Havana Syndrome: Elaborate Hoax, or Sinister Spycraft? Plus, Checking in on the Charlie Kirk Conspiracy.

Summary

Wait a Second… — Havana Syndrome: Elaborate Hoax, or Sinister Spycraft?

April 2, 2026 | The Ringer | Hosted by Jason Concepcion and Tyler Parker, with guest producer Justin Sales

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Episode Overview

This episode of Wait a Second… delves deep into the strange, headline-grabbing phenomenon known as Havana Syndrome—a set of mysterious symptoms first reported by U.S. government personnel in Cuba in 2016. The hosts investigate whether the syndrome is an elaborate hoax, a case of mass psychogenic illness, or a real example of shadowy “sinister spycraft,” now given new credence by recent investigative reports and classified revelations. The conversation also explores broader themes of government secrecy, the arms race in directed-energy weapons, Cold War legacy tech, and how conspiracy theories take root. The show closes with a “loose scale” ranking, a tour through military-civilian tech (microwaves to the Internet), and a “Doom Scroll” segment on Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories and more.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin & Mechanics of Havana Syndrome

• Background:

  • First reported in late 2016 among U.S. diplomatic staff in Havana; spreading to U.S. officials worldwide (“over 1,500 cases, apparently across 96 countries” [04:04])
  • Symptoms included hearing strange/piercing sounds, headaches, vertigo, and cognitive issues
  • Early official stance: likely mass psychogenic illness (“mass delusion event” [04:04])
  • Expansion beyond Cuba: cases in China, Georgia, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Tashkent, London, Key West, etc.

• Target Profile:

  • Victims were almost exclusively U.S. government personnel working on Russian issues, suggesting a non-random pattern.

• Recent Revelations:

  • New reporting (60 Minutes, Washington Post, Der Spiegel) corroborates existence of a portable, backpack-sized “Havana Syndrome” device
  • U.S. Department of Homeland Security reportedly purchased such a device from the Russian black market for $15 million ([06:50])
  • “Apparently it’s real.” — Jason ([07:03])

• Device Description:

  • “Backpack portable” (textbook-sized), likely microwaves with a dish or aiming mechanism
  • Pulsed waveforms specifically targeting the central nervous system (“can go through several hundred feet of drywall, windows, etc.” [07:55])

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2. The Skeptical Case

• Medical & Institutional Doubts:

  • NIH found no brain damage in victims; DNI and intelligence agencies initially ruled out a foreign adversary attack.
  • “No microwave emissions were detected at attack sites. No device was recovered at the scene. There were no intelligence intercepts…” ([09:58])

• Alternative Theories:

  • Psychosomatic illness, anxiety, PTSD, environmental factors (“Early on, they tried saying it was crickets” [09:36])
  • Bureaucratic resistance to acknowledging a new threat
  • “These aren’t people who are inclined to drum up something so they can get the workman’s comp.” — Justin ([18:44])

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3. Why Would the U.S. Cover This Up?

• Potential Motives:
  • Embarrassment at being unable to protect personnel (“That is a gap that makes you look like you can’t protect your people” [19:39])
  • Avoiding the need for a direct/proportional response to Russia or other adversaries
  • Concealing U.S. programs in directed-energy weapons (“Now you’ve got to answer to what you’re doing” [20:58])
  • Maintaining the arbitrary “10 milliwatt” safety standard for microwave exposure ([22:41] and in-depth discussion 22:15–28:00)

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4. Directed-Energy Weapons: Context and Cold War Paranoia

• Historical Precedents:

  • “Moscow Signal”: Russians blasted microwaves at the U.S. Embassy for years in the 1950s/60s; possibly related to passive listening devices ([22:23])

• Safety Standards and Blind Spots:

  • The “10 milliwatt” U.S. standard was arbitrary—not evidence-based—which “colored our thinking” ([26:20])
  • Institutional inertia and vested interests in keeping the standard, despite contrary Russian standards

• Creepy Tech & Animal Testing:

  • Real effects found in animal experiments: hearing sounds inside the head, neurological changes ([28:11–29:24])
  • “Some evidence that peoples’ personalities and behaviors can be changed using this stuff…” — Jason ([28:58])

• Notable Insights:

  • “The standard is based on what it takes to heat something up, not what it takes to actually fry what’s going on inside you.” — Justin ([29:24])

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5. How Are Targets Chosen?

• Identification of Personnel:
  • Surveillance, possible leaks, open activity (example: Mark Polymeropoulos, code-name referenced, targeted in Moscow)
  • Noted hack of U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) possibly aiding adversaries in identifying U.S. spies using AI cross-referencing ([33:36])

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6. Evidence and Notable Cases

• Physical Limitations vs. Reports:

  • Questions about the precision/possibility of an attack on White House steps, busy urban areas ([34:38])
  • Devices are reportedly “remote-controlled,” but close proximity is dangerous even to operators ([36:29])

• Spectacular Tales:

  • “The Chef”: Vitaly Kovalev, ex-GRU, worked in U.S. restaurants, arrested with spy tech, interrogated for 80 hours, then released and reportedly died on the Ukrainian front ([36:49–41:46])
    • Memorable: “He’s good with the microwave and the stove, you know.” — Justin ([39:09])
    • The FBI agent interrogating Kovalev later “suffered symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome.”

• DIY Norwegian Scientist:

  • Norwegian scientist, using public reporting, replicated a version of the device, tested it on sheep (and himself), and experienced symptoms ([43:12])
    • “He was hoping to disprove it, right?... He was like, guess what? We figured it out.” — Jason ([43:54], [43:47])
  • Question raised: Is the Norwegian scientist real? Story reported by Washington Post, but details remain scarce.

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7. U.S. (and Everyone’s) Energy Weapon Programs

• Examples of U.S. Directed-Energy Weapons: ([47:08–49:45])
  • Active Denial System: Crowd-control microwave blaster
  • “Marauder,” “Project Excalibur,” ODIN (“Optical Dazzling Interdictor”), “Chimera,” “Neural Particle Beam,” etc.
  • “We dropped the first atom bomb, yada, yada, yada… I think we underrate that the Russians are experts in the field of microwaves…” — Jason ([43:59])

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8. A Game: Best Military-to-Consumer Products Bracket

• Playful ranking of tech with military origins—from EpiPens, Super Glue, Freeze-Dried Food, Tampons, Bomber Jackets to Computers and the Internet ([53:03–64:16]).
  • Winner: Computer (“I feel like none of this is here without computer…” [62:24])
  • “Bomber Jacket really a Gonzaga situation where it went from Cinderella to heavyweight.” — Justin ([63:10])

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9. Final Theories: Real, Hoax, or Something in Between?

• All three hosts believe the core of Havana Syndrome is real, with possible overcount in attributed cases:
  • “I think it’s real. I mean… what would it mean for it to be fake? … That’s a lot of people, to believe it’s just psychosomatic.” — Jason ([64:24])
  • “Family members of operatives are feeling the effects too… That kind of takes it away from the whole ‘psychosomatic’ thing…” — Tyler ([65:19])
  • “I think that there’s some reporting… that the number is much smaller, like 100.” — Justin ([66:23])
  • Some may be “retirement claims,” but genuine cases remain numerous.

Institutional Blindness

• U.S. arrogance and skepticism about what is possible likely delayed acknowledgement (“We think we’re a great science nation and we got out scienced in this particular regard.” — Jason [69:32])

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10. Lucid Scale: Story Rankings

(1–4 scale on each trait; total out of 20)

• Legs: 2.5 – Ongoing niche story, but not mass public interest
• Unintentional Comedy: 2 – Both for the chef’s story & Norwegian scientist, but tempered by the horror for victims
• Sinisterness: 1.5 – Sinister, but “spies blasting spies”; not as dark as other conspiracies
• Intrigue: 3.5 – Highly intriguing and full of weird twists
• Danger: 2 – Dangerous for a few, but not world-threatening (unless it escalates into conflict)

Total: 11.5/20
“It’s a good story. It’s a bad story for the people who are experiencing it. But one of the cornerstone conspiracy theories of the last 10 years.” — Justin ([73:59])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Bureaucracy and Denial:
  • “If you acknowledge there are weapons that your adversary has that you can’t counter, that’s embarrassing.” — Jason ([19:39])
• On Russian Tech Prowess:
  • “We underrate that the Russians are experts in the field of microwaves… they’ve been working on it at least since 1953.” — Jason ([43:59])
• On Institutional Arrogance:
  • “We think we’re a great science nation and we got out scienced in this particular regard…” — Jason ([69:32])
• On the Chef/Agent Story:
  • “He’s good with the microwave and the stove… cooking all around.” — Justin ([39:31])
• On Conspiracy Skepticism:
  • “Do we fully buy this story about this classified Norwegian scientist…?” — Justin ([45:04])
• On Reporting Crazy Science:
  • “Honey, look, it works.” (on the Norwegian scientist blasting himself) — Justin ([43:57])
• On the Military-Consumer Tech Bracket:
  • “Bomber jacket really a Gonzaga situation where it went from Cinderella to heavyweight.” — Justin ([63:10])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |------|---------| | 00:08 | Cold Open: Microwave oven history, Raytheon, military tech legacy | | 04:04 | Overview of Havana Syndrome, first cases, symptoms, global spread | | 06:32 | Recent reports: U.S. purchases Havana device on Russian black market | | 09:02 | The skeptical/psychosomatic case | | 13:01 | Why would the U.S. cover this up? Motivations and politics | | 22:23 | Historical context: Moscow Signal, safety standards, Cold War legacy | | 28:01 | Animal testing and the bizarre effects of microwaves | | 34:38 | Anomalies: Attacks in Washington, Istanbul, precision questions | | 36:49 | Chef Vitaly Kovalev story: spy, chef, “zapper” | | 43:12 | Norwegian scientist re-creates the device and zaps himself | | 47:08 | U.S. military’s directed-energy (laser, microwave) arsenal | | 53:03 | Military tech turned consumer: March Madness bracket | | 64:24 | Verdict: Is Havana Syndrome real or a hoax? Panel’s views | | 71:06 | Lucid scale: Legs, Comedy, Sinisterness, Intrigue, Danger | | 74:29 | Doom Scroll segment: Charlie Kirk, bullet conspiracy & more |

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Doom Scroll Segment (74:29–end)

Charlie Kirk Conspiracy

• Defense lawyers claim bullet that killed Charlie Kirk does not match suspect’s rifle, but actual forensics uncertain; possible misreporting amplified online (esp. by Daily Mail social headlines) ([74:45])
  • “I love disinformation. I’m amplifying it. I’m putting it out there. I’m an agent of chaos in this regard.” — Jason ([76:53])

Cash Patel Hacked

• Former FBI director Cash Patel’s personal emails hacked by pro-Iranian group; some embarrassing photos but no government data found; rumors (unconfirmed) that his email was used for porn site ([79:25])

Legal Oddities: Staten Island “Protected Class” Defense

• Crime suspect Ator Mazi claims to be part of a protected class: “Senior Sicilian.”
  • “I’m half Italian. And you know what? I’m half protected.” — Justin ([83:39])

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Tone & Style

• The episode balances irreverence, humor, and deep-dive curiosity.
  It’s conversational, frequently self-mocking (“None of us are physicists…”), and riffs on pop culture, military history, and conspiracy tropes—while keeping a skeptical but open mind on the science and politics behind murky government events.

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For Newcomers

If you haven’t heard the episode, you’ll leave understanding:

• What Havana Syndrome is and why it’s so controversial
• Why it’s gained new credibility after years of skepticism
• How weapons built for the Cold War keep haunting us in strange, modern forms
• How skepticism, secrecy, international rivalry, and American exceptionalism shape both conspiracy and reality in national security
• The enduring weirdness of weaponized microwave energy, strange deaths, “chef spies,” and the blurry line between institutional blindness and real, covert warfare

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“There’s just too much reporting for it to be fake. And when you have a guy and you bought one… I want to hear about that. The Russians have a top secret device and people are like selling it on the Internet.” — Jason ([70:17])

“It is, like, exactly the type of thing that I think is fascinating to discuss, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it’s an 11 and a half out of 20.” — Justin ([74:02])

Transcript

[A]

It's 1945 in Waltham, Massachusetts, and you're standing next to a machine that helped win the war. The cavity magnetron generated the radar that found U boats and tracked bombers. And you, Percy Spencer, fifth grade dropout, self taught, technical genius, foundation, figured out how to build them fast. When you arrived, Raytheon was making 17 magnetrons a day. You got it to 2,600. 80% of every magnetron tube powering every radar set on every allied ship and plane in Europe and the Pacific passed through your hands. But you're not thinking about that. You're thinking about the chocolate bar in your pocket. Because it's melting. It's melting fast. And in a strange way, heating from the inside out. You look at the mess of sticky chocolate melting. Then the magnetron, and the idea arrives whole. You send a boy to the cafeteria for popcorn, it pops. You try an egg, it explodes. Eureka. You file a patent. You would eventually hold over 100 patents. Raytheon pays you the same thing for all of them. $2 a pop. That's just company policy. You don't know it yet, but you just invented the microwave oven. That discovery, for which you were paid $2, will generate, by conservative estimate, north of half a billion dollars in profit for the company over the next 50 years. $2 for an invention that will end up in 90% of American homes. $2 for the foundation of an industry that will eventually be worth more than $10 billion a year. Your employer will sell its appliance division for $550 million, 275 million times what it paid you and never make another microwave oven. Your employer, Raytheon, will keep making magnetrons, just not for Kitch, for guided missiles, for the Tomahawk, for the Patriot missile system. Eventually, the magnetron's descendants will power directed energy weapons that can fry the electronics of an entire building. In the active denial system, a microwave weapon designed to make human skin feel like it's on fire. But you don't know any of that yet. You're just a man with $2 at a melted chocolate bar. This is. Wait a second. Havana Syndro. Welcome. I am Jason Concepcion. That's Tyler Parker.

[B]

Sup?

[A]

Joining us today is our producer, Justin Sales. Welcome to the program. Justin.

[C]

You just let anyone on the show these days, huh?

[A]

I mean, yes, it's true, but, you know, no one's. Very few people in the world are as responsible for the existence of this program. Besides Bill Simmons and yourself.

[C]

I was gonna say I was at least top six and responsible for the show. Existing but okay.

[A]

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[D]

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[A]

So today, Justin, we're talking about Havana Syndrome, the previously thought to be controversial energy directed weapon that has been. I'm sorry to use this term, but zapping the nervous systems of various US Government personnel across the globe. Beginning in Havana in late 2016, American diplomats and intelligence officers in Havana started hearing strange sounds. Piercing sounds, popping sounds. Then they got headaches, then they got vertigo. Then they started coming down with cognitive problems. The FBI sent investigators to investigate and the diagnosis, at least from JUMP and for the next kind of several years, was like a mass delusion event. Sure, like everybody having like a mass anxiety attack about this. Within two years, the same symptoms were popping up in China, then in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Tashkent, London, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And these were all government personnel that worked on Russia? Seemed to be the thread connecting everybody. A DoD official at NATO, an FBI agent in her home in Key West, Florida. There were over 1500 cases, apparently across 96 countries. The people being hit were not random. Again, they all seemed to have one thing in common, which is that they worked on Russia. The government's official position was at that time that this was probably not real.

[C]

Very unlikely is the phrase that gets

[A]

used a lot to be a foreign attack. Yes, five of seven intelligence agencies still say a foreign adversary is very unlikely to be responsible. However, there's been some pretty significant reporting lately, including by 60 Minutes, Der Spiegel, the great German journalistic outfit, and the Washington Post, basically corroborating that this device exists and stating that in fact the Department of Homeland Security, in one of their rare successes in recent years, purchased a version of the device off the dark web.

[C]

Russian black market.

[A]

Yeah, which is not uncommon, you know, times are tough in Russia, it's hard to make some extra scratch. So a lot of the ways that that can happen, at least for people who are involved in the military and the government is selling stuff on the black market. So apparently one came up for sale on the black market.

[C]

$15 million.

[A]

$15 million brought to us from our Ukrainian friends who are like, hey, are you guys interested in a Havana syndrome box? We bought it, and apparently it's real.

[B]

So is it true that it's less. It's more software than it is hardware? Like, they don't all. They're probably not all gonna look the same if you were to get ahold of these devices that were used for this. Or they might. I don't know.

[A]

Well, it's interesting. It's described in the 60 Minutes report and the Washington. Recent Washington Post report as backpack portable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So like, the size, one would guess, of, like, some textbooks in a backpack that just based on the fact that it's probably microwaves, there must be some sort of dish or way to aim it. And that. Yes. That it's specifically the way anybody who's worked with synthesizers or understands, like, a waveform.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And that it's specifically the way the waveform is pulsed at microwave frequencies. That it's like a quick, like it's a rise and then a quick down is the way that this beam is directed to affect the central nervous system of its. The people that it's aimed at. And that it can go through, like, several hundred feet of drywall, windows, etc.

[B]

Got it. Okay, I did it. I was surprised to hear about the software hardware distinction just because my dumb brain, when I hear this stuff is just like, oh, they're making the. This is. This is what a handgun looks like. This is what a knife looks like. This is what Havana syndrome weapon looks like, or whatever. I realize those are terrible examples because guns can look like a lot of different things in knives, too, but maybe take all that out, Sarah. But yeah.

[A]

Now let's talk about the skeptical case. Just because I think it's important that for.

[C]

Because for a long time, I think

[A]

across several administrations, yes, there was a

[C]

lot of skepticism that this was a real thing. It was treated like these were psychosomatic

[A]

cases in some form or fashion.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Based on anxiety, post traumatic stress, or

[C]

that there were underlying conditions that had been reported or it was environmental. One of the early cases there was, you know, there's always a sound that they talk about being associated with this.

[A]

A crickety sound, a popping sound.

[C]

And they tried saying that it was crickets. Right, right. And I think in the public too there was a lot of skepticism early on on whether this was actually a legitimate thing. But it seems like that's eased up a little bit lately. And I don't know. Let's go through the skeptics. The skeptics case first.

[A]

Right. Well, the skeptics case is that they sent a lot of these victims to the nih, the National Institutes of Health, for a study, which if you listen to some interviews by from some of the people involved in these attacks, they were kind of pissed that instead of being sent to a doctor who was going to be like, let's find out what's wrong with you. They were sent to the NIH just to be kind of studied. But the NIH found basically no brain damage detected. And dni, the Department of National Intelligence, assessed that again, that it was highly unlikely this was a foreign adversary attack. No microwave emissions were detected at attack sites. No device was recovered at the scene. There were no intelligence intercepts from known foreign adversaries. Talking about the device now that's changed recently.

[B]

Something was intercepted. Right.

[A]

But this was at the time and that was the case for basically several years until the last two weeks of the Biden administration. So that's important to note. And then there's a lot of people still to this who feel like this is a kind of like complex psyop to get people angry. Afraid of Russia and Cuba in general.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

And that we must be doing equally as bad stuff. Whether or not this is actually true. Which I. Fine. My thing though is why cover it up? That's my. Let's assume that it's real and assume that we have a device. There were some recent reports that seem to suggest that we used a similar device when we snatched Maduro in a totally legal raid on Venezuela.

[C]

Absolutely fully above board.

[A]

Totally, totally fine. There was one of the Maduro guards got on like a tape of him was played on some like right wing radio where he's describing like these crazy effects of some kind of like energy beam ray, people vomiting and like bleeding from their ears and stuff. Doesn't seem to be the same type of effect. Although we do have projected energy weapons mostly that just kind of like burn your skin.

[C]

Sure. Like really bad sunburn.

[A]

Really bad sunburn. When we want to like get rioters away from the embassy or like force somebody out of a building, you zap them through the walls with this and you microwave the outside of their skin. But so my. I'm still stuck on why Would you cover this up when 1500 people plus have been attacked with this? Apparently?

[C]

Well, I think that there are a lot of reasons. Right. And by no means I'm. Look, hate to say it right off the top, but I'm not an expert. Right, but I am.

[A]

None of us are physicists here unless some of us are hiding some deep, dark secrets.

[C]

But I do. I think that, look, if there were things pointed toward the Russians around the first Trump administration, you can understand why the Trump administration would not want to invite this specter of more Russian, more Russian stuff, more Russian stuff interfering with us and like, you know, for obvious reasons, the election, interference, etc. Etc. His allegedly cozy relationship with. With the Russians.

[A]

Well, I mean, he does love them. It's not. That's not alleged. What's alleged is that it's veers into, like, illegal territory. He does love.

[B]

He's got. He's got a deep love for the Ruskis.

[A]

He does love him.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And then, like, look, I think on some level, if this is made public and this is coming out, right? Like, doesn't this mean that you then have to find a way to respond? Right? Like, isn't this on some level, that's

[B]

kind of my answer, right? Yeah.

[C]

Like, you kind of have to have a proportional response.

[B]

If you acknowledge publicly like, hey, yes, this foreign adversary of ours is doing this to agents of ours, then wouldn't you. Then as the way Americans operate, wouldn't people be like, hey, we gotta go on now.

[A]

I'm gonna push back slightly on that. Sure. I could see where under Trump, assuming that he does love Russia as much as he appears to, that if our people were getting hit by a Russian laser beam, microwave beam, I'm gonna call it a laser beam occasionally and conflate the two.

[C]

It's your show. It's your right, too.

[A]

Because of that fondness, he'd be like, yeah, go. I don't wanna get into it. But when it gets into Biden, then it's confusing to me. Like, why wouldn't. And to that end, this is like a war in the shadows. I just read a New Yorker article, great New Yorker article about a former CIA guy whose job was to recruit Iranian nuclear scientists and basically say, hey, we can get you out of the country. We can get your family out of the country. You can live safely in the US or you stay here and at some point you're assassinated. And so that's happening. We do stuff like that. Why wouldn't we just fucking go zap their guys? I don't understand. It's clear that this type of behavior on the edges doesn't escalate into open warfare. And Moscow is very aggressive. The Russians are aggressive. There's this thing called the Moscow Rules, which is a known way that intelligence agencies operate in Moscow in particular, where if there's a State Department official that's suspected to be CIA, or even not suspected to be CIA, just an American that works there, works for the US Government, they'll go in and toss your apartment, they'll take a shit on your bed, they'll beat you up in the street just to let you know, like, hey, you don't get a moment's fucking peace. Right.

[C]

So poison your pet. Something like that.

[A]

Right, Right. Yeah, they'll do stuff like that. So I guess I. I don't understand how. I don't think this would escalate to World War Three if we just, like, sunburned a Russian guy through his. Through his condo walls.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

I mean, I think that on some level, my understanding is there's some bureaucratic considerations within the CIA that have led to this. Conditions of this denial of this thing.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Where under John Brennan in the Obama administration, there was a lot of tearing down of the. And a lot of this comes from Michael Weiss's reporting in Insider.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But there was this tearing down of this silo and some McKinsey dweeb came up with the term modernization for bringing the. The agency into its next generation, where there were two sides in the CIA.

[B]

He came up with. Got you. I was like. He came up with the word modernization? No, but we have that one on the book already.

[C]

But there are. There's the operative side and then there's the analyst side. And these are, you know, they work for the same Agency, but anybody who's had a job knows that. Like those fucking pricks over in it.

[A]

Right.

[C]

There are just. There are different factions within the. Within your company.

[B]

I love our IT people here at Spotify.

[C]

They're great.

[A]

They're great. Shout out to them.

[C]

I don't want to disparage them. These two groups are naturally skeptical of each other. Right. Because you have the analysts who are the people behind. Behind the desk with the computers, the more wonky types. And then you have the operatives who are the ones in the field. Now, the operatives are the ones who are experiencing these things. The operatives are the ones who are in these foreign territories. The operatives are the ones.

[A]

If you look, they're under tremendous stress all the time. Yes, yes.

[B]

Which is one of the other sort of skeptic explanations for things too, is like, these people are under extreme stress. So these sort of things.

[A]

In the New York article about this guy who is recruiting Iranian scientists, it notes that, like, many of this guy's colleagues in the field were being treated for alcoholism, because that's very common out there, apparently.

[C]

Sure. But I think that's also worth noting that like a lot of these people, on the operative side, the ops, like this is going to be the most. Like, I'm really not trying to come across as like too patriotic in a story like this or on this podcast, but like, these guys are lifers for this agency and these guys have been in really intense situations. So for them to feel like this is happening as a result of what they experienced and that they feel like this happened, I think that whether it actually went down that way or not, where I think we're going to, we'll get into a little bit more. More as we go. But these aren't people who are inclined to drum up something so they can get the workman's calm.

[A]

Okay, here's several versions of reasons why to cover this up. One, if you acknowledge that there are weapons that your adversary has that you can't counter, that's embarrassing.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

And that is a gap that makes you look like you can't protect your people and is the kind of thing in a multi, multi, multi billion dollar defense establishment that nobody wants to admit. Number two, what you said, if you attribute it to Russia, China, Cuba, whatever, now you got to do something about it. And nobody wants to go there. Which I don't. Again, I don't believe, because like, we, we kill people. You know, we, you know, we pay other. We pay warlords to kill people like in Africa. Like, we do that. Yeah.

[C]

But to put a pin in that, too. Sure. I do think, though, that the Biden administration, there were a lot of Obama people there and they had. There was a, like, conscious effort to kill as much. No, no, we were droning. We were droning. They were droning. No, but to have different relations with the Russians than there had previously been in the past, and there were a lot of people who were in the Obama White House in the Obama administration that were also in the Biden administration where there were more normal relations with Russia.

[A]

Right.

[C]

So I think that the bar to accepting this probably would have been a little bit higher and then acting on that, if you accept that is true.

[A]

Okay, here's another reason, possible reason that acknowledging a category of weapon that a foreign intelligence service has would invite questions about weird weapons that you have. And now you've got an answer to what you're doing. This is kind of. I fall a bit here that we're doing crazy shit all around the world. We're zapping people, we're making them disappear. If we're not directly assassinating. Iranian nuclear scientists were passing their names to the Israelis, and they do it, which is part of why we, I guess, love having them around. So to complain about this is a little bit like, hey, let's look in the mirror. And then people will start to be like, well, what are you doing around the world? Because again, I don't. I don't fully buy that. We're just kind of doing nothing around the world that's untoward. And our guys are getting zapped and it's terrible, and they've paid a terrible health toll, but that we're not doing something of that nature also that we just don't want to talk about.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

And this is not to say that

[B]

that to me, knowing nothing feels almost certainly true. You know what I mean?

[A]

And here's my. Here's my big brain theory about it. So back in the 50s, starting in the 50s, the Russians were. We realized that the Russians were sending, like, microwave radiation into the US Embassy in Moscow. Like, so called Moscow Signal.

[C]

Moscow Signal. Yeah.

[A]

It was going on for years and years and years. And it's. There's some. The theory is that there were passive listening devices in the walls of the embassy somewhere. Famously, like, the Russian ambassador gave the American ambassador, like this huge, like, eagle seal of America. And it had a passive listening device in it in the meeting room. And it was there for many years before it was found. And the reason these are undetectable is that they don't emit a signal. You have to send a signal at it, and then the signal bounces back, and then that's how you read and listen to the device. So that they. The signals that they were sending into the embassy for years. Again, for years were like, modulating at different frequencies in the microwave spectrum. And therefore, the idea is like, there's probably like dozens of bugs in the building and that they're just trying to hear them now. We complained about it couple times. Johnson complained about it. President Johnson. And then I believe our ambassador complained about it and was like, could you please stop? And they were like, what are you talking about? And they're like, no, no, no, no. You're doing it. Please stop. Like, it's. Now we said that it's causing health effects to our guys now. Here's where it kind of. My theory gets wonky. So in the US we have a standard called the 10 milliwatt standard, which is. I won't get into the scientific details of it, but basically anything up to 10 milliwatts is safe in the microwave spectrum. And that's like a very important spectrum because that's like radar. That's like guided missiles. It's like, we use the microwaves for a lot of things. It was. That number was picked arbitrarily. It wasn't picked because of, like, we did scientific testing that we blasted sheep with microwaves. It was just like some guy was like, I don't know, 10 seems good. And then they just ran with that.

[B]

Is this the guy who had the chocolate in his pocket?

[A]

No, that's a different guy. We'll get to. That's a different guy.

[B]

Really excited about the chocolate. Inspired.

[A]

That's a different guy. And so when we were complaining to the Russians, like, hey, you're like, blasting our guys with this crazy. They were blasting us with signals that, like, are a thousandth of the 10 megawatt standard. Like, and in fact, the Russian standard is like 1/1000th of the level of our standard, which originally we thought they did that just to embarrass us and that it was fake and that they had a much higher standard. It's unclear that that is the case. They've done. The Russians clearly have done a lot of experimentation on microwaves. So everything that comes downstream from 10 megawatts, like, you can't, for instance, 10 megawatts, like, you can't work on an aircraft carrier because you are blasted way above 10 megawatts. Like, we don't even enforce it. But it was unclear earlier in the microwave oven era if more than 10 megawatts was leaking from that. So all of our conversations around microwaves are based on the idea that 10 megawatts is safe. And therefore that shaped institutional thinking about what was possible. And therefore, when this happened, people were like, well, it's not like it's undetect. We're not detecting it anywhere near 10 megawatts. Therefore, this can't. We're not detecting it, therefore, it can't be real, therefore, this is fake. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's not that it was a fully a conspiracy to cover up, per se. It was more that this arbitrary number has colored our thinking about what is possible in this electromagnetic wavelength.

[C]

Sure. I mean, look, when we were preparing for this episode, I'm like, the microwave Stuff. Jason's gonna have to kind of walk me through this because I've spent a lot of time, my life staring at a microwave. I've had my face blasted with technology my entire life. And you know what? Sometimes I feel like I'm experiencing some of these symptoms.

[A]

Well, I mean, this has. Now we're gonna get into. This is like kind of where the 5G.

[C]

That's what I was gonna say conspiracy comes from.

[A]

There's this really interesting 1970s two part article in the New York urn, microwaves. And it quotes Dr. Milton Zarit, who did a bunch of studies on microwaves and basically was like, hey, I don't think the 10 megawatt standard is safe. And honestly a lot of the conspiracies about 5G, about microwaves, about cell phones in your pockets, come through this. But his findings have never actually been refused. No one's ever actually done the study. And we are at a point right now, and I'm not saying that microwaves aren't safe and that cellular technology isn't safe, but an entire regulatory framework based on 10 megawatts has been put into place where if that is not safe, the liability, the destruction of like future economic earnings, the fact that we'd have to like retweak entire technologies around that idea is pretty significant. So what I'm saying is there's significant institutional reasons to act like that level is safe. Despite the fact that when we complained to the Russians, we were using their standard, not ours, we were using the 1/1,000th of 10 megawatts.

[C]

So what do we think that these Havana weapons, like can we describe how that, how that works a little bit, how that would play into this?

[A]

Well, I mean the research that Zaret did is pretty alarming. Like there were several studies, one called Chimera and another one called Bizarre, that studied the potential effects of. It was thought that when the Moscow signal first appeared, one of the things they thought was they're using some sort of behavioral modification ray. It's going to make us think different, it's going to make us act different. And that those findings are still classified. But it is. There was some evidence to back that up found by Zarit and other other scientists that if you blast sheep, the amount of animal horrific animal testing in these.

[B]

Yeah, what's I get, you know, rats, I.

[A]

It's sheep and rabbits and dogs.

[B]

Yeah, what the hell.

[A]

It's just horrific. But there was some evidence that people's personalities and behaviors can be changed using this stuff and the experiences like sounds emanating from inside of your head. Popping, crackling. This is probably your individual neurons being cooked inside your brain.

[C]

And that's kind of the thing, Right. The standard is kind of based on what it takes to, like, heat something up, not what it takes to actually fry what's going on inside you.

[A]

Right, right. And that's the other thing, is this device did not create heat. Yes. Whatever these people experienced, it was not the feeling of what we think of as the effect of microwaves on humans, which is like a burning sensation, boiling, you know, burning of the eyes, etc.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, when you read about some of these things, right, like, you talk, you see people who say that they've experienced this and they're talking about muscle deterioration. And then there's, like, one of the first cases, one of the famous cases is this guy, quote, unquote, Adam. He was a CIA operative. He was. I think he was stationed in Havana. I think he's considered patient zero, though there might be a couple cases that date. Actually, there's a case in Germany from 2014 that may be linked. Adam talks about losing a certain percentage of his brain mass as a result of this. Right. And then you have people that talk about they've lost vision in one eye, and that's neurological. That's not just their eye being damaged. That's a neurological thing. And it's like, just horrific things going on inside of these people that, you know, if we accept this all to be true, are being caused by microwave frequencies being shot off of a weapon.

[A]

Here's the other part of it that I find fascinating. How do they identify these folks? I mean, you're talking about, like, CIA agents, State Department officials who are potentially CIA agents, undercover. I guess. Like, some of it would be the way we would find out, like, intercepts and whatnot. FBI agents working on Russia. But, like, that's interesting, too. Like, how did they identify these folks?

[C]

Some of them, I think, were out in the open. Like, Mark Polymeropoulos is one of the big ones.

[A]

Not his real name. That's a code name.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And you went through all that trouble,

[C]

all that trouble pronouncing the name, trying

[B]

to figure out how you say that.

[C]

Do we think he's Greek? Do you think? I.

[A]

We don't know what he is. It's not his real name.

[C]

Now this is bothering me, okay? But it's like. Like, gotta nail this Greek name. Well, Mark P. Not his real name. He says that he experienced it in 2018 when he was on an official trip to Moscow.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, he was, I guess, at least out there. I think he was in Moscow. We have reports of this happening in Havana, of course, in that time period after the, we reopened the embassy and the restrictions on Cuba were lifted under Obama. But like a lot of these things have happened in countries like Vienna, in London, places like London, places that we know that like Russia has kind of had like free run of some stuff.

[A]

Yeah, Vienna is known as like a spy's haven. I will say the one that interests me is, is Guangzhou in China. Because I just find it like hard to believe that.

[C]

Tell me about this. I actually don't know much about this one. Tell me about this one.

[A]

Well, I mean, it was an attack. There's not much details other than someone suffered the, of Vanna syndrome symptoms in the city. And I just find it hard to believe with the amount of surveillance that they have that like there wasn't. The Chinese didn't know about it. I'm saying they helped, but they, they didn't, they weren't aware that that was happening because it's. China is like a very, very hard place to operate because of all the surveillance. The cameras, they're tracking you all the time. It's like Moscow, just very, very hard to work there. And this leads to a. So do you know about the OPM hack, the OPM breach? So a, we think groups associated with Chinese intelligence, like got into, basically got into State Department databases that have like the list of government employees, like a huge list of government employees. And it says like, I don't know, some 20, 21 million like names and stuff, like people who have worked for the government, like over the years, anybody's like, who associated with government work. And the feeling was that along with advances in AI technology, like if you fed that database like into an AI cross referenced with a bunch of other data, like social media, et cetera, that you could figure out who the spies were and who the military people were and who the generals were and who the people who worked in various agencies were. And one wonders if that's not part of it too, that they just have us dialed in.

[C]

I think that there were a lot of specific cases and I think if anybody's watched the 60 Minutes reports, there were some cases cited in that that I have questions about.

[A]

Okay, let's hear it.

[C]

Well, there's the one on the steps of the White House.

[A]

Right where the guy just like collapsed. Yes, on the steps.

[C]

And then there are just others kind of just in the General Washington area. And I guess I just have more Questions about that. And I wonder where you guys land on that, because if you're telling me this happens in Vienna, if you're telling me this happens, I know that there

[A]

was cases, there was, like, a restaurant in Istanbul where, like, it happened.

[B]

Sometimes this just happens on, like, their commute.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

People can get.

[A]

Yeah, well, you just, like, point the back. But now I kind of understand what you're saying, because my issue is, like, how precise is this thing?

[C]

Sure. Right. Because presumably that person who was shooting the thing wasn't actually on the grounds of the White House.

[A]

Right.

[C]

There was a remote to presume.

[A]

Right. Well, you can't leave a fucking backpack, like, on the grounds of the White House anywhere.

[B]

No.

[A]

So I guess it could have been in a car down the street or something. But then again, like, how do you aim it that precisely. It is stated in the 60 Minutes report that these things are remote control. And that would be necessary because the closer you are to the source of microwaves, it's like a. It's like a 10x amount of the power that you're getting. So, for instance, with the guy who walked, apparently, is on video walking a backpack into a restaurant in Turkey where an FBI agent or a State Department, like, person and their family are, like, having dinner. Apparently, it's described as, like, the entire restaurant was just, like, immediately, like. But, like, the guy who walked that backpack in must have just, like, gritted his teeth and been like, fuck it. I'm like, I'm going to take one for the team and just fry to get this guy. Because there's no way that person wasn't feeling it, too.

[B]

That's. That is. I mean, I get that, like, part of it. In some situations it is, you know, you're just from far away and you're pointing it at someone. But the people that are doing this, in a lot of these situations, they must be feeling some of the effects, right?

[A]

Yeah. If they're close to anywhere close to it, they have to be sure.

[C]

Like the cricket gun from I Get the Blowback. Can we talk about the chef?

[A]

Okay, tell me about the chef. Okay, this is the 60 Minutes guy that's mentioned.

[C]

60 Minutes guy report a couple years ago. Yeah. Jason, how would you describe GRU unit 29?

[A]

Very little is known about it, but the GRU is basically like our CIA. They're an intelligence agency that the FSB is like, their FBI works internally, and the GRU is like, their CIA works overseas.

[C]

Okay. And unit 2915. Sorry, 29155.

[A]

It's a cool Name.

[C]

It's a really cool name. It's like the excellent branding. But, like, these are kind of like. I mean, granted, that number would imply there are a lot more units within the gru, and I'm not familiar with the rest of them. But like, this. This sounds like, like some of the scariest.

[A]

You know, they do that too, though. They. They number shit weird. So you don't know. They'll be like, you know, Battalion 55. So you think there's 50 battalions and there's like. They do. Everybody does it.

[C]

But this. So first of all, like, this unit has popped up. There have been sightings of members of this unit, like, allegedly in the vicinity of different reported Havana attacks.

[A]

Their cell phones were pinged and it's known that they were in that area.

[C]

Like the two, 2014, one in Frankfurt. Somebody identified a member who was a member of somebody identified someone in the vicinity who was a member of the unit 29155. This unit is like, responsible for apparently assassinations around the world aimed at, like, destabilizing things in Europe. They also, according to the CIA, operated a Russian bounty program that offered cash reward to Taliban linked militants to kill us.

[A]

I mean, that's soldiers. Everybody does that, though. Yeah, but that's true. Yes.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I'm sure they did.

[C]

Okay. We have a chef who had some connections to the gru, Vitaly Kovalev. Vitaly Kovalev, he was a security technical officer at GRU who then came over to America and started working at Russian restaurants. Michelin star. I mean, chef, like, this guy loved to cook. Legend in two games.

[A]

He's keeping your equipment. You think he was ever, like, cutting it up? Like, over the. Over the chopping board or whatever? Or like, frying something up in the pan and being like, what am I doing? The fuck am I doing with my life? I'm gonna go out tonight and go like, microwave of FBI guy's brain in his house. I just love to cook, man.

[C]

He's cooking all around, right? This man, he's good with the microwave and the stove, you know. So 2020, great year. He was in Florida, allegedly visiting. Not on a mission, just allegedly visiting. And he went. Police went to go pull him over. Takes off in his Mustang, High speed chase. They pull him out of the car. They find various things, including a passport device that can erase GPS data from vehicles, which is like, that's cool, that's cool. That's great. Um, they put him in the back of the cop car at one point, his glasses and by the way, on all of his social media, never wearing glasses. Okay, but his glasses are hanging over his face a little bit, right? And he appears to be having a one sided conversation with the glasses. Okay, Just into the glasses about, you know, just like. I, I don't know, like, just things that would imply that, like, yeah, this, this things are getting a little fucked up for me right now. Glasses fall off his face, mission conversation stops.

[D]

He.

[C]

While he's in jail in Florida, he is interrogated by one FBI agent for over 80 hours.

[A]

He only did two years in jail, by the way.

[C]

I mean, what do they really have

[A]

him on other than, come on, look at what we're doing now. This guy's weird Russian guy with like spy shit and he does two years evading the police.

[C]

Well, while they were interrogating him, this, this agent spent 80.

[B]

You said for 80 hours.

[C]

80 hours. Not at once.

[B]

No, I know that. I'm aware it wasn't. And they weren't just sitting there for eight.

[C]

But this FBI agent later suffered symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome. The. The way that the Vitaly story ends is he gets out 2022, goes back to Russia.

[A]

They tell him not to go because it's like, hey, you've been in American custody so long, they're going to think you're an American agent. Don't go.

[C]

And he gets out. He goes to. He gets shipped to the front lines of Ukraine, go straight to Ukraine. And then a few months later, they just issue a death certificate for him. No, I don't know if his body was ever recovered. I don't know what happened. But they issue that death certificate.

[A]

And let that be a lesson to all you Russian agents in the US if you get arrested, first of all, you're going to do two years max. It's going to be soft, very soft. But when you get out, do not go home. Don't go home.

[B]

Get back in the kitchen.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Do what you love.

[A]

Look, follow your passions.

[C]

Now look, Action Bronson would love to have you on. Fuck, that's delicious. Like, come on, you can go on there after.

[B]

Zoron was just on there. Go on there after him.

[A]

You know, I'm still like, I don't know. They let this. First of all, we sure he wasn't a spy? Two years and they let him go. Are we sure we didn't turn him?

[C]

They. Right, right, right, right, right.

[A]

And then after two years, like, good job casing the home of an FBI agent with strange devices in your car, you're free to go.

[B]

Matter of Fact. Go back over there.

[A]

Go back over to Georgia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, don't go back.

[C]

Go back.

[B]

Don't, don't go back.

[A]

Yeah, it's not safe.

[C]

But, you know, so that, that's a crazy story in this.

[A]

It's. Yeah.

[C]

I don't know if I necessarily want to move on from the Russians, but another one of my favorite stories is something that we were talking about before we came in here. The Norwegian scientist.

[A]

This is so good. So the Norwegian scientist mentioned in the recent Washington Post article who apparently in 24. 2024, 2024, built a based off of open source reporting about what this device, the effects it potentially had, and descriptions of the device that is just out there from 60 Minutes and other places. He kind of like reverse engineered a version of this device in the lab, was just blasting sheep with it, blasted himself with it and was like, hey, guess what? It works.

[B]

Yeah. He was hoping to disprove it.

[C]

He was hoping to disprove it, right?

[A]

And he was like, guess what? We figured it out. Yeah. Like it works.

[C]

Are you firing that in your face?

[B]

No, no, not in. Never.

[A]

Well, I think, you know, here's an underrated part of this. I think we, because we, you know, like, we're in a very technically advanced society, you know, we invented all these incredible technologies that have changed the world. You know, like how many computers around the world right now run on software that were created here, right? So we have this idea of ourselves as very technologically advanced nation. You know, we dropped the first atom bomb, yada, yada, yada. And I think that there is a. Because of this, I think we underrate that. The Russians are experts in the field of microwaves, have been working with them at least. I mean, 1953, when they're blasting the embassy, that's like 70 years ago at this point. Like, this is a long fucking time that they've been working on this tech. And so it's very interesting that not until 2024 was it even proven that you could do this with energy in that wavelength, that you could have these kinds of effects.

[C]

I have to ask the question.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Do we fully buy this story about this classified Norwegian scientist that, you know, they, the government, anybody out there has not really confirmed his existence.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I have to ask the question. This guy out there planning to shoot, to shoot sheep with this, with this microwave weapon and then start shooting himself in the face, then all of a sudden starts experiencing these symptoms, right? Like, do we 100% buy this? I look, it pops up in The Washington Post.

[A]

Are you, are you besmirching the Washington Post? As bedraggled as they are, I would

[C]

never do that to Jeff Bezos, Washington Post. And I don't want to like, look, I don't want to get in the game of calling other journalists. Work into question. But like they're operating from their sources. Right. And we, I guess. Right. We would have to assume that they have seen things that would prove this. But like a lot of these stories are kind of scant on much details. Right?

[A]

Sure. Because again, I think a lot of this stuff is classified, but I trust the Post. So what is your. Let me ask, what is the conspiracy theory? Because this is interesting to me.

[C]

I'm actually just trying to plant the seed to build up to. Right, okay. The weapon. Because the weapon is the big thing. And I think that has turned a lot of this for people. Right. I think there were a lot of people that were skeptical in the past

[A]

and we bought the weapon and we got it.

[C]

We bought the weapon. We got it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I haven't seen. I think I would have liked to at least seem like a sketch of what the weapon could look like. Right.

[A]

You know what I imagine is like a Ghostbuster backpack.

[C]

Exactly. That's exactly what I was envisioning.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Yeah. And like 12 C batteries.

[C]

Just saying. I got questions based on the scantness of the details.

[A]

Well, would you like to hear about some energy directed weapon systems created right here in the old US Valley?

[C]

I would love that.

[A]

There's ads the active denial system. It directs millimeter wave directed microwave energy at humans causing like extreme heat on the surface of human skin, causing pea sized blisters in less than 0.1% of exposure. Like it just like will burn you up. We used it in Afghanistan to get people out of like buildings that we didn't want to go into. How about Marauder? Marauder, We've got cool names.

[C]

Yeah, great branding.

[A]

Magnetically accelerated ring to achieve ultra high directed energy and radiation.

[C]

I love this. They came up with the name first and then the acronym second. You can always tell.

[A]

This was used high energy capacitors to create a toroid of plasma at a significant fraction of the speed of light. That would then be, I guess launched at something. There is, I like this one. Project Excalibur. This is from the Star Wars, Reagan era. Star Wars. The concept detonate a nuclear weapon in space and then using some sort of like lens system, channel the X rays into a laser beam that then shoots down from space.

[B]

This was obviously we didn't get very far with that one.

[A]

No, that one didn't get very far. But I guess the idea is like, hey, technically this can work. Chimera. This is so Chimera. There's a bunch of like anti drone things. Chimera is ground based high power microwave system for like burning the electronics in like incoming missiles and drones.

[C]

I'm so caught up on the nuclear bomb in space because that actually ties back. To. What is it? Archimedes. The mirrors of Archimedes, which was the idea of like harnessing the sun and projecting it through mirrors to burn ships. And this is just for the Cold War era. We're gonna blow up a nuke in space.

[A]

That guy was out of his, you know, ahead of his time. ODIN Optical Dazzling Interdictor.

[B]

Dazzling.

[A]

Yeah, dazzling. It's a shipboard laser intended to counter drones and complicate intelligence gathering.

[B]

Give me old razzle dazzle.

[A]

Yeah, just give them the razzle dazzle with that. Let's do one more because the names of them are fun. Neural particle beam.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

This is a current program missile defense agency. In 2019, 34 million was requested to develop a space based neutral particle beam for boost phase ballistic missile defense. Under Secretary of Defense Michael Griffin, who had worked on the original like Reagan era Star wars stuff, said in 2018, quote, we should not lose our way as we come out of the slough of despondence in directed energy. In other words, don't forget about the lasers, man. We gotta be making the lasers.

[C]

You must always be thinking of the lasers.

[E]

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[D]

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[F]

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[A]

Yes, would you like to Would you like to rank some products? My cold open today was about the microwave oven. Yes, and how. That was the Raytheon Corporation, which many people have heard of. They're the incredible minds behind the Tomahawk missile, the Javelin missile, and many other guided missile systems and defense systems. They made untold millions from the patent of the microwave oven, which used to be 6ft tall.

[C]

Microwave oven was as tall as Tyler

[A]

Parker for like 10 years. It was like 6ft tall and weighed like 800 pounds. Like you could only use it on ships.

[C]

Taller than six feet, you could take

[B]

down, well, 800 pounds. Maybe a couple of me.

[C]

Good.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

You could only use it on ships. So here it is. I'm going to give you a consumer product that was created because of military experiments and or military funding.

[C]

So wait a minute. So things that I can purchase or could have purchased in the recent past

[A]

you can purchase today.

[C]

Today.

[A]

That because of the military.

[C]

The military created them and then for whatever reason they found a second life or in civilian world.

[A]

Right, Right. And that's the military here and militaries across the world.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And you will. I'll give them to you and then I'll name a second thing and you will tell me. It's basically winner stays on.

[C]

Okay, so like this or this? This or this. Okay.

[A]

Gun. Knife.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And then you would say knife. Okay. And then I'd say like knife Club knife. Okay.

[C]

So that's how I got the game. Okay.

[A]

That's how we're gonna do it. Ready?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Freeze dried food developed during World War II to preserve blood, serum medicines and food for military logistics. Freeze dried food and EpiPens.

[C]

I'm going EpiPens. I don't have any personal attachment there. It just feels like the right choice.

[A]

So you're right. You didn't want to consign untold thousands to their deaths from allergic reactions.

[C]

Oh. What I decide is actually what lives on. Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Well, I mean. Yeah, like this is. I don't want to tell you your scoring system for you got it.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

You tell me how you're going to score.

[B]

I can't wait until. Bomber jackets beats. EpiPens.

[A]

Okay, so. EpiPens Super Glue discovered accidentally in 1942 during the height of World War II.

[C]

I've never had to use an EpiPen. Superglue got me through a lot of class projects when I was in fifth grade.

[A]

This is going to be a very interesting matchup. Super glue duct tape. Also developed during World War II by Johnson and Johnson's Permacell division. This is originally called Duck D U C K Tape.

[C]

Really?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

This actually blows my mind. I thought, I thought it was duct tape because they were.

[B]

That's what it is.

[C]

Now you're taping the. Like the ducks.

[A]

It was originally. Because it was made to.

[C]

Dumbest thing I've ever seen.

[A]

Cotton duck fabric.

[C]

Got it.

[A]

And so it was originally called duct tape.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Super glue duct tape.

[C]

Duct tape. 100% duct tape.

[A]

Duct tape.

[B]

A legend of the game.

[A]

A legend. Absolute. Does it all.

[C]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I mean.

[B]

5. Tool player duct tape.

[A]

Like the Josh Hart of adhesives.

[B]

Oh, dude, Absolutely.

[A]

Okay. Duct tape. Tampons. Slash menstrual pads. During World War I, Kimberly Clark developed Cellucottin, an absorbent wood pulp wadding five times more absorbent than cotton. After the war, army nurses who had discovered the material worked well as a menstrual absorbent drove demand.

[C]

What you got to know is, me and my guy Tyler over here, we're allies.

[B]

Total allies.

[A]

Total allies of the ladies out there. So you're not going to select duct tape over Kojaks and menstrual pants?

[C]

I didn't say that.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

No. We're going tampons.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

We're going big.

[A]

Tampon shouts to producer Sarah

[C]

Everyone, there is actually a lady in the room. We make these episodes. She's lovely and she puts up with a lot.

[A]

Okay. Tampons. Menstrual pads, MRNA vaccines. A foundational research on MRNA vaccine technology was funded in part by DARPA through its AdEPT program, autonomous diagnostics to enable prevention and therapeutics.

[C]

We're going tampons.

[A]

Wow. Holy cow. Look. We would still be in the throes of the COVID pandemic, but we're going with tampons. And that's the kind of ally you are.

[C]

They'd be saying this about me.

[A]

Tampons, menstrual pads. The SUV.

[C]

Oh, I love cars in the SUV.

[A]

The original Jeep was designed in 1940 to a US army specification for a Light Reconnaissance Vehicle. After WW2, Willys Overland sold a civilian version, the CJ. The civilian Jeep. And all SUVs trace their lineage to this.

[C]

So I lose all SUVs if I lose the Jeep?

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Even the RAV4, which I know is very special to you.

[C]

What? You think I rap for tampons?

[A]

Okay, we can't alienate half the globe just for merely an suv. Okay, Tampons, menstrual pads versus the bomber jacket.

[C]

Bomber jacket. Look, I've seen some of the biggest dweebs in my life just level up by putting on a bomber jacket.

[A]

Could we have baseball without the bomber jacket?

[C]

There's that, too, right? Just think about all that.

[A]

I'm sorry.

[C]

Sorry, ladies. Bomber jacket. But you look great. Some of them look very lovely in bomber jacket.

[A]

Let's keep it here. Bomber jacket versus aviator sunglasses. Developed the aviator in 1936.

[C]

Bomber jacket.

[A]

Bomber jacket.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Bomber jacket versus the interstate highway system championed by President Eisenhower in order to quickly move troops across the country. Just go with your heart, man. What do you think?

[C]

Yeah. Bomber jacket.

[A]

Okay, so in this universe, we are, like, still peeking our way through, like, back roads across the vast swath of north. No, it's fine. I'm not, like, making it.

[B]

Who likes i40? I get it.

[A]

Nobody does. Route 66.

[C]

Look, have you ever tried to drive at the 101? We could turn this into the Californians podcast. Okay.

[A]

Bomber jacket. Digital photography. The charged couple device CCD was invented at Bell Labs in 1969, but the US military and intelligence community drove its development for spy satellites.

[C]

I'm a film guy.

[A]

You're like analog film. I like analog celluloid, baby.

[B]

Celluloid.

[C]

Yeah, we're sticking to that.

[A]

Just think about that. Without spy satellites, no one could take a picture on their phone. Okay. The bomber jacket versus canned food. Napoleon offered a 12,000 franc prize in 1795 for a method of preserving food so he could send his armies out to invade Russia, Austria and other countries.

[C]

Tyler, what's your favorite canned food

[B]

now? I don't even know now. I don't think I've eaten a ton of canned foods now. Might get corn.

[A]

Chef Boyardeer.

[C]

Mm, soup.

[A]

I mean, there's soup, and then. Could we even do soup? It'd be glass jars, I guess.

[C]

Like, I guess we could.

[A]

Glass jar. So what is the answer?

[C]

Bomber jacket or canned food?

[A]

Yeah. Millions, if not billions, will starve. Yeah. I would just tell you this, but it's. Feel free to select the Marmor jacket.

[C]

All right, I'm going to switch it up and go canned food.

[A]

Another victory for Napoleon. All right, Canned food versus wristwatches. Wristwatches existed before World War I, but they were considered women's jewelry, which is great, wonderful misogynistic note about society. But military officers needed a way to coordinate artillery barrages. Therefore, the wristwatch became popular.

[B]

Check out this pussy.

[C]

He wants to know the time.

[B]

He wants to know the time.

[A]

Look at this. What is he going like this?

[B]

We're going to go.

[C]

Canned food. Canned food.

[A]

Okay. Canned food in the microwave oven invented by Percy Spencer at Raytheon, for which he was paid a $2 patent fee.

[C]

Would we still be here doing this episode if the microwave went away? Yeah, and I wouldn't want to butterfly effect that.

[A]

That's true.

[C]

I enjoy being here with you guys.

[A]

Okay, so microwave oven. Microwave oven versus GPS. The Global Positioning System was developed by the U.S. department of Defense in 1973. Originally, called NAVSTAR.

[C]

All I need is one fucking Russian chef to. No, we're going microwave oven.

[A]

Okay? Microwave oven versus.

[C]

We're printing out maps dot com.

[A]

Microwave oven versus computers. The eniac, the first general purpose electronic computer, was funded by the US army to calculate artillery firing tables.

[C]

Bomber jacket. No, sorry. This is really tough because computer caused all the problems.

[A]

Well, I feel like none of this is here without computer. Maybe life is simpler, but computers, okay,

[C]

Computers I'm too addicted to.

[A]

And then finally, computers versus the Internet. ARPANet, funded by DARPA, went live in 1969, connecting four university nodes. The TCPIP protocol suite was developed under DARPA in the 1970s and obviously commercialized to great effect in the 1990s.

[C]

This is like all of a sudden, we did this bracket and we ended up with the Yankees playing the Lakers. I know, right? I don't like this. I don't like where this ended up. I wanted to be a little more whimsical and not have to choose between the computer and the Internet.

[B]

I think for anyone keeping track at home, Bomber Jacket made such a run as a Cinderella.

[A]

I mean, it was like.

[B]

I think they got a lot of exciting stuff in the. In the early rounds.

[C]

Yeah. Bomber Jacket, really a Gonzaga situation where it went from Cinderella to. To heavyweight. Yeah. See, if we didn't have the Internet, I mean.

[A]

Well, can you have Internet?

[C]

Can you have Internet?

[A]

That's one of those things.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Chicken and the egg.

[C]

This is. This is not a good situation. I guess I could play solitaire on the computer. Computer. Without the Internet, I couldn't do my taxes. I. Spreadsheets.

[A]

It's like some video games and stuff that you could have done.

[C]

This didn't work out how I wanted it to.

[A]

Like recipes, computer. Okay, well, because the computer is less

[C]

the problem than the Internet that we have.

[A]

I don't disagree.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Incredible run by computer to come in late and steal it. But you have to say, it was like computer and Internet were like the number one seeds from.

[C]

That's what I'm saying.

[A]

So I think it's not necessary.

[B]

In a way, they got by. Like, they got the buys that they deserved to, you know? You know what I'm saying?

[A]

I mean, half the women in the world are walking into a CVS and discovering that their lives are very, very different.

[C]

Now get ready to learn compact computers. We haven't gone through whether. Whether we think this is real or not. We haven't answered that question.

[A]

I think it's real. I mean, I guess I was. Let me take the counterfactual. What would it mean for it to be fake? 1500 people from different places in the world all experiencing similar symptoms because they heard that somebody else had these symptoms and therefore that I guess reverberated with their own mental health issues. Issues around stress. That's were to believe. It's that or some very sophisticated psyop using over 1000 government officials who. You're asking some of them to destroy their careers in order to gin up antipathy towards Cuba and Russia.

[B]

Or.

[A]

It's real, Tyler.

[B]

I think it's real that family members of the operatives are feeling the effects of this stuff too. That kind of takes it away from the whole like psychosomatic kind of thing for me. And it's seems like it. I'm sure there are explanations for maybe a few of the things that. Where it's like, okay, this isn't Havana syndrome, but it feels like for them, like I say, everything just lines up too much for it to be fully bullshit. It seems like it's definitely happening.

[A]

That's how I kind of feel being a spy. Feels like it's. You're just basically doing pranks. But like at a high level, I feel like that you're just like pranking guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Watch this, huh?

[C]

Ashton Kutcher. I think it's real.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

But I don't know how I feel about 1500 people.

[A]

You think it's less?

[C]

I think it's less. I think that there's some reporting out there, which I'm kind of inclined to agree with, that the number's much smaller, like 100.

[A]

That's still a lot.

[C]

That's still a lot.

[A]

So what are the other 900 doing? Just having the psychosomatic reaction and kind of freaking out.

[C]

I don't think that these are. That most of these are psychosomatic because a lot of these people are showing biomarkers in their blood. And you can, like if it's psychosomatic, you're not going to show the biomarkers.

[A]

Right. What if it's from the 5G towers?

[C]

Sure. But what if it is in some of these cases environmental or for pre existing conditions?

[A]

Right.

[C]

I think back a lot. And please push pat back against this idea because I tried this out on my girlfriend today and she pushed back immediately. But May 2020, you talk to someone and you're like, they were like, God, I was so sick in like January 2020.

[A]

Sure, sure.

[C]

And everyone was like, that must have been Covid. Right. And I think like, people do have a tendency sometimes to hear that this thing is happening and be like that sounds like what I'm experiencing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I think that when we're talking about operatives who have been in hostile territories or operating a space where the Russians had easy access to these things or whomever, like we're operating under the assumption that it's the Russians, again, none of us experts, none of they did catch a Russian guy.

[A]

But yes, but we don't know.

[C]

But yes. Yeah, I'm trying to, try not to get sued by the Russians though. I. But I think that when you start to let in like 1500 people into this, into this thing that was probably a little more targeted and I think this is actually where some of the doubt came from because you let in 1500 people, all of a sudden somebody's like, ah, yeah, I got this ringing in my ear. They might just be listening to the AirPods too loud. Right. Like, I think that you, by having so many people looked at has allowed like some of the agencies that have examined this to be like they're to doubt some of these claims. But I do think that on a smaller scale this is entirely legitimate.

[A]

I, I tend to agree with you. I also think like, there's probably people who are like, let me get my early retirement. I got that. I got microwaved.

[C]

I got microwaved.

[A]

I'm hearing popcorn, Doc, get me out of here. It's time to retire and take my benefits.

[C]

I'm just picturing some CIA agents hanging around some construction sites like the guys in the Sopranos trying to get some no show jobs. Yeah, I mean, I think that's where I land though, that this is real.

[A]

I think it's real also. But just to restate, I think to take a haircut on what your position is, I think that it is institutional arrogance that we didn't think anybody could do something like this.

[C]

That was part of it too, that I think that Americans and hold your throat. I'm sorry, but the Americans, the CIA believe that. Well, we couldn't do this to this many people.

[A]

Right. How could they?

[C]

How could they do it?

[A]

How could they do it? Right? They're fucking submarines.

[C]

So when you hear the 1500 and they're like, we couldn't do 1500 people without getting caught. So obviously this didn't happen.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But anyways, sorry to cut you off.

[A]

No, but that's what I think. I think that there is just kind of like an underestimating of enemy prowess, foreign prowess in this particular area. We think we're a great science nation and we got out scienced in this particular regard, you know, that's like not what any of our movies tells us is a thing. Not to mention, as mentioned before, there's that 10 megawatt standard that underpins so many parts of industrial and consumer life that we just couldn't imagine that something beyond or under that signal could possibly be dangerous in this way. But yeah, I tend to think it's real. I mean, at this point it's kind of like there's just too much reporting for it to be fake. And when you have a guy and you bought one, which still, that's another one. That to me is like, I want to hear about that. They've got a top. The Russians have a top secret device and people are like selling it on the Internet.

[C]

Look, $15 million.

[A]

I mean, it's pretty. But where are you going?

[C]

Money. Where. What are you doing?

[A]

Where do you. How do you leave the country?

[C]

Yeah, I. If there's any country that I believe that there could be a black market for Havanan, it's Russia.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That does happen. Okay, let's go to our lucid scale.

[C]

Okay. By the way, I've heard in some of the comments, I can say I can speak from the producer perspective. There's some lucid score inflation going on. So I'm going to try to keep this as. As honest as I can.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

As you know, our lucid score scored each category one to four. Legs. Does it have legs? Unintentional comedy. Is this a funny story? Sinisterness. How sinister is this story? Intrigue. Is it intriguing? I feel like Alec Baldwin and Glengarry Glenn Ross. Danger. Is this a dangerous story? Okay, legs. Does this story have legs? Are we going to continue to hear about Havana syndrome?

[C]

I'm thinking about going with a three because it's been going on for a decade and it's going to continue.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Actually, let me revise. I'm going two and a half.

[A]

You don't get how I feel as well.

[C]

Two and a half.

[A]

I think it's a two. I think it's like, listen, obviously a really interesting story, but like it's spies that are getting zapped, not the general population. So I feel like it's going to continue to be a niche story. I agree with you. Two and a half. A 2.5 unintentional comedies is funny at all. Vitaly's kind of funny.

[C]

Vitaly's very rip.

[A]

I mean, rip to him.

[C]

Rip Vitaly.

[B]

It was.

[A]

Sorry to Vitaly's family and I also.

[C]

This Norwegian scientist just blasted himself Watch this. Honey, look, it works. That is. That is deeply funny.

[B]

It's very funny to think about that guy being like, these idiots think this is going to hurt me.

[C]

But, like, you know, at the same time, we have some. We have some people who have worked for these agencies for a long time reporting that, like, 20% of their brain has been destroyed because of this.

[A]

Yeah, Their brain has lost mass.

[C]

Let's go.

[B]

Two.

[C]

One. One for Vitaly. One for the Norwegian.

[A]

Okay, that's a two. Sinisterness. Is this a sinister story?

[C]

I kind of want to go low on this.

[A]

Okay, go low.

[C]

One and a half.

[A]

Why so low?

[C]

Because it's just you don't care about people. You don't care about our culture. Come on. Come on.

[A]

If you don't care about the. About the red, white, and blue heroes that have, like, bled for this nation. But.

[C]

But to your point, this is spies blasting spies.

[A]

Right?

[C]

And honestly, like, if you're getting in the spy game, you're getting in the spy game, right?

[A]

You kind of. You kind of. You. You know what's up?

[C]

Yes. Right. Okay, so we got two and a half to one and a half.

[A]

Intrigue. You intrigued?

[C]

Very intrigue. I'm going. I'm going three and a half on this one.

[A]

Wow. 3.5.

[C]

I love the story.

[A]

I do, too. And then finally, danger. How dangerous is this story?

[C]

2. Unless it actually leads to this war that I was talking about.

[A]

This is an interesting score. This is an 11 and a half out of 20.

[C]

I'm just trying to keep it real. We can't have everything. We can't have everything be a 19.

[A]

I think this is fair. Yeah, this is fair, right?

[C]

It's a good story. It's a bad story for the people who are experiencing it. It's a good story for us to discuss. It's one of the kind of cornerstone conspiracy theories that have popped up in the past 10 years. It is, like, exactly the type of thing that I think is fascinating to discuss, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it's an 11 and a half out of 20.

[A]

I don't disagree with you. All right, let's go to the Doom Scroll.

[B]

All right, everybody. Welcome to Doom Scroll. This week, this is where we take a look at some stories that have made us raise our eyebrows. Eyebrows a little bit that we want to keep tabs on. First one, Charlie Kirk.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Not sure if y' all heard, but the lawyers of the man charged in connection with the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The man's name is Tyler Robinson, he's requested a six month delay for a court hearing scheduled in May to review evidence that suggests the bullet that killed Kirk did not match the rifle.

[C]

To clarify, they are saying that his lawyers are saying that the ATF conducted a report that. Saying that they cannot definitively conclude or that they cannot definitively link the bullet to the rifle that was in Tyler Robinson's alleged possession after the act that he's been charged for was committed.

[B]

Yes, the quote is, was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson. Tyler Robinson is the name of the suspect.

[A]

Now, this is what the defense is claiming. It's unclear. Now, when you say inconclusive, that might mean that the bullet is ostensibly of the same caliber, but is so mangled and destroyed that they can't actually tell through testing if it actually came out of the road, the barrel of this particular rifle. That said, you're seeing, like, a lot of chatter online that it's like, oh, see that the bullet's not the one that doesn't match. Which is not exactly what they're saying. They're saying that his defense is saying, hey, the ATF did a test and they were not able to prove that it's conclusively the bullet. And it's not clear that that is even the case. They're claiming it.

[C]

They haven't seen the report.

[A]

They haven't seen the report.

[C]

And I think that, like, I've seen some chatter online in the past 36 hours since this came out that was saying, oh, the bullet didn't match. And I think some of this came from the way the Daily Mail, who was. Which was one of the first outlets to report on this, framed this. And that story was spread very widely. And as these types of stories tend to make their way into the same publications again and again, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, etc.

[A]

Etc.

[C]

But I even noticed it because it was shared in our group chat.

[A]

It was. I shared it. And do you know why I shared it? Because in this specific case, I love disinformation. I'm amplifying it. I'm putting it out there. I'm a agent of chaos in this regard. The bullet didn't match. That's what the difference is. Not conclusively. Alex, all I'm saying is we don't know what happened.

[C]

The Daily Mail headline. Sorry, I'll let you take a beat on that. The Daily Mail headline. When you. Now I'm gonna get really, like, nerdy for two seconds, but when you. And when you, when you publish things online, you can publish a different headline on the story and a different headline that pops up when you share it on social.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

When you drop something in your group chat, it pulls a social thing because for some reason fucking Apple thinks imessage is social and I guess it is. The headline on the social simply said I should probably get this right because I'm quoting it. So let me pull this.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Pull this up real quick.

[A]

Why? Just love the disinformation.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Just enjoy it.

[C]

Okay. The headline from Daily Mail when you share it says bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not all caps match Tyler Robinson's rifle.

[A]

It's fairly definitive.

[C]

No, alleged. No. Lawyers say it's very definitive. And you know, I think as we know most people, they don't unless they're listening to the doom scroll. They're not getting much. They're not getting the full story.

[A]

So here's the so again, just to kind of underline it, the full story is this is a claim made by the alleged assassin's attorneys about a report that they haven't seen yet. That they're hoping that this stay of six months will allow them time to examine this report which they have heard has held that it's inconclusive regarding the bullet. That said. I don't know. That headline says what it says. What's next.

[C]

I have one thing about Tyler Robinson.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Right now, unless this case turns out differently than I expect it's gonna. He's given. As a fellow Dodge Challenger owner, he's given us a bad name.

[A]

Did he drive a Dodge Challenger?

[C]

He drives like a 2012 six cylinder. It's like. Okay, yeah, I thoughts on that, but okay.

[B]

Cash Patel got hacked.

[A]

He did.

[C]

He definitely did.

[B]

Iran link tackers broke into FBI director Cash Patel's personal email inbox on Friday. Uh, the, the. It's a pro. Iranian hacker group Honda hack team said Patel, quote, will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims. There was no government data exposed. They found and published some embarrassing photos.

[A]

A lot of him in a cigar.

[C]

A lot of him in a cigar.

[B]

You know, making a face while he's like taking a picture of himself in the mirror holding like a bottle of rum. Real like sort of divorced dad kind of energy. Yeah, it, you know, him riding in some old convertible.

[A]

A lot of stuff like that.

[C]

Thank God, not a Dodge Challenger.

[A]

Can I note something? Just put this out there. See if this starts anything in the disinformation space. His eyes have changed, have they not?

[C]

Kasper tell replicants Kasp Patel today.

[A]

The eyes are at a. They operate at a different angle than they did at the time these pictures were taken. That's all I have to say about that.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Something's happened.

[C]

Something has happened.

[B]

Maybe we look into that next week. A deep dive on that.

[C]

Yeah. Cash Patel's eyes could be an episode. The. The one thing in that that I was very sad that actually hasn't been confirmed. What was going around last week was that he used this same email address to sign up for X Video.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Has that been confirmed?

[C]

It has not been, sadly, has not been confirmed. Spider Cat.

[A]

Spider Cash.

[B]

Yeah, that's the username. Spider Cash.

[A]

I did read that. I think it was like a Reddit post and I was very hopeful that it would be the case that the head of the FBI used his actual name to comment on videos on the X video platform. And by the way, let me just say that to the folks out there, you've absolute freak gooners, the people who make accounts on porn platforms to comment. Don't ever let this world dim your shine. That's incredible. Keep going. Keep shining.

[B]

I'm sure that the porn stars are reading what it is that you're saying. I'm sure they're weighing every.

[C]

I read the comments on this show. You know, I know about the loosest inflation.

[A]

Imagine being so moved that you're like, I got to say something about. She needs to know. I got to say something about this one.

[C]

I mean it's basically letterboxd.

[B]

All right, all right. So there. 63 year old Staten island catering kingpin Ator Mazi has been behind bars since his May 2024 arrest on a 61 count indictment that included drug sale, grand larceny and identity theft charges. He, he claims that in the Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon has labeled this guy a one man crime wave. Mazzy is acting and I apologize if I'm saying that wrong, but Mazzy's acting as his own lawyer and in a court filing last month, he claimed that he is, quote, part of a protected class. Senior Sicilian.

[A]

This is not an uncommon viewpoint in Staten Island. I'll say that like as a person familiar with the area who by the way worked for a Italian owned catering company on Staten Island, Chesteframbois Catering, not connected to any illicit transactions. As far as I know they were on the up and up. But that's not an uncommon. That's a, that's a Sicilian. You would hear that. Yeah. That we, you know, like the Sicilians of that area are oppressed.

[C]

Look I grew up in Rhode Island.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

I'm wearing a sopranos shirt today. It's my second. Second Sopranos reference. I'm wearing a pine baron shirt on the show. I'm half Italian. And you know what? I'm half protected.

[A]

So no indication that this person's connected to any of the crime families of the area. Which. Staten Island. A known place where those figures reside.

[B]

Nothing that I've read sort of goes into that much detail. The most interesting detail that we found was that in 2014, this guy published a book titled it's your right to be fit, sexed and happy.

[A]

I mean, which I agree. Who's going to disagree?

[C]

Not Caspatel.

[A]

Well, listen, Justin, thank you so much for producing this pod and appearing.

[C]

It's really, truly the pleasure of my life.

[A]

Life. See you next week. Quick break. This surprised me. The most useful advice I get now doesn't come from experts. It comes from regular people on TikTok. What works, what doesn't. No filters. Download TikTok and see for yourself.