Gay Frogs
56:01 Share

This episode was originally a Patreon-exclusive episode that was released on January 26, 2023. All references mentioned in this episode today will be located on our website, TheoriesOfTheThirdKind.com. Now, if you liked this episode, we have over 170 more Patreon-exclusive episodes that you get access to for just $5 a month. I hope you all enjoy the episode. See you next week. Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. Patreon-exclusive.

Welcome! First off, I want to say thank you to whomever you are listening for opening your minds to receive extra knowledge nuggets each week. It means a lot to all of us and I want you to know that. Also, before we start, since you are a Patreon subscriber, remember that you get priority in topic suggestions.

So feel free to shoot those suggestions on over to us by email or you can write us a letter and send it to our P.O. box and we will take your letter, frame it and stick it up in the studio somewhere. OK, I have so many letters. You do? Yeah, they're all downstairs. I don't have any of them because they come to the P.O. box. I go to P.O. box. Oh, OK.

Today's topic is over gay frogs. Before we get into it, I just want to make a clear statement, okay? We support whatever the heck you are, whoever you love, whatever you do, whatever it is. I don't care if a person comes down and sits next to me and tells me that they're straight, they're gay, they love themselves, they're asexual, they're whatever sexual, I don't care.

You be the person you want to be because ultimately it is your happiness overall. Okay. And I don't want to affect that. I just want to support you as a person. Okay. And I know the topic may sound a little strange, but this is one of the top weirdest subjects we've gone over that has the proof to back it up. This is true.

So how today's episode will go is that we'll talk about an individual who plays a key role in this episode. And then we'll talk about a chemical called atrazine. And then we'll go into the research behind it. And then we'll go into strange facts and findings. And then, of course, wrap it all up with our own personal thoughts and theories. So with all that being said, let's get into today's episode. I am sure you have heard it before.

Popular radio host Alex Jones making claims that companies are putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay. I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay! Upon hearing these claims, the majority of individuals laugh, mock, and overall disregard what is being said as nonsense. However, what if we told you that there is truth behind what is being said?

that researchers have discovered that one of the top herbicides that is being used in the United States is also being found in our rivers, lakes, streams, and it is turning male frogs into female frogs. And for almost two decades, the chemical company that produced this herbicide would actively try to cover up and discredit the researchers and their findings.

This is Gay Frogs.

Alright, so to understand this entire story, I first need to ask you, Dan, have you ever heard of this claim before by Alex Jones with him saying, they're turning the freaking frogs gay? Of course, and I believe we have a magnet on our fridge that says that. Yeah, so I automatically assumed, just like everyone else, that he was just kind of blowing smoke until we came across this individual and his research.

And it is unbelievable. And I figured, hey, this would be a great episode. So that's what we decided to do. Now, we first need to start off this episode by talking about an individual who plays a key role in this entire thing. Tyrone Hayes. So, Dan, can you tell us who he is? Of course. So Tyrone Hayes was born on July 29th, 1967 in Columbia, South Carolina.

Growing up, Hayes loved lizards, frogs, and was extremely interested in the way that frogs morphed from tadpoles into their adult forms. Now, while in grade school, Hayes entered the state science fair and ended up winning it with his research that showed proof that anole lizards had to be awake to change color.

So following that, in 1985, Hayes graduated from high school and then went on to earn his bachelor's and master's degree in biology from Harvard University. Now, just a side note, Hayes' dissertation, which if you don't know what a dissertation is, it's pretty much an essay written by the student as part of their degree. And the essay has to be over a subject that they have researched themselves.

Hayes' dissertation while at Harvard was on the genetic and environmental mechanisms determining the gender of the wood frog. So needless to say, when it came to frogs, Hayes knew his shit. Oh yeah, if you wanted an expert on frogs, you contacted him, okay?

So after Hayes graduated from Harvard, he would continue his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would receive his Ph.D. degree in integrative biology in 1993 for his study on the role of hormones in developmental responses to environmental changes in amphibians.

So pretty much he studied amphibians and how environmental factors affected the gender outcome of them. That's pretty much what he was an expert in. Okay.

Then in 1994, Hayes became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Then in 2000, he became an associate professor. Then in 2003, he became a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Molecular Toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now, I know we mentioned that he became a professor back in 2003. However, we're going to jump back a few years prior to that in 1997. So like we mentioned, during this period in 1997, Hayes was an assistant professor. It was during this time that a consulting firm named EcoRisk ended up contacting Hayes

EcoRis paid Hayes to join a panel of experts in conducting studies for the Swiss pharmaceutical company called Novartis. Which, by the way, this Novartis later becomes the company Syngenta. So from here on out, we're just going to refer to them as Syngenta. All right. So Hayes joins this Swiss company and learns that they want him to conduct studies on their herbicide called atrazine.

Now, this is where we're going to step away from talking about haze for a little bit and just talk about the chemical atrazine so that we can better understand it. And I know this might sound boring, but trust us, this all plays a key role in understanding how screwed up this story is. So stick with us. It is worth it. All right, Dan, tell us about atrazine.

Alright, instead of listening to my dumbass try to explain this one because I don't know too much about atrazine, I figured we could instead listen to an audio clip that is only a few minutes long that explains this herbicide very well. So we will take a listen to that right now. This is a pretty typical view during the summer across fields in the corn belt of the U.S. But this is a not so typical view. From ground level, we can see the neat orderly rows of corn separated by soil that's pretty much completely free of weeds.

How is that? Well, many large-scale corn growers in the U.S. take a little help from an herbicide called atrazine to get these weed-free fields. Atrazine is one of the most common herbicides used in agriculture in the U.S. An herbicide is a chemical that is toxic to plants and is used to prevent or slow growth. Every year, atrazine is applied to over 50 million acres of agricultural land, mostly cornfields in the Midwestern U.S. This amounts to about 70 million pounds of atrazine.

It doesn't kill the corn, but it does kill lots of the common weeds you would find growing in cornfields. Let's take a look at what happens to a plant that's susceptible to the killing effects of atrazine. We can set up a little experiment using wild clover, a common plant that might be growing in cornfields. If we treat the plant with a commercial herbicide containing atrazine, the results are pretty dramatic. We went from healthy and green to shriveled and brown.

So what is the atrazine doing to the plant? Why is the plant struggling to survive? Let's compare a healthy plant and a plant treated with atrazine. We pretty much see all the normal pieces and parts. So it must be doing something at a cellular or subcellular level. Something we just can't see. Let's zoom in a little bit. If we take a look at a leaf from a healthy and a sick plant, and we look even closer to see cells in those leaves, and now we look even closer at those cells,

That little thing right there is a chloroplast. That is atrazine's target. It's poisoning something in that chloroplast. Now, you probably already know that the chloroplast is a site of photosynthesis. I don't know that bitch. But we need to dig in a little deeper. Let's visualize what's happening during photosynthesis in a healthy chloroplast.

Alright, we aren't going to go into full detail like this chick did, but pretty much what atrazine does is it kills the plants, okay? You got all these cornfields, right? And you got weeds growing up in them. They don't want weeds up in that bitch, so they spray atrazine and that atrazine goes down and it kills the plants, the weeds, but it doesn't touch, well, I'd say it doesn't touch it, it does touch it, but it doesn't kill the corn. So it kills the bad weeds and keeps the good food. Yeah, pretty much.

So, there you go. That is atrazine and how it works, in a nutshell. But before we move forward, I did want to mention a few more things about atrazine, okay? So, as of 2014, in the United States, atrazine was the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate. A total of 76 million pounds, or 34,000 metric tons of it, is used in

Each year. Jesus. That's a lot. But that's only second. Yeah. So after being applied, atrazine remains in the soil for months, and in some soils it can remain for up to four years. Now, once it's in the soil, atrazine then migrates to groundwater, and then once in the groundwater, it degrades slowly.

In the United States, atrazine has been detected in groundwater at high levels and it contaminates lakes, rivers, and streams. Now, watering monitor data from 20 high atrazine use areas has found atrazine in the water with levels up to 147 parts per billion. Get you some of that atrazine. Suck that down your gullet.

Just a side note, this chemical makes the company Syngenta billions of dollars a year in revenue. Now, keep that in mind as we go forward. We're going to hop back to Hayes' research now. So like we previously stated, in the early 2000s, Hayes was working for Syngenta, the company who was making atrazine, and Hayes was conducting studies on this herbicide.

In 2002, Hayes started noticing something odd in his studies. Young developing male African clawed frogs and leopard frogs that were exposed to atrazine started exhibiting female characteristics. Due to these findings, Hayes, publishing his findings in the National Academy of Sciences,

For the next few years, Hayes continued his research on this chemical, and in 2007, he co-authored a paper that detailed how atrazine induces prostate cancer in laboratory rodents and highlighted atrazine as a potential cause of reproductive cancers in humans. Now, that same year, in 2007, Hayes went in front of the United States National Institute of Environmental Health Services and presented his studies to the crowd.

Hayes' studies showed that male frogs exposed to atrazine were pretty much chemically castrated from this chemical. Three years later in 2010, Hayes published additional studies that he had conducted on atrazine and frogs. These studies showed that frogs exposed to atrazine turned male tadpoles into females with impaired fertility.

Since publishing his research on atrazine, Hayes has become an advocate for banning this chemical. Hayes believes that his research shows that there is a link between atrazine and altered testosterone levels and estrogen production in fish, frogs, alligator, birds, turtle, rats, and even in humans when we are exposed to it.

Due to these findings, Hayes believes that atrazine is a risk to wildlife and to humans. Now, I know what you are thinking. Hayes was doing the research for Syngenta. How did they respond to his criticism of their chemical that makes them billions of dollars each year?

Well, after Hayes started publishing his findings, Syngenta severed their ties with him and then started to conduct press releases and letters to editors of certain articles telling them that Hayes' scientific credibility should not be trusted. Now, I know a lot of people would say that there is no proof of Syngenta doing this, like them conducting some kind of like discrediting of Hayes. However, that is not true.

because proof ended up coming out during a lawsuit. So in May of 2012, the research that Hayes had done was used as evidence in a class action lawsuit against Syngenta. Fifteen water providers in Illinois filed this lawsuit against the chemical company, stating that they had to spend millions of dollars to upgrade more than 1,000 of their water systems

Yeah, so pretty much their chemical was going into the runoff and then getting into the groundwater and then getting into our drinking water.

Or I say are. Yeah, it is in our drinking waters and everybody's now. But these 15 water providers in Illinois were like, hey, we had to upgrade a thousand of our water systems to get rid of your chemical. And even then it didn't get rid of it all the way. You need to pay us. So Syngenta was like, we'll do it, but we're not going to accept, you know, any wrongdoing. So messed up. So pretty much it makes them look like they did good. Like, you know what? We didn't do anything wrong, but we will help pay for the upgrades that you did. Yeah. Nah, sneaky.

So why do we mention this lawsuit? Well, like we said earlier, there was proof that Syngenta was attacking Hayes' credibility. So during that lawsuit, internal Syngenta documents from 2005 were released to the public.

These internal documents showed that Syngenta was actively conspiring to discredit Hayes, including attempting to get journals to retract his work and investigating his funding and his private life.

Not only that, but the documents also showed that Syngenta had written about plans to track Hayes' speaking engagements and prepare audiences with Syngenta's counterpoints to Hayes' message on Atrazine. Syngenta subsequently stated that many of the documents unsealed in the lawsuits referred to ideas that were never implemented. Which, that's another lie, because they were implemented. Yeah.

So after all this research was shown to the public, you would think that the Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to protect the public, would step in and review Hayes' findings about this chemical since it was and still is one of the top chemicals used in the United States. Well, the EPA did indeed conduct an investigation into it

and their independent scientific advisory panel examined all available studies on this topic, and they concluded, and I quote, Atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian development based on a review of laboratory and field studies.

When in reality, Haze has a freaking he took in one of his experiments, he took a male frog, a male toad, put him in water and then put just like a small amount of atrazine in it. The male frog ended up turning into a female.

turned into a female, 100% a female, male to female. He put a male frog inside there with it. The male frog mated with that female frog and the female frog had eggs and had babies. Damn. Yeah. Anyways, they said it doesn't affect the EPA did. They're like, nah, everything's okay. Yeah, the EPA, we'll hear a lot of shit about them later. Yeah.

So, many years later in 2020, the EPA finally came forward and announced that atrazine will be banned in Hawaii and in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the North Mariana Islands due to the chemical being linked to cancer. Now, even though this chemical is banned in 35 countries around the world and in only select areas of the U.S., the chemical can still be used in the majority of the United States. How messed up is that?

Of course, a lot of people were like, what the f*** EPA? You're not going to save me from it? And the EPA was pretty much like, well, we can't fully ban this chemical completely because it'll cost the farmers too much money. So instead of banning the chemical completely, we will just prohibit farmers from using it along U.S. roadsides. They can't use it on forests and they can't use it on Christmas tree farms.

Like we're going to be eating Christmas trees. I mean, I guess because it's going inside of a house, but... Yeah, but even then, I mean, you're freaking letting them use it on corn and stuff. Anyways, so as of 2023, of course, currently, atrazine is still the second most commonly used herbicide in the United States.

Now, in regards to Hayes, he still works as a professor and department co-chair in the Department of Integrative Biology at University of California, Berkeley. Also, he still travels around the world and advocates for the banning of atrazine. Save the f***ing frogs, man. Come on. Yeah. And save us. Oh, yeah. Us.

So there you go. That's pretty much the summary of gay frogs. So when Alex Jones mentions that, this is what he's talking about, is this research right here. It's almost unbelievable. So now we're going to get into our strange facts and findings. So our first strange fact and finding is about some emails between Syngenta and Hayes.

So back in 2010, Syngenta ended up filing an ethics complaint to the University of California, Berkeley.

Syngenta stated that Hayes had been sending sexually explicit and harassing emails to Syngenta scientists, which also included quotes from the rapper DMX in his emails. What do you like sign off with the X going to give it to you? You'll see. We go over his emails here in a minute.

Now, the University of California, Berkeley, where Hayes worked at, ended up responding and stating that Hayes had acknowledged sending letters having unprofessional and offensive content and that he had agreed not to use similar language in future communications.

When Hayes was questioned about the emails, he stated that he sent them only after a Syngenta executive named Tim Pastor had threatened him and his family. Which I don't blame him. I mean. Yep. All right. So we were curious about what these emails said, especially since, you know, they stated that they had quotes from DMX in it.

And we ended up finding that Syngenta had actually released a 102-page PDF file that contained all of the emails. Of course, we don't have time to read you the entire 102-page PDF file, but we do have some quotes from the emails that Hayes sent that we're going to read off. So tell us this first quote of this email, Dan.

On March 16th of 2006, Hayes sent an email to Syngenta that said, and we quote, Then another email was sent by Hayes on September 5th, 2006 that said, and we quote,

The rain by Tyrone. You can turn on your headlights, but you can't see through the haze in all capital letters and spelt like his last name. You can mark your calendar, but you can't keep track of the days. Bow down, fools. My name is Tyrone. Imagine getting that email from like a bona fide scientist. He's fighting for the frogs here. I mean, I would probably play some music and read the email over again just to make it sound even better.

Yeah, why don't you go into this next email, which is the best in my opinion.

Oh, here we go. Then another one on February 23rd of 2010 that said, and we quote, is your phone off the rook? Reporters blowing up my cell. Can you believe that someone wants to publish my emails and rhymes like some kind of book of poetry? By the way, about the shit on the next week too. Here's a preview. Word to your mother, Tyrone. So of course it was after all these emails that

that Syngenta was being sent that they were like, OK, look, we had enough, enough of these, enough of these emails. They ended up filing that ethics complaint to UC Berkeley since, you know, Hayes worked there. And then, you know, Hayes went on to state that the emails, of course, were just responses to verbal threats and abuse that he was receiving on his end. And he apologizes to any of the supporters that he may have offended.

But he did mention something at the end that we haven't said yet. But at the very end of that, he said, I am not backing down. So he showed it. Yeah. There you go. That's our first strange fact and finding is the emails between Hayes and Syngenta. I'm going to go through some of those emails because they sound fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. So our next strange fact and finding is about...

atrazine and the USDA, which is the United States Department of Agriculture, they ended up publishing a paper about atrazine. And it is the most ridiculous shit I've ever read in my life. Now, before we get into that, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back. So at the very start of this

paper or this publication. The USDA, now keep in mind they're supposed to protect the public, okay? They state, restricting or eliminating the use of atrazine in the Midwest would have important economic consequences for farmers and consumers. Atrazine is a very important herbicide in the production of corn and other crops in the U.S.,

And then they go on to state that targeting atrazine use may be more effective method of protecting water supplies rather than banning it completely. Atrazine is a very important chemical used in the production of corn.

And it can be found in surface water used for public water supplies in the Midwest at levels greater than the standards established by the EPA. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires that public utilities treat water for atrazine. And then it goes on to state, hey, you know, yeah, the EPA has restrictions on levels of atrazine, but

Installing advanced treatment systems for removing atrazine could result in substantial cost to the utilities and consumers. So what does the USDA state to do to atrazine? Because they recognize it as being harmful.

They state that if it was banned and if water treatment facilities were updated to get rid of it, that it would cost between $295 million to $665 million per year. Instead of that, what they should do is they should have alternate strategies and focus on controlling it from its source and preventing or limiting its discharge into drinking water.

That's what they said in their fucking report. It's like, what? God damn. Money. That's what's wrong with these people. 100%. That's what it is. Money. It's all about money. Damn. Anyway, that report's a pretty long one. We'll provide a link for it for anyone that wants to take a look at it. Our next strange fact of finding is kind of similar. We found a website.

It's atrazine.com. Of course, it's ran by Syngenta. And you go to the front page of it, of this website, atrazine.com. It shows a farmer standing in a cornfield and it says, Atrazine, safe for people, good for the environment and the economy.

Someone's full of shit. Oh my God. Yeah. It just talks about atrazine and it's a freaking, it's all lies. Anyway, I thought that was something stupid that y'all could all go take a look at and see how they're trying to brainwash us. Go back to the site. Okay. They have a tab down in the middle there, like home, fast facts, benefits and all that stuff. And they have water. So I clicked it.

With rising populations and limited availability, coupled with impacts of a changing climate, water must be safely and sustainably managed. Atrazine concentrations in service water have declined dramatically over the last two decades and pose no threats to humans. Yeah, right. The herbicide is also critical in helping enable no-till farming, which reduces soil erosion.

Someone so full of shit. Yeah. More than 7,000 studies attest to its safety. I feel like those numbers are wrong. 100% they're wrong. Oh, man. All right. Well, that's that strange fact and finding. All right. So the next strange fact and finding is actually a TED talk that Tyrone Hayes did around four years ago about his research. Now, before we get into that, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back.

Now, this TED talk is a bit lengthy. However, it is totally worth the listen. So we're going to listen to a portion of that right now. I also have to thank the funding sources for the research that I've done. And this is also my disclosure. I have been funded by the chemical manufacturers, but they've since decided they don't like to hang out with me so much. That's OK.

That all changed a few years ago when a chemical company, the largest chemical company in the world, asked me to use my expertise in studying frog hormones to try to understand if the chemical, their number one selling product, a weed killer, atrazine, if it interfered with their hormones somehow. Long story short, we examined the African clawed frog in my lab, we exposed them to this chemical atrazine, and we showed things like this.

And these are testis. And you don't have to have a PhD or be a frog expert to see that there's a difference between the control and the exposed animals. The control testis, if you look at it under the microscope, is full of sperm soldiers ready to go. The atrazine-treated gonad or testis, the testicular tubules are filled with cellular debris. What's more is if you look at the young developing larvae, you often find sometimes, these are the kidneys, if you're not used to looking at frog gonads, that this is an individual, though, that has testis.

Then it has more ovaries. Then it has another testes. Then it has more ovaries. One pair will get you in enough trouble. This guy...

This situation is certainly not typical of amphibians. There are fish that are naturally hermaphrodites, but not amphibians. We later show that some of these animals grow up, even though they're genetic males, to become completely functioning reproductive females, even though they were genetic males. We show that in other species, the gonads look like this. So those are the testis on the top, and all of that junk in the trunk on the bottom, those are all eggs that are bursting through the surface of this male's testis.

Now, I showed this to the Environmental Protection Agency because I thought they'd be interested. After all, it's the number one selling chemical in the world at the time. And they said, well, that's not really an adverse effect that would stimulate us to reassess the chemical. Now, my wife tells me that there is nothing more painful in life than childbirth. I'm going to have to give her that. But I would guess that a dozen chicken eggs popping out of my testicles would have to be at least in the top five most painful experiences. The EPA doesn't think so.

I thought more about why this might happen. So for example, if this were your testes, you should make testosterone. Testosterone is a portmanteau. I learned that word at age 49. So when you put two words together like smoke and fog, you get smog. Twist and jerk, you get twerk. Testosterone means testicular hormone. It's literally the male hormone. But we hypothesized that this atrazine turned on an enzyme aromatase that caused the testosterone to be converted to estrogen.

And if you're a male, that means that you're using up your testosterone so you don't make sperm, but it also means that you're making the female hormone when you shouldn't be. So then I started to think, we publish that. We publish that in Proceedings and the National Academy of Sciences and Nature, very prestigious journals, journals that'll get you a tenured professorship at a place like UC Berkeley, but journals that, as my mom says, how important can it be? Barnes and Nobles never heard of them.

And I started to think though about how my work might imply things beyond frogs. So this is a pond in Lake Nabugabo in Uganda where I started to think that this agricultural runoff might not only affect the frogs and the fish, but also the other animals that are drinking out of the water, including the humans that collect the drinking and cooking water from this same source. Because see, we all make estrogen in the exact same way and use it in the same way.

The connection to contaminants and water might not be so obvious for us. This is my village.

But things like Erin Brockovich's story and things like Flint, Michigan remind us that we don't necessarily have the resources that we think we have, the clean sources of water. A colleague of mine showed, because I don't study humans, I had to work with other people on this, that if you look at men in Columbia, Missouri, and compare the atrazine in their urine, men who have atrazine in their urine have a low sperm count and can't get their wives pregnant. And by the way, this is the same amount of atrazine, 0.1 parts per billion, that we were using to chemically castrate and feminize our frogs.

Another colleague showed, and I've matched the data down now, because these are atrazine levels of men who work in the fields in California, and these are atrazine levels of men who apply atrazine in California. 2,400 parts per billion. They have 24,000 times the atrazine in their urine than we use to chemically castrate frogs and fish. 24,000 times what we know is already having a negative impact on men in Columbia, Missouri. One of these guys could pee in a bucket.

And I can dilute it 24,000 times and use the atrazine in their urine to chemically castrate and feminize 24,000 buckets of 30 tadpoles each. So there you go. I know that was kind of lengthy. If you want to watch the rest of it, we'll have a link to it for anyone that wants to, you know, go take a look at it. But very interesting stuff. Yeah, it's definitely worth the watch so you can actually follow along with some of the images that he throws up and everything. It's crazy. It is.

So after we researched this, we started looking into different chemicals to see if there were any other chemicals like this out there that are kind of like flying under the radar. And Dan, why don't you tell us about the one you found? All right. So our next strange fact I'm finding is about the forever chemical.

Or also known as PFAS. Or I think you know it as PFOS? Uh, PFOAs, PFOs, and PFAS. Yeah, so there's multiple ones. Yep. Back in 1946, DuPont introduced a new product line of clickware that was coded with Teflon.

It became a popular product, and today thousands of fluorinated chemicals that came from Teflon include thousands of nonstick, stain-repellent, and waterproof compounds called PFAS, which is short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. So yeah, Teflon makes it to where if you cook something, it won't stick, right? Right.

Okay. So yeah, PFAs are very useful in our daily lives. But decades of using them constantly on pretty much everything has contaminated our water, soil, and also the blood of people and animals all around the world. Now, you would think, well, this chemical will probably like break down, right? Eventually, you know? Nope. It doesn't.

That's why it has the nickname the forever chemical, because it is so persistent that it never breaks down in the environment and it remains in our body for years. Which in 2001, a scandal erupted in Parkersburg, West Virginia, after discovery of the Teflon chemical in the drinking water of tens of thousands of people near a DuPont plant, which a documentary was made called The Devil We Know.

In this lawsuit, it was discovered that DuPont knew that the PFA, or whatever, the substance, was hazardous and had contaminated the tap water, but decided not to tell its workers, the local community, or the environmental officials.

No, my contact is rolled into the back of my eyeball. Hold on. All right, there we go. I just pulled my contact out of the back of my eyeball. Sorry. During your, when you were talking, I rubbed my eye and my contact went back behind my eyeball. That hurts. Now it looks like you got pink eye. Someone fart in your face. Yeah, you did. Oh yeah. Wait, no. All right. Anyway, so continuing on. So DuPont,

of course, knew that the PFAs, like Dan said, were hazardous and contaminated tap water. And of course, they didn't tell their employees, local communities, or even environmental officials.

which this led to studies by environmentalists, and that ended up linking the Teflon chemical to cancer and other diseases and side effects, such as testicular, kidney, liver, and pancreatic cancer, reproductive problems, weakened childhood immunity, low birth weight, endocrine disruption, increased cholesterol, weight gain in children and dieting adults.

as well as black teeth. Oh yeah, I remember you telling me that earlier. Black teeth, yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, if you haven't seen the movie Darkwater or the documentary The Devil We Know, I suggest anyone that's looking for a good movie or documentary to watch either one of those, and it will teach you more about this chemical and how it was all covered up by DuPont, which is a giant piece of shit company, and 3M as well. Yep, so I've added both those movies to my list to watch.

Tony, I remember that we need to watch at least one of them very soon. Yeah, I've watched both of them already, but I will watch them again because they are so good. So, yeah. Now, you'd think that it probably just stops there, but no. As I was searching up this Forever Chemical, you search it up, there are so many articles and stuff about it.

And there's one actually that was published today. There's a new lawsuit that is going on that the U.S. alleges Coca-Cola and Simply Tropical Fruit Juice have been deceiving customers.

They claim that their all-natural healthy product of orange juice has been found to be contaminated with toxic PFAS levels hundreds of times above the federal advisory limits for drinking water. Now, water use is the main route for exposure of this chemical, but researchers have recently found that contaminated food is more of a risk than they originally thought.

Now, even though all of this was found out, the FDA has pretty much dragged their feet and has done very little to address the contamination of food that is affecting pretty much everyone. Then, of course, Coca-Cola, on the other hand, decided to release a statement which said, and we quote,

We are aware of the lawsuit, which focuses on our Simply Tropical product. We stand by the quality of our products. That's all they say. What a bunch of f***ing assholes. Right? Goddamn. You know what? F*** them. I ain't drinking Coca-Cola no more. I'm on the Pepsi gang, bitch. Pepsi, Pepsi, bitch. No, you know what? No, because they didn't give that guy his f***ing jet. Oh, yeah. Never mind. You know what? F*** all these Coca-Cola companies, these soda companies. It's bad for you anyways.

Sparkling water is where it's at. LaCroix gang gang. Wait, who makes LaCroix? Hold on. It's probably Coca-Cola. Probably. Hold on. LaCroix. No. National Beverage Corporation. Oh, okay. Yeah, LaCroix gang. You know, we had one of the LaCroix's in the fridge and we didn't have no soda and I was just like, and I was starting to cut off sodas, right?

So I haven't had soda in like a week. I grabbed the LaCroix and I actually drank it. I'm just like, oh shit, this actually has flavor. You know what? F*** LaCroix. You know what I just found out about them? What? Their CEO, Nick Caparella, or Caparelli, whatever the hell his name is, was accused of sexual harassment by two former employee pilots who alleged that he inappropriately touched them

more than 30 times during 30 trips between 2014 and 16. And one of the lawsuits was settled out of court in January 2018, and another one's still pending. And he denies all these claims and remains as the CEO. Oh, shit. They got another lawsuit, class action lawsuit. LaCroix stated that they have an all-natural branding.

But they use synthetic ingredients including ethyl butanol, linol, and linolol proponate. I don't even know how to pronounce those words. They use complicated chemicals, okay? And the company responded with, all the flavors essential in LaCroix are natural. All right. Well, speaking of settling out of court, this next range factor finding has some of that going on too. All right. Why don't you start it off for us?

Alright, so the next strange fact I'm finding is over the lack of oversight on pesticides. Which, Aaron touched on that earlier, how atrazine is the second most widely used pesticide or herbicide. And the number one is glyphosate. So back in 1974, Monsanto introduced a new product line of weed killers called Roundup.

They stated that the product would kill weeds and would have no health effects against people. It was extremely safe to use. But in 2019, some of the corporate secrets arose in three public trials that were going on.

which revealed a covert campaign to cover up the pesticides' risks. Which brought forth the lack of oversight of all pesticides by the EPA and any of the other regulatory agencies that were supposed to have the public's safety in mind. So there was two trials that ended up happening with Monsanto and their Roundup product, and the jury found Monsanto's herbicides...

that they did indeed contribute to cancer and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risks. So, of course, the jury awarded the plaintiffs. Yeah. Which was the people going against Monsanto. Now, during those trials, revelations came forth. Monsanto never conducted studies for Roundup and its other formulations made with the active ingredients glyphosate to see if the products could lead to cancer in people who use them.

Also at the same time, Monsanto was refusing to conduct long-term product safety studies, the company spending millions of dollars on secretive PR campaigns, which included a $17 million budget in a single year to finance ghostwritten studies aimed at discrediting independent scientists whose work found dangers with the herbicides Monsanto used. If you don't know what ghostwritten means, pretty much someone would write it and then they were just like,

well, I don't want to publish it. And they would push it on to somebody else to publish it so it doesn't come back to them. Yeah. They would pay off a doctor. Yeah. They did that. Then Monsanto was aware of tests that showed that the chemicals used in Roundup were easily absorbed through the skin, human skin. Neither the company nor the EPA have warned consumers of a need to wear protective clothing while using Roundup. Which causes cancer like crazy in individuals who...

decide to use it, which I that's one of the reasons why I never touch it. And every time you see it outside our house, you're just like, you need to throw that shit away. I do. I have every single time. Now, there's something else that we're going to mention is that in the 1980s, the EPA scientists saw that mice dosed with the chemical glyphosate developed rare kidney tumors, which showed that people would be at risk for developing cancer while using it.

But Monsanto started to protest this finding, which led the EPA's top people overruling their own scientists' findings. And the EPA assured Americans that glyphosate posed no cancer risk at all to humans, even though their own scientists' research said different. So with this chemical being deemed safe,

It has been and still used today all over the world, even though some countries try to regulate it. That's kind of sad, ain't it? Very sad. Now, the residues of the chemical have been documented in food, air, water, and soil samples, as well as within the bodies of people who have never even touched or used the pesticide.

Which is crazy. What's even crazier is this chemical has been detected in raindrops when it rains. It's like, Jesus Christ. So it just spreads. Now, just throw it out there. Monsanto was purchased by Bayer and it still goes on trying to assert that glyphosate is safe, but it has over 13,000 plaintiffs awaiting their own day in court. And that was back in 2019. Yeah.

Because they got lymphoma, yeah, from Roundup. It's crazy, man. It's like they're hiding all this shit. $17 million in just one year to cover up, you know, with campaign ads and saying like it's safe. While scientists and stuff, independent scientists are like finding that, oh, this is causing cancer. It does this. It does that. And they're just like, no, no. We have proof. These studies show that they're safe. It's crazy.

With you mentioning how they detected this chemical in raindrops, that reminded me of some of the studies I was reading over atrazine. And there was a study done with mice that they gave the grandmother of some mice atrazine. Okay. And she had a baby. And then that baby had a baby. And then that baby had a baby. So that last baby...

His great grandmother is the one exposed to atrazine. Not him, just the great grandmother. The entire tree, the lineage, had atrazine in their blood, even though they were never exposed to it. Just because their great grandmother was exposed to it, her entire bloodline after that had atrazine in their blood. So it was genetically passed down? It was all passed down. Damn. Yeah, it's screwed up, man.

Anyways, so that pretty much is our last strange fact and finding.

And now I guess we go into our own personal thoughts and theories behind all this. And there isn't really any theories other than it's, I mean, it's not a theory, it's a fact. The EPA, the USDA, all these regulatory bodies that are supposed to protect the public are not protecting the public. They have these scientific advisory councils and committees that make decisions about

These committees are all being ran by X chemical companies, CEOs and shit like that. They all just like trade off each other. Like, I don't know. We talked about it for politicians going into like bigger companies that they invested in and stuff like that. What was that on? What episode was that on? Because I remember that. I honestly want to say it's the where we talked about all the big corporations and all the shit that they did. They had like Kellogg's in it and all that stuff. No, it was something else.

I don't know. But yeah, yeah, I know exactly how the what you're saying, how these corporations trade off with private companies and they protect their interest. And that's what it is. It's not the public. It's the corporations that are protected. And it's sad because, I mean, you even pull up that USDA document.

The one that we linked and you can read that the USDA pretty much states, hey, it's going to cost too much to get rid of atrazine. So instead, you know, yeah, there's going to be some deaths, but overall it's going to benefit humanity. It's like, oh my God, you pick monetary value over human life. You're the biggest piece of shit I know.

I found a site earlier and I was like trying to go through some of the documents, but there's so many. Have you heard of the poisonpapers.org? No. This site has over like 20,000 documents from like court cases and stuff like that. Documenting the hidden history of chemical and pesticide hazards in the United States alone. And these are actually like official court documents and shit going through all kinds of stuff. Like I already made it through like a couple pages, opening up a couple of documents and

Shit's scary. It is. And I bet all these chemicals that are being used is the reason why

We're having a just an absolute crazy increase in Alzheimer's or however you can pronounce it and dementia. Like if you look up the cause of death, Alzheimer's and dementia is way up there now. Within the past few years, it has skyrocketed. And I guarantee you it's these chemical companies that don't give a fuck about the public and they just care about money. Selling products, man. The product's sold and who cares about the side effects or what it does afterwards? It's a shame.

There was something else I wanted to talk about, which is the elephant in the room. The prominent theory, okay, is that all across the United States, there is a rise in individuals transitioning from male to female. Now, do you think this atrazine, since it gets rid of the testosterone and it converts it to estrogen, do you think it is one of the causes or one of the reasons why

this rate of transitioning has increased or do you think this rate has always been that high that it is only because society has become more accepting of these individuals that we have become more aware that there are these many individuals out there that's tough to say i honestly would say that atrazine plays a part but i also believe more so on the side of that the

world's becoming more open to people being themselves. Okay. But I'm not going to say that atrazine does not play a part because 100% I think it does. Okay. All right. I can respect that. So yeah, that's a prominent theory that a lot of people say, you know, and I know it's a hot topic and it's a very sensitive question, right? And I just want to reiterate that we are open to anyone and everyone and we don't hate anyone unless you're a

a CEO of a company and covering up crimes against humanity. Yeah. But yeah, we're love. We're loving and accepting of everyone. Come to us as you will and you will be accepted into the cult.

Of conspiracy. Two words that we don't want to say. Cult and conspiracy. Yeah. But no, we love and respect everybody. Even if you hate us, we still love and respect you. Yeah. So with that being said, do you have anything else you want to add to today's topic other than Alex Jones was right?

Uh, if you're going to use herbicides and pesticides, please wear protective clothing. Don't even use them, man. Just go on your field. Pick them. Pick them with your hands. When my mom and dad first moved to Virginia and bought their house, they didn't have a lawnmower, not the little push mowers or anything like that. Didn't have any of that. My mom would go outside with a pair of scissors. That's right. Scissors should be on her hands and knees cutting the weeds and everything.

To weed out the yard and everything. To make it look nice. Damn. Why aren't you doing that to your house? Because I hate this yard. You can't even call it a yard. I don't blame you. My grass ain't growing where it shit. Anyway. Damn. Your mom's dedicated. Good for her. Oh, dude. She loves yard work. Need to bring her down. Dude, she would probably whip my ass saying, like, what have you done to this yard? And, like, I mean...

Granted, we're kind of restricted on all we can do to it. Damn the HOA. Yeah. Anyways, if you or a loved one hate the HOA, write down in the comments that you hate it. Hashtag President Aaron for HOA.

Yeah. 2023. All right. Well, with that being said, I want to thank you all for joining us today. And again, make sure you go suntan your butthole, get that vitamin D all up in you. And I want to thank you for your support. You were all amazing. Every single one of you. So with that being said, Dan, you want to roll us out? Sure. Well, it's okay to be out of this world with your thoughts because you are not alone.

America, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By honoring your sacred vocation of education, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. At Grand Canyon University, our online bachelor's, master's, and doctoral education degree programs allow you to balance online coursework with observational and hands-on experience in the field. Find your purpose at GCU. Private. Christian. Affordable.

visit gcu.edu.