Scientists Are Disappearing… Coincidence or Cover-Up?

Duds: something else.

Bright: Well, glad, glad she's doing better. I'm glad, glad to hear it. And I'm glad that you're back on the pod, man. Duds and I, think, you know, it was nice to, you know, two man show. We did well, but it's more pressure when it's just the two of us, you know, and we miss your comedic takes. We'll talk about something else. don't know. We could talk about He-Man. Do you guys know that there's a new He-Man ⁓ movie coming out?

Nilla: Yeah. No.

Duds: I did not know that.

Bright: All right. The preview I saw it when, when we went and saw project Hail Mary looks pretty good. I loved He-Man when I was growing up, when I w I mean, five, six. No, this is like a masters of the universe, kind of like the, the live action. it's actual people. So I think it'll, it'll appeal to adults and probably kids of a certain age.

Nilla: Yeah, that's Gotta have that.

Duds: Somebody's gotta be talking. ⁓ yes?

Nilla: Hmph.

Bright: You know, the only good thing probably was is that we weren't talking over each other as much. That's the only downside of, of obviously doing this virtually and you have three people on you can't, you don't always know what the other person's thinking and when they want to interject. ⁓ when it's two people, you can kind of read the other person a little bit, we miss, we miss your comedic takes Nilla. So we appreciate you hopping back on and riding the wave into what hopefully will be a hundred, ⁓ views here soon.

Nilla: Is it a kids movie, the new one, or? I don't Okay.

Duds: Live action.

Nilla: Gotcha. Mm. Yeah,

Duds: I think the He-Man movie back in the day was a live action one, it? Yeah.

Bright: I tried to get my kids into He-Man, but...

Nilla: yeah, that's right.

Bright: Dolph Lundgrim. Drago!

Nilla: Mm. So how was?

Duds: I haven't seen that since I was really, really little. Yeah.

Nilla: Ooh. So what's going on in the world?

Bright: You know, from Rocky, from Rocky four. Yeah.

Nilla: That was that movie, The Hail Mary.

Bright: Well, what do you, well, uh, so I've got a topic. I've certainly, I certainly have a topic. Uh, there's stuff going on in the world that we could always talk. Um, you know, ceasefires and the straight of her muse or however you say it and crude oil prices and stock market. That's all boring stuff, but have you guys heard? Oh, I know we only have one hour today, by the way. I know we run long. We started late tonight. So. ⁓ it was, it was really good. you know, I, I know I posted a review on the website, Nilla. Did you read it? All right. Now, Nilla, you've been, you've been gone for like two weeks, you know, so first, ⁓ first week back. Yeah. Cause we missed, ⁓ we missed two spring break weeks. You're right. So probably like a month or something. You've been on the pod, but yeah, you gotta go check out the website. ⁓ duds. What'd you think of the review?

Duds: You didn't read the review?

Nilla: Okay.

Duds: I read it.

Nilla: Yeah. Yes.

Duds: I did?

Nilla: That's right. Which actually was three or four weeks, I think. That's right. Yeah.

Duds: Boring. I thought it was pretty good. I mean, you sold me. I'm gonna go see it.

Bright: We're, going for the 10 o'clock hard stop. Right. I think that, I think that's fair. I think we can get this in. just be a little bit more on point tonight, but all right. So the main deep dive, if you will, that I pulled up were the missing and dead scientists. Have you guys heard about the story at all, or am I throwing something new at you? This is something. So it's been going on for a while now, but it's certainly picking up traction because more and more. Yeah. Yeah, it's, worth it. I actually have it here. They're updated numbers. If you give me a second, $432 million in the box office.

Duds: Sounds pretty good.

Nilla: Hmm. It's... It looks interesting, like I'm not sure if looks good or like it just it's weird looking though.

Bright: Yeah, it's pretty good.

Duds: How many weeks is that?

Nilla: Like which ones? Like with as far as...

Bright: It's very good. The, you know, the book always it's way better. The book is way better. The movie it's two and a half hours long and they still have to kind of rush it a little bit because there's just so much to cover. So there's a couple of spots in the, in the book where, you know, they spend 60 pages on a problem. And then the movie it's like 60 seconds, you know, and you're like, Oh, what happened to that? You know, but, scientists that work for the U S government are just fucking dying or going missing completely randomly. ⁓ and there's a lot of conjecture. I'm sure it's a larger conspiracy. You know, some of them are probably legit. ⁓ some of them there's questions. So I was like, ⁓ you know, we'll, we'll talk a little bit of that. The Will Cain show. If you watch that on Fox news right before the five.

Duds: ⁓ yeah. Yeah, I did hear this. Same thing in The Martian.

Bright: Yeah. It's the same with the Martian and the Martian, skipped a whole, you know, subset subsection of the book. They just skipped it. It wasn't even in the movie. Yeah. So supposedly they had like a four and a half hour director's cut. yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was good. It's, it's definitely worth it. It was great to see in the theaters and it was fun because it had a little like community vibe to it. Like, I think I mentioned this maybe on the pod. I don't remember duds, but there was a part where.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Nilla: Well, two and a half hours for a movie is already, you know.

Bright: He's been doing ⁓ a deep dive on this. And then I had it last week, duds. I had it in the wheel. It's just a little segment, but I'm like, you know what? There's enough here that we could probably, we could probably go into some specifics and say, Hey, maybe.

Nilla: Bye.

Duds: Can't wait to see it.

Nilla: Okay.

Duds: Some of this was linked to the Los Alamos, NASA.

Bright: Yeah. NASA, Los Alamos. Absolutely. Yeah. So if you want to, if you want me to give you the, the spin, this is, this is interesting. Let's hear it. All right. Okay. So over the past few years, multiple us scientists, many that are tied to defense, energy, nuclear research, they're either dead or disappeared or have been found dead, ⁓ under some, ⁓ You know, crazy stuff is happening in the whole theater. Just went silent. Like it may be in the review. Yeah. Maybe that's what it was like. Spoiler alert. I didn't, I didn't spoil anything other than everybody just shut the fuck up. It was like, what is going to happen? We hope everything works out. Like it was fun. It was a fun movie. Yeah. Yeah. And it went right along with our, our topic last week. ⁓ hopefully you listened to the pod, even though you weren't on it last week. I know you had.

Duds: Quite a coincidence. think you mentioned that in your review.

Nilla: Heh.

Duds: Let's hear it. spoiler alert on the review note.

Nilla: Yeah. Well... Hmm. Yeah,

Duds: The suspense.

Bright: Questionable circumstances, if you will. Right. So the main question here, and I'm not sure that we're going to solve this today, but is this coincidence or is this, is this something bigger? Right. Are we under attack? Right. Or is it, is it foreign adversaries that are taking us out? Are they, you know, are they looking to stall our, ⁓ you know, our technology growth or scientific growth? I, you know, I don't know.

Nilla: ⁓ yeah.

Bright: I know you had a medical emergencies, ⁓ with the family. ⁓ but we talked about Artemis too, and, which is still going on, you know, they're on their way home now, but yeah. Yeah. And it was the, it was actually the most viewed episode ever of the NFN peep off.

Duds: Ha

Nilla: ⁓ Yeah, coming back tomorrow.

Duds: ⁓ wow. Probably.

Nilla: This is probably because it was about Artemis, ⁓

Bright: Maybe, maybe it's because we're deviating from politics a little bit. mean, Doug, doesn't I still hit on some politics. So multiple scientists linked to NASA, Los Alamos, and US research labs, ⁓ like I said, have either died or gone missing over the last couple of years. And they've been sudden deaths, missing persons, and very limited public details. So now that people are asking questions, there's no answers. The government won't say, the local municipalities won't say, no autopsies are being performed.

Nilla: Yeah.

Duds: I have heard that ⁓ Artemis 2 might be fake.

Bright: Yeah Yeah, I don't know. think at, at this point, I don't think there's any fake in this, right? Like people can probably track it with their telescopes and all kinds of smart phones. Right. Right. Supposedly. Well, you know, there was a lot of that, you know, people were, they were sending back pictures and they were like, guys, this is it. It is over. Like the flat Earthers, like this is proof. You can say what you will about the sixties and the seventies, but like, this is real.

Duds: It's all staged. They staged it.

Nilla: Well, supposedly. The earth is flat, right?

Bright: You know, all kinds of crazy stuff. you know, individually, you might be like, ⁓ this is a one-off, but once you start putting all of these together, you start wondering is something bigger at play.

Nilla: Yeah

Bright: It is, it is a sphere.

Duds: Yeah, you gotta wonder if the government like who who does discovered this these links, you know to all these people and that there was some connection. That's what you say.

Bright: That's what I say. So Nilla, what's been going on? How are you?

Nilla: you ⁓ Oh, not bad, not too much. The dog, it still doesn't know what it was, know, basically, know, 500 something dollars later, you know. They didn't do a blood test, you know, so that was next. But I was like, I mean, what are you going to come back with, know, cancer or like what, know, I mean, I don't know. So she was fine a day later. Yeah, yeah. Well, they gave her fluids, which they inject under her back, like in her skin.

Bright: Honestly, it was probably the, internet community, you know, ⁓ started putting them together. Well, I'm sure they're aware of it, right? Yeah. Are they in.

Duds: Right. So is the government even investigating this or do they even, are they even aware of it? You know,

Nilla: I'm sure they're aware. They're either behind it, obviously.

Duds: Well, aware of the right. That's the question. If they're, if they're aware of it and they're not investigating it, then they're, it must be in on it. So.

Bright: Has she gotten better though? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they certainly could be investigating it, but again, that's not in the public eye. Like they're not, they might be investigating it behind the scenes and maybe they've determined that there's nothing here, but they're not telling us.

Nilla: Well, alright. Mm-hmm. Right. It's like this big bubble of fluids, kind of like an IV, except for they give it to you at once and then your body absorbs it over time basically, right? So you don't have to sit there for the whole hour long an IV would take. And then they also gave her an anti-nausea shot, which was supposed to last 24 hours. She wasn't eating, which is not normal for her. She's very food motivated. And then a day or something later, basically, she was fine. And I was like, okay, not really sure what that was, but.

Duds: That's what I'm wondering, like, did they make that connection? Did they make the connection or did the internet do that? Sometimes the internet, you know, the social media works faster than the...

Bright: Yeah, right. Well. Right. Absolutely. And if you just watch the new acting acting attorney general, I don't remember his name. ⁓ but the guy that, that has kind of taken over for Pam Bondi, he had a press conference earlier this week about the, all the fraud case of which we've covered on this podcast. ⁓ so all the, you know, Nick Shirley stuff coming down from Minnesota and California and all this stuff. And, know, they're asking all these questions and he was like, Hey,

Duds: investigators.

Bright: Well, at least she's, at least she's doing better.

Nilla: Yeah, yeah, so it was fun. Mm-mm.

Bright: Like we don't necessarily know this stuff is going on until the public tells us about it. Then the public tells us about it. And then we send our investigators and our prosecutors out. But like we don't, so how else are they going to know? And I think that could be the same here, you know, cause again, individually, no big deal. But once you start being like, okay, this is a Los Alamos guy. This is an MIT, ⁓ professor. This is, you know, three NASA scientists.

Duds: Right. Well, yeah. How else are they going to know?

Nilla: Mm.

Bright: all related to jet propulsion and all of a sudden they're all dead or missing? It's like, wait a minute.

Duds: Yeah, you almost think that there would probably be like somebody at the business or in the families that's like, Hey, why are all these people that we know dying? You know, let's alert the authorities and get some kind of investigation going. And if they all have top secret knowledge, that makes it even more questionable.

Bright: Yeah, you would think so. Well, and if this happened during like world war two or something like that, and a bunch of people, you know, that were working on the Manhattan project, all of a sudden just went missing or died. You don't think they would have been like, it's the fucking Russians. You know, of course they would have, you know, so like in this instance, why are they not looking at the Chinese? Why are they not looking at the Russians, the North Koreans? You know, we've already seen, and even recently there's been some people that they've busted for.

Nilla: No. Yeah, yeah.

Bright: ⁓ for espionage type stuff. We even talked about the one on the podcast that was related to Missouri. If you remember, it was that, that Chinese guy that was running a, he was running a scam in the state of Missouri. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean this

Duds: ⁓ yeah, I think so. So let me ask you this, do you know how the people that have been confirmed dead, how did they die? Are they questionable deaths? Are they suspicious?

Bright: Well, I got all, I got all of it. You ready? You ready to go into it? All right. They're of course they are. Well, so I got, I got all the primary ones. There's eight primary ones and there's other ones that are speculative. Right. People are like, are these connected? But I got the eight primary ones. And before we dive into that, just a couple of other quick things. Right. So we're talking about Los, Los Alamos, which is a major nuclear facility.

Nilla: Yeah. Well I said yeah.

Duds: Okay.

Bright: We're talking about NASA and aerospace, ⁓ engineering and, and that kind of a thing, ⁓ space research, defense contracts, classified worked advanced tech development. And the fact of the matter is, is that again, many of these deaths are either suicide, maybe, right? Accidents, missing people, undetermined. And then the problem is the main problem is again, the government.

Nilla: next

Bright: is not giving out the public details. It's all classified information. So when the public goes to look at it, we're not getting the full details. So yeah, of course not. Right. So I got eight scientists, eight strange cases and one big question. So let's, let's start. I've got number one, Frank Mewald, Mewald. He worked for NASA. He was a principal researcher and he died in Los Angeles on July 4th.

Nilla: Yeah, sounds about right.

Duds: Of not.

Bright: coincidence right off the bat, July 4th, 2024. So he was six. Going back a little bit, but this is probably the oldest one. The rest of them start in like 2025, 2026. So this is probably the oldest one and probably the one that kind of kicked everything off. Um, so he was 61. So not necessarily like a young man, but still early, you know, still young. And, um, you know, right off the bat, that kind of gets people kind of buzzing like, okay, 61. So it was obituary.

Nilla: ⁓ this is going back a little while. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. NNNN Sure. Yeah.

Bright: ⁓ disclosed his death, like, okay, he died, but there was no autopsy performed and no cause of death. Right off the, like, so you say that this guy died, but everybody gets a cause of death. So how does this guy not has a cause, a cause of death, at least not one that's been released. So again, they might, they might know, but they're not telling anybody.

Nilla: No cause of death. Yeah

Duds: You think,

Nilla: Yeah.

Bright: So again, that doesn't necessarily prove anything in and of itself, but no autopsy, no public case. He worked for NASA. you know, other than that, okay. Let, let's see. That's number one. All right. Number two, Anthony Chavez disappeared. So this guy disappeared in May of 2025 in New Mexico. And the reports are that he vanished after going for a walk, just out for a walk.

Nilla: It's weird, but yeah.

Bright: But here's the thing of court. Well, oh, and that's later. got, got another one. That's later. All right. All right. But guess what? He left his wallet, his keys, his phone, all left behind. So he went for a walk with any of those things. Like how often do you go for a walk without your phone?

Nilla: He was probably abducted by aliens. ⁓ sorry. Always.

Duds: It only does. Only to your death, probably.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. So right off, right off the bat, you're like, okay, this isn't so much a guy just go missing. This is like the, opening of a Netflix, you know, series or something like that. Right? Like little too coincidental. guess what? There's still nothing. Nobody knows what happened to this guy. Just gone.

Nilla: If you know ahead of time would.

Duds: You

Nilla: Mm-hmm.

Duds: I just abandoned everything he had and gone.

Bright: Yeah, right. Yeah. So they don't, they don't know there that nothing's been said about it. The guy's just missing kind of like Savannah, Savannah Guthrie, which we also talked about on the podcast gone, you know, they're never going to figure it out. Never, never to be found again. The only problem is, that

Duds: When did he go missing?

Nilla: Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Duds: never to be found. Yeah, ⁓ what's that percentage of missing people that never get recovered or murders and never get solved? It's extremely high, I think, isn't it? All right, continue on. I'll look that up.

Nilla: question. Like what are you talking about? Like 40 %? Yeah, probably.

Bright: Like if you're not found in the first like 48 hours, that's basically over. You're screwed. You know, you were not going to be found. And so that's something they say, like if you're ever are kidnapped, you know, like let's say you're, you're in a trunk of a car or something like that. Like you got to escape before they take you wherever they're going to take you. Because once you're taken somewhere, it's over. Right.

Nilla: Yeah. Well, yeah, because it's most likely going to be somewhere like off the grid, like in the middle of nowhere. No chance.

Bright: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to do whatever you can to get out right away. So even if it doesn't feel safe at the time, it ain't going to be any better later. So don't get, know, you're going to get, you're going to get something bad is happening two hours from now in the middle of nowhere. Right. ⁓ All right. So the next one, while does looks that up, Monica Reyes or Reza Reza, Monica Reza aerospace engineer.

Nilla: soon. Right. Yeah, right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hmm.

Bright: Again, another big high profile job. Uh, she was connected to NASA, so maybe she didn't work for them directly, but she was like subcontracted out and, know, had, uh, worked in advanced rocketry. Right. So rocketry, you know, so another, another big job went missing of June 22, 2025, June 22nd, 2025.

Nilla: Yeah, interesting. When was the second person? What date was that?

Bright: May 2025.

Nilla: Okay, gotcha.

Duds: You know, having ⁓ skills in advanced rocketry is probably very valuable information to have too.

Bright: You would think so. Right. We talked about this on the pod last week does we talked about a project paperclip. Right. Or two weeks ago, one of the couple, one of it was just us about how after world war two, the United States took all the German scientists that were working on their rocketry and stole them, gave them citizenship, protected them from the Nuremberg trials and all of that. and, and then they, they're the ones that helped us go to the moon. I was probably last week's episode. You know, and they were all freaking Nazis. You know, we, just, we just took all these Nazis and we're like, is forgiven. Just help us with our own endeavors. You know, but so who's to say that didn't happen here with, with Monica or Anthony, you know, so she was in, ⁓ Los Angeles and she was hiking the national forest. One of the, the California's national forest and reports.

Nilla: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: Probably a bobcat got her.

Nilla: Yeah, She probably didn't have her phone or did she?

Bright: A bobcat. Yeah. Speaking of, well, I don't know. The biggest thing was that she was hiking with her friends. She was hiking with her friends and she was only a short distance away from them. Gone.

Duds: Well, that sounds like an animal or something got her. Or an alien.

Nilla: Wow. I don't know, think they killed her.

Bright: An alien, an animal, Chinese person, Chinese spy. don't know, but you brought up a Bobcat. So now is a good time as ever early in the podcast. ⁓ we got to give a shout out happy 42nd birthday to a Bobcat man. You know, one of these days he is going to join this pod. swear. ⁓ you know, I w I'm not going to go that far. Yeah. All right.

Nilla: To the Bobcat, man. That's right. Maybe.

Duds: Should we sing him happy birthday?

Bright: So hopefully he's listening to the podcast. If he's gonna listen, should listen early, so we better get it out.

Nilla: Thanks.

Bright: So she goes missing. ⁓

Duds: Yeah, I think he said about 20 minutes. He shuts it off. It's got a 20 minute limit.

Nilla: Well, it depends on time too though. If it's like eight o'clock at night, forget about it. It's done for.

Bright: ⁓ you know, don't care how people listen to this podcast. They could fall asleep to it as long as they're listening. You know, that's, that's all that matters.

Nilla: That's right. Yeah.

Duds: Maybe that's what people are using it for. It's a good thing to help them go to sleep.

Bright: There's nothing wrong with that. That's most of my podcasts I put on and I fall asleep. Now, if they're really good, it delays my sleep. And if they're really, really good, I go back and I listen to them the next day. So that's, that's when, know, if, if they're just, ⁓ if they, yeah, if they just help you go to bed, that's still a win in my book, you know, and it's still listen that you still get made. still get paid money. Maybe I don't know.

Nilla: Mm-hmm.

Duds: That's how you measure podcast quality,

Nilla: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: Hey, whatever works, right? still accomplishing something, right? Helping people sleep at night is a great thing. Yeah.

Bright: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nilla: Yeah. People will pay money for that for sure. I yeah.

Bright: Yes, they will. Oh, there are apps. There are a hundred percent are apps that are designed just to help you fall asleep. So yeah. Well, why would you do that? Well, you can just put on a podcast and I don't know. I usually I put on the resudo show. Yeah. Can you do a humpback humpback whale humpback whale sound? You can do dolphins. Give us a, give us your best dolphin sound. Let's hear it.

Duds: Yep.

Nilla: Yeah, like the sound machine, like different sounds.

Duds: We can just start making sounds. We'll start making the white noise sounds. ⁓

Nilla: Maybe. Probably. I'm pretty good at sounds actually. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ that was a good one. Ooh, I can't do it on demand on cue like this, you know, with the pressure. mean, only in the pool.

Bright: You got to be in the water. That's I was going to say. Got to be in the water. Yeah. All right. Okay. ⁓ all right. So the sheriff's office reported that again, she, she was missing. They were concerned about her wellbeing. Homicide investigators were involved, but nobody, never, never found her just out hiking with her friends. And all of a sudden.

Nilla: So her friends don't know and they were not, I they were questioned I guess obviously, but that's it.

Bright: I don't know, I mean that's pretty freaking weird. Yeah, pretty freaking weird.

Duds: That's a really odd one. You'd think that her friends would have some kind of idea of what happened.

Bright: Yeah. So that's what makes me think that somebody like, literally like Homer Simpson came out of the bushes and like grabbed her and pulled her in, you know, something like that. All right. That's number three. Number four, Melissa Cassis, Melissa Cassis also Los Alamos employee disappeared June 26th, 2025. So this is only four days difference, right? months later.

Nilla: I mean if you fell or something like that you're gonna make a noise or...

Duds: Yeah, something.

Nilla: Hm. Mm-hm.

Bright: No major breakthrough in the investigation. One report says she vanished after returning home from a walk toward the forest. She was walking towards the forest. Yeah. ⁓ and here's the big one. Her phone had been wiped. It had been, it had been factory reset and completely wiped.

Nilla: Wow, what's up with the walks?

Duds: All these health nuts going for walks. ⁓ that's odd. Hmm.

Nilla: That's a very odd idea.

Bright: Yeah. Something, something's going on. And yeah. So we got again, June 26th, 2025, June 22nd, 2025, May, 2025. And then the one before that was July 4th, 2024. But that's three and. Yeah. Let's, get a murder, a murder board going here. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Hey, have we solved this? Uh, our podcast would skyrocket.

Duds: So far that's one of the most suspicious things.

Nilla: Mm-mm. Should we make like a chart, you know, the dates?

Duds: We should get a board. Yeah, murder board. Love a good murder board. ⁓ No shit, yeah.

Nilla: Wasn't there a podcast that did that? It was like some women and they were talking about murders.

Bright: You know. Caroline and I, went and saw the one up and vanished. I can't remember. may have even talked about it on the pod before. ⁓ we went and watched the guy at the pageant, ⁓ which is actually where close to where I was for my event tonight. We were at pinup bowl right next to the pageant. ⁓ but we, I had listened to up and vanished, which was a great podcast. I highly recommend, especially going all the way back and they had in theory solved the murder, ⁓ of this beauty queen that went missing.

Nilla: Maybe. Mmm. Wow.

Bright: And it had been like 20 something years. Nobody had ever solved it. And this podcaster more or less, you know, solved it. ⁓ then he went on the road and we went and saw it. It was pretty good. It was, it was well worth it. So you never know. You solve it. You solve a true crime. You big mystery. You're going viral. Right. So this is our opportunity. All right. Next we have William Neil, Neil McCasland.

Nilla: That's crazy.

Duds: Hmm, interesting.

Nilla: Yeah. Yeah.

Bright: He was a retired air force general and he disappeared in Albuquerque from his house, February 27th, 2026.

Duds: Albuquerque.

Bright: Yeah. Albuquerque. know breaking bad. Flouribus, you know, yeah. A lot of bad things happen in Albuquerque. You know, it's, it's no DTF St. Louis, but it, you know, something it's another, another throwback, right? ⁓ anyhow, again, left behind his phone, left behind his keys, ⁓ was previously in charge of an air force research laboratory and oversaw.

Duds: Mm-hmm. How does that all tie in? So that seems like a connection, like if people are leaving behind their personal items in these cases. Now it sounds like that's a connection, for sure.

Bright: Of course it is. It. Yes. It's, it's weird, right? That's like three, three out of the four. A lot of the stuff has been down in that area, you know, well, and of course Los Alamos, you know, of course those things are located down there. ⁓ but yes, you know, in the desert. So odd. This guy oversaw $2.2 billion in, of a science and technology program. ⁓ I mean, that's, that's, that's a lot of money. He's clearly in the no. Right. Um, and then this is the one Nilla that had UFO related rumors. So some people said that he worked for area 51, that the wife came out and said that that is not the case. But of course her husband's her husband's missing her husband's gone. Right. So I, you know, I don't know, maybe this guy, maybe this guy was, uh, he was a UFO guy or something.

Duds: She killed him. That's odd, Yeah, right.

Bright: Well, yeah, that is true. That is true. So, but once you get into UFO stuff, you know, I don't know. All right. This one, the number six of eight. This one is where this happened relatively recently too. And this one's messed up. So this was the MIT professor Nuno Lerero. He was, ⁓ from Portugal and he was a leading figure in plasma physics. Infusion research. That's pretty big stuff. Plasma physics and fusion research. He was killed in December, 2025. Now you guys heard about the story. I guarantee it, but what makes this story kind of crazy and it almost was overshadowed, maybe on purpose. The guy that killed him was the Brown University killer. So if you remember this, so this guy went and he shot up

Duds: ⁓ yeah.

Bright: Brown university, I think he killed like two students, one of which was the head of the Republican, um, charter or committee at the campus. So people right off the bat, you were like, is this politically motivated? But then he went and got on a train and went to Boston and then killed this MIT professor. So like, what, like, why did he, there's

Duds: Right. Yeah, definitely like a planned attack on certain people. Wasn't just a random, you know, attack.

Bright: planned attack. Oh, a hundred percent. what like, it seems unconnected at, at the point, like why shoot up Brown university and then drive two hours and he's gone. No, but as much as his laptop died or something, he typed out, hopefully he gets back on man. Um, we'll see what happens, but yeah, this is, this is a yeah.

Duds: And he's gone. He timed out. He timed out. I remember hearing about that when this shooting happened, that there was a lot of questions about like, why this particular person? Like, this doesn't seem random. And then maybe that's when people started to tie all these other murders, or missing people and deaths together.

Bright: It wasn't, yeah. Maybe, maybe this was, you know, cause again, this, this is at the end of 2025. Now the only thing here is that the murderer was also, also from Portugal. And I guess it went to school with this guy. So they're saying maybe this was some kind of, um, you know, occupational jealousy. You know, like he was jealous that his friend or former classmate made it big. And was this big MIT professor?

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: But it doesn't explain the Brown shooting, you know, and that was the Brown shooting is some kind of distraction that made the news. then this MIT professor just happens to be collateral damage.

Duds: Yeah, I don't know about that. That seems pretty odd to me.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. It's odd. It for sure. that.

Duds: It's the problem is you're, you're dealing with people that are willing to do that. It's like, you're trying to put yourself in their mind. It's probably going to do that.

Bright: Now, now you're cutting out, Doug. So we lost Nilla. was first. So I missed, I missed what you just said. Um, but I, I don't, I don't know what, what's the, what's the, what's the technology these days? I bet you it's because all these freaking MIT professors are dying and our internet's getting slow down. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Uh, text, text Nilla ask him if he's coming back on while I run through, uh, the next one. So the next one is Carl.

Duds: Yeah, you were frozen too. It's all these streamers, everybody's streaming.

Bright: grill mirror, number seven, he was an astrophysicist whose work was reportedly supported by NASA and linked to, and media coverage to tracking aerospace applications. And he was shot to death on his front porch. And what was more or less just a random shooting. Now there is somebody that's been charged, but if you watch the X-Files, you, yeah, you know that

Duds: Yeah. Just so happens.

Bright: There's no random shootings on your porch. Like this probably targeted.

Duds: Right. Only you just randomly walked up and shot you. if none of these other incidents were occurring, that might be something that could happen. But now you tie it in with these, and it's starting to look even more fishy.

Bright: Exactly. Yes. And this, again, this was, this was in February of this year. So this is relatively recent. And even if they did catch this guy, he's probably a Patsy.

Duds: They're all patsies.

Bright: They're all Patsies. All right.

N: Thank

Duds: Who's the kingpin?

Bright: Woody Harrelson.

N: I knew it was coming.

Bright: Did anybody get that joke? That's a good joke, man. That was a great movie. Kingpin is highly underrated. That is a fantastically funny movie. And I went bowling tonight, actually. Went bowling tonight. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, we were at, we were at pinup bowl. Shout out, shout out to pinup bowl. ⁓ started a little rusty, ⁓ but picked it up in the, the back half of, of my, I only got one, one round in.

Duds: Who's behind all this? It is good movie.

N: That's true.

Duds: Is that what you were doing? That's why we started so late.

N: The lane's dry or?

Duds: About 260, 270.

Bright: No, I just had to figure, I just had to figure out my spin a little bit. The first, probably like three frames, I was just going a little too left. So I had to correct my throat. You know, you haven't bowled in a year or something, two years. I don't know the last time I bowled, you know, you gotta, gotta get used to it. The lanes were not dry. I was using a 10 pound ball. Uh, yeah. Well, I've noticed that I get, I get more spin with the lower.

N: Anyway.

Duds: Lanes weren't dry though.

N: Yeah. ⁓

Duds: Ten powder, Lightweight. Sure.

N: Yeah, that's true.

Bright: with the lower weight. If I started with a 12 and right off the bat, just kind of like, I didn't get enough spin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: that higher velocity.

N: I like the 12.

Duds: get you a little more, a little more group or a spin on it and curve that ball around. Get those seven, 10 splits.

Bright: Yep. Yep. That's right. So I don't know. Now I now I got the feeling I got to get out back out there. You know, I to hit hit up the lanes again.

Duds: So what was your score tonight?

N: Mm-hmm.

Bright: my score tonight. don't know that I want to say cause it's, it's, did break a hundred. We'll, we'll say that much. We'll say that much. But my all time best score is two 20. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty good. Now I was like a sophomore in high school when that happened and I'll give a shout out. I'll give a shout out to, to, to Mark. I won't say his last name per se. Nilla Nilla is in here twice. All of a sudden.

Duds: Did you break 100? Okay.

N: hehe Really? ⁓ you

Bright: I don't know what that was. The aliens. I'll give a shout out to Mark. So I was with Dan and Mark in high school and they were both were like, we're done. We're not going to bowl anymore. And I was like, come on, I want to do one more. was feeling it. So I bowled one by myself. I didn't have anybody else bowling with me. So it was just me, me, me. And I bowled the 220. I think I marked every frame except for one. And that was my

Duds: aliens Does that count though if you just play by yourself?

Nilla: Sure, why not? I mean, he's got, is this?

Bright: Yeah, it counts. Of course it does.

Duds: I feel like that's not a legit competition. You have to be bowling against somebody for it to be an official score, don't you? Or else it's just practice.

Bright: I mean, I'm... This was not official, I'm just saying. I'm not putting myself in the bowling hall of fame or nothing.

Nilla: I don't know. You're right.

Duds: It doesn't go in your official bowling stats.

Nilla: Well apparently not, you only had a 220 I mean.

Duds: I don't want your bowling card to say that you've rolled a 220.

Bright: I'll take 220. One of these days I'll get back up there again, but anyhow. Okay. All right. Number eight, Jason Thomas. He was a pharmaceutical researcher at Novartis. Disappeared. Yeah. Do you know it? Yeah. ⁓ okay. All right. All right. Disappeared in December, 2025 and his body was recovered from a Massachusetts lake.

Nilla: Any.

Duds: The Vardis, yeah. Mm hmm. AJ used to work there.

Nilla: Yeah.

Bright: March 17th, 2026. That was pretty recent. St. Patrick's day. And, um, again.

Nilla: How long was he missing?

Duds: He was in a lake. Body was in a lake. Just drown. Nothing.

Bright: Found in a lake, found in a lake, no re-

Nilla: How long, when did he go missing?

Bright: You went missing in December found in March. Yeah. So like four, four months.

Duds: But no bullet holes in him, he was just drowned.

Nilla: You're right.

Bright: It doesn't really, it says no foul play was suspected. How convenient.

Nilla: Come on. He went for a walk and fell in the lake, you know? Didn't have his phone. mean... ⁓

Bright: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Happens, happens all the time. Just a random drowning. Like, what do you think? What do you think your odds are? What are your odds of drowning in a lake randomly?

Duds: It happens all the time. Left his phone, left his car keys.

Nilla: Yeah.

Duds: Pretty low. ⁓ Can't even be 1%.

Nilla: Man, I don't know, like 1 %? I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Bright: Pretty low. ⁓ You know, like if you're. No, it's gotta be less than that. If you're at the ocean, you know, like you could get caught in a riptide or, you know, attacked by a shark or something, but like in a lake that you're not like actively swimming in.

Nilla: Yeah, yeah. Right. Was the toxicology report? Well, you know, didn't do one, you know? Yeah, why not? Interesting.

Duds: Certainly not without file play.

Bright: Right. Come on. Like, unless this was, well, that I don't have that information, but.

Duds: trying to do a little night swimming.

Bright: Yeah. All right. That was number eight. So that is all of them. That's the eight main desk. And again, there are more supposedly, but those are the eight that people are like, wait a minute. These people are tied to NASA Los Alamos, defense contracting, aerospace, ⁓ engineering, advanced rocketry. You know, they've either disappeared randomly in front of friends with no, no cell phones, no keys, no wallets on them hiking alone.

Nilla: Mm.

Bright: Something just it doesn't pass the smell test something's up

Duds: Thumbs up, thumbs up.

Nilla: Well, the person whose phone was wiped clean, let's just say for the fun of it, ⁓ don't you still need, unless they didn't have any sort of password on their phone in general, don't you have to get into the phone originally unless you're like some sort of crazy hacker, but you know.

Bright: Well, if you, if you have them with you, could do the face scan. could do the thumb, the thumb prints, you know? So now I've heard that that doesn't actually work. If you're, if your thumb has been chopped off or if it's dead, that it only works if it's actually like alive and there's blood. Yeah. Or same. Yeah. Yeah. What would, if you were really drunk, I don't, I wouldn't want to say I'm really drunk yet.

Nilla: ⁓ or the fingerprint. It's true. It's true. Yeah. You're dead. right, right. Or live eyes. Your eyes have to be, you know.

Duds: be a live thumb.

Bright: But you know, I've had a couple of beers. If your eyes are like, ⁓ you know, would that work? got dead eyes. had Tiger Woods eyes, Tiger Woods. If you had Tiger Woods eyes, are you able to open up your cell phone?

Nilla: Hmm... I dunno.

Duds: your facial recognition.

Nilla: You were talking about like what's the chances of accidentally you know drowning in a lake. What about there was a second story that was it earlier this year or about that college kid who again like you know ended up in a was it a lake and died a river yeah and that was the second time right there was another big story like last year sometime same thing happened what's going on there you know?

Duds: down Tennessee, wasn't it? Yeah.

Bright: The river. Nashville. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the one with, with the story that really hit big, ⁓ that he was from the zoo. He was a Mizzou student. So it was really big here locally. And I was in Nashville shortly thereafter for the Pearl Jam concert. ⁓ and that was about a year ago. It just popped up on my Facebook. So I know, and it happened a little bit before that. So we're probably talking like February of last year. ⁓

Nilla: Yeah, that's right. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Duds: Did you feel like you were gonna drown in the lake or the river?

Bright: And no, no, I felt good. But what they say is a lot of these guys are getting like drugged and you know, cause apparently, well, there, lot of, supposedly a lot of there, got a lot of scammers in Nashville that are like, Hey, can I borrow your phone? Or like they drug you and then they borrow your phone and then they transfer a bunch of Venmo money and like all kinds of stuff and you're drugged. then they just, they just send you on your way.

Nilla: River.

Duds: tossed in the river.

Nilla: Hmm. Hmm ⁓ yeah.

Bright: Well, this guy, his college kids, his college friends, duds, you were in a fraternity. They just abandoned them, you know? And then he stumbled his way into the lake. mean, you should never know late man left behind, right? Like, yeah.

Duds: You'd never do that

Nilla: You

Duds: and you don't abandon a friend. Got a friend does that.

Nilla: But what if he abandoned them? you know, basically he just like left, like, I'm going go to the bathroom and then, you know, didn't come back. like, well, I mean, I don't know. Yeah.

Duds: You could have who dated, yeah. I would chalk it up to that.

Bright: I think they said that it didn't happen. I, guess they said he got kicked out of the bar for being too drunk and they just wanted to stay at the bar. So they stayed and they were like, all right, see you buddy. We'll see you at the hotel. And yeah.

Nilla: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Hmm.

Duds: I shouldn't do that. You gotta go out there with them. You can't, you can't let the guy get kicked out by himself.

Nilla: Yeah, at least go with them, go back to the hotel, and then come back.

Bright: And now he's dead, so imagine how they feel now.

Duds: Yeah.

Nilla: Yes, true. ⁓ Interesting.

Duds: Yeah, pretty bad, I bet.

Bright: All right. ⁓ so that's it for the scientists. got a local in the loose story here too.

Duds: I would say there's definitely some potential for connections going on there and some kind of conspiracy.

Bright: There's something to this. Yeah. Well, I, yeah. I would recommend if you're interested in this, go check out the Will Kane show. He, he's the one that I've seen devote really any time to this story. ⁓ he's on Fox news at 3 PM central, 4 PM Eastern. And he's covered. He is not a sponsor yet. He has his own podcast. Not yet.

Nilla: Hmm. Do sponsor her? No, I mean, are you a sponsor for him? He's open to it though.

Bright: Maybe you never know. You never know. So I do think that there's something more to this story. It seems a little too fishy and don't put it past our adversaries. ⁓ the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, you know, this is, this is what they do. And we used to do this. I'm not, we might still do it. I don't know. We might still do it.

Nilla: ⁓ yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say we would do it too. Yeah. ⁓ Right.

Duds: Then we got all soft.

Nilla: you

Bright: Yeah, I know. Right. The gas prices are going up. Let's just cancel the war.

Nilla: It's too expensive.

Duds: Yeah, how about that?

Bright: We talked about that, talked about that a little bit last week, right? Yeah. Gas is too expensive. World war two. Let's just let the Germans have Europe. Can't God forbid gas prices have gone up a little bit.

Nilla: You

Duds: What do you think about the ceasefire?

Bright: I, this is tough. I didn't want there to be a ceasefire. I, I want us to finish. I want us to, I want us to finish it. War monger. So this is, this is, somebody said it the other day. This is the first like AI war, right? Like outside of like a couple of things, like there's no boots on the ground. ⁓ yes, we did have, we'd had our, maybe some, we had our, our, ⁓ fighter pilots that went down.

Duds: You warmonger.

Nilla: Not yet, or maybe soon.

Bright: Awesome that we were able to recover them and I'm sure that was an amazing mission. like they were, there will be a movie about it. There'll be a book about it. I'm sure soon and we'll get some more information. The ghost murmur, you know, like, of course we just gave that away that we have this technology that can pick up a heartbeat. ⁓

Nilla: Yeah.

Duds: ghost murmur.

Nilla: Yeah, that's what happened. It was about that. That's when these people disappeared.

Bright: I mean

Duds: Ooh. I should use that to look for them.

Nilla: I'm not gonna to

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Where were we?

Nilla: Hmm.

Duds: Did you watch that video on that technology?

Nilla: I don't think I actually did.

Bright: I did not, I didn't have a chance to watch it yet. I know, I just haven't had a chance yet. I got it saved.

Duds: I sent it to you. was pretty interesting.

Nilla: ⁓ You were talking about the something in the loop, I think.

Duds: Yeah, something pretty nuts.

Bright: Well, yeah, I was moving on to local in the loo and then we got distracted and I could talk about the ceasefire and oil prices and stuff all day. But, but I did want to talk about the blues.

Nilla: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, we lost.

Bright: I didn't put it on. Did we lose in regulation? Three to two, bummer. Bummer, bummer, bummer.

Nilla: Yeah, three to two. So where are we at then? mean, are we, do we have a chance to, I mean, no.

Bright: No, this probably did it. If we, we had like, when we had six games left in the season, if we won all six games, it gave us like a 60 % chance to make it into the playoffs. was pretty good. But then like five winning five out of six games only gave us like a 10 % chance. And now we've lost two in a row. like, even if we. Yeah. Yeah. It's over, but this is why I want to talk about it. Cause I think the NHL is.

Nilla: Mm-hmm. Mm. Maybe we lost another one. Yeah.

Duds: Yeah, I mean you knew it was over. Come on.

Bright: bullshit.

Nilla: What do you mean, how so?

Duds: expand on that.

Bright: ⁓ expand. ⁓ that's what I was hoping. That was what I was hoping for. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to convince you guys right now. The NHL gives out how many points for a win. If you win, how many points do get? Two. Nice job, Nilla. Yeah, you get two points for a win. All right. If you win in overtime or a shootout, how many points do you get?

Nilla: I wasn't positive but I was like, ⁓ I think.

Duds: Let's get to it,

Nilla: I was gonna say it should be three, but I guess it's two.

Bright: two. Nope, it's two. If you lose in overtime or shootout, how many points do you get?

Duds: It's zero.

Nilla: I was gonna say it be one.

Bright: Nope. One. Yeah. So herein lies the problem. Some games in the NHL are worth two points and some games in the NHL are worth three points. That is a fatal flaw of the system. So it rewards teams that are shit. And a prime example this year are the LA Kings.

Duds: You get one, that's right.

Bright: that have played more overtime games than any team in the league. And they're

Duds: So you think they're shit teams or they're just competitive teams?

Bright: Well, I mean, in theory, I guess they're competitive, but the league.

Duds: Seems like you're getting rewarded for like more competitive hockey play.

Bright: No, that's the opposite. Well, you're getting, okay, you're getting rewarded for not winning or right. You're getting, you're getting rewarded to go into overtime. Right. So especially when it comes down to the, the last five minutes of the third period and both and you're. Sometimes, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes.

Duds: Unless it's zero zero. ⁓

Bright: But, but the blues, you know, like we're, we're in this playoff hunt right now. Surprisingly, we shouldn't be, we're not a good enough team, but we are because we had a really good after the Olympics. Like we've been on a tear. were like up until the other night, we were like 13 and three, you know, like that's, that's pretty good record. You know, now I think we beat, we beat Denver, the best team in the league in Denver, Colorado, the avalanche. And then we lost to them and now we've lost the jets. So we're, probably done, but. You know, so we're, we're in the thick of things all of sudden. then like Nashville is playing LA and guess what? goes to overtime. Right. So they are getting three points out of that game, but we played the same night and we only had the chance to get two points. Bullshit. So I, I, I'd solved and I've been saying this for a long time and people are just starting to pick up on it, but I'm going to say it was me.

Duds: So how do you solve that?

Bright: I mean, I can't a hundred percent prove that I came up with it, but I think I came up with it. You got to go to a three, chat, GPT. No, this is way before it I've been saying this for 10 years since the lockout of 2005. The Nilla gone again. What does he do? What is he doing? You know, I don't know what he's doing, man. All right. So I'm going to explain it again when he comes back. So it's a three, two, one system.

Duds: Check GPT. He disagrees. I don't like the three, two, one. I'm out.

Bright: Every game in the NHL should be worth three points. It's that simple. If you win in regulation, two would be two and one. So if you win in regulation, you get three points, kind of like soccer, right? You get three points. If it goes to overtime, they're still, yes, correct. There's still three points up for grabs. If you win an overtime or a shootout, you get two points.

Duds: Yeah, so overtime when B2. Yeah. Yeah, one of the points goes to the loser.

Bright: If you lose an overtime or a shootout, you get one point.

Duds: So why don't they do that?

Bright: I don't know. The only thing, the only actual answer that hockey analysts say at the moment is like, Oh, hockey purists, you know, um, we, it's the way that it used to be. So if they change it, it'll screw up the record keeping, right? You look back and you're like, Oh, that, that blues team of 2001, one of the best teams ever had 122 points. Well, if you start awarding every every team three points per win, that's going to be 180 points. And so you

Duds: Ah, it's going to skew all those old numbers. Oh no. How will we ever compare?

Bright: ⁓ no. You know what? You need to adapt. You need to adapt to changing times. And so here's my argument. So not only do you reward teams that are better for standard regulation, right? You win in regulation, you're earning more points. But think about the chaos at the end of the season. A team like the Blues that's like borderline, a regulation win becomes that much more valuable.

Duds: Mm-hmm. Right.

Bright: So instead of playing for the tie and hoping that you get the win in overtime or shootout, you're going all out for that regulation win because you need three points. Like that's good. That's going to make it way more interesting. It's going to make the playoff push way better. It's going to differentiate the really good teams, the teams that, that should be well above, you know, this year you look at the avalanche, the stars, the wild.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Like they shouldn't even be in like any real worry that they're not going to make the playoffs.

Duds: Well, and then you can, you can gain ground or, you know, put distance between you and the other teams even more if you're winning and they're winning too. Yeah. So you still have that option.

Bright: Sure. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mediocre teams like the blues, you know, this year, they get exposed, you know, are the Kings really the Kings are a better example of the blues actually had the tiebreaker of all of the teams for most regulation wins, but the King. Yeah. So if we would have gotten there, we would have been, we would have been in because we had the deal. So this

Duds: really? So this would have benefited the blues, this new scoring system.

Bright: A hundred percent this year, this would have benefited the blues, but the current system benefited the LA Kings because they went into more overtime games than any other team in the NHL. So they guaranteed. Of, of course.

Duds: Well, that makes sense. That's why they're using it because the LA Kings, you know, it's the LA. There are a bunch of cheaters out there.

Bright: Pansy. I agree. So.

Duds: They got the big market. They're just trying to get them into the playoffs. That's the only reason.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. But so here's the other thing. You're you for sure. Europe already does this. So this isn't necessarily, I don't know when Europe started it. ⁓ but they already moved to the three point system. ⁓ but this would be better for TV ratings. It would make, you know, the playoff push even more exciting. I don't

Duds: I hate the blues. Shit on St. Louis. That's what they always do. I mean, it makes sense.

Bright: I don't, and of course it makes sense. don't know why the NHL doesn't just buy into this and make the change. It would be way better for the league.

Duds: Do they know about this problem?

Bright: I can't imagine if they need mean to, to really go out there and push for this. I will do it. I will take on that burden, but they have to know, right? You would think.

Duds: You would think the only other option is you eliminate the one point for the overtime loser. It's like the overtime loss doesn't matter, you know.

Bright: Well, and that's how it used, that's how it. Right. Well, that's how it used to be back in the day. If it went into overtime and you went in overtime, you just took the two points, but there were also ties. So if you didn't win an overtime, then the points got split. It was one-on-one and that was fine. Right. That makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to have some games worth two points and some games worth.

Duds: You had a one on one. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense too. Yeah, that's kind of an unbalance right there.

Bright: ⁓ 100%. All right. ⁓ I told you I would. I was going to change it. Well, I think that's the thing. I think, I think most people don't know that it's a problem.

Duds: I would agree with that. You sold me. I didn't even know this was a problem, but I agree it is. And I think we should change it. No, probably not.

Bright: Yep. All right. What's going on, Manila? Here, we're down to our last 10. You think it's done? Text him. I don't know. Like what? Did his phone die now? Is that what he said?

Duds: I guess he's done. I guess he's done. I don't know. Let's see. He's probably like, I'm out.

Bright: His laptop died, his phone died. What's his problem?

Duds: Yeah, he said it's the computer. He said it's the computer.

Bright: I tell you what. All right. Well, we got like 10 minutes left. ⁓ I don't necessarily have, I do have the wheel if we want to do the wheel. ⁓ but more or less, we talked about project Hail Mary a little bit already. You said that you finished, you finished dark matter. Let's just, let's just stick with that. What'd you think?

Duds: Mm-hmm. I did. Sure. I thought it was pretty good. know, the story was good. ⁓ I liked the, it gave you kind of a good, like, I guess, perception of a normal person kind of getting put into this situation where I don't want to ruin it for any of the listeners who probably won't ever read the book. ⁓

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Duds: but a guy in his quantum one universe that gets infiltrated by another universe, I guess, of himself. Kind of hard to, yeah, your doppelganger, your clone, what would you call that? It's really you, right? You from another quantum universe.

Bright: Right. Yeah. His double, his doppelganger. Doppelganger, I think. Yeah, it's really you. I think Doppelganger is probably the best. Yeah, right. Yeah, the multiverse.

Duds: Being unaware of this other person that researched this ability to travel through worlds and he just takes your place and throws you into his world. mean, imagine that it would be kind of a strange day.

Bright: It'd be a mine. Yeah. So what I really liked about it is it took a couple of twists, you know, that I didn't expect. And I alluded to this a little bit the other day, ⁓ last week that I thought it was kind of like fringe, right? You had world a and world B and they were going, but then it turned into the multiverse, right? Which it turned into sliders. Right. So when you brought that up a couple of weeks ago, you're like, ⁓ I'm really looking for a show to replace sliders, which is a classic, like nineties reference.

Duds: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

Bright: It was just too funny because I had just read the book. had started the TV show and I had it on the agenda for the podcast. you, you, of course, and the TV show does even more so. So I highly recommend that. ⁓ we haven't finished it yet. have like two episodes to go. ⁓ and I don't want to, again, I don't want to, no spoilers best that I can, but the book took, so takes a little bit of a turn when he gets back to quote unquote earth prime, his original universe.

Duds: Yep. It did remind me of it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bright: Or at least we are to assume it's his original universe. We don't necessarily know that it is. And there are all the Jasons there. That to me, that blew my mind. I wasn't expecting that. I'm like, ⁓ there's a ⁓ thousand other Jasons that are doing the same thing now. And they all came back to this one universe trying to get back together. all, actuality, it's kind of like a love story. He incorporates a love story into this sci-fi book.

Duds: Right. Alright.

Bright: He does the same thing with recursion, which I really liked. And again, I think I recommended that you read that one next. Kind of the same story. It kind of turns into a little bit of a love story, but the sci-fi aspect of it is pretty cool.

Duds: I liked the fact that, like you said, it was a love story, but also it kind of gave me like the perception of like looking at your life and what your life, you know, different avenues your life could have taken. Right. And hopefully, hopefully you're living the life that you want to live, you know, and then, you know, is the best life for you. And I was kind of thinking about that. I was like, I like my life. Like, I think I can relate a lot to that guy, you know, and if you were just

Bright: Mm. Yeah, sure. Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

Duds: pulled out of your normal life and said, here, now you have to go live this way.

Bright: But you do have to think about it, like for you, what if you never would have moved back to St. Louis? We wouldn't be doing this pod right now, I could tell you that much, right? So like that's, ⁓ for you.

Duds: Right? a completely different, whole different world. Right. You can see how one decision can make huge impacts all throughout the world.

Bright: Sure. You know, when I took the job that I have now, my, remember going to the bar to talk it over with my parents because it was a pretty big lifestyle change. And I remember my mom did not want me to take the job because of the drastic lifestyle change. And yeah, because of all the travel.

Duds: Mm-hmm. ⁓ really? There's a lot of travel.

Bright: But I, course, again, for me, was like, think of all the places I get to go, all the cool things I get to do. I get to work from home and the pay is better. All of that. So I chose, I chose to take that job. Yeah. But now I can't, I can't imagine my life not having taken that job. If I didn't take that job, I'd be at, at middle man, not even middle management, low management of some company off of Tesson Ferry.

Duds: Mm-hmm. And you're like, travel sounds fun.

Bright: making $40,000 a year, you know, going to the office every day wearing crappy polos. Yeah. No, that's not you. No, but instead I, you know, I got to work for this big company, you know, and I got to go to cool places and you know, like my life is completely different. But you, so I think that is certainly the fun thing of this.

Duds: Sounds like me. element.

Bright: book and of the show too, is it kind of goes into the major decisions. And I, and won't spoil it, but the move, the TV show does a good job, especially with Jason too, if you will. Like, is he happy in that, in that life that, that he stole? Like, is that everything he

Duds: Mm-mm. All right. Or was, see, I was kind of wondering that myself. Like, was he almost getting tired of it? Like, you can have it back. You know? Because he reminded me of like the Elon Musk kind of guy, right? Where just eccentric, like very devoted to his work. And that was kind of above all else, right? And.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ I would highly recommend the TV show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Genius. Right. Right. And then ultimately that is the, the, the plot of the book is what if I traded all of that for, for the home life, for the wife, the kid, the, you know, the steady, you know, just like humdrum of everyday life.

Duds: Mm-hmm. Well, it does, I guess, make you look at that. Like that's a huge decision. Like being a parent, you know, there's certain careers you in certain lives that you can't have, you know, because you've chosen to do this for 20 plus years, you know, I mean, it's a big, portion of your life devoted to it. So.

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they, just promoted, ⁓ season two of dark matter is starting up in August. So now's a good time. If you can go check out season one, you don't have to wait that long for season two. and again, I don't know how they're going to wrap up season one. haven't, they haven't a hundred percent tied it into the end during of the book. I'm curious that they'll do that or if they'll save it for season two. Or the season two turns even more into sliders, right? Like, I don't know. And that's what I do like about it. Like, cause it, it's endless possibilities. And I was kind of, my wife and I, were watching it. Yeah. They're fun shows. And I was explaining sliders to my wife last night as we were watching dark matter and how sliders did a pretty good job of switching it up and making it interesting because you could do the.

Duds: Yeah. I think those are fun shows. Mm-hmm.

Bright: You know, like, ⁓ different worlds here or there. And they came up some really crazy concepts. I was explaining to my wife, and I don't know if you remember this episode, the lottery episode from sliders. Do you, do you know what I'm talking about? And

Duds: ⁓ yeah. Yeah, is that the one where they could get all the money out of the ATMs? And that was like your entries into a lottery.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. So they're playing the lottery, but what they don't know that the lottery, so they take as much money as they want, but the more money they take, the more times their name gets entered into a lottery to off themselves for population control. So they don't understand that they take a bunch of money. And then of course they win the lottery and they're all, they're all slated to die. And so they all have to slide before, you know, before they get off.

Duds: She wins the lottery.

Bright: Which is the premise of the whole show, right? Like something they're all about to die and then they slide just in time. ⁓

Duds: I always seem to be at like ⁓ quantum leap was the same thing, man. It was right there at the end. I always leave those cliffhangers, you know.

Bright: Yeah. Quantum leap was also very good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my dad played, ⁓ played tennis with Scott Bacula. From quantum leap. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Pretty cool. ⁓ and they brought back quantum leap and I, I, my parents watched it because they were big quantum leap people and I thought about it I didn't, they ended up canceling it after two seasons and it was kind of, ⁓ what's the word? Whoa.

Duds: ⁓ really? That's pretty cool. Claim to fame. Not good. That was too woke.

Bright: I didn't watch it. don't know if it was good, but they made it kind of woke DEI. Yeah. So, so yeah, that, that could kill it and it did, it didn't, it didn't make it. only lasted two seasons, my. Yeah. Yeah. The new start. Yeah. We were obviously are we're on the same spot. I didn't do very good. You're right about that. Didn't make it pathetic. It was terrible. You know,

Duds: That'll kill it. I don't know why they keep trying to push that. doesn't work. How's that new Star Trek show? Gone. ⁓ was pathetic looking.

Bright: ⁓ but quantum leap, want to go back my favorite episode. There is a great episode. was a season finale and premiere, probably like season three into season four. don't really remember. was too young, ⁓ when I was watching it and I've never actually gone back to rewatch them. But this episode really stuck in my head where Scott Bacula goes back and he's a bodyguard for JFK. I don't know if you remember this one and the big tw-

Duds: Okay. think so.

Bright: The big twist at the end is not his, thought his job was to save JFK, right? Cause he knows that he was like, Oh, my job's to say, you know, well, it wasn't, it was to save Jackie, Jackie Kennedy, not Jackie. was going to say Jackie Oh, but she wasn't Jackie Oh yet Jackie Kennedy. So he ends up saving her and he comes to the realization that, my whole part of this leap was to save her, not JFK. And that was the

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: The big twist. ⁓ I loved it because of the history of it all. And it was, it was a very cool concept. That's the one that sticks with me from quantum leap. So, but I was explaining sliders again to my wife and they had to do the whole big thing with the Cro-Mags. You remember that? They were, they were the Cro-Magnon people, the alternate humans that didn't like come into play into like season three or something like that. Where.

Duds: What's the Chrome ads? ⁓ yeah, I think so. Okay.

Bright: Yeah. So they, there was a, a universe where humans developed and these Cro-Mags developed and they were always at war with each other and the Cro-Mags developed slide technology. And then they started conquering different worlds. I thought that's what made the show. I love that aspect of it, you know, cause yeah, that was, yeah, that was later, later seasons. So you probably only made it probably after it's after it switched to sci-fi.

Duds: I don't even remember that part really. thought I watched, I think I watched all of it. Did they bring it back?

Bright: Well, they, so they did two seasons, I think on Fox, and then they moved over to the sci-fi network for two or three more seasons. And the. No.

Duds: But he made it back home, right? But then his gate was like not squeaky.

Bright: ⁓ that was the end. That was the end of the very first episode or the end of season one. So the, the end of the very first episode, he comes, he comes back. was like, ⁓ yeah, this is it. And then his dad walked, his dad walks through the door. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And eventually they kill off the professor. They killed off Wade. And then in the last season, well, it got, you know, they eventually they kill off.

Duds: the end of season one. That's right. That's right. That was to wrap up the first season and then they left. Yep. Yeah, I remember. But I did see seasons after that. I think I did stop watching it though.

Bright: ⁓ Quinn, main guy, ⁓ Jerry, Jerry O'Connell. ⁓ it was bad. They had his note. Well, Carrie were Carrie were, ⁓ or Harvey pronounce her name. ⁓ she was a later season edition. then who else was left? ⁓ the Rembrandt, the black guy.

Duds: How do you do that? How do you do that? Who was left? Chrome ads. Okay, that was it.

Bright: Yeah, they stayed in it through all five seasons and then they brought on some newer characters.

Duds: Yeah, so I definitely stopped watching it.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. I bet it is too bad. It's still, I think it's still a show that has promise. They could probably bring it back now and I would watch it. ⁓ people have asked Jerry O'Connell about this show because this is really where, I mean, obviously he was in standby me, but he, I feel like he really got his start. Yeah, this is a big break for sure. You know, so, yeah, I don't know.

Duds: That's too bad. revamp it a little bit. That's kind of his big one.

Bright: So definitely check out dark matter TV show. And then if you're looking for your next book, I highly recommend recursion. This one is a Fox with your mind, man.

Duds: Did an Ulta another one like that?

Bright: Yeah. And it has definitely some similarities. ⁓ but, but enough differences. It's not the same book, obviously. ⁓ and I almost think recursion is better than dark matter. And there's, they're also supposedly making a, recursion movie for Netflix, but I don't know how they could wrap the whole thing up in a movie. Like it, this thing is, it reminds me a little bit of the sixth day. Do you remember that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Duds: Really? There's a lot going on. I do remember that. With Arnold? Yeah, with the clones.

Bright: ⁓ yeah. And this is not clone related. So I'm not going to give any spoilers away, but a little bit of that. then there's, I'm trying to think of the other movie. ⁓ Maybe butterfly effect a little bit? Yeah. So.

Duds: Okay. That one was weird. That was like time travel and that was the

Bright: Yeah, that's yeah. Recursion is more along that line. Time travel through memories.

Duds: Yeah. So what do think the butterfly effect like that was supposed to represent? That wasn't a multiverse type thing, right?

Bright: No, that was more, that was more playing. That was more like back to the future, I guess, playing with the, the time continuum, space time continuum. Right. And

Duds: Because the butterfly effect though is the whole chaos effect,

Bright: Right. Like you change one little thing and it alters every, so that's, that's more along the lines, probably of recursion. ⁓ but you'll definitely, if you read it, you'll get the six day aspect of it too, getting the, and it's the same kind of a thing where, ⁓ Ashton Kutcher gets all these memories all at once of all of these different lives that he lived in his brain. He ends up having brain problems, right? And they say like, Hey, if you keep doing this, you're going to die. Your brain can't take all of these memories.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: So recursion, you're going to go crazy, right? Recursion is kind of like that. ⁓ butterfly effect. still say, I think it's a great movie and actually made like three of them. ⁓ you know, the other ones were like straight to DVD. ⁓ but they were, they were decent movies and it took me a while to get Caroline, ⁓ to watch butterfly effects. She was like, Ash and Kutcher in a serious role. And I was like, trust me when I say like, I think it's a great movie.

Duds: You're gonna go crazy. ⁓ I think it's a great movie.

Bright: And it was one of the first movies that had an alternate, a true alternate ending on a DVD, you know? So in the movie and they have, there's actually like three or four endings. They only put one in the DVD where he, yeah, the, the alternate ending was pretty shitty where he offs himself in the womb. You know, that was, that was kind of lame.

Duds: I think I did watch those. ⁓ yes.

Bright: ⁓ but there's, know, there's the original, the ending that we saw in the movie where he passes by Amy smart and yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the original alternate ending. That was the terrible one. And then there's different to not right. Right. They did a pretty good job where they see each other on the street. They take a second look. Yeah, it was fine. And, and Oasis is playing in the background, you know, great song.

Duds: Did he like put the umbilical cord around his neck or something? That's a good one to not use. Yeah, I thought the ending was fine.

Bright: ⁓ but there is another alternate ending where they see each other and they reconnect. I think like they remember, ⁓ like that one was pretty good too. And I think there's one other one. So I think there were four, if I remember correctly. So yeah.

Duds: Well, what else you got going on? Anything? I've been up since like 3.30 this morning.

Bright: That that's about it. You know, Nilla's not on. told them we would stop at 10 o'clock for him, but he obviously, you know, he's going to be on the pod. He's got to figure out his, ⁓ his technology aspect of it all. Yeah. I don't know, man. You know, he's got the wrong audio to start the pod then drops twice. You know, if he wants to leave, I told him he could leave whenever he wants, you know, it like, stay on for an hour, talk the main topic and then bounce. He could do that. He could.

Duds: Studio set up. the internet, the computer. Let's charge your battery.

Bright: Charge your, I don't know, you know, but Hey, ⁓ I mean, that's all I got. don't know if you have anything else, you know, we're trending upward in the pod. ⁓ we got St. Louis city pod coming out, ⁓ either tomorrow or Saturday as well. ⁓ we'll drop that before the game. got a late.

Duds: We've had enough technical difficulties on this one to hopefully drop that down a little bit.

Bright: I hope so. I hope so. Well, too much traffic. Hey, that's always a good problem. Right? I had a, I had a website back in the day. I won't say what it is, but it, no, ⁓ it went viral. This website, it went viral back in the, huh?

Duds: Maybe there's too much traffic. Is it MySpace? your website? A website you made.

Bright: Yeah. It was a website I made. Yeah. What's that I made? Well, I don't a hundred percent know, but it got picked up by a much bigger website and it drove so much traffic to my site that my site crashed because I didn't have any money. And so I was paying for just like the generic whatever and, uh, videos and stuff like that. It was before the days. You really want me to out myself, huh?

Duds: Viral. What do you consider viral? What was honor? What kind of videos? You

Bright: ⁓ the buffy, vampire slayer videos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, ⁓

Duds: Okay. This wasn't pirated stuff.

Bright: No? Uh-uh. No? Well, I mean, kind of.

Duds: What kind of Buffy videos were they?

Bright: Like fan, ⁓ fan made videos, that kind of a thing. ⁓ correct. Yeah. They, well, they were buffing the show, right? Like, like the, that's what I'm going to say. Like, was it pirated? Like the, videos I did not own the content. Right. I was not in them. What did you think I was doing? You think I'm acting or something like that? No, no, no, I took the clips from the show and

Duds: Okay, but there were videos you made. They weren't Buffy the show. But you were in them? You were doing some cut scenes? You'd add you into it? I modified the show.

Bright: Yeah, I still got a couple of them that I was able to, I got AI now, you never know. I got a couple of them that I was able to save because at the time YouTube was not a thing. So I hosted them on this website and the website got picked up by another website and it crashed because too many people were downloading my videos.

Duds: So you created the first YouTube.

Bright: Maybe? The Buffy Tube, if you will.

Duds: If you would have paid a little bit, if you would have paid a little money, you could have had a better server. Then you could have started, you could have started the first video website.

Bright: ⁓ This was like I was like Yeah, I was probably like a freshman or a sophomore in college. ⁓ then, yeah, YouTube came out slightly, probably like shortly thereafter. I don't remember exactly what year YouTube came out. Probably like 2005.

Duds: How many videos do you think are on YouTube now?

Bright: ⁓ my, a, more than a billion.

Duds: Oh God, yeah. I think it's probably a billion a day.

Bright: It probably is. I don't even know.

Duds: Let's see.

Bright: as stupid.

Duds: What's your final guess?

Bright: tender.

Duds: Let's see... This is only, well, anywhere from 5 to 15 billion.

Bright: All right. 10 billion. That's right in the middle. That's pretty good. They don't know. There's so many that they don't know.

Duds: upload rate isn't that crazy upload rate 500 to 720 hours of video every minute

Bright: Yeah. What do you think about like this? This is getting uploaded. You know, you look at like Oasis or Foo Fighters or what? Like their music has more than a billion views. You know, like it's crazy, you know, Mr. Beast, you know, he has a billion followers or something like that. Like that's one seventh of the planet, one ninth of the planet follows him.

Duds: 700,000 hours a day. That is crazy. adding millions, millions of new videos daily. Millions. There's literally more content out there than any person could ever hope to consume.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is pretty crazy. Sure. And what do you do with all of that? You know, like you have these.

Duds: You don't do anything with it, you just put it on the internet. put it out there for AI to look at one day. We're basically making content for AI.

Bright: put it out there. Well, that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Yeah, maybe one.

Duds: You know, if you think about it, that's, what a lot of the content on the internet is going to be. Eventually there's going to be so much out there. You're have have AI scour the internet and, you know, utilize that content.

Bright: Well, maybe, maybe that's the thing. Maybe, maybe chat GPT will eventually scrub NFN P pod. And what we're saying about dead scientists will go viral. It could, you never know.

Duds: Good. Yeah, maybe that'll, it could lead to, you know, solving investigations, ending world hunger, world peace.

Bright: Maybe. And if we solve world hunger, you know, then we're in good shape. All right. yeah. How do you do that? Let's sleep on that. What do we do for next week? So I'm on the road next week, ⁓ for work. Yeah. So, ⁓ I don't know. I don't know if we can squeeze it in or not. ⁓ I might be able to do it from the road or we might have to take a week off.

Duds: How do we do that? Let's sleep on that. We'll figure it out for next week. On the road again, huh?

Bright: We'll just have to see if we take a week off. be back on the 24th.

Duds: It's also tax week, so if you haven't done your taxes.

Bright: I have done my taxes. You know what? I'll say this and we can end with this. I don't want to go too far, but my wife got her taxes, you know, hers, her W2 and W whatever it is W four. I never know. She got all of her statements. did the taxes and then I don't know a month later, they're like, we fucked up. They're like, we're going to send you a corrected her, her plates of employment. We're going to send it. I'm like too late.

Duds: Who did? W2? Already filed.

Bright: Yeah. W2. Yeah. Too late. I'm not messing with it. If the government comes back or whatever, fine. But I'm not doing it again. Like this is on you guys. Well, I don't, I think it was so like, come on. We're not making millions of dollars over here. You know, like not yet. Maybe one day. So maybe $20 here or there. I'll, you know, it's not even worth my time. I'm just gonna.

Duds: So I guess it was in your favor not to redo them. Couple bucks. not with an attitude like that. Fix it on next year's.

Bright: Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Fix it on next year.

Duds: Yeah, I got filed my first quarterly tax payment since I turned off the withholdings. I like it a lot better, I think.

Bright: Error. Yeah. How's it? You like, are you liking it?

Duds: Well, yeah, because you just, get to hold onto the money and then just send them one, one payment. So I kind of, kind of do like that.

Bright: But what are you do? Are you doing something with the money or investing it? Like you feel like it's worth your trouble? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cash flow is all good until you don't have the money until you're like, fuck, I spent it. And now I owe the government a bunch of money that I don't have because I took a family vacation or I needed a new roof or whatever. need a new air conditioner unit.

Duds: We made it sit in an account. It's just cashflow, you know, helps out. Yeah, till the flow is out. Yeah.

Bright: and I took that money out of that account and now I owe the government.

Duds: So I guess you should budget and not overspend. That would be the key.

Bright: Well, of course. Yes. Yeah. Always, always easier said than done, but then everybody keeps raising the prices.

Duds: I know. We can get into that if you want.

Bright: Well, maybe, maybe the next time we'll talk about, we've talked about this before, but now again, I feel like because gas has gone up a little bit and like, this is not the first time it's, it's hit more than $4 a gallon in this country. But yet all of a sudden Southwest, know, $10 more for bags. Bags used to fly free. And now not only do they charge you, they're charging you $10 more now because of the price of gas. I'm like, okay, what? Four years ago, five years ago, gas was $4 a gallon.

Duds: Yeah, well. He never lowered it.

Bright: I think it's all I think it's all a money grab. Not just Southwest.

Duds: I know, Southwest screwed up everything. Southwest had a good thing going. Well, they did, they had a good thing going and then they changed all their fairs.

Bright: Of course, who the screw Southwest. Have you seen the price of asphalt?

Duds: ridiculous. They just keep raising, they just keep raising the prices.

Bright: If Bobcat man made it $9 more per ton, like that's out of control.

Duds: It really is. It's outrageous.

Bright: If Bobcat man made it this far, he'll, hopefully appreciate it. All right. Well, I said it was a 10 o'clock hard stop, but Nilla dropped off. So we made it till 10 17 PM. about that? It's still one of our shorter, shorter episodes only like an hour and a half. So time for bed. Well, I appreciate the later start given that I had, ⁓ had some work to do tonight. ⁓ and we'll, we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll come at you next week. Maybe we won't. Maybe we'll take a week off.

Duds: Time for bed. That's all right.

Bright: Either way, we do have a St. Louis City SC posse, so check that out. Check out the blog, check out the website, give us a like, give us a follow, all the things.

Duds: Do what you can.

Bright: Do what you can. All right. I was waiting for you to throw in the last word and you, you pause for a little too long. All right. I'm hitting the stop button.

Duds: Nah, I got nothing. I'm too tired. I'm too tired. Later.