Strange News 8
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Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. My name is Aaron. The other host joining me today is Daniel. Hello. Hello. Hello. Now, before we start today's episode, we do have a quick announcement to make. If you would like to support the show, you could do so by joining our premium subscription service, Supercast. It is not through Patreon anymore. It is now Supercast.

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I like strange news. Now, if you've never listened or watched a strange news episode, it's pretty much where Dan and I have each selected three strange news topics each. We've independently researched them, and then we are going to discuss them with one another. So similar to a Theories Thursday, except... Many, many Theories Thursday, which is strange news. Yeah, many, many ones.

So that's what a strange news is. We have a lot of good topics today that we're going to cover. We have Black Alien, Mysterious Monolith Returns, Thrift Store Vase Round 2, We Got the Meats, Tokyo Drift into Marriage, and Asteroid Saturday. I know, my topics make no sense. Dan's are the last three.

All right. So I guess with that being said, let's get into our first strange news topic. You want me to start or do you want you to start? Are we going to treat this like a theory Thursday? Do we got to? You want to roll for it? We could. Odds are even. Odds? You can get it right on my back. Well, this has been in Aaron's mouth. What was it? 17, I think. I think I picked odds. And of course, now my laptop is going to stay up. So I guess I go. You go first. What is your first strange news topic today for us, Dan?

Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back. All right. So the first one that I have for us is my, we got the meats, which I know the topic name is very weird and it does not involve Arby's. It's an excellent place to have a nice roast beef sandwich.

So this article here is about a company called Believer Meats, or formerly known as Future Meat Technologies, or for short, Future Meat. Okay. Such a weird name they had before. Yeah, I work for Future Meat. Sounds like something off of Tinder. Anyways, Believer Meats is a biotechnology firm that produces cultured meat from chicken cells.

I have no idea what cultured meat is. All right. It is meat that is grown in a lab from a few animal cells, aka chicken cells that they're using. It is supposedly real meat, but it doesn't require animals to be slaughtered the way traditional meat is. The article on this goes on to say that the science behind this new meat comes from the medical world. Now, there's a bioengineer guy named Namias. He launched his company after going to lunch with a Tyson Foods executive at a conference, and he scribbled his method down.

for making cultivated meat on a napkin. I feel like that's a lie, but... Yeah, we did an episode over Tyson's food, right? We did. And their corruption. Now, he goes on to talk about the process, which will start with cells. Depending on the company, though, on where they get these cells, could be from the piece of living tissue, a fertilized egg, or a cell bank. Then they have scientists who select these cells that can self-renew

and that will turn into muscle and fat cells that will make up the meat tissue. They will then use these ones to pretty much make an assembly line of cells called cell lines so that they don't need to keep collecting new cells. So once they find these cells that they will use, they put them in these big-ass bioreactors, and they are bathed in a nutrient-rich broth where the cells will then start to multiply. Which I have an image. I'll throw it up here.

You can see that these scientists are in this glassed room and those big metal, they look like they're making beer to me. Yeah. But those are the bioreactors and they have the cells in there with these nutrient-rich broth that they're using. Almost sounds like they're just making soup. But pretty much these cells are using this broth to pretty much grow and multiply. Okay. So once these cells start multiplying-

They change the broth and they change like the coating in the system from the computer to tell these immature cells that are growing in here, like, hey, you need to either turn into muscle or fat so they can keep like a balance of it. And then also connective tissue to hold them together. Now, once the tank fills up with these cells, they take them out, which sounds very nasty that these cells come out like a paste. They end up mixing it with plant proteins.

then pressurize it and push out to create meat fibers. Doesn't sound very appetizing. Yummy. Currently, they have chicken and lamb already in the process of being created. Beef is on the schedule, but they say it's hard to create a genetically stable cell line from bigger animals. So no Spectrum Moose yet.

Oh, damn. Sad. But there are other companies that are just focusing on beef, though. You know, that's their main priority. But the reasoning for making cultured meat is to reduce the impact of meat on the environment because it would reduce the need for land for the animals and for feed. Multiple studies show that traditional livestock production is responsible for about 10 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Then the cost to make cultivated meat, which

It first started in like 2010, somewhere around there, over a decade ago, when the first cultivated beef burger was created. Guess how much it cost? I have no idea. I would guess probably 25 bucks. A couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jesus! Who would buy that burger? Yeah, no one would buy that burger for that much. But...

With, you know, over time, they have, you know, reduced the price down to about $10 a burger now, which if you stop at, you know, these traveling stations on highways, that might get you half a burger, considering how expensive they are. Yeah, burgers now are like, what, $14, $16, sometimes $17. Yeah. It's crazy. Now, they do expect these prices to drop down even more once they start, you know, to commercialize this. But the big problem, though, is that the self-food...

Not the actual cultivated meat, but the cell food. So like the soup it feeds off of. Exactly. That is the most expensive part. The broth includes expensive fetal bovine serum. So they're still using... Still using beef. Which, this is blood from a cow fetus. Which, I'm like, that kind of defeats the purpose, right? Sacrifice the baby cows. Yeah, they're just like, this is supposed to reduce slaughter and all that, but yet...

They have to use cow fetus blood. It doesn't really make sense, but they are trying other types that are serum free, but they are costly ingredients, which is why it was like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to do, which is leading them now to look up food grade growth factors rather than the pharmaceutical grade substances that, you know, they've been using to stimulate cells to divide and grow in number. Then again, scientists aren't like, that's not their main concern about it all. They're just like, we know we can do this.

We know we could find a solution to bring the prices down, but how do we make it sound enticing? Like, hey, this is lab-grown chicken. I don't trust it. That's exactly like what a lot of people say. In a poll that was taken, only 18% of U.S. adults said that they are extremely or very likely to try cultivated meat, with 30% saying somewhat likely. And from that poll, they realized that those under 45 years old are likely to try it, which it's mostly men than women, but...

There are people that don't want to try it because like you said, you don't trust it. You don't know how safe it is. You don't know what it will do in the long run. But it was last year, I believe that they actually passed a law or something enacting that they can actually start serving this in certain areas for people to try and see how they like it, which I think it was in California that it was. Of course. It was tried. And one person that did eat it,

They had a quote. I'm going to read it. Okay. When you bite into it, it was moist. It wasn't dry. It did have that kind of feel of chicken, taste of chicken. I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted great. It was almost like they were trying to convince you it tasted good and they didn't believe it themselves.

Yeah. And then they go on to say like the person, you know, saying like she's not bothered by how it's made, especially when she thinks about how traditional chicken is made. Fucking. Yeah. I'm just like, so I guess the only bad part would be the whole slaughtering of the chicken. But the fact that it's lab grown, she was like the cultivated meat process seems clean, controlled, environmentally safe and more humane. Except for those baby cows, you know.

As of right now, the World Health Organization report noted several potential safety issues, such as microbial contamination at various points in the process, biological byproducts, and scaffolding that some people might be allergic to. Which I'm not sure what they mean by scaffolding on that. Because the scaffolding I'm used to is things you climb up on. But I think it's what they... Building block materials? Yeah. Ah, the stuff to make the connective tissue to bind it together. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Now, experts acknowledge a lot more safety testing is needed, but noted that conventional meat carries significant food safety risks, such as potential bacterial contamination during slaughter. So they're just like, oh, yeah, you know, there are some contamination issues with growing it in the lab. But you also got to think, you know, slaughtering the cows, they could have bacteria and stuff, too. So you're taking just the same risk as eating normal meat rather than eating, you know, lab meat. I can see that. I can see that, too, but.

I don't know. It just doesn't look right to me. But yeah, Believer Meats opened a large plant in North Carolina, I believe last year in December-ish. And other companies have plants open around the world. Management consultants expect that cultivated meat will be providing billions of pounds of the world's meat supply by 2030. Billions? Which is...

By that calculation, that is still only half a percent of the world's meat supply. Wait, what? Billions of pounds is like only like half a percent. We consume that much meat? The world does, yeah. Jesus. Well, I guess that makes sense. Well, you got 7 billion people in the world. Everybody eats. So, yeah, they're expecting it to be about, you know, half a percent by 2030.

well good for them believer foods or meats whatever they're called yeah justin bieber meats i honestly believe like they took a picture of actual chicken breast and they cut it and they pretended that it is that yeah this looks like the plant-based uh chicken just normal chicken i mean that's what it looks like like you could tell the difference between what a plant-based meat is and not and that that looks plant-based and i've tried plant-based meat it's not bad it's not bad you can tell the difference

You definitely tell the difference. It has like a different taste to it for sure. But some of the texture is not bad. I think it was the one at a Hardee's. I think I tried before. Yeah. Wasn't too much of a fan that one. Yeah. I don't blame you. Well, thank you for your first strange news topic, Dan. You're welcome. I don't know. I read that and I'm just like, I knew that they were, you know, creating, you know, cultivated meat and all that, but I didn't know the real process of it.

But then actually seeing it in like the paste. Well, that reminds me of the McDonald's pink goop. Yeah. I think that's a myth, ain't it? No, that really happened back in the day. But they don't make it that way anymore. Oh. Yep. That's why it was so much better back in the day. Yeah. McDonald's created a PR team to push out the narrative that it was false. To cover up that a woman got paralyzed from eating it.

Really? Yeah. So they made a woman go paralyzed. They burned a lady with their coffee. Yeah. McDonald's. You have it your way. Which is death. All right. So let's get on to our next strange news topic. Are you ready for mine? I am ready for yours. Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Crime Door TV is now a podcast. I'm your host, Sydney Schofield. Join us as we dive deeper into the world of true crime and go one-on-one with legal analysts. There is a presumption of innocence. There really does have to be some factual evidence. Your exclusive interviews with families of victims. When my daughter was kidnapped and we found out the truth, I couldn't imagine that anybody could feel as awful as I felt. And get an insight into the truth.

All right, welcome back. So the first strange news topic that I'm going to discuss today is called Black Alien. Black Alien. Yeah. Okay. So this topic starts all the way back in 2016.

An individual named Anthony Lofredo looked just like your everyday 27 year old man. He had short black hair, brown eyes, and just looked like a normal dude. Here, here's a picture of him right here. So normal looking dude, right? You pass him up every day when you go to the bodega and get you some chips and soda. Jersey Shore style. Yeah. Now over the past eight years, Anthony has decided to undergo an extreme transformation.

He wanted to become an alien. Yeah. So what did Anthony do to become one? Well, he's had an assload of medical procedures. He had his entire skin covered in tattoos, which, I mean, it's pretty normal. I've got tattoos, you know. However, shortly after that is when things started to become pretty extreme. He got the whites of his eyes tattooed, and then he split his tongue down the middle like a snake

Okay, I've seen that. Following that, he amputated his ears, like cut his ears off. He cut his nose off. He cut off the top of his lip. And then he cut off two of his fingers. Also, he got skull implants, removed part of his scalp,

and then placed implants in other parts of his body, like his hands and his arms and a lot of other places. And we have a photograph of him that we'll put up right here. And if you're not watching us on YouTube, you can go to our website, theoriesofthethirdkind.com and click on today's episode and you'll see all the photographs there. But pretty interesting looking fellow, wouldn't you say? He looks more like the crocodile guy off of like,

what's that movie oh it's such a bad movie with will smith and yeah um it's like a suicide squad suicide squad that's exactly who he looks like the crocodile dude definitely not an alien that definitely looks like a reptilian so this entire journey of his of turning into an alien he's documented it on instagram and he's gained over 1.4 million followers oh my gosh look at his forearms yeah now to add even more strangeness to this entire thing

In an interview here recently, Anthony confirmed that he plans to cut his penis in half straight down the middle in an operation which would leave him with two inner penises swinging next to one another. I don't know how that works. Well, I guess we'll find out because he's having the operation, so...

Yeah. Now, if you are interested in becoming an alien and transforming your body just like Anthony did, you are in luck because he is offering fans the opportunity to join him in his journey through the Black Alien Online Tattoo Program. He ended up making a post on Instagram that said, and we quote,

Hello, I'm the Black Alien Project, and I come to recommend this online course to people who want to learn to tattoo, which obviously I don't teach since I'm not a person with talent or experience. End quote. So I signed you up, Dan. It's a 99, well, 99 euro course. That doesn't sound very expensive. No, it's all online. You get what you pay for. Well, you're going to experience it.

So yeah. I'm going to learn how to tattoo. And get your penis cut in half. Cut my nose off, my ears off. Your lip. My lip. No eyebrows, no hair. So that is my first strange news article. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm a little weirded out by the whole penis cutting thing though.

I'm weirded out by how he described it. How, how I wrote it down is exactly how he described it in an operation, which would leave him with two thinner. Oh, I said inner it's thinner penises swinging next to one another. I just don't think that's how that will work out though. How the hell do you pee after that? Exactly. Like just squirts out like a, it's like when you take a water hose and you put your thumb over the top of it, it's just going to spray everywhere. That's what's going to happen.

One of them is going to have where the pee actually comes out and he's going to wake up. He's not going to know which one is which at the time. What happens when he, yeah, is it two? It probably goes outside. That's weird. Well, be on the lookout for two penis man. Actually, half penis. Would it be half penis man? I mean, it'd still be one penis. He's like, look, I got a cool trick. Whoop.

Anyway. It's like, I can move this side and I can move this side. He plays the drum. That's probably what he's going to do. Oh God. All right. So tell us about your next strange topic. Let's move on from the black alien. So the next article I found is about the decline of marriage and birth decline in Tokyo. Okay. I guess their solution to solve that. There is a new initiative going on in Tokyo and it is called Tokyo Futari Story.

which was started by Tokyo's City Hall. This is an effort to create couples, futari, and Tokyo has lately become a country where it is pretty common to be hitori, aka alone. Okay, so futari is together. Futari is couples together. Hitori is alone. What's clitori? So yeah, Tokyo futari story is Tokyo's couple story. In this article, it talks about marriages on the decline in Japan, as well as the birth rate.

Now they throw some statistics at us. In 2023, there were 474,714 marriages down from the 504,930 in 2022. That's a difference of 30,216 marriages. And then with birth rates being 727,277 in 2023 from 770,759 in 2022, with the difference being of 43,482. Let's

that's a lot of math a lot of math a lot of babies not being a lot less yeah so it's like all right so what big deal you know a lot of things happened in the past couple years you know not a lot of dating going on well japan to them it's a big deal it's actually a national level size big deal the government has been trying to solve a serious labor shortage by promising cash payments for families with children and supporting child care facilities

It even relaxed immigration policy over the years to encourage an influx of foreign people to relocate to Japan so they can get more people to work. So they want wage slaves. To encourage people to move there to work. The problem is that in Japan, everyone works long hours. By the time you get done with that, you just want to go home. You don't really want to go out too much. People aren't meeting anybody because they're too damn tired. So they're just like,

That's okay. We know how to fix that. Here's our first step. We created a website that offers counseling and general information for potential lovebirds. This website, you can go on there, and it's literally like a match.com. But it is ran by the government, and you have to provide a ton of information. Because, you know, like on some of these sites, you can provide the basic information. I guess. I don't know. I'd assume. That's what I looked up.

You provide like the basic information and all that. But this, you have to have like your driver's license to identify yourself. You have to prove, you have to like show your taxes paid to prove your income. Yeah, it gets very in-depth. So the government's playing matchmaker? They are playing matchmaker. Now, they even sponsor events where singles can go meet, couples can get counseling on marriage and all that. Lovers can have their stories shared.

of how they first met turned into like comics and stuff. You know, they try to encourage people to stay together, have kids and become little workers for them. Wage slaves create slaves for us. But the problem is, and I think this is like a thing that's been going on all over the world. People are just not interested in the old style marriage or having children. It's like, what's the point of getting married these days? That's the way that people are thinking.

So no one's getting married in Japan. No one's having kids together. So Japan's just like, this is a huge problem because we need workers. Yeah. Now they already have the website. They have the, you know, sponsored events. And even with those, you know, methods in motion, Japan's just like, all right, since the time's moving forward, technology's advancing more, we'll create an app, an online dating app for you guys now. But like I said,

It's not just like, you know, normal thing. It's you have to provide all this information. You have to show proof. And not just that, you actually have to go in, do an interview. Then you fill out the stuff. Then you provide all this information. It's very, very in-depth. I guess in a way, if you're serious about dating and wanting to find a partner in Japan that

That would be the safest way to go because you don't have to worry about the scammers that are out there that are like, Hey, I'm lady. Send me $10. I'm lady boy. That's in Thailand. Oh, I'm sure they're in Japan as well. I'm not lady. I'm lady boy. But yeah, like, I mean, you provide all that information, but then the kicker that I find to be very weird, which I mean, it helps with the compatibility matching.

is after you provide all this information, you end up taking a diagnostic test. That's what they call it, a diagnostic test. Pretty much, I think it's like a personality type test. And that's how they match you up. And that is what they use to determine who is compatible with you. It almost made me start thinking like, this is how they start, like in the movies and stuff you see, where they start, I think it's like,

Not the Hunger Games. It's the Divergent or whatever. Or the movies where they say like, okay, this is when you get born, this is your job. You know, this is who you're going to be compatible with. This is who you're going to marry later on. Yeah. It's like they determine everything for you. And this is like, to me, seems like the start of it. It is. It's a slippery slope. Because they have everybody working.

No one's able to go out and dating all that. And they're just like, you know what? We'll help you with that. We'll tell you who's perfect for you, which they're going to take what job they work, like their personality, how much money they make. It's all going to be predetermined on who you marry because this I feel like this is what the government's going to start doing. And it's going to be like a mandatory thing.

for kids to do in school to predetermine who they're going to marry once they leave school what job they're going to have this is going to lead into spreading out not only in japan but the rest of the world i predict in the next probably by at least 500 years i know that's far away but probably less than that i would say probably 100 150 years they're going to have this worldwide and it's going to be implemented to where hey you want to have children

Well, you got to go through our dating app and you got to be approved to date this individual and get approved by us to marry this individual. And then that's how you have children. Oh, you're dating this person that you didn't meet through our app. You can't have children with him. We won't allow you to marry them. Y'all aren't compatible. We know who's best for you. The cost of divorce, the cost of children being raised without a mother and a father, which

But that's what's going to happen. That and they're going to ban all manual driving vehicles. It's all going to be automatic now. It's going to be shared where you just hit your phone and the car pulls up and you jump in. But there's not going to be a driver.

desliz already starting doing that yeah and then your neighborhoods all gonna chip in to you'll pay like 20 bucks a month and that will be the monthly payment to the car service or whatever that you all share and then you'll be like god damn it Leroy you left cheeto bag back here again in the group chat guys I tell you clean up after yourselves after you use the vehicle no more jacking off in the back there are stains in

in the backseat that will not come out. I now have to pay $200 for a professional cleaner. That's how I see it going. That's where it leads to. Jacking off in the back of an AI driven vehicle. Yeah. I went to their website and of course it's like all in Japanese. Try to translate it. No, I signed you up for it actually. Fuck, no you didn't. No you didn't.

I told you yesterday. No, you didn't. Oh, fuck, you did. That's what it was. You unsigned me up. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? You signed me up for something. What? And you were like, I can't sign up for it. But I signed you up for it. And I was like, I don't know what he's talking about. That's what you were talking about. That's what I was talking about. You can unsign me up from it, please.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really sign you up because I would have to have all your information, your driver's license. Then I would have to pretend to be you to go in for the interview. So you don't look like Aaron at all. I thought you said you were white. But going to their website, though, they did have things that they try to like promote to you to be like, hey, like government backed security. Enjoy peace of mind with our stringent vetting process, including verification of marital status and income and pretty much everything.

all your information is protected by the government. AI matching our AI system analyzes over 100 personal details to find the most compatible matches for you. Exclusive community connect with like-minded individuals who are serious about finding a life partner, which I forgot to mention, you have to sign a form that says, I am ready to be married right now. Like it. Do they force you to get married right then?

No, I mean like you'll go on a date and all that, but like you have to be 100% serious. I'm pretty sure there might be like a clause in there or something that's like, if you go on this many things, you're probably out. It's like, these are the perfect matches for you. Our AI says so. How are you ever going to meet your Nigerian prince who's going to give you $20 million? He better be signing up for the hat. Futari, Futari story. But yeah, then it's like user-friendly interface, easy to navigate and designed for a seamless user experience.

Like, this app hasn't come out just yet, but the website's been active. And they supposedly have, like, over 100 stories of people actually... Over 100 of this actually working. That shit's made up. Oh, it's definitely made up. Because I tried to go and, like, see some of these stories, but it's...

You click it and then it goes to where you can click all these different panels. And it's like different ways on how they met, how they talk, how they deal with things. I'm just like, I thought these were stories about people meeting and all that. But it's like different topics, subtopics. It was hard to navigate. I don't know. But yeah, I found that and I'm just like, that right there is like the start of where they start controlling who you're going to be with, decisions and all that. Especially since it's backed by the government. Slippery slope.

It is. And I mean, granted, it is convenient for people that are, you know, working long hours, don't have the time to actually meet someone out in public or, you know, find someone themselves. This makes it a little bit easier route for them to possibly meet there forever. Yeah. Like that.

Well, if you are living in Japan and you signed up for this, send us an email. We would love to hear how it goes. But yeah, definitely let us know if you live in Japan, if you tried this or you've moved to Japan and want to try it. We want to follow. Yeah. All right. So my next strange news topic that I'm going to discuss is called Mysterious Monolith Returns. I saw this one.

Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break. This is our last one, so don't go nowhere. All right, welcome back. Now, I'm sure you all remember back in the year 2020 how these mysterious silver-colored monoliths started appearing randomly all over the world. And when I say monoliths, they're like these, they look like uranium bundles, do they not? They do.

They're like tall, ranging from six feet to 10 feet, 12 feet tall, silver reflective. Think of long, skinny pieces of sheet metal. Yeah. But they're thicker and I think heavier. Yeah. So those monoliths started appearing all over the world in 2020.

They showed up randomly in random spots in different places such as Utah, California, Las Vegas, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Romania, and a bunch of other places all around the world. Now, a lot of those monoliths ended up disappearing overnight. And since then, pretty much everyone's forgot about them. They're like, oh yeah, those monoliths that appeared. Oh yeah, well, they disappeared. Not a big deal. Well, that was until a few months ago.

So in March of this year, an individual named Richard Haynes, he was running along a hillside in Wells when all of a sudden he came across a 10 foot tall metal monolith. Now this monolith looked exactly like the ones that surfaced in 2020.

And he was like, whoa, that's really weird. And we do have a photograph of the ones that surfaced in 2020, just a few of them, pretty much what we described. So three months later, on June 18th of this year, another mysterious monolith was found 20 miles north of Las Vegas.

And the Las Vegas Police Department ended up going out to that location, taking multiple photographs of it, and actually posted on their Instagram about it. And here we go. Dude, that one's way shinier than the other ones. Oh, yeah. It's super reflective. It's like the movie Predator when he puts on the cloaking device. He's like... Yeah. Ah, ah, ah. It's my favorite part of the movie.

So a few days after that post made by the LAPD or not LAPD, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. LVMPD. Yeah. They made another post on social media and they stated, and we quote, the strange structure that was found a few days ago was removed due to public safety and environmental concerns.

In total, this monolith was 77 inches tall, constructed out of sheet metal and secured to the ground with rebar and concrete. The structure is being stored at an undisclosed location while public authorities determine the most appropriate way to dispose or to store the item.

It remains unknown how the item got to its location or who might be responsible. End quote. Now, you would think that would be the last monolith to surface, but that's not the case. So last Thursday, on June 27th, another mirrored monolith structure randomly appeared overnight in Colorado.

Now, this monolith is a little different than the others. It's more of like a squished rectangular shape, and it's eight feet tall, and it was placed on top of a hill. And the owner of the land was alerted about it, and she had no clue who put it there. She was like, I have no idea what the hell that thing is. Whoever put it up there needs to take it down. And I have a photograph of it.

You see that dent in the side of it? It's a big ass dent in the side of it. They must have dropped it on the way up. Yeah. At first, I thought this photograph was Photoshop because if you look at the bottom, I was like, oh man, they just placed that bitch on that. They didn't even blend it in. But that's not the case.

It doesn't go all the way to the bottom. Yeah, it's rebar that's sticking out at the bottom. They put a concrete pad down and they stuck the rebar in there and they slid the sheet metal over top of it. They did this all in one night? Yeah. Or that's when they found it, so they don't know how long it actually took. One night. And they can do that in one night easily. Oh yeah, they got quick drying concrete, rebar. That monolith that was found in Colorado last Thursday,

That is the most recent one. There's been no updates since. And yeah, they're just randomly popping up all over the place again. Yeah, I originally thought they were just like an art project or something like that. An anonymous art group, like an art collective came forward and said, oh yeah, that was us. But it wasn't them. But it wasn't them. I read up that.

There's some people out there that they create art that's similar to this and they're just like, oh, it's possible that they did this. But then they looked at the rest of their art and they're just like, eh, no, not really. It's similar, but it's not. Maybe someone was inspired by this, which I mean, everyone that does art, they want someone to be inspired by their work. Now you look at a Stanley Kubrick's movie, Space Odyssey, at the beginning of it, that monolith shows up and the monkeys are all looking at it like, huh? Huh? So yeah.

Alright, there's something else I want to add to the end of this strange news topic is that Dan ended up coming across a very interesting article that was from 2020. So something happened to one of the monoliths that appeared in 2020 that I had

Not even heard of before. I had never heard this story before until you showed me this article and I'm guessing the news stations didn't cover it because what happened to the monolith and the type of things they were saying in the video. Yeah. All right. So like we said in 2020, a bunch of monoliths popped up all over the world. Well, one of those monoliths that surfaced was in California and

Now, shortly after it appeared, a group of three young men ended up driving five hours in the middle of the night to this monolith. And they live streamed themselves arriving at the statue with plans of tearing it down. Once they arrived, one of the individuals stated in the video, and we quote, Christ is king in this country. What?

We don't want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space, so let's tear this bitch down, end quote. That's an exact quote that was live streamed. The three young men began pushing the statue back and forth, trying to knock it loose while chanting America first and Christ is king. Eventually, the 200 pound statue toppled and fell to the ground.

And then one of the young men then looks at the toppled monolith, which is on the ground, and calls it gay. And then he takes a wooden cross and places it into the ground where the monolith once stood. And this was all recorded on video. They recorded themselves, live streamed it and everything. So, yeah. Yeah. I did not know that happened to one of the monoliths. I thought they were just like.

collected and just moved yeah they wrapped a rope around it and drug it down and took it home with them yeah so that's the end of my uh second strange news topic oh he really told that monolith didn't he he really told that monolith and they put a wooden cross in its spot cross is king so yeah my last article though is uh also about outer space oh which i didn't know this happened this past weekend did you know that there were actually two asteroids that flew

I can't really say close to Earth, but considering how big space is, it was pretty damn close to Earth this past week. I had no idea. Yeah. I wish they would have hit Earth. It wouldn't have been a world destroyer, but it would have probably taken out at least half of Earth, you could say. Unlucky us. Mm-hmm. One day. Now, the one that I focused on was the one that happened on June 29th, 2024, this past Saturday. In this article, it talks about Asteroid 2024 MK.

which is the size of a football stadium and what they said threaded the needle between earth and the moon saturday morning it went between the earth and the moon what is that like 224 000 miles yep it was like 180 000 miles from earth that is a small needle to thread considering how big the universe is yeah it's almost as big as my wiener now

This would be the second astronomical near misses in three days because there was one that happened on Thursday, the 27th as well. Like I said, this one was only 180,000 miles from Earth as it passed by the 2024 McKay. And the other one was one point something mile million miles away. I thought you could say one mile away. I was like, what? No, that if it was one mile away, we could see it. We'd be dead. Yeah.

Now, this 2024 MK1 has been like larger than 99% of the asteroids or NEOs, which are, what are NEOs again? Oh, near earth objects. Oh, I thought they were nuclear engineer operators. Yes, they're flying in space. Now, they didn't know about 2024 MK though. Now, this thing, think about it. It's the size of a football stadium.

And it's coming almost straight towards Earth. Coming straight towards Earth. They didn't spot this thing until two weeks before it passed by. What the hell were they doing? Are they asleep at the helm? That's what the problem is. How the hell did they not detect this until two weeks prior to it passing Earth? This is something that they should have spotted way, way before. And that was the problem. An asteroid of this size would cause considerable damage if it did hit Earth.

So they're just like, it would pretty much take out like half the earth. Now, even though with the trajectory of this being like a 0% chance of hitting earth, still, it's pretty damn big football size stadium asteroid. And if it did hit earth, it would destroy half the earth. But they're just like, well, shit, this definitely means that we need to improve our ability to detect and monitor potentially near earth objects. And they're just like, just remember back in 1908, one of my old theories Thursdays, the Tunguska event.

That one didn't even hit Earth. It exploded like in the air above Siberia and it destroyed a huge chunk of the forest there. I think it's like, I want to say it was like 80 miles. I can't remember exactly. I can't remember either, but it was a lot. Yeah. And funny enough, that happened on June 30th. They're just like these, these two asteroids passing by so close to Earth right near asteroid day is insane. Like what's the coincidence of that?

Now, this did lead me to look more into like the near-Earth objects, which I learned about NASA's DART mission, Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which was a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against NEOs. Now, this was a test that was designed to assess how much a spacecraft impact deflects an asteroid through its transfer of momentum when hitting the asteroid head-on.

So the DART mission was launched in September of 2021, and it impacted the asteroid Dimorphos in September of 2022. So it took a whole year for this spacecraft, whatever they used, to fly there and hit this asteroid. They end up finding out that after the impact, this has caused the asteroid's orbit to be shortened by 32 minutes. So it slowed it down. What the hell did they hit it with?

They launched some type of vessel, spacecraft or something like rocket or something that just, oh, it was Bruce Willis off Armageddon. In October of this year, 2024, they will be launching a new mission called the HERA mission, which HERA is part of the world's first test of asteroid deflection and will perform a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos. And of course, it will still take a year for that to get there. So it'll get there by 2025, do the survey and all that.

And then by 2026, come back to Earth and give a detailed report on how much it actually impacted, how much it did. And they're just like,

If this turns out to be, you know, really good, we can understand what we can do to improve it. And this could be a repeatable planetary defense system that we have. If you can see them coming. If you can see them coming, which they obviously had a hard time seeing asteroid 2024 MK. That was a football size stadium. It's like you have to see it before you could actually hit it. But yet they're targeting this one that's frigging a year away, but they couldn't see one that was two weeks away.

I wonder if NASA or any other type of government entity has the ability to, when they name an asteroid that's heading towards earth or close to earth, do they auction off the name to where a company can sponsor it? To be like, oh, the theories of the third kind asteroid is planned to hit earth in 2028. I don't know if I'd want to do that, but then again, you'd hear about it all over the news. Yeah.

It'd be a good way for them to raise money. Viagra. Viagra asteroid is heading towards Earth this week. Watch this blue flame as it flies by. But supposedly, though, this past Saturday, I think it was around 6 a.m. in the southeastern part of the U.S.? No, southwest part of the U.S. If you woke up at like 6 a.m.,

You could have possibly seen this asteroid pass by, but very faintly. My vision sucks, so I wouldn't have seen it either. You would have to use a telescope and all that stuff to actually see it. It's not like the Mother of All Dragons asteroid that, was it this year or last year?

I read it. It's that really big asteroid that does like this big orbit and it comes around every, I don't know how many years, but yeah. Well, thank you for that, Dan. You're welcome. I honestly thought it was actually this weekend coming up as I read the article. Then I realized they started mentioning it in the past tense. It was like the article started off just normal, then switched to past tense. I'm like, did this happen already? So I actually had to go and

find like the actual orbits of it and all that to see and yeah it happened this past saturday damn so i was actually looking forward to trying to see this thing even though we're not in the southwestern well maybe next time maybe next time maybe we'll get a good up close and personal thing with it we'll smack right into us we gotta go work on an oil rig

Have an asteroid coming to Earth. And they come and recruit us. We need ex-podcasters who are good at drilling oil. And I won't have a daughter, but I'll have a coda with me. Thank you for that, Dan. You're welcome. So let's get on to the last strange news article that we're going to discuss today, which is called Thrift Store Vase Round 2. Now, if you all remember back in February of this year,

We released Strange News 7. In that episode, we discussed how a woman named Jessica Vincent ended up finding a unique-looking vase at her local Goodwill in Virginia.

She purchased the vase for $3.99, and it ended up being like an extremely rare piece from Italy or some shit like that. And she ended up selling it at an auction, and it brought in like over $100,000. Yeah, and she ended up opening a horse slaughter factory with it. No, it was a horse sanctuary, not a slaughter factory. I was going to say, she's working for McDonald's?

Hey, they used to slaughter horses back in the day for meat. So, yes, you pretty much found that vase for $4 at Goodwill, sold it for $100,000. Good profit. Yeah. Now, you would figure that something like that happening again would be very, very rare, almost impossible. However, believe it or not, it has happened again. So, earlier this year, a woman named Anna Lee Doyser of Washington reported

She was shopping at a 2A thrift store. You ever heard of a 2A thrift store? Never heard of a 2A thrift store. Must be a Washington thing. Yeah. So as she was shopping there, she noticed an unusual vase that was very ugly. As she inspected the vase, she thought, you know what? It looks like one of them old ass vases from like a Mayan museum.

However, she assumed that the vase that she was holding was probably like a tourist, like a reproduction that the locals make and sell to the tourist. I mean, kind of. Yeah. And that it was probably only 20 to 30 years old. But she figured, hey, what the heck? For $3.99, she would buy it and just, you know, leave it in her home as a art piece. Would you buy that for $4? Actually, yeah, $4. What is that on the top? Is that a rat?

I don't know why, but it looks like a... We have a photo of it. We'll put it up right here. It looks like a koala. It does look like a koala. Oh, that's not even an animal. That's the right part of it's the head. That's a face right in the middle. That's the nose in the middle. I don't know what that round thing to the left is. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, it at first looked like a koala. All right. So shortly after Ana ended up purchasing that vase, she ended up visiting Mexico on a work trip.

During her trip, she ended up going to a museum of anthropology, and that's when she noticed that some of the items on display looked just like the vase that she had purchased at the thrift store for only $3.99. So Ana ended up talking to one of the museum officials about it, and they told her, hey, you need to contact the Mexican embassy whenever you return home.

Ana ended up sharing photos and the dimensions of the vase with the embassy. And the vase was identified as an authentic Mayan artifact dating from 200 to 800 AD. Damn. Yeah. So the embassy was like, look, it's a very old artifact. It belongs in Mexico. You should probably give it to us. And, uh,

Ana agreed. She returned the vase back to its original location in Mexico. And when she returned it, she had to go to the Cultural Institute of Mexico to return it. And when she arrived, they had a big-ass ceremony that they held for. And eventually, the institute said, hey, we're going to place it in a museum in Mexico at some point. But until then, it's just going to stay here.

But there's a part of the story I didn't add here. Turns out... It was fake. ...that they were caught, the Cultural Institute of Mexico, reselling it to an art collector in California for $240,000. And they didn't even pay Ana. No, I'm just kidding. That didn't happen. That's fake news. But wouldn't that be a twist? That's an M. Night Shyamalan ding-dong twist, huh? That would have been a twist right there.

So all they needed were photos of it and they're just like, oh, it's authentic Mayan artifact dating. Well, photos and dimensions. She like did measurements and stuff. They're like, yo, yeah, that's real. That's 200 to 800 AD. I feel like they do better testing on it before they was like, it's authentic. You'd figure. I wonder if she asked for her $4 back.

I bet you they didn't reimburse her for the $4 and they didn't pay for her to bring it back either. They made her pay for her own ride. Oh, man. Aaron, I think that iPad that you have right there, I think it is from the 200 to 800 AD. From looking at it, it looks like it is, but... It runs like it. Slow. I'm going to need the dimensions of it to verify that it is. So that right there is our last strange news article.

A lady pretty much hit the jackpot. So if you are a loved one, go thrift shopping and you find a odd looking vase that looks old. That's $3.99. Purchase it and then send us photographs of it. And then we're going to be like, oh yeah, that belongs in the TOT3K bookshelf. Yeah, right there. Why can I never find stuff at thrift stores like that?

I found a couple good things. I found some books and stuff, but yeah, I found a Jim Mars signed, um, limited edition psychic spy book. Ooh. Yeah. It was like three bucks. I was like, Oh, it's a good deal. I found the book. Oh, that was half price books. The book of the black dragon first editions codex, the barren citadel. I don't have any like super, super rare books.

I mean, this one, but we didn't find it. There's only three of these in the United States. Actually, three of these in the entire world. This is Are There Devils Today? It's considered a pamphlet, but I would say it's a book slash pamphlet. It's supposed to have true accounts from the nuns that were involved. Nuns and priests from the late 1800s, early 1900s.

An authentic report on two cases of exorcism performed in recent years with cited testimonies of numerous eyewitnesses. And it says performed in recent years, but this was published in...

1927. Took a while to actually find it and get it. Oh my God, yeah. So it's 80 pages total. There's only three of these in the world, and we have one of them here in the studio. The other one is at a bookstore somewhere up north, and the old lady is a total B-word. Oh yeah, she's a B-word. The other one is in the library of Notre Dame University.

They are the slowest to respond. Yeah, they are. I think it was like two weeks after we did the episode that we used that for. And we didn't even publish that episode. Yeah, we didn't publish it. But yeah, they were just like, oh yeah, you can come and, uh, or no, they would, I think they told me like, yeah, let us know which pages you want to see of it. And I'm like, I don't know which pages I want to see. I want to see all of it. What are you talking about? Like, can you scan it and send it to us? No, not really. Or I think they wanted, they, they were going to charge for it.

I don't mind that. It's like depending on the cost. I think it was actually pretty pricey. I think I might still have the email. Let's look. We can make a copy of this for you for your personal reference use of use for a fee of $15. That's not bad. Please fill out this form before submitting payment. They wanted me to fill out a form and then send a payment. That's not bad. 15 bucks is not bad for a copy of it. Considering how much we paid for that copy. Yeah. Physical copy though. Physical copy. Yeah.

All right. Well, do you have anything else you want to add to today's strange news episode? If y'all find any or stumble upon any strange new articles, send them our way. I love reading this weird shit. Yeah. And if for some reason you cannot get enough of us, go check out our premium episode today, which is strange news 8.5.

And in that strange news, we cover additional articles. We cover Joey band, robot suicide, a hundred thousand dollar magnet, Facebook and Instagram training AI microplastics are where 23 twins and the bonus, which is called naked flying. And we got a couple extra ones in case. Yeah. Which they are pretty, some of those are pretty funny. So if you want to check that out, go sign up. It's,

Through Supercast, you can sign up for $6.66 a month to listen to the audio, or you can watch the video as well for $9.99 a month, and you get access to all the previous episodes as well. Boom. All right. Well, with that being said, I want to thank you for joining us today. And again, thank you for your support. You are all amazing. I love you all. I am proud of you, and we will see you next week. So, Dan, you want to roll us out? Sure will.

It's okay to be out of this world with your thoughts. Because you are not alone. Boom. Boom.