Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: You just were in Colorado, right?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Yes, I have a good friend, actually, our friend who.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Who said I stole you from. Yes, exactly.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Julie, who lives in Denver, and I. I usually visit her at least once a year around her birthday, which is nice because that's when the snow happens.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Oh, that is nice. Yeah, you get to come for a weekend, enjoy it, and not shovel anything and go.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Right. And they have a nice backyard, so it's not like we have to go anywhere. I literally just like, run in circles barefoot in their backyard.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: That's exactly what my sister does. She, like, comes, she builds like a tiny snowman, and she's like, I have had the time of my life. Right, so you. It was her birthday and you did one of the things that we.
We started doing I don't know how long ago now it has to be like six years ago or.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Covid.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it was clearly pre Covid. I still lived there.
A thing that I think a lot of people aren't familiar with, but has become normal to us at this point, which is a PowerPoint party.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yes, the PowerPoint party, which Julie and our other friend Aaron, like, when I started telling them about, oh, we have this party every. You know, we either have a theme or we don't have a theme, but everybody comes equipped with a full fledged PowerPoint that they then present to the rest of us. They were just like, that does not sound fun. That is not something I would like to do.
And especially Julie's like, I'm a teacher, right?
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah. This is my work.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: That's my work.
But gradually they came around and, like, you know, told their friends about it and their friends got excited.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: See, once you start telling the other nerds, then it's like, right, right, this is a good idea.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
And it was her 42nd birthday.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Nice. Very important, very meaning of life birthday.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: And so the theme was. Don't panic. It's Julie's birthday party.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Amazing. Listen, if you are not as big a nerd as probably most people who listen to this podcast are, but if you happen to be like a cool kid who somehow stumbled upon here, that's a. That's, of course, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, reference 42 being the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So we. We started this. The first PowerPoint party we had was our friend Kristen's birthday.
And it was.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Which for some reason we did pantsless. And I don't remember why.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: I think just because that's her vibe didn't.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah, she just didn't want to wear it, because that.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: That's what made me question if it was before or after Covid.
Because that's a very Covid thing, that.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Just professional on top. Yeah, that's right. It was business on top.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: No pants.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: It was like a zoom party.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yep. Oh, yeah, that does feel very.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: But you said that you were still living there.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Yes, it was not. That's just a thing we did. Listen, we also, you know, we've been referring to ourselves in the no pants clan for, like, over a decade now. So, like, it makes sense. It's just funny that it was enforced upon other people as well. Hey, everybody, come here. Don't wear pants. Give a presentation. Yeah, this is gonna be really fun.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And of course, Taylor won best dress because he had, like, the guard. What are those?
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah, like what a guy is wearing. Yeah.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Suspenders.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: I don't think you call it garters when men.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: No, not when it's men.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: No. But I don't have any other words, so.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: But suspenders.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Sock suspenders is what he was wearing with his. Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Suit top.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: And then, of course, this last year, I had my 40th.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: And you weren't able to come, but.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Kia was my husband. Sure was. And, boy, did he plan right for that.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: So mine was. It was a time travel theme. And so everybody had to pick a person or an event from the past and then pretend either that you time traveled to the.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: The.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: To the present to tell us about it.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Or that I guess we time traveled the past. I don't know.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Or they came back. They.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: They came back. Oh, yeah. Travel from the future. You're from the present, and you went to the past and you came back to the future.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: But yeah, of course, you saw Keo's Amazon purchases and could not figure out what he was.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: What is going on here? Well, the thing was, we had gone on a walking tour in D.C. and at the time, we were both planning on coming out for it, but he was like. I think as we were on this tour, this story was told about this, like, crazy architect who wanted to bring George Washington back from the dead. And I think I kind of offhandedly was like, oh, that'd make a good PowerPoint story. And he was like, oh. And leaned in so hard. So hard. Like, he wrote a rap like Hamilton Rapid. Like a Hamilton esque. I love about.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: He wrote it in case there was, like, dead space.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: But then, of course, he had to bring it out at the end.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yes. Which I got text messages about from people like your husband.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Oh, good.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: You won't believe what he just did. I'm like, I'm sure I will.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: I will. I live with him.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah, most of the time. It's the kind of thing normally he just does, like in our room while I'm trying to watch TV instead.
With a nice little audience.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: So good. So this one, what was your. Did you have a theme for the Julie one?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: No, it was more of an introductory.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: PowerPoint party and just get everyone used to the concept.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Just whatever you're interested in.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: It's funny because they introduced this new element. So. So my friend's sister in law, Amber, who is. I mean, I just have this crush on her because she's, like, trained in opera and, like, plays every instrument.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: So she had to do, like this, a final presentation on like clarinet or something.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: In PowerPoint form. And it was, to her, it was just like, so boring, so uninteresting. She's also really into botany.
With each slide, she also had a fun fact about a flower.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: So she showed us that PowerPoint after we were done with the main PowerPoint party. But so Julie's husband Josh, like, he had joked about doing a presentation on merging because merging lanes, like. Yeah. Because Julie gets so fed up with people who don't know how to merge.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: It is a problem.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: And so he had a presentation about frogs, which was very nice on its own.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Frogs, man. Great topics.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Right. But then each slide had, like, you know, step by step how to do the zipper merge.
And so his sister Amber, who was in the crowd, would like, shout out the thing. And every time he'd be like, this is not a presentation about merging. This is about frogs. Pay attention.
But it was very funny.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Delightful. I'm such a fan of this. I just. I wanted to approach this out the gate because this is a podcast for, like, very nerdy people who like info dumping and like to be info jumped on.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: So I highly suggest that people take this on as a thing. I mean, format wise, like three minutes is. Is your PowerPoint length. If you go over it, there are penalties.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Yes. That's what brings the party into it.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: That's what brings the party into it.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yes. A special shot for the party.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Usually if something really disgusting containing ingredients that you don't want to be drinking, which discourages you from going over. Unless you're Brienne here, who. The first time we did this, PowerPoint just kept going, just downing these, like, soy sauce and chaos.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: There's so much adrenaline Running. I did not taste like soy sauce vodka shot.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was incredible to watch. But, yeah, that creates the sort of raucous atmosphere of everyone sort of chanting at you. It becomes. There starts to be heckling to a point. People might try to slow you down so that you don't make your three minutes. You know, there's like, a lot of interaction that can go on. It starts to feel like a British Parliament meeting or something like that.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: You know, that's exactly what I was gonna say, Corey.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Hey, who has not watched one of those and been like, that looks like fun.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Who among us?
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so I just needed to. To get that out the gate. If you have never had a PowerPoint party.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's so sweet. Like, you know, she was obviously afraid if I do this. And, you know, the thing is, everybody has to have one or else why would you.
And so she was like, well, I'm afraid people won't come if they have to do this. And to be fair, I think there were a few people who were like, no, I don't want to do that. I'm not coming to your birthday party.
But it's like, you know, one guy did one just about narwhals and how great they are and anything. It's just so sweet that people will willingly do homework. Right.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: For your birthday. Exactly. And also that I just think it's neat, you know, that everyone probably has some special interest that they're thinking about all the time. And in this one moment, they get to shine.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yeah. You learn like, oh, this is what.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: This person's thinking about, right when their eyes glaze over. It's narwhals.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: It's narwhals.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. Yes, please do. Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. The way I whispered the word sex cannibal recently. Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? I think you feel great about it.
Dear friends, it is our final mark. Free week here on Joag. He is out today, going to see the Monkey, the new Oswald Oz. I almost said Oswald Ozgood. Perkins. Oz. Perkins flick that is out in the cinemas this week. And we'll talk about that when he comes back next week. We are going to do a big movisode because we've been to the theater a lot over the course of this past month. February has been quite a horror month. But for our last episode before he comes back, I have invited someone completely new to the cast.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Bachelorette number three.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Number three. My dear friend Brianne. Brisea is here. Hello, Brianne.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Hello, Corrigan.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: I'm so glad you joined me as someone who does not constantly put yourself on the Internet like the other people.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: That I have terrified to be here, Corey.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: And I'm just so glad that you have overcome that to be a part of it. Obviously, you are not new to the concept of storytelling as we have just discussed with the PowerPoint stories and just our general, you know, info dump sessions in our group texts and whatnot, pretty much every day. So I'm looking forward to see what you've. What you've brought here today. How you doing? How's your. How's your February? How's your. You know.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: You know, it's a blur. I feel like everybody I've talked to and I kind of think every year, like, at least January, that's how it is. But this year, February is just like, what's happening?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: I feel like, you know, January always feels like it's like, six months long. And then February, we lose, what, two days out of the year or out of the month and, like, it's. It's gone. It's the 23rd. Yeah, that happened. I don't.
I don't know what happened there.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: It's like the passage of time as a person. You know, late 30s, 40s, is like.
It's hard to wrap your head around how fast it goes.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: I know. Like, that's what worries me is that it's not just, you know, the universal, like. Right. It's that it's just getting old. Getting to that point where it's like, when you're older, time passes differently.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, you know, I always thought it was funny that people would say life is short, you know, But I was like, it's not that short, really. Like, you know, you can do a lot of things. Like, it feels pretty long when you're waiting for something.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: It feels long.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it feels long. And now it's like, I was. I keep thinking about, like, obviously, Kio and I travel quite a bit and things like that. And I'll think about when we were somewhere and think it was like, six months ago. Like, oh, we were in Barcelona and it was like, it's like two years ago or something like that. And I'm like, that's concerning.
I don't like that.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: So does this we just race until we die now? Yeah, to me. And then does every year get shorter?
[00:14:16] Speaker B: That happened 10 years ago. 10 years ago. Somebody would be like, not exactly, but.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Okay, I don't have no sense. Like, that's the other thing, is that 10 years ago feels like it should be a long time ago, but it isn't. And so, like, at this point, I think I stole you from Julie as a friend about 20 years ago, at this point, which seems like a bonkers. Like, I would be comfortable saying it was a decade ago. Not totally comfortable with saying it was two of them.
It's a really long time is all I'm saying.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: It was probably 2003.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: 2005.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: I would say 2005.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, because that was when she was my R.A.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: See, that's the thing. I also don't know.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: See, now you have no idea what.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Year it is, because I was thinking about, Oh, I graduated college in 2002, which is when I graduated high school. So I have no idea what's going on. Actually, as a matter of fact, this.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Time, I don't know, maybe it is a combination of getting older and pandemic life and everything in the world, because, yeah, it's overload. Overload. So everything goes very fast.
But I'm excited to see what you have. Have brought here today. What story you're going to tell me? You said it somehow relates to one of the PowerPoint parties that you do. Yes.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: So this is a story all about how. No, this is. I'm sure this is something you've heard about because you've heard about everything. But this was introduced to me because our mutual friend, Brianna Moore.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Who I stole from you.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: True.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Did her PowerPoint on it.
And have you heard of the Cold War? Are you familiar with the Cold War, Corey?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Sounds vaguely familiar.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's when our story takes place.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Place. Beautiful.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: 1960S.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: And I wanted to do it justice.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: I thought you had props, but it was just your cat's tail.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Well, he is a prop, in a way. This is Rocket Trash Panda.
I went out yesterday and actually got this book which is.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: I thought it said Milking the Moon. It says Milking the Moon. Nuking the Moon.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Nuking the Moon by.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Okay, that sounds promising.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Vince Houghton, who was the director, I guess, of the International Spy Museum.
And he was saying, you know, in the. The Opener of this book, whatever you call it, the introduction, he's saying that, you know, on the board of this international spy museum are people who were pretty high up in the CIA. So, you know, I started out just looking at a bunch of websites and then thought, I'm going to actually make sure some of this is grounded in fact.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Love it. I love the fact that I love.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: To say how it's grounded in fact.
So this is the story of Acoustic Kitty.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Acoustic Kitty.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Acoustic Kitty.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: I think you've. I think you've stumped me. I don't think I know anything about whatever this is.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: So you talked a few weeks ago about MK Ultra?
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: And yeah, the CIA trying to figure out how they can control minds and, you know, possibly be psychic.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: And they landed on LSD for that, which did. Yeah, didn't work right, as it turns out.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: And my book here explains that MK Ultra was actually kind of like an umbrella and there was a bunch of projects under it. And so my understanding is that Acoustic Project. Acoustic Kitty is one of the 150 sub projects. Okay, subplots.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Close enough.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: But I want to say in terms of the CIA during the Cold War, like the first sentence of this book is, this book is about desperation.
And then like a page later it says, if necessity is the mother of invention, desperation is the drunk uncle.
So all that to say that, you know, this time in history, we were just, you know, we were just trying to figure out how to beat the Ruskies.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Right? Just throwing whatever shit at the wall.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, just trying to figure it out. And so this, this project, Acoustic Kitty took them five years.
And so none of the website said this, but our friend Vince, like took it back to. They were trying to come up with better listening devices and, you know, basically bugs. And the problem was that as when we started recording and the audio was coming through my headphones, right, there's just so much like static and background noise. And so you can, you know, have the listening device next to your two spies that you're trying to listen to. But there's so much like cars honking and background talk that you. It's really hard to sit there and figure out what the heck they're saying this is.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: It's funny you mentioned that, because I was watching. Have you ever seen the movie the Boys from Brazil?
No, it's from the 70s.
It's Steve Gutenberg's first movie role.
He's like from the. 18 years old in this. Yes, it is the first Gutenberg Project, if you will.
And in that he, at the beginning of it, sets up, like, a listening device that he uses to, like, spy on these Nazis that are. It's like they have migrated to South America after World War II. When they're down there and they're trying to. They're putting together a nefarious scheme to essentially clone Hitler. They're going to clone. They have. They have cloned a bunch of baby Hitlers that are growing up all over the world at this point. It's a fucking bananas concept.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: And it's a true story. Right?
[00:20:36] Speaker A: It's true story. They cloned all these Hitlers. No, this.
So at the beginning of it, though, he. He, like, sets up this thing. And the entire time, all I was thinking is, like, you would. You would not be able to hear shit. It's just he is so far away from what he is, like, right. Listening to. And, like, they're all moving around and doing all kinds of stuff, and he's, like, listening. It's like, perfectly clear. Like, they're talking straight into a walkie talkie. And I was just sitting there, like, like, obvious. This is a movie about cloning Hitler. It's not going to be the most scientifically accurate thing in the world. But all I could think was, like, Steve Gutenberg wouldn't be able to hear them.
I can't hear you when you.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Right, yeah. Anybody who's tried to use technology. Yeah.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: But so, yeah, so they were talking about how, you know, our ears, the cochlea, it. It's all specially designed to pick up.
Sorry, I don't. I don't know. Science.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: I was like, honestly, like, wow, you were real. You're, like, going in here, right?
[00:21:47] Speaker B: I. I couldn't really understand if it was saying that the cochlea and, like, you know, the little hairs and stuff that pick up the sound know what they're doing or if it's. That it sends it to your brain and your brain is able to distinguish, like, okay, this is the actual sound that I'm trying to hear.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: As opposed to what we recognize as, like, white noise.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Because that is a fascinating, like, process that the. The brain does. I remember I was reading a book, like, sitting at Nellie's one day and. And it was like, basically just. Each page was just like, a fact, essentially. That was. The whole thing was like, just some sort of, like, interesting fact. And one of the things it was talking about was the fact that, like, we hear things and see things and stuff like that before we process them. And I thought that was like, as such you might react to something before you even know that you have seen or heard it. Right? So like someone does something across the room and it hasn't registered, but suddenly you go. Or something like that. Like someone throws a ball or something. You don't register that someone threw a ball. We go like this and then the ball comes and hits you in the head. Something. Right.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Like you don't know what to do.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: But your body, your body somehow knows. And I always find that fascinating with things like that. Like, okay, when something. When we hear something, our brain is going to do, like this intricate act of interpretation and filtering of all the outside shit we don't need in order to make it so that we hear the thing we do. There's so much going on around us. And as like an adhder, I have a really hard time tuning out most of the things that are around me. You know, this is the thing that Theo has finally started to realize because he's always like, you know, like, I pick up every single conversation that's going on. Or if someone puts like gum in their mouth three rows behind us on a train, I immediately, immediately put my head, my earplugs in and stuff like that. Like, I can't tune that out. There's like something, you know, that's not turning off everything there. But at the same time, there are still huge acts of filtering that are happening in that process. And that's just. Yeah, human brains are crazy, man.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Right.
So I don't know. Yeah.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: So somehow there's.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Somehow that's the part my book sets up the story with.
They were trying to figure out the science and technology of how to duplicate this. And it was just beyond them. And so it came to the idea of, well, why don't we use something that already has a cochlea and ears and stuff? And that turned into, why don't we take an animal and make it into a listening device?
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Stop it.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Yes. And so they, you know, of course, this is just a story, but he, you know, he's saying, like, they're going through different animals and things are either going to be too conspicuous. Conspicuous, Conspicuous, conspicuous.
You know, you see a dog, you're going to want to pet the dog.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: You're going to stop all conversation and pet the dog. If it was a monkey, that's, you know, you're in Russia and suddenly there's a monkey.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah. You'd notice.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: If there's a rat, you're going to freak out and say, get rid of that rat or something.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah. There's Not a lot of just, like, neutral animals are there.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: And like, that makes sense to be there.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: That's why they came to a cat.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: A cat? Yeah, I guess kind of everywhere, you know.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: Yeah. You're out in a park and a stray cat walks by, you barely even see it.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Like, yeah, whatever.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: It's just there.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And they don't want, like. They don't want anything to do with you. And you understand that. Like, we. We were in. I guess this has happened in multiple. This now I'm thinking about. I'm like, fucking hell. This is like, yeah, genius. Because, like, Puerto Rico, they have, like, cats everywhere. Like in San Juan, it's like a big thing that's like cats and. But they're trying to get rid of them now. And they're like, it's a whole thing with, like, the government was just like, let's just kill all the cats. And everyone was like, you can't just, like, kill the cats.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: It's not how this works. And it's been like a huge thing, but they're trying to get rid of the cats. But we were in Rome, and there's two spots. There's where allegedly Julius Caesar was killed, and that if you read the signs for it. And there's also cats. There's just cats all through this. And sure enough, everywhere you look, if you focus your eyes for a second, it's like, oh, yeah, cats.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: There's a cat.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: And the Colosseum, too. The Colosseum is full of cats, which I feel like they don't.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Are they fighting?
[00:26:27] Speaker A: No, they just. I mean, probably after hours, you know.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Gets a little hairy in there, but. Yeah, there's just like, cats all over the place. So now that I'm think, like, it was a thing that at first I was like. I don't know, like.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: I think it'd be weird if I saw, like. No, they are. They're everywhere. My yard is filled with them.
Yeah. It's not great. They poop everywhere.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yeah. Then, you know, you see a dog and you can tell if it's a stray dog or somebody's dog.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: And you act accordingly. You see a cat, like, I. You know, I see cats all around outside of my apartment complex. Who knows? It's. Yeah. You don't know if it's stray or if it belongs to somebody.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Right.
So.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Perfect. Spice smart.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yep. I'm with it.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah. With. Also. I meant to say trigger warning for harm to cats.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: I was going to say they are going to. Yeah. They're going to do bad shit.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: They're going to tinker with the cats.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: So. Yeah. So they figure out, okay, what do we need? We need a battery in this cat. We need, like, the actual listening device.
Hold on, let me.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: We need a battery in this cat.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: The transmitter, and we need an antenna.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: So they, you know, obviously put the listening device in the ear.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: They put the transmitter that's like 3/4 of an inch, which is 2 centimeters. Okay. So I don't know, like, maybe the size of your. Your thumb, the top part of your thumb, maybe a little smaller.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah, probably smaller than that. Yeah.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: They put it in the back of the neck. You know, you can. Where the mama cat picks up.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Yeah. The scruff.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: They have all that loose skin. So I feel like. Okay, that's.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Yeah. They probably didn't even.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Safe place to put it.
They take. See, at first when they said the. The antenna part, like, they took a fine wire and put it along the cat's spine. I was like. But no.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: They wove it into the fur. Oh. Along its spine and up its tail.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Nice. All right.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: And it specified. Yeah, it wouldn't have worked if it was.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: I was gonna say it had to.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Be outside the cat.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: It's like, I like to swim, you know, And a thing that people like to use while swimming are these things called, like, bone conduction headphones.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And you basically, like. You put them, like, here, like, not in your ear, against your, like, temple sort of area, and you hear through there, essentially. But the thing about them is, like, you can't use, like, you have to, like, download stuff to your phone. And like, only certain kinds of, like, stuff you can, like, listen to. Because if you use, like, Bluetooth or something like that, it just cuts out as soon as you get under the water. It's like you're cutting off the, like, signal between you and the.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: And yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: What it's coming from. It's like you can't necessarily just like, cover up like an antenna or cover up where a signal is coming from, or you just immediately.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: To be in the air, the waves.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Right. So, you know. Yeah. The idea of, like, I can see them trying to put an antenna inside of a cat because scientists do.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Weird shit. But, like, it seems pretty obvious. That's like. I mean, it kind of defeats the purpose of an antenna, doesn't it?
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Supposed to be standing up there getting the. Getting the signal.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Right. Can't have insulation around it.
I. I couldn't figure out where they put the Battery.
But they did specify, like, they had to, you know, use super small battery because you're putting it inside a cat.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't even know. I feel like it would have to be external or did they. They did put it inside the cat.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: They put it inside the cat.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: There's a battery inside the cat.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: The battery is coming from inside the cat.
Well, and part of what. What made this so challenging, like, the first step is that you. You gotta be able to make this cat still act like a cat.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Right. And not be, like, trying to pull shit out of it.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: And.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Not like licking excessively or scratching at itself because it has things inside of it.
So. Yeah, they had to be really. I mean, I hope they didn't try a bunch of things and see. I hope that they thought it through and then.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Calculated. And we're like, this is the best way to do it.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But I, like, there was a quote from one of them, from one of the articles. I said that it would. Everything needed to be able to withstand the cat's internal temperature, humidity and chemistry. And I'm just like, oh, yeah, super humid.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: I've never considered, like. Yeah, Like, I guess we have cavities inside of our body. It's not all just like, you know, mush. And it would be wet in there.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Your glasses would fog up if you were in your house.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Inside a cat. Yeah. You know, does Ms. Frizzle have glasses when. When they went inside that.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: That would be a hilarious bit. Like a running bit. That is every time they get out.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: She has to wipe her glasses.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Glasses down.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
But. Okay, so they have moist.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, they have put battery, antenna and speaker or transmitter.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Transmitter.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Okay. Which also, like you said, the idea here was the thing. Try putting it in a thing that already has an ear, but you still have to put something in it.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Right, sure. Like, okay. Tap into the cat's brain.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Into it.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: What? It's right. Yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Okay, go on.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Okay, so then the obvious problem is if you've ever had a cat, you know, like, you can't train a cat.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Like, not because they're not highly intelligent, but because they don't want to.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: So there's kind of two versions of this story.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: The first comes from Bob Wallace, who was the director of the Office of Technical Services, which was what they called, you know, coming up with this technology.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Okay. They gave it the most boring name possible, even though they were electrifying cats.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yes, he was.
He was the director in the 90s.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: So it's probably like when a lot of this stuff was becoming, like, public.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: What's that word? Been long enough so they would have to release it. Freedom of Information act.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Foia. Yeah. Freedom of Information act there.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Foia, sure.
So this is kind of his story. They. They took the cat and they tried to train it and like, they could train it like a little bit, you know, get it to stand over there. Get it to stand over there.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Probably with a lot of treats.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Right. Little mice's.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Catnip. No, no, no. That would be crazy.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: You can't drug the cat and turn it into a speaker. That's too many things.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: But in the end, you know, it was not feasible that they could train this cat to do what they needed to do and, you know, go.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: And they basically just wanted to, like, walk near whoever they wanted it to listen to, right?
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Probably sit. And it's kind of like, how do they even know where the, the enemy spies are going to be or the.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: It feels like there's so many variables. Yeah. Like what it. And like, okay, let's say you figured it out. What if they walk. The cat walks in and the person like, hates cats or is they're allergic cats. Yeah. And they're just like, fudgeing. Get out of here, cat.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: You're really. The idea that people are just going to accept a cat in their space is like a big ask.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: I mean, the example they kept using was like, at a park bench, which is.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: You know, in the movies that's what spies do. They go and sit at a park.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Bench, slide their little, you know, manila envelope, like, yeah, sure.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: If you knew where they were going to sit, then presumably, you know a lot of other things too. Right.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: So do you need. Do you need to get to the cat point if you already know where and when these people are going to be places? Apparently your intel is already pretty good.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that's one version of the story. They tried. They made this cat with all this hardware inside of it. It just didn't work. They scrapped the project. But in the end, they learned a lot. Yay.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: What did they. What did they learn?
[00:35:59] Speaker B: They learned about training cats that you couldn't. It wasn't. You could do it. We were. We were so good. We were so close, but it just didn't work. And in fact, like, you can get the, you know, the, the summary that they wrote up, the CIA wrote up about this project.
Like, you can find it online.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Pretty much everything is now and the.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Title of it is Redacted. Views on trained cats redacted for redacted use.
And, yeah, I read it and I was like, I. This is not saying anything.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Wow.
So it's such a. Like, I mean, this is one of the things that, like, when I was talking. What. What was even the subject that I brought up MK Ultra in a few weeks ago. Oh, it was the telekinesis thing. Right. And I think the point that you made at the beginning of this, from the book about desperation is like, so apt. Like, desperation is the drunk uncle. And that is what the CIA was, you know, at this point, like, and probably still is, you know, but, like, the. Especially during the Cold War, it was like we were not thinking clearly.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: It was like there was just this sense of such imminent threat that, like, just about everything the CIA did, when we look at it, in hindsight, you're like, what were they thinking? Like, why did this seem like the reasonable way to attack this problem?
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. It's not reasonable, but we've tried all the reasonable things, so.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Right. Or. Or maybe not, but, like, you know, it's like, what. At what point do you go, you know, what might work, Cat?
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and there's. This book has a few stories, and most of the stories in the book are things that they talked about and they thought through and decided not to do it. But he's telling them because they're so ridiculous. Like, there was one plan to, like, strap little explosive devices to bats and let them loose in Japan, where most of their houses are made out of wood and rice paper.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: So they were just gonna hope the bats landed.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Enemy homes.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: And they tried it. Well, because bats like to go into.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: I mean, they settle in your eaves, for sure.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: And it was saying that they tried it, but some of the, you know, they had to anesthetize. Like, they put them into hibernation, like, just by putting them in a refrigerator so that they stay still until they got to where they needed them, and then they let them loose. And half of the bats went to, like, the model village that they had and, like, burnt it to the ground, destroyed.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: And half of them, some of the.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Bats woke up early and went to the military base and burned down the military base.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: No, it's so incredible.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Part of this idea was it was just, like, such a shit show to test that. They're just like, you know what? We've got other things going on. We don't have time for this.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: They should have talked to anyone in Hollywood is the thing. Because what's the Rule in Hollywood, Brienne.
Don't work with kids or animals.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Oh, don't work with kids or animals.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: It's like, it's just always more of a shit show.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Think that it's going to be explosive bats. Yeah. Is just simply not. Because, boy, if you can't train a cat, surely you can't train a bat.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Right. But, you know, I'm sure the idea is if you let them loot. Like, they didn't.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Yeah. We'll just put it close.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: They burnt down.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Right. Except that it was their own.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, once you got them to Japan.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like, yeah, just go, you know, whoever. It's fine.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: It's fine. It's fine.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: They forgot they were there, too.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Right.
Okay, so the second version of this story. Okay.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, give me the second version.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Is what makes it more juicy.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Ooh. Okay.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: And so this comes from Victor Marchetti.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Who was the specialist Italian man.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Victor Marchetti.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Victor Marchetti.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: I can say this because my name is Briana Bresnet.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: See? Shut up, Mark. She's allowed.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Mark, Right.
Yeah. I say it's okay. And I am half Italian. Okay. So he was the special assistant to the director of the CIA.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: In the 1960s.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: That's a more interesting type of.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Last year, though, I feel like he was probably actually there.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: And like, different articles say, like, okay, he came out later and was kind of, you know, he had a beef with the CIA and how they did things.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: And so you take this story with a grain of salt. Me, I'm saying, like, no, if he's saying, you know, you take this other Bob guy who was you, like, you take his stuff with a grain of salt. This guy who has beef with it is going to be more like, it's.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Going to be forthcoming.
That's always the thing, is, it's like every time, like someone is like a disgruntled government agent, it's like, oh, you shouldn't listen to them because they have a grudge. Well, why do they have a grudge? Is that what they're talking about?
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And why would he make this stuff up about this cat?
[00:41:37] Speaker A: It's not like it makes him look good.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Yeah, but his quote about this is, they slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. They made a monstrosity.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Oh, they Frankensteined that.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: They also mentioned, like, during the testing phase, you know, they could get the cat to do some things, but then he'd get hungry and wander off and go try to find food.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Yeah. They do that.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: And so they use some of their MK Ultra knowledge. And I mean, Victor says that they stuck another wire in him, but somehow they did another surgery to, like, turn off, you know, his reaction to hunger.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Oh, sure, okay. They ozempic to cat.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: They owes the cat so that he'd be able to focus on his duties.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Amazing.
But I'm just imagining now, like, with his description of them, just like tearing this thing open and shoving at it and creating like this weird, awful monster. Like the. It's the spy sitting there on the bench and this just like, weird ass, like, like cat just like twitching, walking up to them with like, patches and stitches everywhere. It's like, right, that's the normal cat.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Like, how long do you have to wait for the cat fur to grow back?
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Right? Like, you know, just this monster hobbling towards them. And they're just supposed to be like, this is fine.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Right? Nobody's going to notice. Straight cat. They're weird.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: They do weird stuff.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: But yeah, so he says they made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry. So they put another wire in him. Finally, they ready. They're ready. They took him out to a park, pointing him to the park bench, and said, listen to those two guys.
And then he finishes his sentence, which is the big spoiler.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Ooh.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: And if I may, I'm going to read what our friend Vince Houghton has dreamed up about these circumstances.
So he says Marchetti never provided a detailed, minute by minute account of the first and only CIA field test of Acoustic Kitty. He told us the ending, but that's all so welcome inside my head.
As I imagine it.
Vince says the field test takes place on a sleepy street somewhere in Northwest Washington, D.C. the CIA texts parallel park their spy van along the street, directly across from one of the many public parks scattered throughout the city. Many. Maybe their van is just plain white. Maybe it has Bob's Plumbing or flowers behind Irene painted on the side.
Inside the van, the two CIA techs are surrounded by 1960s era technology.
Blinking lights, knobs, switches, buttons. An oscilloscope is in the corner. Oscilloscoping monitors that project the feed from a handful of clandestine cameras line the top of the interior. These will allow the CIA to watch the test from every angle. It's one of the techs takes Acoustic Kitty out of its cage, makes sure everything is where it's supposed to be. The other turns the knobs, flips the switches, pushes the buttons that activate the agency's newest Top secret listening device. The cat is placed on the asphalt, and the text point to two men deep in conversation sitting on a park bench. To the surprise.
To the surprise. Satisficate. Satis. Please say that word.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Satisfaction.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Satisfaction of the CIA techs. Acoustic Kitty goes straight for the men on the bench. No hesitancy, no deviation. No stopping to search for food. A beeline to the target. It's not hard to imagine what might have taken place in those tech guys heads. This is going to make my career. I'm gonna get promoted, get a raise, take a vacation on the beach this year. Maybe buy a boat or a motorcycle. Sky's limits.
And as they watch our feline heroine cross the double painted line in the streets, pride swells up in them. This is 50 small steps for a cat. One giant leap for mankind.
But here's what we do know from Marchetti's version of the story. Only feet away from the safety of the curb.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Acoustic Kitty was run over by a taxi.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: As soon as you said it crossed the lines, I was like, oh, no.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: I've seen enough movies to know what happens when something casually steps out into the road, right?
[00:46:33] Speaker B: Especially when everybody is watching, man.
No promotion, no raise, no boat, no Harley. Just the indignity of having to scrape the still, sparkling Acoustic Kitty off the pavement before the Soviets, or worse, the Washington Post. Find out what the CIA was up to.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
All of that. Five years of development and this cat gets run over by a taxi immediately.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: $20 million.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Is what it took in 1960s money.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: 1960S money.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: I mean, to me, that's a lot of money now, but probably billions back then. Our tax dollars at work to make a Frankenstein kitty cat that will listen to the Soviets and then get hit by a taxi.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: It's also like. I mean, it's terrible, but it's just like one of those. Again. The thing that always gets me about these crazy plans the CIA came up with is that they're always, like, so convoluted that if you, like, sat and thought about it, like, really thought about it for a sec, you go like, this is. There's no way this is going to be. Like, this is not going to happen. You know, like, if you. If someone had a pet cat at home, they could have gone, I don't think we're going to be able to train this.
I don't. I just don't think that this is a practical plan.
But it takes $20 million and a dead monster cat for it to be.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Like, just didn't work. That's how desperate they were to come up with new techniques.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Technology.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: And it's like, you know, you see that in, like, their attempts to, like, assassinate Fidel Castro and things like that. Like, literally, Looney Tunes. Like, can we make an explod cigar? Like, you know, these kinds of things that you're like, yeah. It doesn't work for Wiley Coyote either. So, you know, maybe we take the. The object lesson here instead of then trying to Rube Goldberg our way into, like, just bizarre.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, like, things have to line up just right, and that's it.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: It's like, you know, kind of along the lines of the, like, two can keep a secret if one's dead kind of situation. It's like when there's too many moving parts to something like that is a sure sign your stuff is not going to work. Stuff needs to be as simple as possible, you know? Right. The more variables you have, especially something unpredictable like an animal, you're going to lose it. It's just.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: It's like the opposite of Occam's razor that, like, the simplest solution.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Is probably what happened. Okay, so maybe the simplest. But then. Yeah.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: Things. Let's reverse engineer that then.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: Spycraft.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: We tried the simple already.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: I guess it's funny because it's like peeking behind the door of James Bond and things like that. Right. Like, and I always. This goes all the way back to Electric Fan Cave, where, you know, we had the running joke about the fact that, like, I never understand espionage movies. I'm like, they're too complicated. I don't know what's going on. And Kristen always thought that was funny. Like, you can't follow a spy movie. I'm like, I cannot. I understand what's happening.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: I have an embarrassing story.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: Oh, please, do tell.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: I mean, it's not that embarrassing. Just for me. So do you remember back in your apartment in Anaheim, Kristen, you. Kristen and I watched the Sting.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Yes. Yep.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: I remember watching it.
So Kristen and I and some of our friends had a movie night last night, and we watched the Sting. And I was kind of like, okay, I've seen it, but whatever.
What I also remember Kristen saying back then when we watched at your house was that she wishes.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: She always wishes she could see it for the first time.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: She could see it for. She wishes she could have her memory of the movie cleared so that she could watch it again for the first time. That's what happened to me last night. I did not remember a moment of that movie. I kept waiting for them to go to the bank they were gonna rob.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Incredible, insane, beautiful stuff.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: Thinking, was it a different movie we watched?
[00:51:14] Speaker A: No, because that's definitely what Kristen always says about the Sting. So it's for sure.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: So it was. It was kind of embarrassing. What. Even more embarrassing is that I couldn't tell you now what happened in that movie.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: I've seen the Sting probably half a dozen times, and if I were to try to explain to you what happened right now, I could not do it.
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Right. All I know is that it was a lot like watching an episode of Rockford Files.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, totally. And that's. I mean, that's always the thing. Because I can enjoy a Rockford Files. I love this thing I've seen.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: A bunch of times.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: But I don't follow, like, how they know that this person was going to react this way. And half the time they don't. And that's what makes the story interesting because they have to improvise.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: Okay, now what do you do when it doesn't go the way you plan.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: Such high stakes and you're improvising? It's just crazy.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: And it's like, I think, much like how.
You know, there's a podcast that I always recommend called Running from Cops. Have you ever encountered that one?
It's about the show Cops, and it is about the fact that, like, the bad policing on Cops has shaped the way Americans think about policing. And so we think. Think that they have, like, power that they don't. That they're allowed to do things during an arrest that they're not allowed to do and stuff like that. And it shaped.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: Oh, that kind of bad police scene. I thought you meant they were just, like, bumbling.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: No, no, no, not like that.
[00:52:47] Speaker B: Like, they did things.
Not allowed to be doing.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Lying to, you know, the people that they arrest and coercing them and like, all this kind of stuff. So Americans tend to think that cops have a lot more power than they actually do and that they can violate your rights in ways that they can't. Right. It's illegal for them to do that. But because we all grew up watching. I mean, I wasn't allowed to watch it, but most of the United States grew up watching Cops. We have, like, a distorted idea of what they're allowed to do. It's why, like, when, you know, when someone gets killed by the cops or people say, oh, well, they just shouldn't have resisted. That's not the law. But if you watch Cops, that's what you Think, yeah, this is. If they run away, they're allowed to.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: Shoot you in the back.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Right. You know, like, that's not actually real. You've just been watching a television show similar with, like, watching, like, the Law and Orders and stuff like that. Emily talks about this a lot as, like, a huge SVU fan. She always says, like, it's a fantasy. Right? Like, that's not. This is not real policing. This is what we wish policing were like. But a lot of people watching it don't understand that difference. And so when they think about the legal system, they think, like, it works like SVU or it works like any of the number of procedurals that are on tv. And I think spy stuff does a similar thing where it's like, we watch something that, you know, whether it's like a Man from uncle type thing or James Bond or, like, you know, the Bourne movies, like, all of this kind of stuff. And we think like, oh, yeah, that's what they're. That's what they're doing out there. Like, they're incredibly complicated schemes that come together in all these kinds of ways.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Get a tip and then they sit at a round table and come up with, okay, this is how we're gonna get in that room undetected. And.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: Yes. And it's like all these kinds of things, which goes to. I posted about this on Blue sky the other day. But my least, like, not least favorite. But one of my least favorite tropes in movies is when they're going to execute a plan, like in a spy movie or something like that. And one person says to the person leading it, so remind me why we're doing this again.
You better fucking know.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Right?
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Remember what we're doing. Oh, well, we're gonna go do. It's like, there are so many moving parts of this. You better know right. What is happening here.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
Because we're all relying on you right now for our lives.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But in real life, I think, like, it doesn't work like that when you have things that are this convoluted. You get cat with speakers in it getting hit by a taxi. You don't get James Bond.
Like, this is. This is what happens. You get Fidel Castro dying of natural causes or cancer or whatever when he's, like, 75. Not from an exploding cigar.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: There's. We can't. It doesn't. It doesn't work this way.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: You can only really control what you do and not what effect it has.
[00:55:55] Speaker A: On the world around you and every other person, every bit of nature Every animal, whatever, they're all wild cards. There is nothing you can control or predict.
[00:56:06] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like on Criminal Minds where it's so easy to, okay, this person is left handed and their mom died when they were six and so this is what they're going to do.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: It's like, yeah, exactly.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: People, you know, people aren't going to do exactly the same thing every time. Right.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: You can't truly profile people. You can get like a rough idea of things, but, you know, people are weird. We do weird, unpredictable shit.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Yeah. We have whims.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: We have whims.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: We have emotions that change from minute.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: To minute and then add on top of that technology.
[00:56:44] Speaker B: Right. Which we want to trust in. But anybody who has a printer knows.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: Sometimes things have no reason for not working that you just don't. They are not working.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: Like, exactly. With, you know, Me not using GarageBand this week or last week. Like, this is a simple piece of technology that is giving me an error message I can't figure out and bricked my garage.
Technology is even in the state that it is now difficult to figure out sometimes. And yeah, the idea of sticking it into a cat and thinking like, yeah, this is going to work is just.
I'm going to be thinking about that drunk uncle thing forever because it's just such a perfect.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: Another one of the stories in here, which let me hold up the book every time I cannot believe that this story is true, is that they thought about how cats always land on their feet.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: And so they, they were going to strap an explosive device to a cat and like put it in a little parachute thing and give the cat control somehow over, you know, like if it was a hang glider.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: And it said like, unfortunately when the cat is falling from the airplane, it passes out. And so they could never see if it could successfully control. Like, how does, how's the cat gonna control a hang glider? Cat doesn't know what it's doing.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Again, it feels like they could have figured out the answer to this before they dropped the cat from the plane. You know, like there were, there were clues.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:26] Speaker A: Before this would happen.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: So the idea was that they're gonna try to drop it on a plane, play on a, a boat, like on a ship. And so since the cat doesn't want to land in water, because cats hate water notoriously.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Oh. So they, it would steer itself.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: It's gonna steer it to go on, on the ship instead.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: And then what were they, what were they gonna use that for? Because like, you can't you think wherever you're trying to drop an explosive, people are gonna. Aren't gonna go, is that a cat in a parachute?
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And how is this any better than just dropping.
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Just dropping it? Yeah. Right. Like, if you're not trying to hide it at all, hopefully a ship's big.
[00:59:02] Speaker B: Enough that you can hit, right?
[00:59:05] Speaker A: Like, I don't know. Now all you're doing is dropping an explosive and killing a cat and.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: Yes. And making it fall a little slower, so.
[00:59:14] Speaker A: A little more slower.
Yeah.
Why?
[00:59:19] Speaker B: Like, what are I. I cannot believe that that story is true. But I did read it two different places.
[00:59:26] Speaker A: That's always the funny thing when you read, like, the dumbest thing you've ever read. And then you like, look and you're like, no, that there's a government website that has this on it that actually happened. Because that was when I was looking at the telekinesis stuff. Some of that stuff felt like it was like, there's just. There's just no way. That's too dumb. And then it would be like, here are pages on the United States government website showing that this actually happened as. As described. And that is. It's just so wild, I think. You know, it's. It's a wake up call that, like, we have, like these ideas about our institutions. And over the past few years, like, that's fallen apart about so many things, right? Like, people have really started to get clued into the fact like all of our institutions are kind of bullshit.
But I think, like, there's things about like the CIA, so it's the intelligence agency, for gosh sakes, right? Like, we have, like, these perceptions of it that I don't think have been knocked down all the way and in part because of popular culture about it. And then any time you learn any single story about the CIA, you're like, oh, oh, that's. That's some dumb fuck shit. They just got. They got people who read too many comic books into an organization together, you know?
[01:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: Like, this is. That's what happened here. These are not the smartest people on earth.
[01:00:53] Speaker B: These are people, right? They. They're not so good at real life situations.
[01:00:58] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:00:59] Speaker B: They're in. They're in their little laboratories trying to figure out how to make things work.
[01:01:07] Speaker A: And that's exactly it. It's like real life is so different than whatever lab conditions you create for something.
And to see how quickly things fall apart when they try to do things. It's like, well, well.
[01:01:21] Speaker B: And the fact that, yeah. They put so Much money and time behind something when it's like they admitted this is a long shot, right? It's like, yeah, it is.
[01:01:33] Speaker A: Maybe if it's such a long shot, like, baby steps it then.
[01:01:37] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: You know, maybe don't invest the whole 20 mil in years, half a decade into this project, you know?
[01:01:45] Speaker B: You know, maybe they could have started with trying to train the cat before they implanted it.
[01:01:51] Speaker A: There we go. Yeah. Like, first, that was the big flaw, right. Can we figure out if we can train the cat? That is an excellent first step. Right.
[01:02:01] Speaker B: In fact, there's probably people who had tried that in the past that they could have learned from.
[01:02:06] Speaker A: Exactly.
Listen, you ever see a trained cat on tv, Right? Like, if they could do it. Listen, we got Mr. Ed out there. We got Bubbles or Bobo or whatever the, The Ronald Reagan chimp was. Like, if we can train an animal to do something on screen, they're gonna do that.
[01:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:29] Speaker A: If you don't see it on screens, you probably can't train that animal. It's. It's a lost cause. You know, whoever trained that cat from. What's it called? Quiet Place Day one, which I assume is probably a lot of cgi, too, but part of the plot of Quiet Place Day One is also that the cat is unruly and almost gets them killed several times.
[01:02:58] Speaker B: The truest of stories.
[01:03:00] Speaker A: You're right. Like, yeah, no, this sets up.
That's good. Well, any other details we need on this, this story?
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Just that I got to the end of my notes and in, you know, redacted training cats for redacted use for redacted kind of the summary is that they, they. This, this. This experience was a model for scientific pioneers because they proved that cats can indeed be trained to move short distances.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Help. It definitely worth that. Yeah.
Mission accomplished.
[01:03:43] Speaker B: Cats can be trained to move short distances.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: I love, like, just a silver lining that has nothing to do with, like, what that. Listen, we. Did it help us in any way to accomplish anything in the service of ending the Cold War? No, but, but news flash, pet owners.
You might be able to get your cat if it is wired with something that makes it so that it won't want to eat right.
Actually go where you want it to go.
Great.
[01:04:14] Speaker B: Good.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Good lesson, good talk.
Well, Brianne, before I let you go, do you have, you know, I've been asking, do people have a book or movie or TV show that everyone should hunker down, watch, read this week, this month, things like that? What should people move to the top of their list?
I think you're gonna bring a different perspective.
[01:04:40] Speaker B: Promote Murphy Brown Season 10, which takes.
[01:04:46] Speaker A: Place 10 seasons in Merchant Round. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know there were that.
[01:04:50] Speaker B: 2018, the first time that Trump came into office.
And I find it very refreshing to be back in that era when all of this was new and we felt like we could do something about. People thought we could fix it. We felt like we could fight the system still. So Murphy Brown Season 10. I think it's season 10. It's, you know, whatever the recent. The latest season.
[01:05:15] Speaker A: Right.
[01:05:17] Speaker B: And then I just read it's called the book series. I think it's called the Scholomance, which is weird to say. Golamance, I get, you know, like necromance. I don't know.
[01:05:33] Speaker A: Okay, sure.
[01:05:34] Speaker B: Mance means. But it's Scholar Scholomance.
[01:05:38] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[01:05:39] Speaker B: The first book is Deadly Education, but it's all about like wizard children. The whole premise is that when they're young, they're all like the Oogie boogie monsters, like want to attack them and eat them and so they have to hide them in this school. So it's basically this boarding school where they're learning to use magic.
And. Yeah, there's three books and I just really enjoyed them.
[01:06:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:06:08] Speaker B: We read it for our book club and like half of us really liked it. Half of us did not like it at all.
So there you go.
[01:06:17] Speaker A: Nice. Okay. Polarizing. But if that sounds like something you're into.
[01:06:21] Speaker B: Deadly Education.
[01:06:22] Speaker A: Deadly Education. Love it. Thank you, Brianne, for coming in here and filling in in the big shoes of my dear Welsh co host.
It was wonderful to have you in all these years. Were you. We were in the fan cave.
[01:06:39] Speaker B: I. There was one where I was in the fan cave.
[01:06:42] Speaker A: I was gonna say in all these years, it's.
[01:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
I would make appearances as producer Bri.
[01:06:48] Speaker A: Producer Bri. That's right. Okay, so we have had you around on those. But it's wonderful to finally get. Get you on the Jack of all Graves. And I'm sorry everyone, you can't listen to her anywhere because she is not very online like the rest of us.
[01:07:02] Speaker B: No, you can find me on Instagram. Crazy Auntie Brie.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Isn't it Crazy Auntie Breeze.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: It's Auntie with an I and no E at the end.
[01:07:13] Speaker A: Oh, I guess because it auto fills for me. I just. Yeah, I just never noticed that.
[01:07:18] Speaker B: Right. It's just a jumble of letters. But thank you for having faith in me, Corey. Always where I do not have faith in myself.
[01:07:27] Speaker A: What are friends for?
[01:07:28] Speaker B: Right?
[01:07:29] Speaker A: I see you as a cat. That could be a microphone, right?
[01:07:34] Speaker B: If I didn't have to cross the street.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: You never have to cross the street.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:07:40] Speaker A: Dear friends at home, the only thing left to do, of course, is for you to stay spooky.
[01:07:45] Speaker B: Stay spooky.
[01:07:47] Speaker A: Spooky.
