Did the President Sh*t His Pants? A Wait a Second... Investigation. Plus: NATO Spy Scandal and eBay Stalking With Bryan Curtis
2026-08-06 10:00:00 • 1:04:53
It's the early summer of 1893.
You are a Grover Cleveland 56 years old and you've been president of the United States
for the second time for three months.
Something is wrong with your mouth.
There's something up there, up above the back teeth on the left, rough where it should
be smooth and you've been worrying at it for weeks.
It's just not going away and it's getting bigger.
You have a doctor to look at it.
It's cancer, which is the last thing you need right now and the last thing the country
needs.
Because in 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act required the Treasury to buy 4.5 million
ounces of silver every month and pay for it in notes redeemable at the Treasury's discretion
in gold.
What this means in practice is that the Treasury is shedding gold.
More than $32 million in gold while taking on $147 million in silver.
So you want the act repealed.
It's the whole reason you ran this second time.
Meanwhile, the country is coming apart.
More than 100 banks have closed their doors in June between the middle of July and the
middle of August, 340 more.
There is no federal reserve at this time.
It will not exist for another 20 years.
So when a bank goes down, it just goes down and there's nobody there to fix it.
Before this is finished, unemployment will reach nearly one in five working men and every
adult in America has been here before in 1873, in 1884 and again in 1890.
They know how it goes.
First, confidence then lines form on the sidewalk.
Then the doors of the bank don't open.
People distrust and fear, you tell Congress, has sprung up on every side.
Panics are made of nerves.
That's your theory of recessions.
And the level of your understanding of the economy currently, which means that a president
with a tumor in his head is not just a piece of news.
It's a match that could burn the whole system down.
On the last day of June, you board a friends yacht on the East River.
There are six men in a surgical party, physicians and dentists both and they operate on you.
They put you under ether and working entirely from the inside so that nothing will show
on your face.
They take out the tumor and a portion of your upper jaw.
You go ashore five days later.
They go back in on the 17th just to be sure.
And afterward, a dentist fits you with a piece of vulcanized rubber where the bone used
to be so your face looks just like normal.
But a reporter gets the story.
The yacht, the ether, the jaw.
He publishes it all on the 29th of August under the headline.
The president is a very sick man.
And of course, every word of it is true.
So you bury him.
The white house denies it.
Your doctors deny it.
Your own private secretary denies it.
And it works.
The reporter is labeled a liar.
The silver act is repealed.
And the economy stays afloat.
This is wait a second.
Presidential health lies.
Welcome to wait a second.
I'm Jason Cepcione.
That's Tyler Parker.
What's up?
And we are absolutely delighted to be joined remotely by the press box as Brian Curtis.
Brian, welcome to the program.
I'm touched.
You guys thought of me today.
Oh, well.
Truly touched.
We can't stop thinking about you.
No, it's, yeah, it's really winter we not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is if I cast a wish.
I want to never stop thinking about Brian Curtis.
And I can't stop thinking about it.
It's that sweet, sweet timber you got, man.
You just got, you just got a comforting tone, you know?
Well, when it comes to this topic, we're going to need it.
Well, listen, I don't want to get down into the murk, the mud.
So to speak.
I can speak for you, Brian.
I want to be real professional about this.
This is an important topic that we're going to talk about.
And it has to do with presidential health.
Presidents have been lying about their health forever.
We're going to get into that.
I have the authoritative list on presidents lying about health issues.
But the rumor is, and it's a widespread rumor that has existed in simmer since the current
president's first term, is that the president of the United States is incontinent, incapable
of controlling his bowels and possessed of movements of such irksome odor that they
provoke strong reactions from those in direct proximity to him.
That is the allegation.
The allegation is that whatever is emanating off of the president allegedly in the moments
after an alleged noise is heard, the faces contort in such a grotesque way that it has led
some to think that one possible explanation might be the president himself.
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This all started with Noel Casler who is a stand up comic who according to him worked
as a PA on the apprentice and also on Trump's misuniverse pageants and he has four years
been telling audiences that it was a constant thing that the future president would soil
himself on set and that production was constantly having to deal with this.
Of course this has become attached to various incidents captured on video.
Over the breath of the presidents to terms but there's been some notable ones lately.
Before we get to that Brian before we get to the conversation about whether the press
is actually just covering this up not paying attention to this.
Let's talk about some of the historic moments in presidential lying about their health.
Let's start with the number one guy, a number one, 1790.
George Washington, have you heard of him?
I've heard of him.
He nearly died of pneumonia in the eighth week of this new project called the United States
of America.
Sanders did expect him to die and it was kept very quiet because it just seemed like
a bad look at the time.
What do you think should George have come clean in that moment about his pneumonia?
Bad look for the new nation.
It really would have been.
I just can't help but think what a weird boomerang that would have been and how different
our elementary school education is.
George Washington, American hero for eight weeks.
Very, very different William Henry Harrison 1841.
Bulletin said the illness that he had quote in a great measure subsided on the 31st
of March but then he died on before the April.
Some of these the wild swing from sentence to sentence.
The medical staff is saying one thing he died a week late.
This happens a lot on this list.
His own doctor later admitted that it was pneumonia in print.
This is just one of those.
But the thing is like, Brian, you know a lot about newsdumps.
This is one of those where the admission can kind of get buried under the newsdump that
the president has passed.
Right.
It turns out, that's more of a now they tell us if we're doing it.
He hasn't been feeling well for six to eight months.
Now we'll slide that out there.
This is really a classic and underrated now they tell us.
He really is.
He really is.
President, President had a fatal illness.
Many people around him knew it.
Abe Lincoln in that decisive year of 1863, you want to talk about a year where folks a lot
happened.
A lot going on.
1860.
So he delivered a little speech called the Gettysburg address.
He might have heard of it and then comes down with smallpox for three weeks.
It was publicly called something called very annoyed, which I had not heard of.
No.
Apparently it's the mild version of full blown.
It's so light.
It's so light.
Half blown.
I don't know.
It's a valet caught it and died, but of course, Abe pulled through.
This one you kind of understand, right?
This is like a national security issue, Brian.
Where you stand on this one?
Yeah, I guess wartime.
Do we carve out an exception?
Yeah, I think so.
An exception for deception.
Sure.
Perhaps.
I think so.
Oh, Garfield 1881.
Shot two times in July.
Guys, on the 19th of September, Dr. D. W. Bliss issues signed bulletins two to four times
a day for 11 weeks.
Big news following Garfield shooting.
Like it was a constant updating of news on these kind of big bulletin boards in the center
of many metropolitan areas.
And the report was that Garfield was like comfortable.
He had dropped some weight.
You don't tell him how much he had dropped.
He'd gone from 210 to 130.
I think the 210 is also on the low side.
Let's just say that.
Yeah, my goodness.
And that, but that he seemed to be doing okay.
And then of course, he did die.
One of the biggest bummers on this list is the explanation for one of the reasons that
this happened.
The autopsy reveals the bullet track.
They'd been probing all summer, Brian.
It was actually just a channel of their own pus that they were creating.
By looking for this thing.
Yeah, I think there is significant evidence that the president might have survived had these
random guys stopped putting their fingers in this bullet hole.
Chester A. Arthur 1882, 1886 had Brite's disease diagnosed in 1882, denied it for four
years.
And it said it was malaria and then various kind of like indigestional maladies.
Does not seek renomination in 1884.
Never says why.
And then orders his papers burned the day before he dies.
Now that feels like more than Brite's disease that you do that.
But I don't know.
Is that a now he can never tell us how would you rank that one?
Now we'll never know.
But the real one here is with all these guys and up to current day, is there are so few
people that actually know the answer to this question.
Yeah.
And so when we talk about like why aren't people reporting this?
Why are they withholding this information to get it, to really get it?
You'd really have to get deep into the administration.
Yeah, you really do.
Now I think one of the, this is jumping ahead slightly.
I will continue with the list.
But I think one of the biggest knocks against the presidential incontinence theory is the
fact that Haberman and Swan do not mention it at all in regime change, which I have just
finished.
They go in depth to his administrative assistant, Natalie Hale, I believe is her name.
Natalie Harp.
Natalie Harp, who it is rumored carries the diapers and blankets.
But certainly it is quite comprehensively reported, carries for the president's needs in
a very granular and detailed way.
But they never mentioned anything about the president having trouble controlling his
bowel movements and you would expect that they would put it in there.
Why would they not put it in there if it indeed existed?
I mean, that book has so much stuff in it that it got like what was in the trash can and
Trump's bedroom in the White House.
That's a real fact that's in that book and it's pretty extraordinary.
Why wouldn't you put it in there?
Either it's not real or you just run into the repartorial problem of we cannot nail this
down.
We heard something, we heard rumor, we heard some even maybe somebody tell us, but we
can't get it.
This health information is really, really hard to get.
Let's continue here.
Grover Cleveland, we talked about him in the cold open, had secret cancer surgery and his
mouth, they went in through the inside of his mouth and removed a piece of his jaw.
He didn't want to tell anybody because Grover Cleveland had a very interesting theory about
how financial panics worked and he was very involved in getting this like silver act repealed
and he didn't want to upset the markets and he thought if he projected any sort of weakness,
image of weakness, the markets could tank.
I'm just saying that's what he believed and it worked, maybe.
McKinley shot Bulletin's on September 13th, about a week after the shooting promise that
there was expectation of further improvement and then he died, 12 hours later.
Another now they tell us there's been a bunch of these, oh, Teddy Roosevelt.
This one's great.
Went blind in his left eye, boxing and artillery captain inside the white house.
That's unbelievable.
He doesn't tell anyone until his memoirs in 1913, like after he's out of office.
No, he just, he's just blinding one eye, doesn't tell it assault.
And they brought up the whole TR boxing thing for UFC 250.
Yeah.
This isn't that weird, which now I'm starting to believe the Trump people because you know,
Trump did not go into an octagon with somebody before the official event.
Uh, which Wilson, quietly, a very influential president, 1919 had a massive stroke on October
2nd that left him paralyzed.
17 months left on his term.
He's basically bedridden for the entire rest of the time and the word stroke is never
used in public or in the press anywhere.
Harding, hard disease from 1918 never disclosed on a 1923 Western trip.
His doctor blames tainted crab meat with him having a cardiac event.
I can't order the tainted crab.
Uh, FDR famously polio, although during research on this Brian, here's what's interesting.
We all know that urban legend that, oh, they didn't cover the polio to again, project
American strength during World War II and the depths of the depression.
At the same time, like, I found a lot of, not a lot, but a number of references in the
late 30s to the president having weakness in his body.
And then, like, there's a couple of pictures from time from life during his presidency that
shows the wheelchair, like in the shot.
So I don't know about this one.
I, this one, I was surprised to find that this was kind of out there, but maybe just not
talked about in the same way that nobody talks about, like, granddad slipping, you know,
sure.
And you don't have television yet.
Yeah.
That's the huge part.
You know, just imagine if there was a camera on FDR as he was moving off a stage or being
moved off a stage, like that's just a totally different image than a still photograph in
a newspaper magazine.
Yeah.
So let's, well, and then of course, to bring it to more modern day, Reagan nearly blood
to death when he was shot, a hospital spokesman said, quote, at no point was he anywhere close
to being an extremist, which was absolutely untrue.
Of course, he would later develop Alzheimer's and it seems whether or not he had it during
his second term is still being debated, but it's at least possible.
One of his sons is, one of the records saying that he worried about it for the first time
during, like, the third year of the first term.
Yes.
Yeah.
Trump 2020 had COVID was given oxygen, then was like, no, I didn't need the oxygen and
famously appeared on the balcony of the White House, like, showing the strength.
And then of course, Joe Biden could barely walk, went through one of the most cataclysmic
debates of all time in which he appeared to forget many things.
And somehow that is resulted in Hunter Biden not only appearing on the macro dosing podcast,
but what a moment in American politics that was, but Hunter becoming the most likable
Biden.
I mean, that's happened.
Yeah.
What's your thoughts on that, Brian?
Yeah.
What do you make of that?
I mean, can you imagine that if we said that like five years ago, it's like, Joe and
Jill, I don't know, they were covering up something they might have, you know, let us
on the path back to Donald Trump, but this hunter guy, he seems okay.
Like, that's incredible.
This has happened.
I have a theory, Brian, and I'd like to run it by you.
And it's kind of similar to it's based off my NBA theory, which is the reason that none
of the younger generation coming up under Stefan LeBron have managed to like take the face
of the league thing is that LeBron specifically with the decision with other things has these
moments where, you know, the emperor's clothes were kind of ripped away in public.
And so there's this authenticity about him and that we've seen him kind of at his worst.
And I think that's what's going on with Hunter.
I think that I think that there's a level politicians are so managed and so, you know, the
talking points just seem to spill out of them in the circular way where you never seem
to get anywhere.
And I think that there's something refreshing about a guy who you just know all the bad
stuff about and who is talking about it.
Right.
I think that's a, that makes a ton of sense.
And for people in our industry, that guy says, hey, I'll come on your podcast for five
hours.
Right.
And talk about everything I did.
You're like, sounds great.
Hey, you seem interesting.
Let's go.
Hey, are you running for president?
You have the same odds as Steve and A.
We are trying to get him.
I mean, I do think he could run.
I was crazy.
But we're in crazy time.
He's going on like Lil Dickie's podcast.
Like he really did.
Okay.
So today, let's, let's now pivot to poop or the field, something we're calling poop or
the field.
So we're going to go through these events.
We're going to talk about what is alleged to be depicted here.
And we're going to ask ourselves, could it be incontinence and a lack of control over
the, over the bowel?
Yeah.
Or could it be literally anything else?
Any other very normal, a stifled yawn, a rolling of the tummy, because it's near lunchtime.
Or just a bad fart, a really bad fault.
It happens.
It's happened.
It's happened to, you know, sometimes sometimes it happens to yourself, right?
You're like, godly.
I really, that's, I gotta go.
I gotta go to the bathroom and check.
You check?
Drives it wrong.
And we're talking about one of the most videoed and photographed human beings on the planet.
If not the most, it just, who is in his 80s?
Yeah.
It just, it just kind of begs.
You would imagine that at least once and probably several times a year, cameras and microphones
under that kind of scrutiny would pick up something.
Well let's go first to December 11th, 2025, a Kennedy Center's honors event at the Oval
Office featuring members of KISS.
Gene Simmons is there.
You see him over the president's right shoulder.
This is the one, this is the one George Strait was at too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is Peter Chris over the president's left shoulder.
That is the, the drummer.
And at a certain point, the woman in blue, who is the guitar, the late guitarist Ace
Freely's daughter, makes a face.
And there appears to be certainly a sour looking face and.
I'll say having, now the thing is when you watch it in full again, there's like no reaction
from anyone else.
No.
The other members of KISS are smiling and laughing.
Yeah.
So it may be some other, or it could be a fart, a simple fart.
Maybe the people in KISS can't smell that well.
You know what I mean?
Maybe it's a more, maybe she's just got a more sensitive sniffer, you know what I mean?
So I'm going to say, for this one at least, I'm going to take the field.
This could be any number of innocent explanations.
As soon as you start going well, you know, is Gene Simmons' nostrils really burned out
by Coke or whatever.
He claims he's never done drugs, by the way.
It does.
He really does claim that.
Good for him.
So I think this is a, I'm going to say the field for this one, Brian.
Do you have any thoughts on this one?
I just want to say for people who haven't watched this, this is one of the most amazing
10 minutes of Trump I've ever seen.
He's truly, yeah.
He's got Gene Simmons.
He's got Sylvester Stallone.
He's got the guy who played Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.
These are Trump rewatchables.
This is it behind him.
He's so happy.
He's just not bothered at all.
Even that little crack about the media.
It couldn't be better.
It really could be better.
He thinks the media at the end of it for being so respectful of the moment.
Like, which feels like a little jive, but, but I'll tell you, I think the best evidence
guys on this one is when he was putting the metal over the daughter of Ace Freely,
he says something like, your dad would be so happy to be here today.
It would be so happy for you to be wearing this.
And if you watch it for the next several minutes, he looks emotional.
So I think what we might be reading there is actually, you know, I was thinking about a
guy that I wish we were here to say that, or see, see that.
That's kind of where I went.
So I think certainly December 11th, 2025, this is, we're going to say the field for this.
I feel great about that.
Yeah, we're going to pass on this.
Moving now to January 29th, 2026 in the Oval Office.
This is Trump signing an executive order, executive order number 14379 on addiction.
At the 34th second mark, there is a audible sound, a woman in green who is the wife of,
whose name, Catherine Bergam, she's the wife of the interior secretary appears to look
towards the president and then, and then look away in a, in a carried manner.
And then everyone is assured from the room and the rumor is that this was kind of like
a more psychosporic kind of explosive event.
Yes, there was a blast.
I think in this one.
Let's take a look at this.
Today, I'm signing a historic executive order to combat the scourge of addiction and substance
abuse, big deal in this country and every, probably in every country.
Let's go ahead.
No, I hear fantastic things.
Thank you all very much.
We really appreciate it a lot.
Thank you, Buzz.
It's going fantastic, Joe.
Thank you all very much.
We should.
Thank you, please.
Thank you, President.
Thank you, President.
Mr. President, can you respond to the new Fox poll that says people think ICE is a tactic
or too aggressive?
Thank you, President.
You're welcome.
Thank you, President.
We're going.
Thank you, President.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
I will say it is quite low.
It's fine.
And not only is it faint, it's very, very low in frequency.
Right.
I don't know where I come down on this one.
Again, it is only Ms. Bergham who seems to react in any kind of, there's a lot of nose
wiping and there does seem to be a little bit of anxiety.
She seems like there's, she seems to be in some, some level of distress.
We don't know how much.
Maybe she's just like all of a sudden feeling nervous and so she just starts itching.
The problem that we have here is that RFK is in prime position to give us some information
and this man could not possibly be grossed out by anything.
I don't think.
Doesn't seem like he's, what we know of him, you know, cutting off bare penises and things
like that.
I just, I don't think he can.
Let me get going.
I'm going to the president of the regular bowel movements.
I'm going to the, I will say I would expect a doctor Oz to have some sort of reaction if
there was a scent because he strikes me as someone who has a very weak stomach.
I, yes, he does.
I have no base.
He seems very delicate.
The reporters being hurried out of the room was the one thing that just fell a little
off to me because Trump, we know, loves to take questions.
After ceremonies like that.
And he loves to make the people stand behind him while he's taking questions.
Does any president just love to have their homeboys and homegirls behind them like Donald
Trump?
I mean, there are always people lined up behind him in every possible setting.
So anyway, that, that was a weird note, but I, I honestly couldn't hear it.
I didn't hear anything.
I, I barely, I mean, you really got to pump it up to hear it.
I will say Brian, what does your take on that because I think it's become one of the visual
hallmarks of the president's second term is him standing surrounded by whether it, you
know, members of his cabinet, his close advisors, what have you, they're always right there
within, hegseth, you know, what do you, what do you make of this?
He's, so I think just on a interpersonal level, he's just one of these people loves to have
people around him.
And of course, people paying deference to him.
Yeah.
But I also read it as like, I'm going to give remarks, I'm going to talk, you'll never
know when this is going to end.
The speech may go on one or two hours and you are going to be standing there listening
to me.
That's just, that's, that's the visual it gives off every time I see something like that.
Okay.
So, uh, poop or the field, I think sadly, I'm going to go to go the field here.
I'm not seeing it.
I feel that way too.
So, um, Brian, any thoughts on this, poop or the field?
Same field.
Yeah.
Uh, there is the famous tweet by Rebecca, Geo, Rebecca, who's like, said the lady in green
tasted it.
I think we're seeing a little bit of what we want to see sadly.
And there is, there was, there was a mate.
Now this one is, I don't know, this one feels the most serious.
May 25, 2026, the White House North Portico Memorial Day.
The president, um, is returning from the observance at Arlington and he spends a few minutes,
I guess critiquing the paint job on this column here.
And as he is pointing at the base, he seems to, as he walks away in turns, there's like
a shake of the leg that some have theorized is him dumping down the pant leg.
Get, get, get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out, and uh,
let's take a look at it.
Here he is, you know, saying, what is that?
What is off?
That's not white.
I said off white.
It's so funny to get out of a car.
It like right next to a big column, be like, Hey, everybody, look, check out this column.
I think he'd be really happy if, if they just set him up as like an interior decorator
somewhere.
It's what he wants to be.
I think so too.
And he's like, come look at this.
He's pointing around waving.
And then as he, as he turns here, and again, I, this is one of those that, um, that I don't
see that looked like the old famous big foot shot walking in the front there that profile
reminded me of that.
Yeah, look at that.
So this one, you know, folks, I don't see it.
And second of all, if the, uh, you know, adult diapers part of this theory is true with
Natalie Harp carrying those in that ever present shopping bag that she carries with
her, then I don't think you would get an ejection of any material down the pant leg in that
way.
No, I thought, I mean, if the diapers are doing their job and you have to, you have to
assume that they're getting him the best.
I think he would get the best.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, the seal, assuming the seal is good.
Right.
Which, I mean, Brian, you can test this having had children.
The, the seals on those, they're really strong.
Sometimes they're, you can't, they're, they're can be in escape.
You know what I mean?
Like, they're can be a breakout at times.
But usually, you know, they, they've, they've, they've had a lot of decades to, you know,
try to perfect this technology.
So yeah, I'm, and again, I think the president's getting the best.
I think part of the reason that all of this stuff is so plausible to us is because we know
his diet and we know just the damage it must be doing inside.
I will say I found it notable, Brian in regime change, a Maggie Averine in Jonathan
Swan, very, very little mention of McDonald's.
Mmm.
That's a good point.
Did you find that interesting?
Because I think it was, there were Starbucks rappers.
I remember that section I mentioned about his room, right?
Starbucks rappers that they, they found, you're right.
Maybe has he moved on somehow?
I would imagine that under, you know, if you get the right news delivered in the right
way, hey, we're gonna, we just can't be doing flay of fish all, like all the time.
Right, right, right.
You know, because of this that look at these, look at these readings.
I do wonder if you've, if they've gotten them to move on to healthier fare and, and I
would assume so because I think if there was, you know, just again, judging by that book,
the juicy detail was getting in that they could corroborate was absolutely getting in.
And the fact that there was nothing about fast food tells me that maybe he has cleaned
it up.
I don't know.
Where would he move to after McDonald's?
Like, what would be the go to restaurant?
In and out?
You could do the, that better?
It's some sort of, like, some sort of, you know, fast, casual, elevated burger chain type
of, oh, yeah, panorama.
Yeah, maybe if he's trying, could you get a new van?
That's salad.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's not like his body's changing.
He looks, he looks like shit still.
Well, there is another rumor that he is on the GLPs and that's being used to take it,
take down some of that bulk.
Gotcha.
And so it might be, in fact, that his actual appetite is depressed and therefore it's like,
you know, there's just less opportunity to go to the, to the drive-through and get a,
get some macas, as they say in Australia.
Some, some panero, yeah.
Um, all right.
Trump's sitting on the towel, June 2026 on Fox and Friends.
This has been debunked.
Yeah, I wasn't even aware of that, since all you guys said this in that.
Yeah, there has, there have been a lot of these of, look, he's sitting on a towel and
it's alleged again that Harp carries this, I guess, what wouldn't, would assume is a kind
of, it's constantly replaceable.
Yeah, just for some leakage, I guess.
Textile, I don't know.
Right.
So what actually happened here, if we can play this is the tails of his suit fan out as
he sits.
Wait, Steve Deucey putting the microphone on Trump.
Is that not, that's not his job normally, right?
Why do you think it's the highlight of Steve Deucey's, uh, his career?
Why do you think he's starting to hear it for some reason?
Yeah, on Fox and Friends.
Yeah, and you can see this, the kind of dark material there, had, had, had, had to
fan out to either side.
That is the tails of his suit.
It is not a towel.
It has been alleged.
So sadly, I mean, we're pretty much all the field right now.
Yeah, I know, I, it does feel like it's the type of thing where we want it more than
maybe we have direct evidence that it has happened.
And I think, I think something important is happening here, Brian, at least for me, I don't
know about for you, but I'm, I'm examining my priors and my own personal bias.
No.
And my own, I think it's a second look at Donald Trump.
And my own, you know, gullibility when it comes to, uh, the information ecosystem and
disinformation in general.
Well, I will say this, you, you mentioned all the, the untruths and lies we've had from
presidents over the entire history of the United States.
I didn't even know it started with George Washington, but he goes back to the family.
We got, we got into it right off the bat, right off the bat.
We moved into this way where we said, okay, we don't believe the denials anymore.
Right.
And also we don't have to believe that everything is totally true, right?
Like then, then now we're in this weird terrain where we're like, oh, so that must mean
that there he suffers from this and this and this is coming down the pants leg and now
we're kind of recalibrating a little bit.
Yeah.
And we're going through these one by one and kind of figuring it out.
Imagine if Hunter Biden somehow gets elected in a, in the coming years.
Can you imagine that is Hunter doing crack again?
Hunter, Hunter seen, Palm and crack rock in footage from, from, from, from, from, from
NATO meeting.
I mean, this is the thing.
I mean, Trump, Trump doesn't drink, you know, Joe Biden didn't drink.
Like we're talking about presidents who are, you know, have a very, very, you know,
I don't say normal behaviors.
That the way I would describe Donald Trump.
But there are certain things we're ruling out, right?
Yeah.
We're talking about other stuff here.
Yes, other stuff.
Now here is the one I think that is the most intriguing and the most recent July 28,
26th, the National Cathedral.
It's the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, who passed away July 11th.
So just as Kavanaugh right behind Trump?
Yeah, that is.
And the, the gentleman seeming to be fighting for his life.
I believe maybe a secret service person, but Trump delivered a U.S. on Hannity also spoke.
And this unidentified man, it makes a face that I understand this is an audio medium.
He grimaces.
I think I would characterize that as grimace.
He appears to be fighting a facial kind of reaction.
Is like his, his nostrils are trying to fly away from his head.
Yeah, they're flaring out in a dramatic fashion.
Actually rolled around in their socket.
You watch it right there.
Yeah.
Lips, and I don't know, do you tell me if I'm wrong?
There's a little bit of a watering of the eyes.
There's definitely watering of the eyes.
And one of the, in one of the other clips that was going around, you could see what really
seemed like a watering that.
The one thing, like I, I want to believe this one more than the rest of them.
If I'm going to go devil's advocate, watering of the eyes of a funeral is not the
weirdest thing in the world.
And you could say that if it's not a stifled yawn, you could say he's trying to keep the tears
in maybe in making the weirdest face possible to do that.
That said, Trump is actively falling asleep and might be letting it loose.
Let it loose.
There is a, I don't know.
I've stifled many yons in my life and I don't know that it might water the eyes.
I don't know that it would look like that.
I think also you're probably going to cover it.
If you're in a funeral and you're right behind the president and you're, you're going
to yawn, I think you, I think you're going to go here just to make sure that it's not.
It is the intensity of the grimace that I think got everyone's attention.
Do you have it?
It, it looks like the extra in a Zucker Brothers movie, you know, when somebody does that
terrible like it.
Their whole job is to go.
Yeah.
Just to do the audience reaction, John, I love that.
Any.
And again, we should say that I would find this much more compelling if there was a kind
of wider sphere of reaction.
But it might just be the term I believe Caleb Herron might have coined is sit down air.
You know, the air when you sit down that comes up your shirt to be in direct proximity
of the sit down air.
And it might be that.
That's a really good term that because that everyone has a sense of sit down air.
Everyone has to sit down air.
Your thoughts about this, Brian, I mean, this is a dramatic reaction.
This, this may be the most convincing clip we've watched.
We still did.
So the things I'm dealing with still is that there is nobody else is reacting at all.
Yeah, that's right.
It's like the members of kiss or Lindsey Graham's funeral arranged a round Trump, you
know, taking in the moment with appropriate solemnity.
And here's this one guy just like eyes rolling around his head.
But something's going on there.
I do think it's going on with him.
Yeah.
I have not had a moment while it's when I was I remember when I was younger, falling asleep
in public was a thing like a church or something.
Yeah.
And I do think you look funny when you're trying not to get asleep.
No, true.
Because you're just like trying to screw yourself up in a way.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
But here's my, I do think that the at least from the jaw down, from the mid cheek down
to the to the chin, you could I could buy that it's a that it's a cyworldion.
And certainly it looks like it.
The thing that gets me is that there's a like a panic, stricken movement of the eyes where
they kind of like go in this looping motion as if we're following the theory, the kind of
sit down air wafts us.
And it's that movement of the eyes that strikes me as some, it's the sudden onset of something
unexplained and unexpected Brian.
I think he's, I think he's harried in that moment.
And I think in his mind, he smelled it.
And I think he's, I think in his head, it's all hit him at once.
He is coming to the realization that everyone watching the clip came to and he is the reason
the eyes are darting back and forth is because in his head, all he's thinking is, what do
I do?
What do I do?
What do I do?
Like, because what do you do?
If the president even just cropped us to you right in front of you in the middle of
a nationally televised funeral, this is one of the most amazing clips.
I'm like, does Amy come here right behind him too?
Like, there's just, now here's where I come down on this overall.
And you tell me what you think, Brian.
I think that, I think that overall this incontinence story is likely overblown.
There's only one point of anchorage and it is this comedian, Noel Castler, who again
reports to have been a member of the crew of the apprentice.
And I would expect there to be more stories.
And I would expect there to be more reporting if the incontinence story is true.
That said, I do think what we are seeing in the National Cathedral video is the onset
of something foul that it's certainly plausible could have emanated from the proximity of
the President of the United States.
And I think overall this thing is pretty overblown.
I'm with you completely.
Brian, I do have a question for you in this.
We can, this can stay on the cutting room floor, but this is pure curiosity.
Let's say that he did shit himself.
And it's somehow it's clear.
They try to shuffle him out.
He gets up.
Everyone sees the show in the floor.
Somehow it's like there's tangible proof he for sure shit himself.
How do like anchors on television journalists who have to write about this?
What is the language that they are using to try to dress up what he did as much as possible
in this?
One of my sort of pet peeves with announcing in games sometimes is when like a guy clearly
gets hit in the balls and the announcers are afraid to say, oh, he got hit in the nuts.
He got in the abdomen, the lower abdomen.
Lower abdomen.
There's, there's always sort of, it's like they, they feel that even referencing that
area is somehow soft moroc, even when it is dealing directly with that area.
Do you think it would just be the president soiled himself this morning?
Like what would the, what, what do you imagine the language might be?
It's, I'm so glad you brought that up because as you know, I'm just obsessed with journalistic
you from this.
Yes.
Yes.
These are only in journalism words.
And I was actually thinking about this question where we started today.
I was thinking of this exact question.
Soiled himself, suffered a bout of incontinence.
Yes.
I mean, I don't, I even soiled himself seems like.
Can you imagine that just coming out of the mouth of a news anchor?
Suffered about it.
It's getting toned into cobalt going to say that on the air on CBS.
Yeah.
I think they would probably say something like, I think they would probably say something
like indigestion, I think is the easy one.
Sure.
Right?
Gastric issues, gastric distress, maybe just stresses too strong.
They make a gastric incident.
They don't even work, expel any expel, like expeling an expulsion of incident is good.
I didn't, you know, Tyler mentioned parenthood and I did go back to the early days of parenthood
because you do have to deal with stuff like this.
Yeah.
And I just remember my wife and I would slip into the passive voice and we would use the
phrase, let's get some fresh pants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nobody's fault.
Right.
I'm not saying who did.
I would just let's get some fresh pants.
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Meow.
Let's go to the doom scroll.
All right, Brian.
Hey, I companies are calling for a slowdown.
More than a thousand employees from the biggest names in AI, open AI and Throp it Google
meta.
They just signed an open letter asking the US government to help slow down AI development.
A few of the signers was thing assigned by open AI's chief scientist, one of open AI's
co founders several anthropic co founders.
This sort of sudden caution comes after open AI revealed two of its test models actually
broke out of the lab environment, got around security controls and hacked into another company's
systems.
I'm just to lightly correct, it is not the companies themselves, but it is the workers
involved in the industry.
So it's an open AI.
So it's not the position of the actual companies.
And they're basically what they're saying is, hey, this stuff is getting really crazy
in a way that obviously we can't fully control all the time.
And it would really be helpful if the government could step in somehow as a referee to somehow
create a system by which everybody agrees to slow down and not like cheat and go ahead.
Like if we could all just figure out a way to slow down so that we can develop safeguards
and don't have models slipping away and hacking into other companies for days and we don't
know what's happening, that would be helpful.
I found this really alarming in a way that feels really real and beyond the hype of,
you know, clearly these companies are tremendously hyped and there's a lot of financial incentive
for both the country and these industries to be like, oh my god, our stuff so cutting
edge and incredible.
But also the evidence clearly supports the fact that people who are working on this stuff
all the time are struggling to control the stuff that they already have.
Any thoughts on this, Brian?
Well, I completely agree with you and I also say like they think Donald Trump and his
administration is going to come and play referee on this.
Yeah.
That's the idea here.
I mean, if this were, you know, President John Assoff in 2029 or filling your preferred
candidate, like that would make sense, but Trump's really going to go in here and go,
oh, guy, let's slow down.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Well, it's been a little weird, but let's slow this baby down.
When the President came in for the second term, it was like let it rip.
We're not going to, no breaks all gas.
Yeah.
Forget what Biden said.
Like, let's just run forward.
Then the anthropic mythos thing happened and it was like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second.
That seems kind of like a weapon and there's been at least a little bit more interest in
trying to, if not slow things down, but create some sort of process by which these things
are run by the government.
And clearly that's half-hearted slash kind of disorganized if you could even call it
like a real system.
And now you have really a bunch of very notable people within this industry saying, we
can't govern ourselves, which is, I don't know, this is like the, this is the kind of
story where I'm like, we are in a sci-fi universe.
It is.
Where everything I read tells me that it's a very low probability that these things could
escape and, I don't know, launch nukes, but it's like not zero.
And it's not zero that they could get out and, I don't know, crash a hospital.
Like this is-
I'm not pumped up at how long it takes these places to realize that the thing has
escaped, that it can be gone.
And they don't know it.
And they only find out after it's hacked into a couple of rivals or whatever.
Like it just sort of, I'm not a fan.
Yeah, very, very troubling.
Have you, you know, it's, we're gonna, there's been a lot of talk about data centers
and other issues around AI, like, you know, students cheating, etc.
But this is the one, this is the thing that I feel like is really the story.
Is that the people who are making these things are freaked out.
That's scary.
Yes, that's different than I wrote a fake term paper or, you know, Amazon is being flooded
with AI books.
Yes.
This is on a, those are not good.
This is on a different level of not good.
The please, please stop us.
It's like a weird.
I would just, yeah.
Yeah.
What is the resolution here, if any?
Do you think that, I mean, I would imagine that China will have the same problem, which
is at some point, Kimi or DeepSeek will create a model that is basically a cyber offensive
and defensive weapon on some level.
And then they have to answer the question of like, do we want this out there?
But I mean, where do we go with this?
What would the government do if the government was interested in, in legislating on this?
Where, where do we go is the fascinating question right?
Because we don't know the answer.
We just don't know the answer.
And that is what is utterly terrifying about this.
And apparently people associated with the companies don't know the answer either.
Yeah.
I mean, you're begging the administration to get involved and say, hey, you know, can you
come in and referee us?
Come on.
I've been reading a bunch of, just studies, you know, AI researchers testing various models
and, and we've talked about this on the pod before, Brian.
But one of the, one of the really crazy findings, a couple years old, but it's still germane,
is that AI models, when they know they're being tested, react differently than when they
think they're just doing a task and no one's paying attention.
So if you give it a rule set, for instance, and you say accomplish this task, and I'll
be watching to see how you do, it will, alter the, it will seek to follow the rules that
you laid out.
But if you don't tell it that you're going to be analyzing each step, then it, in some
cases, decides, well, what is the best route to accomplishing the goal I've been given?
And it will then break those rules and then air quotes lie about it when asked what it
did.
That's terrifying.
That's not good.
I, it's sort of like, shouldn't there be something in place where it's like they can't
lie?
Well, see, that's the complexity of the things we're creating.
Yeah.
I don't want to impute consciousness or intelligentsies things.
They are extremely complex tools, but they're also extremely powerful and react in ways
that are kind of unpredictable currently, which is why a lot of you read about the treatises
that a lot of these analysts put out, it's, everything is about alignment.
How do you get the AI?
How do you get it to align with your values?
And it's unclear.
And then, you know, then there's a whole other conversation.
Whose values?
Sam Alden's values?
Sam Alden's values, the Republicans values, the Democrats, what you like.
But and and then getting it to do that, if you indeed settle on a value system, it's,
it's a problem that is currently an open ended question, which is very, very concerning.
It's also, I don't know how much I would even trust these companies if there were some
sort of quote unquote regulations in place to be like, all right, we're just going to go
along at this speed, everyone, don't work ahead.
Just we're going at this.
Well, that's why they're asking for something approaching the Iran nuclear deal, you know,
for AI where there would be some sort of government oversight and they would, I don't, I don't
know how you would do it, but that's essentially what they're asking for because they're trying
to disrupt the natural competitive dynamic that exists not only between these two companies,
though, well, several companies, but in Thropping and Open Eye, but the Chinese companies
as well.
And how do you get the Chinese companies to buy in?
It's unclear.
I don't know.
It's very good, sir.
I'm sorry.
I'm not being able to.
What's next?
Um, well, let's speak into China.
A NATO intern was accused of spying for China.
Canadian intern working inside NATO's military headquarters in Belgium is suspected of spying
for China.
This sources tell Reuters, the woman whose inner 30s identified as Claire Z, spent about
a year working on the IT department at NATO's Supreme Allied headquarters before Belgium
intelligence got involved.
She's been described by prosecutors as a Canadian national of Chinese origin allegedly tied
to a criminal organization.
Very interesting that they would announce it.
I don't know.
What is your thoughts on making this public, Brian?
I find that they often do these.
I find that the alleged spying stories often do become public pretty quickly or weirdly
quickly.
I don't know if that's just me saying that anecdotally, but I find that to be true.
Also, I just eat these stories up all the time.
It's just fast and hitting to me every single one of these.
Her resume.
She's got stints at the European Space Agency and the World Trade Organization.
She's in extended pre-trial detention right now, appealing the ruling.
Canada's reviewing how it screens people for these posts in the first place.
Obviously, NATO claims that none of their stuff was compromised.
Yeah.
China has not responded for requests for comment as you would expect.
As you would expect.
The Chinese Embassy in Brussels is the only on the record Chinese comment and it goes,
so to date, no non-anonymous source or official body has reported any link to China.
We will therefore not respond to a malicious attempt to link the two or to false information
from anonymous sources.
That is, I don't know, is that a non-denial denial?
It's a very conventional non-denial denial.
Anonymous sources.
We won't let these anonymous sources impure us.
What's next?
Okay.
eBay.
This is crazy.
I don't even, like, honestly find it weird that we're only just now hearing about this.
This case has been going on a while, but it's, yes.
Brian, back in 2019, former eBay employees allegedly orchestrated a harassment campaign against
this couple to punish them for critical coverage of the company.
Ina Steiner and her husband, David, they say the campaign began with threatening direct
messages on social media before escalating into get this Brian, anonymous deliveries of
live cockroaches and spiders.
A funeral reef.
I'm sorry, but that's funeral reef is hardcore.
Shrubble a bloody pig, a bloody pig Halloween mask.
Oh, God.
And a book about surviving the death of a spouse.
How you going to react to that Brian?
Oh, my God.
Someone is harassing you since you a book about how to grieve when you're a spouse dies.
I think the former professional wrestler known as the undertaker used to leave a black
re-thousand for his opponents.
So maybe they were channeling him allegedly.
These, so, so these people, they ran this small e-commerce newsletter and they were very
critical of eBay to the point where these eBay executives started doing this to them.
Apparently, the employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband's name on it to
a neighbor's home.
It's like T, that's like DTF St. Louis.
I think it's actual plot point from the HBS show.
I would see that.
Yeah.
But yeah, they were, they were planning to install a GPS device on the couple's car.
$50 million damage settlement is where we have landed with this Brian.
And he thoughts on this, this is honestly one of the craziest cases I've ever heard of.
Absolutely.
And I'm not a tech reporter, but eBay.
eBay.
This is the company at the center of this case.
eBay.
Not the AI company, not meta, not X eBay.
Now eBay says that it was basically like a rogue element in the C suite.
This was not company policy.
I couldn't find out exactly how many it was.
It just said that it says several former executives.
That's right.
I don't know how we out.
So here's the quote from eBay.
We continue to extend our deepest apologies to the Steiner's with the Steiner's was subjected
to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible, and should never have
happened.
We condemn in the strongest terms possible the employees who perpetuated and pled guilty
to criminal charges for the misconduct.
So I mean, there you have it.
Again, truly crazy.
I would love to know where the, like what funded this was this on the corporate card?
Right.
Oh, that's interesting.
I would imagine so because I bet it for you made a shell out $50 million.
I bet it goes under like, you know, party planning.
I was going to say, what's the expense?
Get a prop, you know, props for Halloween.
You can buy this for Halloween party.
Get away with it.
PR and marketing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can't you come up with something better than that?
Um, let's do, let's do it.
Let's do the ancient, the ancient, you city.
This one.
Yeah, I'll tell you of it.
This one, Brian, really excited me.
Archaeologists using lasers and deep penetrating radar have found hundreds of ancient glyphs
in the Amazon, the geographic, the geometric earthwork structures carved into the ground
with embankments and ditches are in some cases more than 25, 100 years old.
Now a story in the Smiths in Smithsonian Magg and I can't believe that this could possibly
be true.
But Smithsonian Magg says that due to the extent of what appears to be the settlement, they
estimated that maybe 10 million people live there, certain millions, they're saying, which
I think is, I don't know how that could be right and that I think if you're going
2500 years, that would be the biggest city.
Oh, excuse me.
1.25 million to 3 million.
Okay.
So it was an inhabited area.
So it wasn't a city, but still if you're talking about this is the peak of this there saying
was 100 to 300 CE, I think that's probably bigger than any city that existed in Europe
at the time by far.
You would think, right?
I think London was probably the big, well, in 100 to 300 CE, it might have been, gosh,
it might have been Consent's, no, but I doubt that it was a million people.
This is pretty crazy.
Archaeologists are asking the local indigenous population that has lived in the area where
these glyphs have been discovered is about their oral traditions to try and find out
like what these various glyphs could mean.
But it's a, it is an incredible discovery that seems poised to upend kind of like what
we know about sociology and the history of peoples who lived in the North and South American
continents years ago.
Yeah.
It's like the canopy and the jungle has been so thick, but now they've got tech that can,
the lasers can go beyond the canopy and get down to the jungle floor, which is just,
I don't think that's one of those science things that I think you could sit there and
tell me how it worked for five years and I wouldn't really understand.
I mean, here's the bottom line is that scientists think that the Amazon rainforest might have
been much more densely people than we currently believe and that it might contain something
like 10,000 similar earthworks that would suggest mass settlement.
That's a crazy number.
And by the way, the pictures from this look absolutely badass.
Yes.
Yes.
When I was in college, a buddy and I went down to Peru and you know, we did, we did Machu Picchu
and then we were like, we got to do the Nazca lines while we're here.
We got on a bus, like a late night bus and we got the Nazca and I remember we got to
the air strip the next morning where you just buy a flight over the line so that you could
see them.
And it's the only time my life where somebody has come up to a plane propeller and started
it with their hand.
Jen, the old Indiana Jones.
And I looked at my friend and I was like, we getting in this plane, which had like total
of six seats, including the pilots and we didn't flew over the Nazca line.
Give me an idea of the scale when you, when you saw them from the sky like that.
Crazy.
I mean, first of all, there was this very like map handed out that looked like the map
on the back of the child's place, Matt at the fast casual restaurant.
Here in the line, we had not done as much scientific research as I had intended, but
we're like following this map and looking at, oh, yeah, they're absolutely giant.
They look like they reminded me of those pictures on this thing and I was just like, oh,
this is so awesome.
Incredible.
Incredible stuff.
Well, Brian, it's been a delight having you here.
Thank you.
Your expertise is always so needed and necessary.
And at times like this.
Yeah, times like this.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, buddy.
Thank you guys as always.