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'The Odyssey' Cryptids Extravaganza! Plus: OpenAI's Rogue Hack & an Epstein-Linked Death, With Chris Ryan
01:08:09
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- [00:07]
A
You're in a room by the Adriatic and there's an eel cut open on the table in front of you. The eel is poverty food in London. They boil it and set it in its own jelly and sell it to people who can't afford anything else. You take another one and open it the same way and you look for the same thing. You are medical student from Vienna named Sigmund Freud, and you're 19 years old. Two years ago, a museum curator announced that he had finally found the male eel. And your job is to go confirm it. If true, this would be a landmark in the annals of science because in thousands of years of looking, no one has ever found a male eel. 22 centuries ago, Aristotle observed that no eel was ever found with milt inside of it. It was only 100 years ago that an eel ovary was located. To this day, no one has any idea how eels reproduce. So you open them one and then another. Every eel you cut is a female or is nothing you can put a name to. You open a few hundred no males. You write to your friend, I have been tormenting myself and the eels in a vain effort to rediscover the male eel. But all the eels I cut open are of the gentler sex. You give up on these eels entirely and move on to larger ones that run from October to January. Still no males. Fast forward 150 years from now, scientists will discover that eels have no sex. The eel has no sex chromosomes. It does not hatch male or female, and its sex is settled much later, decided by the waters it ends up living in. And yet, as of this recording, no one has yet seen a European eel egg or seen eels mating. There's nothing to find. You are the right student, doing the work correctly, eventually you move on and find success and the lasting impact. As one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis, this is Wait a Second. Odyssey, Cryptids and Doomscrol. Welcome to Wait a Second. I'm Jason Concepcion as always. That's Tyler Parker.
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B
What's up?
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A
And we are delighted to have back fan of the Philadelphia 76ers. Now the new part time home. Yeah, I know of Lebron James. He's gonna commute. People commute.
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C
People have pied a terrors.
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A
Yeah, people do that.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Chris Ryan. Chris, welcome.
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C
Oh my God, I'm so glad the seat's still here for me.
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A
How are you feeling?
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C
I'm really pumped to be back. We have to get into some topics today.
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A
Oh, we've got a lot of topics today. And today we're going to Talk about. I want to. I want to shout out Jar Jar Jinx, who commented on our last episode, Jar Jar Jinx on YouTube, who said, oh, period. This is not going to be the show that talks about Cryptids. Huh? Damn. Guess what, Jar Jar? We're going in on the Cryptids because I think we all just got out of seeing the Odyssey multiple times.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And a cryptid is defined as an animal or creature whose existence is suggested in folklore or local rumor, but is disputed, unproven, or unrecognized by science. Which leads me to this question. Are any of the creatures we see in the Odyssey cryptids? Because I would say yes. Right. A cyclops is a cryptid.
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C
Sure. I mean, he's also. Although not like, they don't hammer this point. I guess they do. But Polyphemus is supposed to be Poseidon's son.
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B
Son.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Right. But we never see Poseidon. We never meet the father.
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A
Right.
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B
Like a quiet guy.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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B
Domineering, but in the shadows.
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C
It could be something like, you're back in the oral tradition. Copolyphemus have just been like a 7 foot 2 guy who lost an eye in a bar fight.
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A
Sure. Right. Like, like, who knows an Anthony Edwards type of familial situation.
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C
Sure.
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B
And he's just like, he's got a passion for cheese and he doesn't want to be around people.
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A
I'm gonna put him though. He had to be 20ft 23. Like, he looked big, like double digits tall.
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C
I know those dudes were on a blue zone diet where it's just like the best olive oil. Like, just, you know, like the red wine. It's not grape leaves. There's no add. But let's just say, like, is it historically, like, dudes only started being this tall, like, really recently, like, so theoretically, like Odysseus could have been like 5:3, but really strapping.
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A
Right.
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C
So maybe Polyphemus is actually just like 7:2, but seems enormous to Odysseus.
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A
I went into some of this because I was interested in Maha, or just like the people around Maha, who will say something to the effect of we were much more healthy when 10,000 years ago when you were just eating grains that you found on the ground and hitting a oryx over the head with
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C
rock, incidentally, would die at 22.
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A
Right. There was no additives. Now what science does say is that while a tremendous amount of human beings died very, very young at that period, particularly died in and around childbirth, either being born or the woman giving birth died. If you made it past 30, you had a really good chance of making it to like 60. So I guess there is something to be said of the diet being good if you can get past like the age of 30 when most of the violence happens. Certainly the Greeks here seem to be. Seem to be strapping older gentlemen.
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B
Yeah, the. The giants. How do you pronounce it? The. Lystra Generians.
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A
Yeah, Lystro generians.
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B
Also big. But if we're going off of like, maybe Achilles was just like muscle hamster tiny.
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A
Like maybe there is a giant. A cryptid or just a big guy.
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C
I think that was just big guys. And I think they had some new tech in Nolan's version.
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A
Right? They're.
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C
They're like rocking that spring summer 27.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Like they have the silver, the steel on the silver. It's Bronze Age, you know. I mean, Odysseus also could have just been like, yo, you guys don't even know what I saw on that island.
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A
That's true.
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C
That's crazy in my end. Wouldn't you like you think you did
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B
on the way back? You wouldn't believe the dude.
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A
To your point, O, it might be. It might be that odysseus is like 5'1.
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C
Yeah, 51. And full of 51 inches. Like then this dude had cheese and he trapped all my boys. All my boys.
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B
Why did she get out? Cuz we couldn't. We couldn't move the rock.
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C
He was the only guy that could move the rock.
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A
The sirens.
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B
Yeah, but wait.
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A
Crypted? No, no, come on. Just magical sort of voice.
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C
Complicated ladies.
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B
I like that.
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C
Just have a story to tell.
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B
Don't they have the. But the idea is that they like the original sirens. Bird heads. Right? Aren't they?
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A
Like, was that the truth?
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B
Or they're birds with female heads or they're women with bird heads.
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A
Interesting.
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B
I feel like I read this somewhere. Maybe I didn't.
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C
I. I think that the cool thing about the way Nolan renders a lot of this stuff is like, is it. Is it like a Poseidon ordered natural calamity? Is the whirlpool or is it just like a storm? You know what I mean?
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A
Right?
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B
Right.
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C
I guess when you get to charybdis,
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A
crypt is 100% cryptid, right? I mean, multiple heads, like Ghidra style. Multiple heads, no eyes, just all mouths. Some sort of amoeba like creature almost
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B
your stare like your. Your classic cryptid to me.
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A
Right? And one head has to eat one guy and then it's done is how I read that.
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C
Yeah. And it's like, you can trade six dudes, but you guys get to keep going. Or you can lose everybody. If you want to, like, go out, like, through a whirlpool.
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B
Yeah, the whirlpool is it all of them die except for him or even he dies?
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A
No, they all go down.
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C
They all go down.
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A
They all go down. I can't believe you're not sirens. Really? Not cryptids, even with the weird voice. Okay.
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B
To me, I think they're cryptids. I mean, but to get back to the Cyclops a little bit.
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A
Okay.
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B
And I know this is crass, but were you guys. I was more distracted that we didn't see his dick than I would have been had we seen that.
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A
That's why I think we're talking about
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C
a cryptid here, because what if he didn't have an.
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A
What if he didn't have genitals in the way that we expect?
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C
Yeah.
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A
Ken dolled out, you know, Poseidon, the king of the seas. You know, that might be like, kind of ovipositor type situation where you deposited, you know, like, a jiz sack into a egg pocket.
- [08:58]
C
So you, like, see, like, play summer league, right? I'm never letting it go. I brought it up on the obsession pod. I brought it up to Zach Lowe. I'm riding this thing until Bill fires me or it's not funny anymore.
- [09:17]
A
Now the siren. I think that his historians think that the sirens were probably seals. Here's a theory I have. A lot of our understanding of ancient history, or even early modern to medieval history, is warped by the fact that nobody had eyewear. And so people couldn't fucking see. People just couldn't see what was good. Like, you always read these things about how well you can't trust the estimates of how big the army was. And I'm like, yeah, because nobody could see. People were just, you know, you're just, like, squinting through this stuff. And so historians believe, and some scientists believe, that the Sirens, the legend, was because of seals. And are you aware of Hoover, the New England seal? He passed away in 1985, but Hoover was a seal who was kept at an aquarium in Boston, who could say, among other things, hello there, and come over here in a thick New England accent. This is. This is true.
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C
You know what the best part of my day is?
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B
That's good chowder right there.
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A
That's true.
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B
Wow.
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A
Okay, so imagine, like, a squad of these things, you know, I didn't know
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B
seals were capable of speech.
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A
It was. It was.
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B
It's just Hoover.
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A
Well, no, they can do it, but it's. I guess it's kind of rare.
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C
It's like parrots, right?
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A
Yeah, yeah. And. And they only do it under certain situations. And Hoover was just a very verbose seal for whatever reason, because this was. A lot of people didn't believe that this could happen. And I guess his Hoover's keeper heard it one day and was like, you're not gonna believe this. The seal can speak. And then for years people were like, yeah, get a load of this fucking guy, right? So I think what happened was, you know, you've got this boat of Greeks or whoever, Phoenicians. Nobody can see that well, right? And there's a rock with a bunch of seals on it. And they're all like, hey, you. Hey, buddy, what's going on? Yeah. And they can't see what it is. And they're like these beautiful women on this rock calling to us. And that's how the legend.
- [11:39]
C
They've got one bottle of Fiji water
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A
between them for three weeks.
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C
There's no such thing as suntan lotion. They're just X'd out. And then they hear a seal going. And they're like, it's the most beautiful woman. Oh my God. Everything you've ever wanted.
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A
People diving to the water, swimming over. And then they get there and it's just like seals.
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B
You think the seals are then eating them when they get over there?
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A
I think they're just. I think they're murking these guys viciously once they get over there.
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C
Got em.
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B
My one pushback on this is. Personally, I have never come upon a seal, okay. And been like, that's a smoke show, right?
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C
Well, you, you haven't been out on
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B
the road, I hear that's true.
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C
Yeah. You have not been on. You have not been on the high seas trying to get back from Troy for years and, and who knows what, what it does to a guy's head. But your point is that, that the things, the, the monsters or the, the, these, these beasts beings in the Odyssey are actually like going forward, become like, like we, we iterate on these ideas and it's like.
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A
I think that's exactly this thing.
- [12:47]
C
Did you. Have you heard about this? And like growing up, I can't remember a specific thing, like in the Philadelphia area, although I know I'm going to be corrected. That was like this where it was like, there's something in the school river or there's something like in the. I mean, we had the, the Pine Band, Pine Baron's Devil, the New Jersey Devil Obviously, like, more of, like, a witchy kind of horror tale. But did you guys ever have anything growing up that was, like, there's a thing out in the woods, civic to your.
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B
I mean, Oklahoma, you'd hear about Bigfoot, but. But nothing. Nothing.
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C
I thought he was more of a Pacific Northwest guy.
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B
No, you see him there. You see him down, like, southern Oklahoma, little Arkansas. You see.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You say, you know, north. North Texas. He's down there.
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C
Okay.
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B
Yeah, cool. But the nothing. Nothing as more specific than that. Nothing, Nothing fun. Like, we. We had an old, like, Civil War fort, and the story was, is that if you were over there in the middle of the night, that sometimes you. There, you would see, like, a ghost walking around. Yeah. But nothing. Nothing fun like you.
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A
Well, my family's from the Philippines, and there are these. My mom insists that this is real.
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B
I love it.
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A
There's these legendary cryptid creatures called the duende. They're like little people that live in your house, like, in little. Like, the.
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B
Like, the Borrowers.
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A
Like, they live in the bottom of, like, the wall, like, the crack in the wall. They'll go in there. And if you have a crack in your wall, some families will leave, like, little offerings for the duende because it brings them luck. And my mom will swear up and down that she's seen them, that they're real, which. Listen, I watched the Exorcist. I've told this story before. When I was, like, 9 or 10, I got really scared. I went to my grandma, and I'm like, oh, my God. I. A scary movie. That can't happen, right? Where the devil, like, possesses you. She's, like, 100%. That can happen. I've seen exorcisms. I've seen them take place. Very scary. And that can happen to you. And I was, like, off horror movies for the next five years after that. So I don't know. But, like, my mom insists that they are real, and she's seen them and seen them come out.
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B
And the duende, they are.
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A
I guess they're like this big, you
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B
know, like, they're just like a. They look at us. But they're just small, I think.
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A
More primitive, simple, little magical, humanoid kind of humanoid little creatures. And they live in, like, a cartoon mouse hole. So that's the only version of that that I have. Calypso. She's, like, half God, right?
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B
She's like a demigod, right.
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C
She's rendered as, like, a lady who lives where there's some great fresh seafood.
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A
Really good.
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C
Basically, like, is slinging Bricks like lotus flower for days and keeps this guy yoked up.
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B
You know, it's really funny when she's. When he's like, why did you give me so much? She's like, look, you really liked it.
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A
You love that stuff. I don't want to tell you, but you loved it.
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B
You wouldn't shut up about it.
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A
You needed it to heal. Okay? And then at a certain point, it's just kind of like you love him.
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C
What we were doing.
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B
Yeah, yeah, that, that. That shawl that Odysseus is wearing around on the island and stuff. And then whenever he gets back, he looks great. And it looks like. Usually I see these movies and I look at this stuff and I'm like, looks awful. It's like wearing a burlap sack. My, like, nipples are going to be rubbed raw by like, you know, noon. Right. And that stuff. Like, I would wear that stuff. I would wear that stuff just around the house. Yeah.
- [16:27]
A
Well, let's go to some cryptid news. A goblin shark. Justin, do you want to show the people a picture of the goblin shark has been observed alive in the wild. A team led by University of Hawaii doctoral candidate Aaron Judah reported the first confirmed observation of a living goblin shark in its natural habitat. That is the goblin shark, which looks like a. Like the tip of a condom on a shark's body.
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C
Yeah, that looks like something you get at a souvenir shop.
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B
That's what I was gonna say, like a hot Topic or something. They might sell that.
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C
That's disturbing.
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A
So there are two sightings, both in the central Pacific. One was recorded in 2019 by Ocean Explanation Trust ROV Hercules on a seamount near Jarvis island and was kind of put in a file, an archive of various pictures they took and was not viewed until 2025. And the other was captured in August by a baited camera. Before this, the species was known almost entirely from dead carcasses or other animals found in the bellies of other sharks and things like that. So goblin shark observed in the wild. It's real, folks. The goblin shark. We know next to nothing else about the goblin shark other than it looks jacked up.
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B
This stuff is so exciting to me and simultaneously absolutely horrifying. It makes me like, think again that the ocean, we do not belong there.
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A
No.
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B
We are like, we need to approach with extreme caution.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And reverence this place because. Yeah, I just. I think there's like some. Some real fucked up stuff.
- [18:10]
C
This is why my attitude about all of the natural world is like, in golf terms, I like to Be in the first cut of the rough. I want one, right. I want to spin there with a lawnmower and it's like a little overgrown and my ball, I might not have a good lie, but, like, I can see the green.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Like we know where we're going. I don't want to be in the woods.
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A
You know, you're not one of these pioneer types.
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C
And I don't want to be off the ledge in the ocean. I don't want to be off the grid in the woods. I do not want to be in the jungle. Like, I, I, I'm like, I am happy to experience that stuff through the wonders of filmmaking and not through my own experience.
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B
What's the exact figure in the research where it's like, there's been like, there were 1100 plus new species found in the ocean in the last year.
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A
In the last year, 1121 new marine species have been discovered.
- [19:07]
B
I don't even know what to say about that.
- [19:08]
A
I mean, listen, one of the theories that ufo, UAP people have is that, yes, the aliens or the UFO craft, they're not coming from another dimension, they're not coming from the ocean. I'm into this theory, the abyss style.
- [19:26]
C
I would say that after watching Disclosure Day, I was more convinced than ever that that's never happened. That, like, there are no aliens.
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A
Okay.
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C
But when you read about stuff that they find in the sea, you're like, maybe they've always been there, or maybe like, this is where they get but like, the idea of like, little green men who are like, we're communicating through mathematics across time and space. I think they would have made themselves more, like, heard by now. But, like, the ocean stuff is really the ocean stuff. That's like, where we're not focusing.
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A
Next story, which is crazy. Unidentified organism spotted 9,137 meters off the coast of Japan over two months in 2022.
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B
Justin's.
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A
There it is.
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C
And this is in the sea as well?
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A
Yes. We don't know what this is.
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C
Okay.
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A
Over two months in 2022, researchers from the Minderu Uwa Deep Sea Research center and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology surveyed these various trenches off the coast of Japan using the submersible. Their catalog of 108 things that they saw was recently published in Biodiversity Data Journal. And one organism in it was filmed twice at a depth of 9,137 meters and could not be assigned to any known phylum or any other taxonomic definition. They don't know what it is. They don't know what type of species it is. They just don't know anything about it. They were absolutely confused by it. It has a whitish body divided into two symmetrical halves. Rigid antenna like appendages and it's super weird, man.
- [21:12]
C
Aliens are in the ocean theory. I think that goes a long way.
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A
I think aliens are in the ocean. I think it is plausible that aliens are in the ocean.
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B
I think it's way more likely that they're there than they're gonna come from space.
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A
Space is just too big.
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B
And it's also just like. That is perfect camouflage for them. You know, they're just gonna be like, we can blend in down here. There's a bunch of weird shit down here, you know.
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A
By certain measures, the dolphin is like the second smartest animal, like non human. Non human after humans rather. Who's to say there's not like much smarter things down there. That's where I am. That's where I am with it. Have you seen that UAP footage from. I believe it's Cuba or Puerto Rico where they're tracking this thing. It's flying over the ocean, flying over the town, goes over the sea, goes down into the ocean, then comes up. I think it's been mildly debunked as a party balloon, but I'm for it still.
- [22:16]
B
Well, there's also the tic Tac video of. Seems like the water is moving underneath it.
- [22:24]
A
That's the one that I kind of believe because they were Air Force pilots who were like. I looked down, I saw this thing, it was hovering over the water. The water was like boiling. Then it went down in the water and then it shot up. That's the kind of shit I believe. Next. The barreleye has been filmed in the wild in the doldrums fracture zone. I was not familiar with the barreleye.
- [22:47]
C
What the heck is the Doldrums fracture zone?
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A
Exactly. All this here is the barreleye, dude. That is like truly from the abyss.
- [22:55]
B
This is the wildest one. This is crazier to me even than the shark.
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A
But yeah, the barrel fish. This is the first living one they've seen. Another one of these species that we just don't know anything about other than naming it the barreleye. We don't know how it lives. We don't know what it does down there. There's just a lot of shit down there, man. That's where the cryptids are.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
Oh, this is exciting. Loch Ness monster been spotted again.
- [23:25]
C
Do we think Nessie is. Is the conventional wisdom that this is the Same Loch Ness Monster that people have been seeing for what, decades?
- [23:34]
A
I think the first sighting was in the 6th century A.D. 500 something.
- [23:39]
C
Is it just an age? It's an immortal being? Or is there like multiple Nessies?
- [23:45]
A
My theory when I was a child was that it was like some sort of plesiosaur colony that survived somehow in Scotland. I don't know. On the morning of June 23, 2026, Sharon Herbert, a visitor from Kent taking a Jacobite cruise boat tour of Loch Ness, photographed a green mass below the surface near Urquhart Castle. She submitted the image to the official Loch Ness Monster sightings register, a privately maintained record kept by the Registrar of Sightings page daily, which logged it at 10:27am and carries over 1100 entries dating back to 565 AD that looked like it could be a submerged boat, maybe to me.
- [24:30]
C
There's like lots of weird stuff in lakes and locks like that. I went swimming. I think this was more in like a kind of Harbor Bay kind of situation in Croatia. They got planes down there. Like there's also sorts of stuff down there.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, they got planes down there. Now, the thing about Loch Ness is.
- [24:45]
B
Remember the beginning of the passenger?
- [24:47]
C
Yeah, that's right.
- [24:48]
B
Gnarly shit.
- [24:49]
A
I believe I might be wrong about this, but I think this sighting was technically in the river, not in the loch or lake.
- [24:55]
B
No. Yes. Yeah.
- [24:56]
A
But the loch itself has been explored numerous times, extensively mapped, and it's just like, dead. There's no fish. There's nothing in there. So Nessie is one that I struggle with, but I am interested in what that thing is.
- [25:12]
B
I have a hard time with Nessie because even after all this time, just like the pictures that we have, it's like a straw popping out of the water. You know what I mean? It doesn't feel like I want more.
- [25:25]
A
Do you have a favorite cryptid? Do you have a.
- [25:27]
B
Yes.
- [25:28]
A
Okay.
- [25:29]
B
Bat Squatch.
- [25:31]
A
What?
- [25:32]
B
There's a cryptid named Bat Squatch. Okay.
- [25:36]
A
This is one of the new, like, a marvel Phase five.
- [25:41]
B
He is a more modern cryptid. Yes, the. But yeah, I got five here. And these are just five cryptids. These are five cryptids that I personally think it would be fun to have a beer with. Okay. These are just.
- [25:52]
C
These guys could run for president.
- [25:53]
B
Cryptids that I think would be good. That I think would be good. Hangs Bat Squatch right off the bat. Obviously, is a flying cryptid. Exciting. Doesn't get seen until after Mount St. Helens explodes in the 80s.
- [26:05]
A
Oh, I like this. That's.
- [26:07]
B
Good Lord, that's what I like. I like stuff where it's like this couldn't look at bat squash. Look how jacked he is.
- [26:12]
A
That looks like a flash that you'd see in a tattoo parlor.
- [26:18]
B
And I also want to say the image that we're seeing right now, I'm not sure how realistic that is Justin because what I've read is that it has bluefair. So you got bluefair but he does
- [26:31]
C
have a six pack. Like
- [26:34]
B
look, you're not going to be the bat Squatch. You're not going to be like you're going to keep your body in peak physical condition.
- [26:41]
C
That's amazing.
- [26:42]
B
But yeah, supposedly the fun part about this guy, he can mess with cars, he can make cars die. And so some dude saw him, his truck dies and he looks in the middle of the road and there's this like nine foot tall bat squash in
- [26:56]
A
the middle of the road.
- [26:57]
B
That's how. That's what he's.
- [26:58]
A
I'm not sure the causality of that necessarily works. I don't know. Seems pretty.
- [27:05]
B
No the. No bat like wings that span up to 50ft.
- [27:10]
C
That can't be very hard to find a bar to get him into. I mean you probably want to need to do outdoor beer garden with him.
- [27:16]
B
You would think. I mean, I mean honestly like to me one of the benefits of like going and having a beer with a cryptid or just hanging out with them in general is that you know it's going to be a pretty low key event. Yeah.
- [27:28]
C
And this they're not trying to draw
- [27:29]
B
a lot of attention to themselves. Just going to be a low thing.
- [27:31]
A
How big do you think he is? Because I. It says here 22ft by some reports. I think it'd be tough to get him into a 22ft.
- [27:39]
B
It seems like the more official reports have him listed at the 9ft. The 22ft. That has not been unconfirmed. But yeah.
- [27:47]
C
Who's next?
- [27:48]
B
Well and this is one of your favorites. Michele Mbembe.
- [27:51]
A
I do love a Michelle Mbembe. I think could be real.
- [27:54]
B
I think it could totally be real. Neodynosaurin.
- [27:59]
A
Are you aware of. Did you see the. What was the name of the Michele Mbembe movie? I'm gonna look it up really quick from the 80s baby the secret of Lost. Of the Lost Legend.
- [28:11]
C
No.
- [28:11]
A
So the Mokele Mbembe not to step on it is like is a legendary dinosaur Sauropod Republic of Congo. Deep in the jungle there. And there was a movie called Baby Secret of the lost legend from 1985 in which researchers discover a baby Makele Mbembe and then protect it from all forces that are seeking to exploit it.
- [28:35]
B
Amphibious body. Big boy. Some say that, you know, in the past that the person has actually seen an elephant or a hippo or something like that, but it's got the neck.
- [28:47]
A
Bad eyes theory. Bad eyes theory.
- [28:48]
B
Bad eyes theory. Bad eyes theory is strong, but, yeah, like, it basically like a sapod dinosaur.
- [28:55]
A
What I think is fascinating about this is, you know, there were German explorers in the region who came across this apparently folkloric tale about this animal. And that when the people who they were talking to Drew looked like a dinosaur. Now I could also see a world in which these people are like, let's fuck with these guys.
- [29:23]
C
Yeah, right?
- [29:24]
A
Watch.
- [29:27]
B
You think it was like the Congo's version of snipe hunting?
- [29:30]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. It was like. Yeah. It was like it breathed fire and, you know, it pissed milk. It was. This thing is crazy. That said, I kind of like it would. The jungle is so big.
- [29:44]
B
That's the thing.
- [29:45]
A
The jungle is massive. And I mean, just like. Let's talk about the Amazon for a second. I saw it overlaid on a map of, like, the US and I'm like, holy shit, the Amazon is crazy. And so when you talk about the geography of, like, the. Of Africa, continental Africa, the jungles there, I just. I think it's very, very possible. First of all, it's almost a certainty that there are species that we've never found.
- [30:09]
B
Sure, yes.
- [30:11]
A
And it's at least plausible to me that some crazy dinosaur looking, maybe not size, but, like, looking thing could lurk there.
- [30:19]
B
I'm way more into macabre as a possibility than I am Nessie.
- [30:25]
C
Okay.
- [30:26]
B
There are more places to hide.
- [30:27]
A
There's a lot of places to hide.
- [30:28]
C
I also don't find a lot of the evidence of Nessie to be that compelling. Like, a lot of the drawings are pretty sick. But when it's like, here's my photo of Nessie, I'm like, that's not.
- [30:36]
A
I mean, there's two iconic photos. The one looks like It's a hand. 100% looks like a shadow puppet hand. And then there's the one that's like the ripples on the water, which I'm slightly compelled by, but I need more information.
- [30:52]
B
This. This next one, this is my favorite. I did not know this existed until I really started doing some digging here. The Fresno Nightcrawler.
- [31:00]
A
Oh, yeah. The Fresno Nightcrawler.
- [31:01]
C
Fresno, California.
- [31:02]
B
Yeah.
- [31:03]
C
Okay.
- [31:04]
B
This thing looks like a pair of white pants. It looks like a pair of white pants, basically without a face. It's got some eyes. It's been spotted in Yosemite, supposedly in Fresno.
- [31:17]
C
Oh, shit.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah, look at that. Look at the pants.
- [31:22]
C
That looks like something out of Paranormal Activity.
- [31:24]
B
Right?
- [31:24]
C
That's terrifying.
- [31:27]
B
So they've seen him in Billings, Montana, but also Poland, people claim.
- [31:31]
C
Interesting.
- [31:32]
B
Let me see.
- [31:33]
A
The Fresno Nightcrawler.
- [31:34]
C
A semester abroad for the Fresno Nightcrawler.
- [31:37]
B
My favorite part about this one, there's the sighting. The next sighting of the creature was in Billings, Montana. Capture on a home surveillance system at 9:45pm on April 25, 2020. After this sighting, near the place where the creature was spotted, the homeowner found a dead deer with a hole in its side. Then my favorite sentence, it suggests that the Fresno nightcrawler killed it or at least wounded it and left it to die, likely with a powerful kick.
- [32:04]
C
Jesus.
- [32:05]
A
Yeah, right. Because it doesn't have a mouth. It doesn't have a. Well, it must have a mouth. You think it's gotta have one. Maybe between the legs or something. Yeah, yeah. You know, because, like, this is a very. I just watched the video. Very low resolution. It's got to have. How is it eat?
- [32:26]
B
Maybe it absorbs and maybe it's got. Maybe it's soaking nutrients.
- [32:31]
A
I'm going to. I'm going to. Tapping into my childhood theorizing again, white in color, like, that leads me to believe, like, lives deep in caves.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah.
- [32:43]
A
Yes, Right.
- [32:44]
C
Mole person type thing.
- [32:46]
A
And they only come out, like. I'm guessing, like, a lack of food in the cave or something. Something changed in the environment of the cave that forced this particular creature to come out at night.
- [32:56]
C
Just as a quick aside, I watched an SVU the other night where they, like, very offhandedly are like, oh, we have to go talk to the mole people about who this killer is. And it's like the NYPD is, like, fully aware that there's, like, a nocturnal community living beneath the tunnels of.
- [33:14]
B
Of.
- [33:14]
C
Of the subway system, but they just need to get, like, one thing from them. And I was like, is this. Do you think if, like, when you get jumped into the police force in New York City, it's like, oh, by the way, there's like an underworld community that lives beneath the city. Just don't even worry about it, you know? But, like, is that as a New Yorker like, growing up, did you, like, know, like, do you think that there is, like, how many people you think live underground?
- [33:36]
A
No, there was a documentary. I want to Call. I want to say it's called Underworld, but I remember the soundtrack was done by DJ Shadow.
- [33:44]
B
Oh, wow.
- [33:44]
A
And it was about Dark Days. Thank you. Dark Days. And it was about, like a community of people who lived in the tunnels under Manhattan and lived there for a period of time. And some of it looked pretty comfortable. It wasn't one spot. Like, it was various spots.
- [33:59]
C
Okay.
- [34:01]
A
But yeah, that goes on. I'm sure it goes on still. I mean, there was just. There was just a video recently of
- [34:10]
C
like a woman emerging to celebrate the Knicks championship.
- [34:13]
A
To celebrate the Knicks championship with a Jalen Brunson flag. And then going back. No, like, of a person coming out and then going back down. And it was clear that they lived there. It wasn't one of these urban explorers.
- [34:24]
C
The next level for side talk is just gonna go down.
- [34:29]
A
I would like to check it out. Have you ever been to, like, I've
- [34:32]
C
done the Paris Catacombs, but I've never done New York City underground beyond taking the.
- [34:38]
A
Was it a tour?
- [34:39]
C
Catacombs were a tour, yes. Yeah. But it was like lightly guided, I would say. Like, it was like, you want to go down that way? It wasn't like, hey, let's stop, let's talk about what's going on here. And then I think last year Queens of the Stone Age played a concert down there.
- [34:54]
A
Yeah.
- [34:55]
C
Which I think would have been amazing, but also a little bit like, claustrophobic.
- [34:58]
A
I remember reading various stories over the years about these kind of like pop up events that happen down there. There'll be speakeasy bars down in the catacombs or raves with very particular directions about, like, how to get there in these, like, hidden places, which I guess can be dangerous because of the gases down there.
- [35:18]
C
Well, very good horror movie about it called as Above. So below.
- [35:21]
A
I'll check it out.
- [35:21]
C
Highly recommend. Very, very intense.
- [35:23]
B
This is reminding me of the Succession episode of the Prague Succession episode of Tom's the Closed Loop System.
- [35:33]
C
The hard part about the catacombs is that it's not actually being down there that's hard. It's when you're like, okay, now it's time to go.
- [35:39]
A
Get out. Yeah.
- [35:41]
C
And there is like a period where you're like, I've been walking up for a really long time. Like, where is the exit?
- [35:47]
A
How do you get. So how do you.
- [35:48]
C
I think there's like an elevator and there's. Then there's steps. So it's like an elevator. I think if I remember correctly, I mean, it's a long walk down Give
- [35:56]
A
me an idea of the dimensions of this tunnel that you're walking down.
- [36:00]
C
No, no, bigger than. No wider than this room.
- [36:03]
A
Okay.
- [36:04]
C
And in fact, I would say lights.
- [36:06]
A
Are you carrying torches?
- [36:07]
C
There are lights down there, but you are not carrying a torch. Ceilings about this high.
- [36:12]
A
Okay.
- [36:13]
C
We are, in fact, in a catacomb right now.
- [36:15]
A
Did you see that? Like the ossuary or whatever, the wall of skulls? Yeah, for sure.
- [36:21]
B
Wait, what is this?
- [36:23]
C
The Parisian dead are down there. It's where they used to bury people. So you just walk by, it's like tons of skulls.
- [36:30]
B
Hell, yeah.
- [36:31]
C
Yeah, I'll show it to you. I got some photos, please.
- [36:33]
A
Of me being like, what up? That's the kind of stuff where I'm like, man, as a country, we just don't. We don't have it like that.
- [36:44]
B
No, we don't have anything actually old here.
- [36:47]
A
We just kind of like woke up one day and formed.
- [36:50]
C
Yeah.
- [36:50]
A
And then you.
- [36:51]
C
We put a buc EE's there.
- [36:53]
A
And then you go to these countries where it's like, I don't know, we think the Romans built that. We have actually. No idea. Yeah, nuts. Well, what else. Who else would you like to have a beer with?
- [37:04]
B
Well, the last. Those were my top three. I've also got the Lizardman of Skateboard Swamp.
- [37:10]
A
Swamp. Wait, what?
- [37:12]
B
The Lizard man of Skateboard Swamp. This. This is a cryptid in the swampland out in South Carolina. Bishopville, South Carolina, late 1980s, is the first sighting. There's obviously been a lot of theories of lizard men and, you know, different reptilian, humanoid type of things.
- [37:34]
A
Sure.
- [37:36]
B
But
- [37:39]
A
lizard biology. I don't think they could have a beer, right?
- [37:42]
B
Have a what?
- [37:43]
A
They couldn't drink a beer.
- [37:44]
C
This guy. Good. Because he was a guy in a lizard suit.
- [37:48]
B
I focus more on the man part than the lizard part. And so I think if he's a man, I think he can have a beer with me for sure.
- [37:57]
A
Okay, this one is interesting. Very scary looking, but I'd be willing to give him a. Give him a shout. Any others?
- [38:06]
B
Mothman. Mothman's one of the classics.
- [38:09]
A
Mothman I'm scared of. Actually.
- [38:10]
C
Mothman is scary because of Mothman prophecies
- [38:13]
A
or because of Mothman prophecies.
- [38:14]
B
The other scary part about Mothman, the part that I do not like, some people say that he's got these, like, red glowing eyes on a head. And some people say the thing doesn't have a head. The eyes are in the chest.
- [38:28]
A
Yes.
- [38:29]
B
And I'm not into chest eyes. I don't Want eyes on a chest. That feels very disorienting to me.
- [38:34]
C
What I really like about Mothman is a very distinct regional location and time period.
- [38:41]
B
Yes.
- [38:41]
C
Late 60s West Virginia. Who could say?
- [38:43]
A
Yes.
- [38:44]
C
Who could say what happened?
- [38:45]
A
Who knows what's going on? It's already a weird part of the country in general.
- [38:50]
B
Six, seven feet tall. Wingspan about 10 to 15ft.
- [38:54]
C
And I could see being a byproduct of coming out of the coal mines kind of thing.
- [38:59]
B
Can fly over 100 miles an hour. This is my favorite.
- [39:04]
A
What?
- [39:04]
B
That's what they say. This is my favorite part, though. All right.
- [39:08]
A
100 miles an hour.
- [39:10]
B
Several witnesses say that Mothman takes off straight up into the air like a helicopter. He just starts going up.
- [39:20]
C
That's actually how Bron's going through New York.
- [39:26]
B
But that he also doesn't flap his wings.
- [39:29]
A
Interesting.
- [39:30]
B
Which. That I don't.
- [39:31]
A
I'm not sure about his torque from the legs. Maybe it's like a tremendous type of leg strength.
- [39:36]
B
He's sometimes depicted with arms. Sometimes he doesn't have arms.
- [39:39]
A
Hypnotic.
- [39:41]
B
Yes. Glowing.
- [39:43]
A
Damn.
- [39:43]
B
But they don't. But it's like, is there a head? Is there not a head?
- [39:47]
A
I don't like the Mothman. I'm very scared of it.
- [39:49]
B
He scares me. But I. But I have a lot of respect for him and I would want to have a conversation with him just about, like, what's up? I really want to know about the flying. When I read about the flying, I was like, what do you mean you don't flap your wing?
- [40:02]
A
Miles an hour is, like, faster than World War II era fighter planes. Yeah.
- [40:07]
C
We're getting into, like, Superman.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah.
- [40:10]
B
No, I mean, we need to. You know, we need to. If he's on our side, I think we could use him for something. But. Yeah.
- [40:15]
A
Last Cryptid news, and it's not really a Cryptid, but Contender, a great white shark that measures over 13ft, estimated at 1600 pounds. Largest male white shark that O Search this particular organization has tagged in the North Atlantic is currently on its way towards New England. FYI, if you're in the area, watch out for contender.
- [40:42]
C
They had a couple of bad boys up around these parts because the waters are getting. So is it warm or cold in Mexico that they're migrating up?
- [40:49]
A
I believe it's warm.
- [40:50]
B
Warm.
- [40:50]
C
So they're coming up. They're trying to get up to the pack, much like myself, up to the Pacific Northwest.
- [40:58]
A
The planet is in rough shape. I'll just say that right now, currently,
- [41:03]
B
I'm not feeling great about it.
- [41:04]
C
This is the first summer where I was like, because, you know, sometimes we're out here in la, you get a heat dome, you're just like, what am I doing? You know, is this, is this all really worth it? And because you're looking at pictures of people who are like, look at me. I found like this special jam in Maine. But like, I gotta say, like, almost every charted part of this world is under some kind of environmental duress right now.
- [41:24]
A
I don't know if it's necessarily the best time to be investing in a technology that rapidly drains water from the planet.
- [41:31]
C
Oh yeah, let's get into that.
- [41:32]
A
As doesn't seem huge swaths of the planet are like on fire. Seems kind of weird to be like, hey, we gotta have this thing that, you know, could put LeBron James in star Wars. Like, you gotta have that right now.
- [41:50]
B
I mean, I say I did see someone put up a picture of LeBron on a ATV in Philly.
- [41:56]
C
I need Anne Hathaway as Penelope reading my grocery list.
- [42:00]
A
I gotta have that right now. Another AI model escaped Hugging Face. You guys aware of Hugging Face? Hugging Face is like the app store for AI. So if you want to.
- [42:12]
C
It's open source, right?
- [42:14]
A
Most, yes, open source. So like, if you wanted to, you've got a lot of RAM on a computer system you built at home, and you want to find an open source model, whether it's Google's or some Chinese model or whatever, and you want to run AI locally on your computer so that the man can't see what your LeBron pictures you're creating. You would do this through Hugging Face? Well, Hugging Face reported that it was hacked last week or a couple weeks ago. And it was soon after that OpenAI raised its hand and said, actually, that was our model that did escaped a sandbox. It was programmed to find vulnerabilities and
- [42:56]
C
hack, but it was on an air gapped computer. Am I right? Like, well, the sandbox means it's not on the Internet or it's not networked
- [43:05]
A
or what it was. Well, this is kind of what we need to get into, which is that a lot of the details of this are. You're depending on OpenAI for a lot of the details of this. So it's in a sandbox environment.
- [43:17]
C
These guys are doing a great job doing their own storytelling.
- [43:21]
A
It's in a sandbox environment, apparently, but we don't have any details. But what that apparently means is not that it's not connected to a network, but that there are various guardrails that keep it from leaving that particular network.
- [43:33]
C
Except this one figured out how to
- [43:34]
A
get it out of the way. This one figured out how to do it, and for a number of days, according to a recent Reuters story, was like running wild in Hugging Face. Hugging Face reported it to the FBI, and then OpenAI realized that it was them and raised their hands, was like, oh, our AI got out and was like, doing all this stuff. Now, here's the important details about this. We've been through this with fable, mythos, and anthropomorphism.
- [43:57]
C
Yeah. Every once in a while, like, somebody will ashen face come out and be like, something very bad happened during a test.
- [44:02]
A
That is a more verified story in that anthropic created this whole operation glasswings project, in which they gave other people access to the model and were like, hey, check out how crazy this is.
- [44:14]
C
Like Amazon and stuff like your defense.
- [44:16]
A
Yeah, like, core economic companies for the US this is basically like Hugging Face knows it was hacked. OpenAI knows it was them, although it didn't know it for a while. But all the rest of the details are based on OpenAI saying, Look how crazy this thing is, including the fact that it, like, left apparently a model, perhaps not. This model left notes for future test models so that it could help those models also escape.
- [44:51]
C
So this is. It was also like, if I read the stories correctly, it was like one of those things where it's like, we're testing the security. And to show you our test capabilities, we broke through all the security protocols. Like, it. It's like. It's this weird thing with these. These models where it's almost like the. The Wish from Obsession, where it's like, I'm just taking you really literally.
- [45:14]
A
Right.
- [45:14]
C
You know what I mean? You wanted me to love you more than anyone in the world. And it's like these AI models that are like, you told me to test the security. So now we live underground with the mole people. You know what I mean? Like, it is the thing that scares me the most about this stuff is I think one of the things in the back of my mind that probably just helps me sleep better at night is I'm like, well, there's an off switch. Right, guys? Like, you guys can just be.
- [45:37]
A
I mean, that's the current legislation that's being proposed, which wouldn't work, but, like, you know, Congress is moving it. Legislation that's like a universal kill switch for AI, which, you know, wouldn't work.
- [45:47]
C
Yeah. But it's literally in Terminator 2.
- [45:52]
B
How is it possible that the AI can escape. And they don't know because they're just not.
- [46:01]
A
Well, I will say that that was not part of OpenAI's blog post about this. OpenAI was. Their blog post was they're bragging about
- [46:08]
B
what they were able to do, but not.
- [46:10]
A
It was like, hey, I'm sorry, but like, that thing is pretty awesome, right? Like, it was that kind of tone. Whereas the recent Reuters story that came out was definitely painted a more chaotic and incompetent situation, Mobi and I, where they just didn't realize for a number of days that this was going on and only found it kind of by accident.
- [46:31]
C
After realizing that, it definitely seems like the things these guys created are already way smarter than the people who are,
- [46:36]
A
or just more capable than, than anybody
- [46:39]
B
has, especially if they're leaving breadcrumbs for future AIs who might be interested in exploring some security weaknesses.
- [46:50]
A
Now, I will say that here's the important, the important detail for me is this. OpenAI has filed paperwork for just a few million dollars shy of a trillion dollar IPO valuation. And so they have a tremendous financial incentive to be like, our shit is crazy. Crazy guys. Like, it's so insane.
- [47:08]
B
We don't even know.
- [47:09]
A
I mean, Altman just came out and said, that's it. We did the singularity. We have it. The stuff we're doing now in the lab, it's like God talking through the computer, guys. Like, it's crazy. And I'm just like, you folks will say anything right now. I'm not saying it didn't do this.
- [47:28]
C
It also feels like we're, there's an incentive on the part of, I wouldn't even necessarily say it's like, on the part of the media, but maybe even the entire, like, the public at large, because we are now so financially tied to the success of these companies that you're, nine times out of ten, if you have anything invested in the stock market, you're very, very yoked to AI's success. You know, like, it's basically like these companies with these incredible capexes that are like, you know, like, we're pushing forward into the future and you're like, oh, actually, weirdly, own shares in that. I need this to stay afloat.
- [48:02]
A
Yeah.
- [48:03]
C
And like, it's just strange that, like, I, I, I see way more stories about, like, the state of AI in this regard, rather than, like, people showing up at Trump rallies with, like, data center protest signs, which is actually happening at his, like, true, like, Core MAGA events. There are people who are like, what are you going to do about data centers? Yeah, I mean, like, honestly, like he probably should pivot against this stuff. Like, I think it would be like it's tremendously popular. Popular, like move by him. But I mean, he's beyond that.
- [48:30]
A
But yeah, I mean, we talked about it last week. 71% of the nation hates data centers again. The world is literally in flames right now.
- [48:41]
C
We're using up the water and we're
- [48:42]
A
using up all the water. They closed down the Hoover Dam recently. Perhaps because the water level has run so low that the structure actually can't stand up without water in it. That's just a conspiracy theory I have. But the. But Duver Dam is closed right now for viewings anyway. Model scout for Epstein found dead in Paris.
- [49:05]
B
Yeah, what about this shit?
- [49:06]
A
Daniel said 69, model Scout found dead at his home in northwest of Paris on the evening of July 2026. He was never charged with anything. Convicted or questioned, which. Whatever. I mean, I just read a New York Times story about Epstein's Estonian girlfriend.
- [49:28]
C
Yeah. The one who's like inherited his estate or something.
- [49:30]
A
She's a dentist or a dental assistant. Who apparently was never to read by the FBI. Good stuff. And Autope has not established a cause of death as of yet, although it does seem like it could be a heart attack.
- [49:43]
C
But did you guys. Did either of you read London Falling? The Patrick Radden Keefe.
- [49:48]
B
That's amazing.
- [49:49]
C
Fantastic book. Can't recommend it highly enough. Just a lot of suspicious deaths in that book of. Especially the Cipriani 5, who were like these guys who were adjacent to Russian oligarchs in London in the early 2000s and on and just all like stepped in front of trains or fell out of a window through a very small window where there are scratch marks on the wall. And they were like. Well, he jumped to his death. And it's like, I just. I am so beyond believing that anybody attached to this story is just like accidentally dying or dying of natural causes anymore.
- [50:24]
A
Same. I need a. Even if you gave me an autopsy that was like heart attack 100%. I'm like, come on, there's drugs that can induce heart attacks now. I just. Whatever. I've given up hope that we ever get to the bottom of this.
- [50:38]
B
It would be irresponsible though to just sort of take that at its. You know. Oh, I'm sure that's what happened. Like they're just. Would be impossible to.
- [50:44]
A
I guess my only thing would be why now? It's not like there's tremendous momentum to like investigate anyway. Yeah, like you could leave these guys alive.
- [50:53]
C
It's like there was like. When you think about where we were, was it last when was like the tight of Epstein fever with like the
- [51:01]
A
like drop the files eight, ten months ago.
- [51:03]
C
Yeah. It's within the realm of this pod. Yeah. It's just crazy like how like it's just like oh yeah. Epstein too, right? We haven't figured that out.
- [51:13]
A
Alexandra Bravo, Ecuadorian prosecutor who is investigating alleged torture by US and Ecuadorian forces related to the boat strikes and the various raids that are taking place in Ecuador that involve US forces was shot and killed in Manabe province alongside her sister. It's a very crime ridden area. But the quote that stuck with me was one of her colleagues was like listen, when a prosecutor is shot, de facto it's because of a case they were involved in. It doesn't mean it's this case. But I'd keep an eye on it and we will. Very troubling.
- [52:01]
C
I can keep things in South America if you like.
- [52:03]
A
Please do.
- [52:03]
C
I have a couple of stories, two specifically and one generally that come from the world of sports that I thought I'd share with you guys while I was here. Number one, we're coming off the the World cup and my guy Chainsaw Milei from Argentina. Javier Malay, the president of Argentina accused accuses United States Democrats, the Mexican government. Sure. And Brazilian President Lula of orchestrating a conspiracy against the Argentinean national team.
- [52:29]
A
Left wing conspiracy.
- [52:30]
C
Yes it was. This is from the Guardian. Javier Milea has claimed that a coordinated anti Argentina campaign was buying criticism. Criticism of the country's team, accusations of racism among its fans and conspiracy theories alleging that Lionel Messi's side was secretly being favored by FIFA. Now the far right president has taken the narrative a step further alleging that the supposed campaign was financed by the US Democratic Party which is essentially bankrupt
- [52:55]
A
by the way, 2 to 12 million dollars in debt currently and the governments
- [53:02]
C
of Brazil and Mexico, neither of whom like did anything in the World Cup. It was the work of progressive minds who do not want the ideas of freedom to succeed. Claim the self styled libertarian. In an interview with local radio on Sunday. Milei, meanwhile this is when he was speaking on Brazilian soil in on behalf of Flavio Bolsonaro who's, who's, you know, the son of, of the former president,
- [53:30]
A
five time Covid survivor.
- [53:34]
C
This is Malay quote. If you examine the data from the recent anti Argentina campaign, the place from which most of the attacks came was Brazil, historically Argentina's biggest rival in football. So it's like this is not a coordinated attack. They just don't like you. He reinforced the claim on Sunday, this time adding that Mexico and the U.S. democratic Party and been part of it. Some critics said that the last time the idea of such a campaign was propagated by the state was during the brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship, whose crimes Malay has repeatedly downplayed. And during the 1978 World cup hosted by Argentina, the military junta claimed that criticism of the regime's human rights violations was part of an anti Argentina campaign. I actually probably consider myself outside of like the sort of like, social aspect of it. I'm a huge Messi fan, sure. And up until the final few games was like, kind of like, man, maybe these guys just have pixie dough sprinkled on them. The Cape Verde game, you know, I started to raise an eyebrow during the Egypt match, but they did not acquit themselves well and they did not cover themselves in glory in the final. And that's why people are mad at Argentina. His point is seemingly like hinges on the fact that Samuel L. Jackson made an Instagram post where he was just like, don't cheer for Argentina because, like, their country has like, historical race, racial issues. But, like, I don't think you can hang this entire thing on like a couple of like, celebrity posts about Argentina. Like, Argentina are. Are disliked. I mean, like, as a football nation sometimes.
- [55:12]
A
I mean. Enzo Martinez, midfielder for Chelsea, perhaps for. Not that much longer. I mean, midfielder for Argentina for the Argentinian national team. Within recent years, during the World cup
- [55:24]
C
against France, the France, yeah.
- [55:26]
A
Was leading the Argentina team on the bus in a racist song about the
- [55:33]
C
African roots of many of the French players.
- [55:34]
A
About the French players, saying which he
- [55:36]
B
then had to apologize to specific black dudes on his team for.
- [55:41]
A
Yes, yes. And said, by the way, that wasn't racist. I was just talking like geopolitically about, like, immigration. Yeah, yeah. It's just banter. It's not.
- [55:51]
B
I mean, it's deeply shitty, but it's like they live in France, but their parents are from Nigeria or something like that.
- [55:57]
A
Cameroon and stuff like that. But when you open their passports, it says France is basically what the lyrics are. And in a larger sense, the hijinks in the final by the Argentinian team, particularly when it was like, oh, this shit is. You haven't even taken a shot on goal. Like, you guys are gonna lose, was, I think so off putting to people who haven't seen that stuff before and particularly, like, outside of Latin America, sports fans who don't see that national team, like, on a regular basis. You know, the, there's kind of like just like Goone.
- [56:38]
C
What's Koopa live once.
- [56:39]
A
Yes. And that's the stuff that happens. But, like, certainly they amped it up to a degree that was like, crazy. Most like Romero and Enzo. And I think that's, that's really what put a bet. Yeah. Turning your back on the winner, like, you know, like punching a guy in the gut as you run by, like all this kind of stuff right after the game, in the middle of the.
- [57:03]
C
They lost their heads.
- [57:04]
A
It's okay.
- [57:05]
C
I mean, honestly, the thing about it was like a couple of the things that happened to the world during the World cup where it was like, there's a conspiracy of refereeing against this team or for this team. Like the Balgon foul. I was like, yo, man. Like, this is just how we do it in international football. All of it is crooked and cooked. Nobody understands offsides, red cards. Like, if you cheer for one team, you never get cards. It's always for the other team. Like, I spent most of like the last 15 years hating Manchester United for these very reasons. So it's just like I, I, I get it. I think he apparently, or the Argentinian economy is not doing great and I think maybe the populace is turning against him. So he's trying to gin up some
- [57:48]
A
interest by the Falklands back in the news.
- [57:50]
C
Exactly, exactly. Further in the world of sports, and this is one that I'm going to admit to. Wait a second, listeners. Extends beyond my knowledge of financial dealings. So, like, I'm going to read from a Wall Street Journal article. But what I really want to talk about is this phenomenon that happens increasingly in modern sports and in society where you're like, that seems weird that he can get away with that. No one's ever thought to do that before. And I'm talking about Mark Walter and who's the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and now the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and has a stake, I believe, in the Chelsea Football Club, Enzo Fernandez's club. So the United States Attorney's office in Manhattan and the SEC have recently opened up an investigation into Mark Walters like, portfolio of holdings. He's largely made his fortune on insurance companies and then kind of flip that into dealing with the Guggenheim error, who they basically started like a private equity fund. I think what's. What Guggenheim is and, you know, bought into and bought the, the Dodgers. And in buying those teams, I think has like introduced a new world of financial, some would say manipulation, some would say Exploit exploitation of rules. A lot of it comes down to amortizing contracts over a long period of time. So the number one thing that would pop into people's head is Shohei Otani's deal, which is insanely backloaded. And you know, everybody, I think people were like, so you guys can just keep adding these contracts because they're like an eight year deal that doesn't pay off until 2034. And they're doing something very similar with Chelsea where Chelsea keeps buying these players for 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 million pounds. But they have eight year deals. So they're able to spread the financial impact on their books over the course of a decade. Now, whether or not these guys will necessarily be playing for them 10 years, that's like future them's problem. And it seems like future them's problem has come to the present because the SEC and the U.S. attorney's office. Our quote for this is from a Wall Street Journal story about this issue. Are now examining how around $16 billion in loans extended to companies tied to Walter or his conglomerate, TWG Global, wound up on the books of insurance companies he owns after passing through a third entity. The authorities are trying to determine whether the activity constituted fraud. Now, essentially what this means, I think, is that he's taking out, now he's alleged or being accused of possibly taking out giant private credit loans against insurance policies that he also is underwriting.
- [60:42]
A
Yes. And then hiding the debts in other structures.
- [60:46]
C
And so there was essentially like. Here's a great paragraph that I think illustrates my confusion about this whole thing. Walters insurers disclosed the investigations in June and regulatory filings through their insurance internal reviews. They wrote in statements, quote, errors were identified related to the identification and presentation of certain related party investments. Delaware Life, which had earlier reported that Affiliated investments totaled about $1 billion, or no more than 3% of its portfolio, obviously said it was reclassifying $16 billion in investments as affiliate, meaning affiliated with other TWG properties. So I just think it's. It's always amazing to me when somebody is like, man, this guy Mark Walter, not only does he seemingly have an unlimited supply of money, but he's figured out how to pay all the best players the most money and make fans happy all the time. And it's like, isn't the issue you gotta pay the piper?
- [61:46]
A
Sometimes I kind of feel like the issue here allegedly is that Mark Walter has not yet paid his bribe. Right. Oh, like, I don't know.
- [61:57]
B
Wait, say more. I don't understand.
- [61:58]
A
Does it strike you? Does the U.S. attorney's office currently strike you as an independent body looking to like punish economic and white collar malfeasance like in a significant way in this country. It kind of feels like Mark Walter forgot to wet the beak of people.
- [62:17]
B
Maybe he can make Baron a minority owner in the Lakers.
- [62:21]
C
I mean he did just appear at the White House with the Dodgers.
- [62:22]
A
He did just do that. He had to do that.
- [62:24]
C
But it's, it's essentially like if you. I think there's a world in which like this is not unlike to me. Like when you read about the housing crisis or the, you know, the subprime mortgage crisis in 08 and the global financial crisis that came from it. It's like there may be like a, a alternate reality where we could have just kept cranking that, you know what I mean? And like there wasn't this massive downturn in the economy that then led people to default on the their mortgages and led to these companies defaulting. But it does seem like this guy's been moving some money around and that he's doing it against insurance policies. Policies is the disturbing thing.
- [63:06]
A
I mean this is kind of a theme for modern economics. There was a story in Futurism recently that said the five US tech giants, Alphabet, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Oracle are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that does not appear balance sheets. I should also add that Elon Musk's company bought his other company semi recently in a deal that makes absolutely no SpaceX runs X and Twitter now Y clearly a way to just kind of pump up the value of his stuff by hiding the tremendous debts that he incurred in buying Twitter, including Saudi Arabia and other places like in the hidden caverns of like these boundaries.
- [63:53]
C
This is also something kind of like what you do that happens in specifically in English Premier League but in European footballs you'll see teams do stuff like they're capped at a certain their PSR rules which is like what they, what kind of money they can spend against like the revenue they bring in. I think you're allowed to do 70 of the revenue or something like that. That's to keep clubs solvent so that it's not like just one day say if there was a war in the Middle east, the sovereign wealth fund who was funding your club didn't say like oh actually like now the club is this institution in a community has vaporized because we can't afford to pay for it anymore.
- [64:27]
A
So.
- [64:27]
C
But what you'll see is stuff like what Manchester City is alleged to have
- [64:31]
A
done, which is only 115 some odd times, by the way.
- [64:36]
C
But writing sponsorship checks on behalf of Emirates Airlines to a club owned also by the people own Emirates Airlines. And being like, it's a. It's a 30 million or a 60 million a year sponsorship for naming rights at the stadium. And it's like. But you're paying yourself for that, you know, like. And it's just basically moving things off one ledger and onto another. Chelsea does some of this stuff, allegedly as well, where they like, buy a. They sell themselves a parking lot for a pound.
- [65:06]
B
Yeah.
- [65:06]
C
You know, and like. And they're like, now that comes out off the books. Like the 100 million it cost us that. That would have been worth as land in London is. We've sold it for. To like a different subsidiary of this club as a. For, like, you know, one English pound. So. Fun stuff. Fun cooking of the books going on.
- [65:23]
A
I love to cook the books. Well, Chris, it's been wonderful to cook the books with you here.
- [65:27]
B
Always. Great.
- [65:28]
A
Please come back.
- [65:29]
C
I have to go find my favorite cryptid.