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The 50 States of Conspiracy: Kentucky · Conspiracy! The Show

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Winter insurance.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Did I'm true Troth, I'm a check now both insurance good?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I checked? Than is the.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Oh Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: host Adam Todd Brown joining me as guest co hosts
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: this week, writer Whiskey expert Kentucky resident Zach Johnston. How's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: it going, man.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It's going love very well. How you doing, Adam?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I am doing just great.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Everything's great.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Everything's great. I got World Cup fever like the rest
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of the world. That's not true, but I am, as
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: we talk about on last week's episode, just like everyone else,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I know, so excited about America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an exciting time. I found it to
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: be a kind of a eh really that's it. I mean,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know about your listeners, but the two of
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: us are old enough to remember the echo of the
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: bi centennial or nineteen seventy six, and like I grew
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: up with like the cups and the you know, the
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: we still had no pads and pencils and like all
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  Speaker 2: the shows on TV that they reran for years and
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  Speaker 2: years and years, and with this I'm just like, so,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: ABC's just doing like a couple of national parks and
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of bullshit in DC, and that's it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Trump blew it. I don't think it would have been
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: a celebratory thing in general. I feel like most of
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the country is kind of past that point. But I
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  Speaker 1: think it would have been a bigger deal without Trump, Yes.
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  Speaker 2: One hundred percent, because people would have want to have
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: been involved. Like, for instance, to me, I mean, coming
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: from a sort of artist pov like, it blows my
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: mind that this is in a year of like Spielberg
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: curating films going back into cinema is about the best
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: of American cinema. Or you know, some museums curating the
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: best of American art and having to tour the country
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: so everybody can see it and kids can go to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: it for school breaks and whatnot. Or you know some
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: you know having just Doctor Gray or somebody like that
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  Speaker 2: curate the best of American music and you know, release
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: specialty albums, you know of America's two fifty. You know,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: stuff like that that feels like celebratory of you know,
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  Speaker 2: shit that's actually positive about America, right, you know the
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: stuff we do well, like space, you know, fuck in medicine,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: you know movies, you know things like that that I
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: think everybody you would hope could get behind. But maybe
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: we aren't past that. I don't know. It just felt
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: like a whiff.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I really think the Trump team thought this was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: going to be the moment where America turns out and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: is like, no, we do want to be Nazis.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. He was waiting for Nuremberg and Letty Riefenstahl
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: and trying for the will and instead he got an
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: algae pool and empty. I don't know how I lived
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: in DC for five years over many Fourth of July is.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know how you get them all that empty
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: during the Fourth of July high That was insane general, Like,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I've been to I've been to them all
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: for the Fourth several times for the fireworks, for the
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: parties and all that stuff. I don't understand how it
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: was that empty unless it was really that like off
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: putting that people were not even going to the mall.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Like to be able to do that to me was
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: mind blowing.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I know it was Trump's fault because I actually went
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to an America two fifty concert at the LA Coliseum
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: because it was smashing pumpkins and Chris Stapleton. Tickets were
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: seventeen dollars and seventy six cents.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I actually don't care about Chris Stapleton that much, and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I knew he would be headlining, so I was like,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I'm getting the fuck out of there after smashing pumpkins.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And my only reservation was, but I don't want to
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: support some Trump shit. And it turns out America to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: fifty and Freedom to fifty are different things. And America
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: two fifty was supposed to be what all the celebrations
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: were and Trump just hijacked it. And on the America
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  Speaker 1: two fifty Instagram page where they announced this concert, it
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  Speaker 1: was just flooded with comments where people were like, I'm
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: not coming to this Trump bullshit, right, So he fucked
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: it up.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they knew what they were doing. Like that's that, man,
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  Speaker 2: I think. Yeah. There was a whole bunch of people
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  Speaker 2: like confused about the concert that was at the US
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  Speaker 2: Capitol on the fourth of July, Yeah, thinking that it
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: was part of the Freedom to fifty, But that was
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  Speaker 2: the actual like official America Fourth of July concert.
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  Speaker 1: There was one in Philadelphia too that the Roots played,
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  Speaker 1: And when I saw that, I was like, Okay, this
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  Speaker 1: probably isn't a Trump thing. I don't think the roots
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: would do no a Trump show.
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  Speaker 2: Not But I mean, speaking of Chris Stapleton, he's a
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: good old Kentucky boy. That's a crazy thing about this statement.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Not to sort of seguey us over.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I mean we should segue over this.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: The state is weirdly central to a lot of shit
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: and people where you're just like it seems probably it's
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: a confirmation biased, but almost important the amount of people
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: who come from here that are important on the national
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: stage where they're you know, you're looking at like the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: actors and musicians, you know, the tons and tons of musicians,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: not just in country. I mean Jack Harlow probably the
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: most popular one right now, but also like big actors
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: like Clooney and Depth and you know Jaylaw, you know,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: just to name like a few, and then I don't
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: know why Kentucky politicians are so big on the national stage,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: whether it's McConnell, Rand Massy now obviously a sheer he
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: is getting some national attention. I mean Massy is literally
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: my congress person at the moment, well for now, from
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: my district. Fine, really fascinating dude went to MIT, like
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: has a patent for solar energy, like and then he's
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: a constitutional absolutist, which is so just like eye rolling.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the fundamentalists of the institution.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Literally, Yeah, he won't vote for like veteran affairs funding
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  Speaker 2: because it's not in the constitution. Absurd, absurd. Yeah, but
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: the dude like literally has bats for solar energy from
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: them and like was went to MIT and has a
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: doctorate from there or something like that. So you're just like,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: but that's the whole other thing. Like did you notice it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Near the end of Trump's last campaign, he started talking
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: a lot about his uncle John Trump. Yeah, and I
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: because John Trump with Vanavir Bush basically they ran MIT
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: for decades, you know, post World War two. Before in
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: post World War two, I think John Trump was more
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: in like radiology and radiation study and engineering and stuff
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: like that, and like he was the one who you know,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: got all the Tesla papers after Nicola Tesla died. But
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: if you kind of notice now as well, Trump leaves
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: MIT alone when he's fucking with universities. Like I'm sure
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: there's you know, been pushed back there. But compared to
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: how he treats like Harvard and Penn and you know,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: all these big universities. He because his uncle's from there
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: is and Trump would talk about how important his uncle
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: was to science and how people scientists need to be
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: more like his uncle. And so I think there's a
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: because he knew he'd won at that point, so we
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: could talk about like science, and people didn't really listen
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: their care because they're already leaving the stadium anyway. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: Like Kentucky's got a crazy amount of people that just
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: sort of like permeate through to the national consciousness in
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  Speaker 2: a weird way. I mean musicians as well, stable in
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: but like Sgil Simpson, all the jugs, you know, the
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: list goes on and on and on. Then also, I
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: guess it's sort of like Crossroads of America type place,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: especially in the old days because the Ohio River in
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Louisville was fall city where you know, people had to
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: get off their boats and sort of made it a
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: very rich place. Obviously, the Derby is huge, Bourbons huge. Again,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: our senators somehow always come up national stage.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was surprised how much stuff I found looking
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  Speaker 1: into a state of Kentucky.
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  Speaker 2: It's small, it's small. It's only five million people too,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: It's not like it's a big state.
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  Speaker 1: Really small place. A whole lot going on there though,
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  Speaker 1: as I found out research in.
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  Speaker 2: This, Yeah, get to it, but like you'll, you'll realize
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: why Justified was based here.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple Kentucky related conspiracies that
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: we've already covered, so we won't talk about them too much.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I recently reposted both episodes. Go listen to them. One
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  Speaker 1: of them is the theory that there is no more
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: gold at Fort Knox.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: That would be weird.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a long running conspiracy that there is
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: actually not gold at Fort Knox.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a sort of like a facade to keep
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  Speaker 2: up the illusion that we're actually solvent.
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  Speaker 1: I even saw someone suggesting that there's actually nuclear stuff
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  Speaker 1: down there now, oh right, right, as opposed to gold.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently there's some trail in Kentucky that has a waterfall
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  Speaker 1: attached to it, and this person apparently at the top
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of the waterfall, you would think there'd be like a
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: body of water feeding into it, and it's just like
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: concrete slabs and water coming out of somewhere, Okay, And
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that person's theory was maybe that's keeping all the nuclear
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  Speaker 1: stuff inside Fort Knox cool.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, I mean it's who knows. I mean I've
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: driven by there, just passively, because you do when you
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: drive west of Littleville. And also there's the uh George
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Patten Museum is out there, which I haven't been to,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: but I've been by, and it's just like from the road,
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  Speaker 2: it's just like a very blank, run down army installation.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: That's all you really see. Yeah, so, and and who knows?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Who knows what's behind those fences, right like?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be anything down there. This is the
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: American government we're talking about. There could be aliens down there.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Right like it, and it could just be gold.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Could just be gold. Go listen to that episode. We
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: reposted it recently. Also, we did an episode a few
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: years ago. I feel like this did not get that
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: much attention. I feel like even I just sort of
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: randomly stumbled across it. But there was a really interesting
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: article in a local I believe it was a Louisville
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: outlet about how the murder of Brianna Taylor was maybe
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: probably tied to a gentrification project that was happening in
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Louisville at the time, and the evidence for it is
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: actually really compelling. Not so much that they showed up
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and killed Brianna Taylor because of gentrification, but if people remember,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: her boyfriend was deeply involved in why the police were there,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: and this investigation kind of makes it seem like he
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was being targeted because he was kind of the last
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: holdout in this area that they were trying to gentrify.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And it's a really compelling theory that seemed like it
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: just went nowhere.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think the uh from I've it's
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: been a few years now, so you have to forgive
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: my memory not really being that great about it. But
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I do think like the actual warrant that they supposed
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: they had for her boyfriend was because of some gentrification
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: prote or complaint or something. Yeah, and the Tops, in
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: their wonderfulness, had take them as like he was dealing
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: drugs or something like that, just so they could get
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: him out finally correct. But that's all I really remember,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: because it's sort of like, I mean, this was six
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, it was it was a while ago.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, she there's still like in Louisville, there's
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: still like placards of her up on street signs, and
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: you know, still memorials and murals around, so it's like
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: still very much at the forefront of the identity of Louisville.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But also there's some rough, rough neighborhoods in Littleville, so
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like gentrification is a tough thing. Man.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but we already talked about both of those, so
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: go listen to those past episodes. We should move on
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: to the stuff I found research in this first. We'll
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: start with the really famous stuff.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's fun though, because I'd forgotten about this entirely, Like, yeah.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not much of an American history buff, so I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: honestly didn't know shit about the Burr Conspiracy before this.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It's a fun thing because it sort of speaks to
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: just the utter chaos and ridiculousness of the early years
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: of this country. Because I think we're fed this myth
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: that you know, they all signed the Declaration of Independence
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: and then you know, we fought this war and then
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the Constitution, the colonies came together and formed a union
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: and blah blah blah, and it's like, no, it was
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: pretty much just chaos until the end of the Civil War.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: This is such a crazy story. It dates all the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: way back to eighteen actually more like eighteen oh four
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: eighteen oh five, but eighteen oh seven is when former
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was arrested.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: He was trying to launch this plot where he would
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: using a militia take over Mexico and Texas and then
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: also as part of the deal it was like one
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: of those NBA trades that involves three teams. He was
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: also good to let England come in and take back
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: some of the western territory of the United States in
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: exchange for helping him take over Mexico and Texas, which
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: he would rule as king. And it didn't not almost work.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: He got far down that road, man, he had gathered
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: like armies and shit.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he got really close. And the reason he did
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: it he famously had that duel with Alexander Hamilton. He
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, one which that's good for him,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: but on the other hand, that made a lot of
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: people think maybe that guy shouldn't be president. Maybe vice
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: president is as far as that should go. So his
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: political future was very murky. So he was like, fuck it,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Mexico and Texas, I'm just gonna take him over. He
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: launches this plot. He rounds up this co conspirator, General
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: James Wilkinson, who was Commander in chief of the US Army.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Apparently that's not the president at this point in history.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Burg convinced Thomas Jefferson to make Wilkinson governor of Northern
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Louisiana because he wanted to take over the Louisiana territory. Also,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: he reaches out to Britain's Minister to the United States,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Anthony Mary, offers to help Britain take Western territory from
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the US. He makes all these reconnaissance trips rounding up conspirators,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: but then one help from other countries never arrives. That
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: just does not materialize at all. And even worse, there
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: are rumors spreading that hey, vice president might be plotting
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a coup. And he hears these rumors too and is like,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to power on. I'm sure it'll be fine. Yeah, yeah,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: what could go wrong? And here's the thing. In his defense,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the rumors were such that he was brought up on
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: treason charges three times in the state of Kentucky and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: acquitted every time.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild. I tried doing a bit more research
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: because they had like big question marks Lake when they
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: said like the governor of Louisiana. Do they mean like
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the Louisiana purchased northern Louisiana, which is like a third
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: of the country now, yeah, or was it just like
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Louisiana we know now couldn't get a straight answer, but
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: I imagine it's like the third of the country.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Probably because it said Louisiana Territory.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: So right, which was massive, like that's all the way
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: from New Orleans to basically the Rockies in you know, Alberta.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: But anyway, like yeah, because the big thing was he
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: would be coming through Kentucky on the whow River, like,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: you know, getting people on his side, and you know,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I think one of my favorite quotes in there was
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: like he'd go to taverns and just talk to people
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: and get them on his side and they know, like
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: come join his militia. It's like this guy must have
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: been like a John hann level mad Men pitchman to
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: like do that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had to have some charm because he really
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: rounded up the troops. He also this plan was smart there.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: We were engaged in a border conflict with Spain at
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the time, Yeah, and what Aaron Burr was gonna do
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: was have the President Thomas Jefferson send troops to Louisiana
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: under the guise of, well, we need to fight this
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: border conflict with Spain. And when those troops arrived, surprise,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: he was going to use him to attack Mexico and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Texas claim his territory.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, yet I would imagine then, because like New Orleans
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: is right near what's now the Panhandle, and that was
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: still Spain, Like Florida was still Spain back then, and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: then like Texas and the whole West was a whole
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: different thing, Like that was Spain too, but it was
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: like you know, Expanse of Florida was a little more settled.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they were going to take all that over.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately for him, Wilkinson got cold feet and literally
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: told President Jefferson about the entire plot. Didn't name Aaron Burr,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: but Jefferson was like, I know who you're talking about, right,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I've read the newspapers where they are currently saying he's
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: plotting some shit. And so Aaron Burr still pressed on,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: but finally gave up when someone literally hands him a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: newspaper that announces an award for his arrest. They also published,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: verbatim a letter he sent to one of his co conspirators,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: so he was like, I'm cooked, and he turned himself in,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and of course he was executed for committing treason just joking.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Turns out the constitutional definition of treason is really strict,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and somehow his actions did not meet it. So he
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: returned to the United States and lived the rest of
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: his life as a broken man in squalor. Just joking.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: He moved to New York and established a successful law
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: practice and just lived a normal life the rest of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: his years.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: You can't keep a good white rich man down. Goddamn right,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: it's funny, Like I don't unders like again, I was
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: looking at this, why didn't they try him for a sedition,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Like he technically was doing sedition, not treason, because like
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: article or section three, Article three about treason. It's like
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: treason is really like you are working for the other
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: side in a war, Like it's got to be like
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: an act of like you know, you're working for the
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Nazis in nineteen forty to harm America, And sedition is like, no,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: you're creating a conspiracy to stop the federal government from
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: doing something it needs to do, you know, like Trump
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: did on January sixth literally sedition by definition, and that's
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: what he was doing. He was seditious, Like why did
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: they try and for treat Like I feel like them
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: trying and for treason was him being like chaos of
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: the time lawyer trick to be like, well, if I
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: get them to charge me with treason, I know I
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: can get away with it. And that's why they was
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: tried three times and acquitted three times. Yeah, because I
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: can't imagine why like otherwise, because they weren't. We weren't
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: like like taking a part of the country that was
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: already part of America. That's sedition. So I don't know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I'm getting lost in the weeds there. But it's just
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: it feels very loyally of him to do that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, I guess living out your life
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: as a successful lawyer beats What would happen if he
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: did this now, which he'd be working for ICE, right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: You'd be running it, Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, he'd be
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: he'd be getting a confirmation hearing now. But yeah, it's
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: wild that, like, because I feel like everyone's sort of
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: idea if they've even heard of Erin Burr is like
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: eighteen oh four merks Alexander Hamilton and exit stage left
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: like the in the show. Yeah, and that's it. Whereas
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: like the sort of knock on effect of him doing
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: all this shit is we then took this stuff way
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: more seriously and consolidated power so no one could successfully
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: do what Aerin Burr was doing, and like accelerated our
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: expansion wes to sort of, you know, institutionalize things to
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: make sure that some asshole couldn't come along and kind
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: of scoop out half the country. By what like eighteen seven,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: eighteen oh eight, you had the Loosen Clark Expedition already
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: on its way something like that.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: So this next one also famous, also very true. This
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: is a good one to bring up to those people
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: who are just so trusting of authority that they assume
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: conspiracies just don't happen at all. I remember when the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Making a Murderer documentary came out and a guy I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: knew posted a thing on Facebook and was like, well,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I just can't imagine that a police department would conspire
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to railroad one guy just because they were facing a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: fifteen million dollar lawsuit that was going to bankrupt them.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, that is absolutely what the police
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: would do. Are you kidding me?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Did they do it over like fifteen thousand dollars? Yes, Like,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I don't think people truly understands the lengths institutional capitalists
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: are willing to go to for very very little return.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: One example I like to tell people like that is
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: if they asked them if they've ever heard of peten pettens,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: which is like a small like explosive powder. And during
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, I can't remember the name of the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: operation now, CIA was literally going around Laos and Cambodian
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Vietnam behind the lines and they would put one single
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: AK forty seven bullet, took out the black powder, put
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: pettin in one single bullet per case, which is a
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: thousand rounds that they would find and leave for the
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: enemy then to find and pick up and reput into
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: their and put into rotation, so that one out of
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: every one thousand might maybe blow up in the enemy's
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: face when they fired it. Jesus and we spent years
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: doing this, millions of dollars, and it was a whole
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: massive operation to put one single bullet in a case
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: of bullet that we happened to maybe find, hoping that
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: they might happen to maybe find it to and use it.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: That's the minutia level of insanity. These people will go
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: to what are we talking about? Like, yes, people get
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: a bug up their ass and will not fucking stop
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: until they're dead or successful.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: This is a good example of it. The Bluegrass Conspiracy,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: which right off the bat, anyone listening to this ever
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: seen Cocaine Bear, I'm honestly asking, I did not watch
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that bullshit. With all due respect to Elizabeth Banks, who.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I love, I feel like I saw the trailer and
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: I'm like, got it.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, a bear gets high on cocaine and goes
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: ripping around the forest.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: If people recall that movie claim to be based on
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: actual events, normally, when you hear that, the actual events
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: are far tamer than what happens in the movie. In
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: this case, I would say, despite it being a movie
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: about a bear going on a cocaine fueled rampage of
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: violence and bloodshed, the actual events are way more interesting
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and wild. Yes.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Is wild about is how deeply these people were entrenched,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: not in like some sort of mafia or you know,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: organized crime, in the actual police departments, like this was
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: institutional crime.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a high level conspiracy that literally reached
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: state government, the police.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Surely. Ciada like ATF.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Spreads over decades, three different decades.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Kind of all in Kentucky, baby.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: All in Kentucky. In the case of Cocaine Bear, the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Bluegrass conspiracy starts with a guy named Drew Thorne. He
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: was a rich kid, son of a prominent horse breeding family.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: He's a human though not a horse.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Kentucky, you say odd.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: He met a kid named Bradley Bryant at the age
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: of fourteen when they were both enrolled in a military academy.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: They both went to the army from there. Thornton was
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a paratrooper that becomes really important later who was injured
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: during duty, won the Purple Heart all that shit. So rich,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: decorated military career got a lot going for him.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wonder where did you ever find out
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: where he actually like served.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't because I had to research so many
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: different things for this. I didn't get into that level
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: of detail.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I remember hearing somewhere it was really sketchy, like Panama Granada,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: like some like you know, backhanded sort of place that
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: you know because it was the seventies, right, Like who knows.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who knows. So eventually he and Bryant both end
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: up back in Lexington, Kentucky. Thornton gets his pilot's license
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and joins the Lexington PD in nineteen sixty eight. Those
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: are two separate things. He didn't need a pilot's license
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to join Lexington PD. I just put those two things
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: in the same notes. The War on drugs newly underway,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Lexington PD forms a narcotics unit and Thornton is in
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: charge of that unit. He meets a guy named Henry
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Vance at that point, Thornton, Brian Vance. Those are your
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: three conspirators. Thornton and Vance, both working at the police department,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: start dabbling in crime. Thornton is dealing drugs. Dance is
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: selling weapons.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, as you do. I mean what else what
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: you got?
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: You can't just leave that money on the table, Yeah.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Just sitting in rooms collecting dust.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So now the guy heading the narcotics unit is also
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a drug dealer, which is absolutely movie shit. That's the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: kind of thing you would absolutely see in a movie
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, that wouldn't happen. It happened in Kentucky.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: So meanwhile, Bryant is out meeting rich people and most
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: importantly meeting drug traffickers in Las Vegas. And in nineteen
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: seventy five, Thornton and Bryant went legit, so to speak.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: And by that I mean they set up a security
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: company called Executive Protection and used it as a front
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to launch a for real drug and weapon smuggling operation.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And you know who I bet was seeded them money.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Who's that?
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I bet it was a little place called CIA through
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: a shell company.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: No, come on, what the CIA being involved in dealing
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: drugs in the United States?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Will will Adam tell them the next point of what
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: they called themselves.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, they brought Vance on board, and the three of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: them came to be known as the Company.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Definitely not a nickname for any other organization ever, I mean.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: And also, like we know from literally CIA dot gov
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: they set up shell companies to support painters and musicians
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: and films and you know all this stuff. They can
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: also do that for every other type of company on
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the planet. Yes, it's not just Jackson Pollock and you
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: know El Fitzgerald and and you know Zero Dark thirty.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: It's also like, hey, these guys are setting up a
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: company called Executive Protection where they're running drugs and guns
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: in the fricking seventies gonna pop up on somebody's radar.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: If they're not getting.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Caught, someone's gonna notice that kind of shit. So that
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: they got away with this for as long as they
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: did is absolutely something people should be suspicious about. So
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: they bring Vance on board. They start calling themselves the company. Also,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: by this point, Vance had been fired from the police
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: department because he was literally caught selling guns. But don't
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: worry everybody, he had a lot of family connections because
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: all these dudes are rich.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean, if you say horse breeding, automatically
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: rich right, like period.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So he used his family connections too get a job
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: in the state legislature. So he went from being a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: disgraced cop caught selling weapons to working in the state
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: legislature while also moonlighting as the third business partner in
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the company. So again, high ranking conspiracy.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't this Pablo Escobar story?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah? This is so many stories of drug dealers where
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: it's not just that person, but they get other people
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: in these high profile positions. And it sounds like movie shit,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: But movies are often based on things that happen in real.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Life and often watered down because people won't believe the
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: craziest parts of them.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, like the part where all of this happened kind
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: of in broad daylight. Bryant would lease small planes under
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the guise of needing them for this security company they
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: had set up. Thornton, who had his pilot's license, would
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: fly to South America, pick up drugs, just marijuana at first,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: so victimless crime, fly it back to Kentucky and literally
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: unload the shit on the tarmac at Louisville Airport and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: then just sell that shit in Louisville. So this is
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: happening as people are watching.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Basically right literally.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And they were able to keep it going for a
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: long time, so much so that Thornton eventually just quit
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the police department to focus on selling drugs full time.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Interesting, just as a quick asterisk, not to interrupt a
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: flow here. Drew Thornton got his purple heart in nineteen
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: sixty five, and it was not in Southeast Asia. It
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: was during the nineteen sixty five US invasion of the
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Dominican Republic during Operation Power Pack, which is when CIA
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: was doing intelligence collection on a Cuba.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, surely a coincidence.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Zach, surely can't be related. No, No, that he got
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: injured during a CIA operation and the famous US invasion
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: of the Dominican Republic, which we all remember.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of purple hearts came from that heroic stuff.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure you remember. You know the coins everybody has.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Greatest generation won the war in I don't remember where
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: You just said the Dominican Republic.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Dominican Republic. Yeah, that's how we got all those cigars.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And again, so if he's getting injured in a CIA
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: operation in a secret war in the Caribbean.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then comes back to the US and immediately
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: starts doing the kind of shit people accused ce if
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: all the time.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Walks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: A fucking duck. So the way they fucked up is
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: they decided to team up with this cartel outfit called
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the Chagra Brothers, who were already under investigation by the FBI.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Interesting that became even more of a thing when the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: judge presiding over a case involving one of the Shagra
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: brothers was shot and killed. So now they're investigating everyone
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: related to those brothers. And that's how Thornton and Bryant
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: end up getting arrested.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: That's like El Paso, like Mexican mafia shit right, the
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Chagro Brothers. Yes, hey, that's real deal, fucking gangsters.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Bryant was arrested in nineteen eighty. People were very shocked,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: especially when he was acquitted Buers, but he kept at
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: it and was arrested again in nineteen eighty one for
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: selling eight hundred pounds of weed to a DEA agent.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: By this point, Henry Vance was administrative assistant to the
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Governor Jesus, so he was able to I'm the ranks,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and he was also able to tip them off when
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: investigations were coming for a while, but not long enough.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: It finally happens in nineteen eighty five. Thornton is back
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: out of prison. He goes right back to drug trafficking,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: makes a run to Columbia, loads up two hundred pounds
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of cocaine. He's flying back to Kentucky and somehow, while
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: flying back to Kentucky, realizes, uh, oh, the FBI's tail
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in me. How does that happen?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Wait, did he look in his rear view mirror and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: there was a plane with flashing red and blue lights
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: behind him? What the fuck.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: It feels like, you know that there's a great joke
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: in the early Simpsons where they're like chasing somebody in
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: a plane and they're like, please, this is the US customs,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Please stop. If you go another ten miles, we won't
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: be able to follow you in international waters, and they're like,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: they'll never catch it. You know, it's like, what did
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: they announce themselves? Like did they call him on the
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: radio be like, ah, hey, this is the FBI.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: The only thing I can think is maybe he somehow
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: got tipped off that they were waiting where he was
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: going to a land right.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I mean maybe Also I can't remember now, but federal
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: enforcement planes might have a different wing license number on
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: them that he would see maybe and be like, oh,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: that's not a pedestrian or you know, domestic plane, that's
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: a FED plane.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Just flies past him, and there's a dude in a
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: black suit with a black tie and sunglasses waving at him.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So once he realizes that, he takes the cocaine, throws
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: it out of the plane, and then with one last
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: bag of cocaine in tow, he jumps out of the plane.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I have heard conflicting reports either they don't know why
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: his parachute failed, or it failed because of the extra
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: weight from holding a fifty pound bag of cocaine. Yeah,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: but either way, his parachute failed and he was found
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: dead in a driveway in Tennessee. My question, do you
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: think his parachute shot and killed him because of all
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: the things he knew about the CIA, right?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, also, I would love to have that driveway
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: where he's like, did I hear something outside? Do you
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: think the people like did some of the cocaine before
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the police got there.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I would do some of
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the cocaine, but I'd take some to sell it later.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, hey, the bag popped open when he
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: fell on my driveway, Like, I don't know how much
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: is here. Meanwhile, he got like a bucket in the
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: back of a garage.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it blew everywhere. Man, I have no clue. So, yeah,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: he dumped that cocaine over the Chattahoochee National Forest when
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: he dumped it, And that is how cocaine bear got
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: all that cocaine. That part really happened. A bear did
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: ingest the cocaine. But even that part is not that exciting.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: They just found a dead bear, and when they went
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: to perform an autopsy to find out why it died,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the coroner was like, well, there's about one hundred pounds
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of cocaine in its stomach, so or bear that would
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: do it?
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, just sitting there typing a screen blazed smoking
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: cigarettes and his heart.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Just explodes exactly. I don't even know if they get
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: into this in the movie, but it seems like what
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: happened to cocaine Bear's body is the really interesting thing.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Apparently the Forest Service kept it for a while. They
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: had a taxidermy, kept it as like a mascot, and
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: then when they were going to go move it somewhere else,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: they found out it had already been moved and maybe
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: sold to Wayland Jennings of course. But now it's at
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: some place called the fun Mall in Kentucky or something
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: I think it's still there as well.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's still there.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: It's in Lexington. I've not gone to see it because
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I why would.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I it's the stuffed Bear.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's definitely like sort of still. I mean,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: obviously since the film, it's become a bit more of
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: a you know, Instagram famous place. Yeah, but yeah, that's
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I feel like another thing from our era where it's like, hey,
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: you want to go to the mall and see like
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: an anaconda because a random mall would have something like that.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I miss malls.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely missed hanging out malls too, man Like, I
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: don't know why something about it. That's why I not
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: to go on a tangent. But I loved living in
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Southeast Asia because male culture there is still king oh,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: because it's so fucking hot. People still just go to
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: these huge, awesome malls and the food courts are amazing
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: and all the shops are amazing, and it's air conditioned.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: You can just chill there all day.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And like, was it a part of Southeast Asia that
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: still has Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurants?
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: It was, God, the only Kenny Rogers Roasters I've been
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: to were in Southeast Asia, not even in America.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: There was I used to work at a subway in Peoria, Illinois,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and there was a Kenny Rogers Roasters across the street
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: for like a year. I never once ate the chicken
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: because their sides are legendary, and they had a thing
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: where you could just get for your meal. You could
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: just get three sides.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Three sides for like six bucks or something, Yes.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: And I would throw down on those sides fucking regularly.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Kenny Rogers Roasters was so goddamn good.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: I remember the baked beans were, yes, good, but I
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: might have just been hankering them.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: But baked beans, collar greens, mac and.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Cheese, Yeah, there we go. Yeah, but what's crazy? So like,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: obviously the blue Crass conspiracy huge, but at the same
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: time that that was going on, the cornbread mafia was
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: going on in Kentucky.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: And I mean coming from the West coast, we think
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: of Humboldt and Mencino and NorCal as like this weed
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: growing mecca, but it's not. The actual big weed growing
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: mecca from back in the day was fucking Kentucky. I
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: mean there were hundreds of farmers growing insane amounts of
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: marijuana in Kentucky in the seventies, eighties and into the nineties.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: And like this was going on at the exact same
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: time as this cocaine stuff with Thornton. There are two
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: different things, because the cornbread mafia was more like a
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: loose knit, almost disassociated group of people doing it with
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: kind of a single hierarchy of local boys. But I
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: remember reading like in the early nineties when they started
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: using these guys like one town, Like they busted like
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: one hundred guys in one town. And I'm not talking
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: about like a city. I'm talking about like a town
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: of five thousand people. It was that deep knit where like, yeah,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Kentucky has, you know, horses in Bourbon, but they also
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: this is where your weed's coming from. I think this
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: could be a whole other episode, honestly, but I think
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Obama gave a whole bunch of them clemency in the
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: in the early twenty tens. But it's the whole thing again,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Like like we mentioned at the top, like Justified takes
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: place in Kentucky because of the Bluegrass Conspiracy and the
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: corn bread maafia. Like like if you snorted cocaine in
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: the seventies and eighties, it came through Kentucky and the
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: blue Grass conspiracy. And if you smoked weed on the
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: East Coast in the eighties, it came from Kentucky. That's crazy,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: little old Kentucky, four five million people people like getting
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: fucked up here. For sure. There's a reason Bourbon's still big.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Who can blame them.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Kentucky.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now let's talk about some modern stuff. We hear
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: talk about election irregularities and weirdness all the time, and.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: This was a dude. I had not heard this at all.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently in Kentucky. And this is a story that
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: just went up on July sixth on NPR, so it's
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: pretty recent. But we always hear shit about election weirdness
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: and it never pans out to anything. But in Kentucky recently,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: during just the last primary, a woman reached out to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a local media outlet and claimed the ballot she cast
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: actually had the wrong races on it, races as in
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: what she's voting for now, like black.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It had Jews on it and Hispanics.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to vote for only white people in Kentucky.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very Kentucky of you, lady.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And she reaches out to this outlet and is like,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: what the fuck? And so this local outlet looks into
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: it and they found that the issue was due to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: errors in election data that happened several years ago during redistricting.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Never let it be said that journalism is completely dead,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: because the guy she reached out to about this story
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: ended up writing a computer program to analyze Kentucky voter
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: data and found more than eighteen hundred households that might
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: be assigned into incorrect voting precincts, meaning those people for
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: years have been voting for people who do not represent
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: them because they're voting in the wrong district. When this
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: outlet reached out to the election officials about it, they
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: were like, well, that sucks. Nothing we can do now
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: because she cast her ballot. But that sure does suck,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: and even worse. The plan to fix it is one,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: if they can get enough money to do it, they're
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: going to do a manual canvassing of each of these
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: houses to find out exactly what district they should be in.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And it seems like there's maybe like a fifty to
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: fifty shot they'll get that done before the midterms. But
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: maybe not, maybe not.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: They're coming up the past.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: This isn't going to do anything to restore anyone's confidence
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: in our voting system.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: No, there's an interesting read because they try to be
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: very very clear. It's got nothing to do with twenty twenty.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: It's got nothing to do with like anything national. It's
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: like a clerical error technically that now they need to
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: like you said, they're doing like literal boots on the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: ground trying to fix it. But it's also like it's
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: going to take a minute. But also like this, ugh,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: like this just fuel on the fire.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: The thing it made me think of is, Okay, this
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: error happened during redistricting. Well it's a good thing. Redistricting
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: has only happened in Kentucky recently, Like that's happened everywhere
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: so much. How many other errors like this might have
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: happened in bigger places where it will affect more voters.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not, you know, not that it's a handful, but
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: relatively it's a handful. Like we're talking about a very
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: small amount of people. Put that on a macro level
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: in like Los Angeles County where yeah, there's that many
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: people on a street.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like this would be the kind of thing
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: where we would almost not want to know. Like I
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: remember a thing I bring up all the time back
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: when all of the Flint, Michigan water stuff was big
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: in the news, was either Reuters or The Guardian. I
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: think Reuters did an investigation at that time and found
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: three thousand more communities in the United States that almost
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: certainly had those same problems, and that part did not
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: become big news here because imagine the fucking panic that
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: would have set off.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would take an educated guess and
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: assume a lot of those are Indian reservations because there's
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: terrible water supplies there. Sure, And then you know it's
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: going to be parts of cities that nobody gives a
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: shit about, right and also rural communities like eastern Kentucky
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: or West Virginia and blah blah that nobody gives a
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: shit about either, Like you know what I mean, And
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: not to be crass, but you know, people, it's hard
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: to break through the static and get people's attention on stuff. Flint,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Michigan is a big place. You can bring through the
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: static there. But if you start talking about, like I
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: don't know, in Asheville, Kentucky, in the boondocks of you know,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: eastern Kentucky, Nope, he's gonna really care.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why do you think they're putting all the data
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: centers in places like that? Because those people can say
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: whatever the fuck they want, but nothing's gonna happen.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge fight here, like it's a huge
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: fight in Kentucky right now. Luckily, the governor seems to
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: be on the people's side when it comes to that
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: at the moment anyway.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So we should move on to the big daddy of
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: modern Kentucky conspiracies. Mitch McConnell's health.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: This u's dead right probably or he's comatose.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And here's the thing. I don't give a fuck.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I don't care about what happens with Mitch McConnell or
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Graham. And I also don't think it's gonna flip
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: any seats or anything. They're both old, they're both gonna die.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: And there's wishful thinking that's just not based in reality,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: especially on the left of like, oh, these guys are
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: gonna die and some magically like a Mundahmie's gonna take
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: over Lynn's grand seat. No, he's not.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Not in fucking South Carolina.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: A Lindsay Graham's going to take over a Lindsay Grams seat. Also,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: these people aren't the avatars that the media and we
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: like to make them out to be. I mean, Lindsay Graham.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Like the whole reason that like Trump stayed in Ukraine
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: for as little as he has is because Lindsay Graham
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: is a huge like z Linsey Eye and goes over
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: there constantly and is doing deals to get him to
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: fight putin. Like, you know, there's these people have multifaceted
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: things that go beyond what we see on their face.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: And I have no defense for Lindsay Graham. I think
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: he was a monster. But the people who understand what
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: he actually did behind the scenes, somebody like that's going
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: to take his spot, you know what I mean. And
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: the same thing with Mitch. I mean with Mitch here,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: like I have a great story. A friend of mine
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: in the whiskey world, he's a journalist. We were at
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: the Derby. This is years ago now, and like everybody's
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: in their serious sucker suits and we're in the Millionaire's
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Club and blah blah blah doing a whisky thing, and Mitchconnell,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: the rand's there, Massy's there, they're all there. Obviously it's
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: the Derby. My friend he's from New York and he's
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: a little tipsy, let's say, And he goes up to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Mitch just flat out was like, fuck you, motherfucker, you're
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: ruining in our country, straight to his face like that,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: and Mitch's just like, I appreciate your support, thank you.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Sir shakes his hand and walks away.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: That's a good comeback, honestly.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it is like you're paying attention to
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: me using up for what is it? A space rent
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: free in your brain? But it was like they're politicians.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: They know what they're doing. And you know, people have
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: this fantasy that there'll be a special election and somehow
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Massey will get in and take his seat, and it's like, no,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: he won't. Andy Barr's going to get that seat. Yeah,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: like that was already a wor gone conclusion, whether or
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: not Mitch's alive or.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Not in it. I mean, as far as there being
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about it, like they're old, like yeah, And
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: as far as the only thing when it comes to
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell and the idea that while they're putting out
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: fake proof of life stuff and he must actually be
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: dead or be in a coma, to what end would
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: they be faking that?
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess to keep his vote there, But again,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: what we just saw with Lindsey Graham, his sister took
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: a seat, is going to vote him like he does,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: so to what end?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: And also I do I do sympathize with the point
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: of view of like, if he is fine, just haven't
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: put out a ten second video on his Twitter or
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: whatever and just be like, Hey, I'm fine, blah blah blah.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Like I kind of don't understand why they wouldn't do
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: that unless he was literally in a ConA.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Do you think that would even help though? Or would
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: people just assume it's ai?
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: Probably yeah, I mean at this point and they know
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: that too.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: So it's like like when net and Yahoo put that
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: video out and people were sussed just because he had
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: like thirteen fingers. Maybe he's just got thirteen fingers.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Right, right, And it's the sort of thing where it's like,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: you're right, Like, what is like the point? Right? I mean,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: I the wife and I have been watching a lot
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: of MythBusters lately because they just uploaded a lot to
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: YouTube and it's sort of fun, easy, no, you know,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you don't have to think about it. It's the same
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: reason we used to watch pond Stars. It's like easy, fun, educational,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: fucking love pond Stars. But there's a few episodes of
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: MythBusters where they're doing things and it was like, yeah,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: but to what end does this myth like they're filling?
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: This is filler. It's like, yeah, to what, like, what
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: does this serve in the real world. Oh? Nothing, It's
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: just like they had to, you know, fill forty five minutes,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: you know, forty times a year at you know, so
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: you get a lot of filler like that. But anyway,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: it is that question where like, to what end is
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell being kept alive and them lying about it.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: That's I mean, even them, like the FBI searched Lindsey
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Graham's home after he died, and even that, if they
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: come out of that saying, oh, we found a perpetrator.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham has been murdered, my first suspicion will be
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: they're framing someone.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they want to get rid of somebody.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: I need way more details about this because otherwise, who
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: the fuck would want to go out of their way
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: to kill Lindsey Graham. Yeah, you can just let time
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: handle that.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's an old man. He's heart attacked. He died,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: like that's what happens like And also, I mean, if
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: there's that clip going around right now of Trump being
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: asked about the FBI, He's like that sounds like waste
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: of time to me. Guy was dead. He died, like
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: got sick and died. What do.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes no sense.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And with Mitch McConnell sort of thing where again,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: not to be a broken record, but who do you
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: think is going to replace this guy?
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Like, come on, his wife is a nightmare, like, if
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: not worse, because I feel like Mitch at least is
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: like an old school, like back rooms politician that sort
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: of like doeshit that you know, doesn't make the avatar
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: that we see of him. Again, not defending him at all,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: but his wife is just a real monster. And then okay,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: now she's the senator from Kentucky who's voting on the floor,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: you know, someone from Trump's former cabinet, Like is that
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: what you want? Is that the end bowl here?
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: In the idea that he'll be replaced by someone better? Well,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: then why hasn't he lost any elections ever? Yeah, Like
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: he's been in power such a long time.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: And he was he's retiring so they can put Andy
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: barr in, who's going to vote exactly like him. And again,
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: what do you think is gonna happen here? Like, yes,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: sometimes things go get you know. It's the same thing
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: in California with Newsom It's like, what do you really
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: think is going to happen if he becomes president? You
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: really think it's going to change that much? Because guess what,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: the guy who's running ICE right now, Obama, gave him
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: a Medal of Freedom for kicking a million people out
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: of this country and still hasn't caught up to that
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: great thing. I mean, so let's say, what do you
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: think is really going to be different? Oh, they're shooting
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: people in cars. Yeah, they were doing that during Obama's
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: administration too, dozens of them, so much so that there
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: was a huge report and a huge investigation that resulted
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: in nothing. And the only reason nobody talks about it
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: because all their names are Martinez and Kuterras and so
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: nobody cares.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I think. Also under Obama, a lot of it happened
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: at the border, like a lot of the stories you
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: read about them shooting into cars and shit all happened
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: like out of the sight of people. And now it's
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: moving into like Minneapolis and Chicago, and people are like, well,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: this is unprecedented, and it's like not if you live
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: at the Southern Mortar, it's not, and not.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: If you're you know, look like me and have skin
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: that's not white, you know.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: So, Yeah, who knows about Mitch McConnell. Who cares.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I would guess he's probably not to be like the
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Oxhome razor guy. He probably did, like fucking have some events,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: was in a coma for a few weeks, and he's
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: in recovery. What I mean, it's probably the stupid simple
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: and they're just being dicks about it so that you
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: talk about it.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Yep, sac So let's talk about something else. When we
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: did the Minnesota episode last week, I consulted a Reddit
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: thread that was about local Minnesota conspiracy theories, and I
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: found one for Kentucky also, but it was just about Louisville,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: not Kentucky in general. But found a few interesting things.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: First of all, Zach, what can you tell me about
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the Christian coffee mafia? Is it true that Christianity rules
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the coffee scene in Louisville?
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kinda in the areas around it as well. Like,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: we have two coffee shops in my town. One is
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Christian mafia and one is a regular like local coffee shop.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: And it's weird. I've never seen it before ever anywhere
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: else I lived. It's very culty. They do food usually
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: as well, and it's good coffee. All books. You know,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: they ban books and have their Christian books and stuff
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: like that, and they're always kind in your evangelical church.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: I don't ever go anywhere near them because I don't
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: want anything to do with those people. But of I'm
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: talking about like local coffee shops. So the two coffee
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: shops in our town, one of them is one of
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: these hikes, and you wouldn't know it. They don't brand
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: themselves as Christian coffee shops, so you can just wander in.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is so interesting. I was at a very
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: famous restaurant in Burbank once and I was talking to
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the owner and they were switching out the soda to
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: this like really small, like niche brand as they're like
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: go to in the fountain sodas and shit. And I
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, what's that about. Is it just like
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: really good soda? And he was like, soda in California
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: is controlled by a cartel, and just went into this
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: whole thing about how these two brothers in California, especially
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: in southern California, like have a lock on the fountain
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and soda business in this area. So it's like shit,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: like this just pops up all over the fucking place
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and you would never know. It's so strange.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: I'll put this in the chat just so you can
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: see it. I don't want to project where I am
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: or anything, but just to see how innocious this place is.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: Here it's opened that and you can see the photos
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: from it where it's like it's just a coffee shop
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: and a strip mall.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you wouldn't have any idea. That just looks
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: like a regular ass coffee place.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you look a little closer. I mean,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you can see these photos. I
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: haven't looked at him, but like the greeting cards are
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: all you know, Jesusy based, and like I think like
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: the bookshop again, I think my wife went in there
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: once accidentally and she was like it was like the
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: vibe was off, and she's sort of like, I'm just
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: gonna leave.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Strange. Yeah, we have a similar thing in California, but
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: it's not it's more entertaining than weird. But in California,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and there's a documentary about this that you can watch
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: called The Donut King. There are probably hundreds by now,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: but there are all of these local, small donut shops,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: like independently owned donut shops, and they're almost all owned
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: by Cambodian people.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Ah, I've seen this.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: If not Cambodian people, they are Asian people. Usually a
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: family business, and this documentary explains it. There was this
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: one guy who got a job at Winchells and he
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: was an immigrant, got this job at Winchells and was like, cool,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: thanks for teaching me how to run a donut business,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: and used what he learned working at Winchells to one
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: start his own donut shops and then was just like, hey,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: if you want to come to the United States, do
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: I have a fucking plan for you, Come here and
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: let me show you how to start a donut shop.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And that shit worked and there are hundreds and they're
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: good donut shops too, And it's not like this, like
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: it's not a creepy thing. It's just they fell into
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: a good way to get to this country and make
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: a solid living.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: There's a similar immigrant population over here. I don't know
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: if it's good south of the West Coast as much.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: For my job, I'm going around to liquor stores all over,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: you know, from New York, Florida, blah blah blah. And
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: there's a who we call it the South South Asian cartel,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: but basically the vast majority of independent liquor stores in
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: all these states Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, DC, blah blah blah,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: all South Asian families. And it's the same thing as
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: the doughnut guy, where it's like, you know, come over,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: start a liquor store, successful going to buy another one,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: bring my cousins over. They run that one, you know,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: they bring their cousins over, they run the next one
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: in the next town over. And so you have this
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: close knit community of South Asians which close knit from
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: you know, New York to Florida to you know, Kentucky
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: and Missouri and Illinois and blah blah blah Louisiana, all
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: South Asian and they all, you know, have this like
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: way of running liquor stores. And there's a really stupid
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: three tier system that is the way alcohol is sold here,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: and they know how to manipulate the system. They know
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: how to manipulate you because of the three tier system.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: And it's the sort of thing where that's the same
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: thing where it's like thing that started off as a
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: pretty small community. I think in Georgia that liquor store
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: is there now is just the whole Eastern seaboard. Yeah,
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: and it's it's kind of funny because it's like, you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: when you walk into a shop, if it's not like
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: a total wine or a liquor bar and you know
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the big you know, national shops, it's gonna be a
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: South Asian family run in the place, and it's going
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: to be like Grandma on the till you know, the
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: daughter and son are working the floor and the old
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: man's in the back doing the books.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these little subcultures are amazing, right, Like, yeah, that's
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the things I think that make
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: America great, especially for immigrants, is that. So an interesting
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: thing about Kentucky especially is we're above the largest known
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: cave system in the world, and that means there's a
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: lot of myths and a lot of conspiracies. And then
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: you put in like the prohibition bootlegging culture, and you
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: put in like you know, hidden vaults and porknox for instance,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: but also just like all this stuff because of that
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: cave system that we're above, that stretched his you know,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: to where you grew up in Illinois, all the way
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: to you know, Saint Louis, all the way down to
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: like Mississippi, Alabama. There's a lot of stuff that comes
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: up here. And then there's there was some funny stuff
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: sort of like touched on that in a kind of
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: a fun conspiracy way.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the fact that there is allegedly a fully intact,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: wellly mammoth skeleton, you know, under the under third Street
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: near the campus there. I'm assuming that means campus of
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: University of Louisville.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so like U of L, pretty big campus. You know,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: it's a whole section of town. Really, I hadn't heard
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: this before, and I couldn't find any supporting I mean
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: beyond the reddit stuff.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't find anything either. It's just mentioned in
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: the reddit thread.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: That said, I mean our national park is Mammoth Cave
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: National Park. So I think it's sort of like cross
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: contamination from that.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And if that's the case, it makes sense, like
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: why dig this random one up if you already got
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a bunch?
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Well, and also like so a little bit of like
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: background on Louisville, Like the reason it exists is, you know,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: there's been Indigenous people here for thousands of years, of course.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: But the reason they were here is because this is
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: the only spot where the Ohio actually had a big falls,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: like a big drop, So sailing down the river bringing goods,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: you actually actually had to poortage around those falls. So
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: that's why the city's here. And those falls are from
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: like an old coral fossils and so there is a
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: lot of fossiling. But then that's and like the second
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: go off the river, it's all caves. So I can't
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: imagine there's a lot of like preserved like skeletons and
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: caves or maybe I don't know. I don't know enough
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: about any of that stuff, but there's a lot of
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: amazing things in those caves. And because of the caves,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: this was also a big beer city because you could
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: store the logger, which you need to put in a
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: cool place to the age for a few months. You
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: could store that under the ground in these caves and
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: make really good beer. And so there's a lot of
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: those tunnels that turned into sort of like tunnels that
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: were kind of fitted for that that now looks super sketchy,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: like bomb shelters and stuff. Also, if you go over
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: to West Virginia, to Greenborough. It's a Greenborough. There's this
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: huge resort over there. There's actually an Amtrak stop for
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: it coming from DC and Greenbrier. Sorry, big resort. The
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: resort is meant to look like the White House. And
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: because of the massive amount of open undergroundness of this
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: part of the country, they built the full DC bomb
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: shelter for the full US government underneath Greenbrier. And the
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: reason they had to discontinue it is because the APC
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: News reported of its existence in the seventies or eighties,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: and so they had to build a whole new one
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: somewhere else, which no one knows where that is supposedly,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: but this is an conspiracy, it's not fake. You can
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: go now to Greenbrier and they will give you a
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: tour of the bunker. And there's a full I'm not kidding,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: a full congressional house, both House and Senate, full serves
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: bull facilities for the executive, for the judiciary, judiciary with
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: office space for everybody. And then the idea being like
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: way the Greenbrier Hotel was constructed. It's all industrially constructed.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: So even now you'll get a room and like the
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: toilet will be like a toilet. You had seen an
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: army barracks, you know, with like the tube coming out
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: and like the black seat and like the old flusher
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: on it. And so that's all there. And the reason
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: that's there is because of this huge cave system between
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Kentucky the Appalachi and all this stuff, and those caves
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: are so fucking big that they fit a whole bunker
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: for the entirety of the US government under there. So
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: jesse Ventura was right, Yeah, I mean you can go there,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: like they get tours every day, and it's kind of
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: mind boggling that they just give tours of this now,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: because it's like, well, if you built another one of
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: these in secret, when't giving people a tour to see
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: how you built the first one, give like a little
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: bit of a idea of what might be in the
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: new one.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: One of the future episodes that's gonna stem from this.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: We've covered a bunch of episodes of conspiracy theory with
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: jesse Ventura, and there's one called Apocalypse twenty twelve that
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: is about all of the different underground areas in the
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: country that are assumed to maybe be where the government's
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: going to go in Kentucky comes up.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's so much hidden shit all over
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: the place, but here especially you hear all sorts of
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: crazy stories, especially because with the caves, like I said,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: they sort of like built them in, especially during Prohibition,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: so you have all these sort of fallow caves slash
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: tunnels that have become offices, and they were brewing beer
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: down there in distilling and you know, obviously making bunkers
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: and things like that. So you know, there used to
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: be I think somebody was telling me underneath one of
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: the hotels downtown Louisville, like back in the day, they
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: walled it over, evidently, but back in the day when
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: he was working there as a kid in the sixties,
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: maybe they had there was a door where you went through,
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: a big, huge, like safe like door you went through
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: and it led to the caves that went under the city.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: And he was told at the time the caves like
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: that tunnel system went for like sixty miles geez, And
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: they said, there's all sorts of crazy shit down there
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: because they would use it sort of as like a
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: garbage dump after because you know how we used to
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: be in like the thirties, forties, fifties, like just to
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: literally throw garbage out our window, like on the road.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: So he says, like they didn't go very far because
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: they were using it as a garbage down basically, and
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: so it was just like who cares, but like and
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: that's of course apocryphal, Like they could have just been
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: telling this, you know, twenty year old kid working at
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: this hotel tall tales you know to But it could
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: also be an underestimate because again, iigguess cave known cave
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: system in the world is blow us here in Kentucky,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: So nos could be.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: So let's pivot from the wooly mammoth to a more
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: modern animal. Were you in Kentucky in twenty nineteen when
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the Louisville Lama Farm massacres happened.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: I missed this. This is before my time, but this
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: is a wild story.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Apparently in Louisville there's a place called the Louisville Lama Farm.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: It's exactly what it sounds like, a brothel. No, it's
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: just a farm where they raise lamas. The owner awoke
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: one morning in twenty nineteen to find that six of
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: her lamas had been killed. All of them had bite
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: marks behind their ears and by their flanks. One of
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: them had its spine torn into by the animal that
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: attacked it. No one is quite sure what killed them.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: It seems like the working theory is that it was
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: a pack of coyotes.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, the thing.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Is, for one, the owner pointed out that lamas are
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: actually very good at defending themselves, and one of the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: lamas killed weighed more than five hundred pounds, and even
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: though you wouldn't expect it, that would be hard for
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: a coyote to take down.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: but I always put like lamas in like the camel
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: category where they'll like use their head to like fucking
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: beat you to death sort of thing on you.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently they are. They are all right at fighting.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: So the owner was like, no, I don't think that's
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: what happened, but it has apparently been the theory ever
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: since that it must have been a pack of dogs.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: It's mentioned in this Reddit thread that at the same
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: time that happened, the Louisville Zoo, which backs up to
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the Louisville Lama Farm. They are basically on the same property,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: they were doing construction on their snow leopard enclosure. And
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: what the person in this Reddit thread. Theorizes is that
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a snow leopard escaped during that construction and killed these
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: lamas in that the Louisville Zoo just covered it up.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: Uh huh.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: That sounds very reasonable to.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Me, Yeah, because I feel like, I mean, I have
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: you can kick a coyote off, and I'm not a llama.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen coyotes. If one attacked my cat, I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: would choke at the fuck out.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they're wiley, don't get me wrong, but
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: they're little dogs comparatively, and there's there's stringy and like
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: like you said, like one of these lamas was five
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: hundred pounds and there was a pack of them. Yeah,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: like I think, yeah, I think I vaguely remember hearing
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: about this because I think this place burned down recently.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Oh did it?
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah, the Lama burned down last year.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Oh that sucks.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: And yeah, unfortunately that's too bad. It's tragedy after tragedy
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: for these lamas. But uh, like the cat wild cat
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: makes so much more sense because man, I've I used
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: to go hunting in the Pacific Northwest. I think we
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: talked to this on the Bigfoot podcast, and there are
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: mountain lions. There's cougars up there, like it's cougar country.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: I mean you're in cougar country too, in California, but
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: like cougar's in the wild. Like you see like them
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: take down like a two to three hundred pound elk
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: and they like sounds like this attack where it's like
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: they go for their head, they go for their neck,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: they go for their spine because they want to, you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: immobilize the prey immediately. They're not like bears that will
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: just sort of like knock you down and start eating
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: me alive, like cats kill you and then take you
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: to a den. This sounds like a cat attack to me,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: I mean from a complete armchair perspective.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: This is a quote from the person who posted it
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: in the Reddit thread. Something had jumped on the lama's
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: bat and tore into its spine at the back of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: the neck. The attack was blamed on wild dogs, but
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: wild dogs don't hunt like that, no, which that sounds
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: about right.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: Sounds like it was the wooly mammoth that lives down
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: in the caves got hungry and it came out and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: went to town on the lamas.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Maybe the snow leopard killed that wooly mammoth too. Maybe
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I was still alive at some point that snow leopard
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: got out and killed it.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's like blaming this on dogs, even coyotes
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: seems crazy. Like this sounds like and I would not.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Like we just talked about how corrupt this state is
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: from top to bottom between bluegrass conspiracy, cornbread mafia are
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: senators and congressmen and blah blah blah, Like the Louisville
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Zoo probably corrupt.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, wouldn't surprise me.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: I imagine there's some people there who, like you know,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: who are running that zoo, who you find out are
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: actually like running cocaine now, and they're like smuggling them
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: in like the snow leopard cages or something. When you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: surprising at all for Kentucky.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the last thing I want to talk about
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: this is more a local urban legend than a conspiracy theory.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: But uh, that would be the Popelic Monster. You ever
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: heard of? The Popolic Monster? This is funny to me.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a it's like a goat man thing.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's a half man, half goat that lives
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: beneath a railroad trestle bridge over pope Lick Creek. It
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: uses hypnosis or voice mimicry to lure victims into meeting
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: their death by getting hit by a goddamn train. That's
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: where this gets funny to me. That's why because I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: read up on this and the get hit by a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: train part is important. There was a short film in
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. We linked to it. It's on YouTube
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: called the Legend of the Popelic Monster, and the owner
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of the railroad company that passes through this area of
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Kentucky was very mad about this film. The reason being
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the way people die on this bridge is they think
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: the bridge is no longer active. They think it's an
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: abandoned bridge. And people know this legend, so they will
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: go walk out on this bridge and like take pictures
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and do tourist shit and then uh oh, now there's
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: a train coming and you're in the middle of a
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: bridge like in the fucking movies.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And the reason the owners of that railroad were so
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: angry is this short film shows someone surviving that situation
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: by just hanging off the side of the railroad trestle
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: as the train passes. The owners of this rail road
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: pointed out it takes five to seven minutes for a
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: train to get over that bridge. Oh yeah, even if
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: you did manage to hold on, the vibration from that
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: train would explode your fucking hands. Yeah, you would just fall.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: You would fall to your death. And it seems like
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: that's what's happening is people are just getting hit by
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: trains because they got tricked.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: We've all seen the Lost boys. Even vampires couldn't hold
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: on right. And this is a tall bridge, like I
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: just looked it up and it is a legit Like,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: you're dying if you fall off this bridge bridge and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I totally and it does totally look abandoned.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: That's the lot funniest part to me. Yeah, imagine dying
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: thinking you just got hit by a ghost train.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: I know. Oh, I mean that's trying not to laugh
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: because it's sad, But like, is this a little bit
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: of Darwinism? I mean, not to be cruel, but like, wow, yeah,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: this is a this is a funny story. And instead
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: of got Man, this kind of reminds me of a
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: I just rewatched Mothman Prophecies for first time in a while.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: Underrated movie, very underrated, and it's like, also, I missed
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: the days where we got like niche movies like this
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: with the biggest stars in them, like Richard gear in
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: his prime and Laura Lenny in a just weird little
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: movie shot in West Virginia or Pennsylvania, I mean shot
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania, but about West Virginia, nonsense like The Mothman,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: and like taken seriously and made like a serious film
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: and shot beautifully and looks amazing and like actually has
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: a great script, and like it was like my wife
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: and I were saying, there be like this is actually
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: a really good movie.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: They just sold it wrong. They made it seem like
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: a going to be a monster movie.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not. It's a really good sort of
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: just thrill psychological thriller, and it's really like dark and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: deep and like there's.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: A lot it's way less silly than people would expect.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Way later. And Richard gear sells it fantastically. I mean
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: he's I mean he's a good actor. So yeah, but
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: it sort of reminded me of that where it was
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: like it can't just be you know, a bridge falling
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: down like it is in The Mouthman Prophecy or it's
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: like no, I mean, bridges fail. But it's like the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: part man part coat. Like, I know this is stupid,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: and I don't like Jim Burr, but it's I grew
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: up like I was an adult in the nineties and
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: Gope Boy, who was like a big thing on SNL
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: and sort of somehow permeinated through the culture, and it
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: just reminded me of that. So as I could see,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it's like Jimber they're scaring people off a bridge.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a wild one. Avoid the Pope, click
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: monster everyone.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: But it's always one of those things right where they Yeah,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: there's always like it's got to be something special, right,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: it can't just be people being dumb.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: People being dumb.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: So it's fun, I mean have fun with it.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: That is officially the last story I want to talk about,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: but Zach, I hope you will rejoin me at some
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: point in the near future because I found one more
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: thing that I super duper want to cover, but I
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: don't want to just shoehorn into this episode. Are you
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: familiar with Thomas Mertin.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, you know, basically, not deeply, but I've
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: been because the he was part of this big abbey
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: that's a huge thing here in Kentucky that's right near
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: a distillery I'd have to go through for work a lot.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: So I've actually been by where he's from or where
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: he lived and all that.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a high ranking member of the Catholic
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Church who's based out of Kentucky, like Zach just mentioned,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: and a vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam. I've
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: seen him described as like the person in the Catholic
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: Church who opposed the Vietnam War, like he was the voice.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Of it, a real bird in Nixon's heel.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, I mean you would be tempted to think, like, well,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: big deal. So what if a guy in the Catholic
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Church opposes the war? That would be you underestimating how
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: much sway the Catholic Church has around the world, not
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: just in this country, around the fucking world.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Still, but yeah, especially back then.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: And especially back then. So this guy, father Thomas Merton,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: he was a huge opponent of the war, very vocal
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: about it, wrote about it. A lot died in a
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: motel room in Thailand from accidental electrocution after touching a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: faulty box fan after he got out of the shower,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: And if you can believe it, there is some belief
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: that maybe the CIA killed Thomas.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Merton No an Enemy of the State.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: There is a three hundred plus page book about it
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: that came out in twenty eighteen, and I want to
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: read that first, and then I definitely want to cover
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: the death of Thomas Merton.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fascinating because just in one respect, he
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: was a fascinating guy to begin with, artist, a writer,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: a thinker, like you know, he was very from what
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I understand, just from the basic stuff, like just you know,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: a fascinating person in the sense that he was a
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: poet and a Trappist monk, which the only thing I
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: ever associated with Trappist monk was Belgian beer, so I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: like this kind brew, Brier beer, Like, who's this guy?
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it seems very fascinating and also super super
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: sketchy death.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the death sounds very weird. So I'm excited to
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: look into that. We'll do an episode about that.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: I'll read the book too, and we can I'd be curious.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: I'll definitely read that book.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll send you the link and we'll cover it
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: soon because I definitely want to look into that more.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: But until then, that's our episode. Zach. Thank you so
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: much for joining me in this deep dive into the
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: conspiracies of the state of Kentucky.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: I was happy to be here.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: What do we have to plug before we get out
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: of here? We got all sorts of things happening on
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: the network. I'll tell you about it later, Zach, you
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: got anything to plug?
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: So, since we're talking about Kentucky, we actually just opened
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: up our room and gift shop and bottle shop in
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: Lexington on Short Street. If you guys happen to be
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: in Kentucky, come and say hi. I'm there on Fridays.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: Poor and Whiskey Blackwood Distilling is on Instagram. You can
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: see what we're doing there. You can follow me on
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: Instagram a ZTP Whiskey and I post there too when
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: I'm in the shop Poor and Whiskey. So yeah, come
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: get some Blackwood enjoy some whiskey.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: I've had it before. It's very good, and I think
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: that's it. Let's get the funk out of here, Zach.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Say goodbye, goodbye everybody.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Goodbye everybody. We love you.