Plot-Twists & Punchlines
Plot-Twists & Punchlines is a conspiracy podcast hosted by best friends Steph and Mel. We started this show because the world feels heavy — and we wanted to create a soft place to land with laughter, comfort, and chaotic conversations.
Each week, we talk life, books, pop culture, and unhinged thoughts and once a month, we review a popular BookTok book so you don’t have to (but you probably still will).
Grab your drink, your blanket, your emotional support book boyfriend and let’s get into it.
Plot-Twists & Punchlines
Unit 731 & Treeman
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This week we talked about Unit 731 and TikTok's Treeman!
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Hey besties! Welcome to Plot Business and Punchlines. I'm Steph, and I'm Mel. Two best friends here to distract you from the world.
SPEAKER_01Join us each week while we both dive into a new conspiracy theory we saw this week and give our questionable takes on them. So grab your blanket, your coffee, and your emotional support from this. And let's get into today's episode. Hello. We're from uh five minutes ago.
SPEAKER_02You don't know that though. Well, actually, you do. We said that last episode.
SPEAKER_01So you you definitely do. We made it pretty obvious. I like that you deleted Eidma Bark immediately.
SPEAKER_02It wasn't racially motivated, okay?
SPEAKER_01Anyway, hi. This week I am going to be starting. I don't think we have anything to talk about at the beginning because we literally just talked a second ago. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I don't think so. I think we can just get right into it. Also, I don't know. Uh, this is kind of fun. Um, my favorite band is Sleep Token. And Jason has made it his life's mission to make sure that I have literally everything that Jason. Jason has made it his life's mission to make sure that I have literally everything. Oh my god, I can't believe I just did that. Please spend all my money.
unknownJesus.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if you can actually see anything. I just kept looking and I'm like, she's she's not. I am. I want. Oh my god. For anyone not watching the video, um, I just flashed my debit card numbers to the video. It won't be in the video, so don't try anything.
SPEAKER_01It will not be in the video. It will be cropped out or edited out.
SPEAKER_02All I wanted to do was show you that Jason got me like credit card stickers. That's so cute. That have the sleep token on it. And I think so beautiful. Anyway, let's get into today's episode. I can't believe I did that. Actually, I can. I can. I can believe that.
SPEAKER_01All right, let me get to my notes. So last week we talked about MKUltra and their horrible human experimentations. Yes. This week we're gonna talk about Japan and their horrible human exp uh experimentations. Oh good. Yes, and this um we're gonna be talking about unit 731 and unit 731 and Project Artichoke happened at the same time. Oh yes. So worldwide we people are being ones doing it. Ha ha. Nope. But remember where some of our concentration camps or or detention centers were, the detainment centers? Where we like put them in other places? One of them was Japan. Really?
SPEAKER_02I did not know that.
SPEAKER_01Unit 731, officially known as I'm just gonna apologize right now. This is in Japan. Names.
SPEAKER_02I know exactly what it is.
SPEAKER_01I am not Japanese. Yeah. I have never been to Japan. I am going to pronounce 100% of these names wrong, and I apologize sincerely. I'm very, very, very sorry from the beginning. Um and also trigger warning for everything. Just in general. Just if you think it might be a trigger warning, I'm probably gonna talk about it. Okay, great. Unit 731, officially known as the Manchu Detachment 731, and also referred to as Camo Detachment and the Ishii Unit, was a secret research facility operated by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1933 and 1945. It was located in Pingfeng district of Harbin. That was the most American way I could have said that. I'm sorry. In the Japanese puppet state Manchukoyu, now part of Northeast China.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01And maintained multiple branches across mainland China and Southeast Asia. The Empire of Japan initiated its biological weapons program during the 1930s due to the prohibition of the biological weapons and interstate conflicts by the Geneva Protocol in 1925. They reasoned that the ban implied their efficiency as weapons. Japan's occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. I I can hear my white voice saying it and I'm cringing inside. Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese an advantage of separating the research station from their island, but also gave them access to many Jap Chinese individuals as they wanted to use for test subjects.
SPEAKER_02So Japan and China are fighting.
SPEAKER_01Forever. Okay. Yeah. They've always been fighting. There's okay. Yeah, they're still not gotcha. Still not cool. Nope. You're gonna find out why. Okay. Yeah, no, uh, China and Japan never really don't get along. Okay. Been close. Um they viewed the Chinese as no cost assets and hoped this ready supply of test subjects would give them a competitive advantage in the biological warfare.
unknownJeez.
SPEAKER_01Most of the victims were Chinese, but many victims were also of different nationalities. These facilities contained more than just medical research and experimentation areas. They also included spaces for detaining victims, essentially functioning as prisons as well. The research and experimentation rooms were constructed around the detention area, allowing research to conduct their daily work while monitoring the prisoners. Founded in 1933, Unit 731 expanded to include 3,000 staff members, 150 structures, and the capacity to detain up to 600 prisoners concurrently for experimentational purposes. Wow. Unit 731 was the first of several covert units established as offshoots of the research lab, serving as field station and experimentational sites to advantage to advance biological warfare techniques. Under the direction of Shiro Ishii, the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was established following his return from a two-year exploration of American and European research institutions. With the endorsement of high-ranking military officials, it was established for the purpose of developing biological weapons. Ishii aimed to create biological weapons with humans as their intended victims, and Unit 731 was formed specifically to pursue this objective. Ishii organized a secret research group, the Togo Unit, for chemical and biological oper experimentation in Manchuria. Wow. In 1936, and again, trigger warnings for it all. In 1936, Emperor Hirohito issued a decree authorizing the expansion of the unit and its interrogation to the Quantong Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department. It was divided at that time to the Ishii Unit and the Wakamatasu Unit with a base in Xingjin. From 1940 on, the units were known collectively as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantong Army or Unit 741 for short. Unit Togo was set into motion in the Zongma Fortress, a prison and experimentation camp in Bianchi, a village 100 kilometers or 62 miles south of Harbin on the South Manchara Railway. The prisoners brought to Zhangma included common criminals, captured bandits, and anti-Japanese partisans, as well as political prisoners and people rounded up on false charges by the compete.
SPEAKER_02So like the Japanese Nazis? Yeah. No.
SPEAKER_01Prisoners were generally well fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and occasionally even alcohol in order to be a normal health at the beginning of the experiments. Then over several days, prisoners were eventually drained of blood and deprived of nutrients and water. Their deteriorating health was recorded. Some were also vissected. Others were deliberately infected with plague bacteria and other microbes. A prison break in the autumn of 1934, which jeopardized the facility's secrecy and an explosion in 1935, which was believed to be by sabotage, led Ishii to shut down the Zongma fortress. He then received authorization to relocate to Pingfeng, approximately 24 kilometers or 15 miles south of Harbin, to establish a new, much larger facility.
SPEAKER_02Drain their blood? Yes. Ew.
SPEAKER_01The military police and the special service agency were responsible for locating victims to serve as test subjects for the unit, while a group of physicians was tasked with maintaining the health of victims and dispatching them for experimentation. Human experiments involved intentionally infecting captives, particularly Chinese prisoners of war and civilians with disease-causing agents and exposing them to bombs designed to disperse infectious substances upon contact with the skin. There are no records indicating any survivors from these experiments. Those who did not die from infection were murdered for autopsy analysis.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01After human experimentations, researchers commonly used either potassium cyanide or chlorofoam to kill survivors. That's crazy. That's horrible. According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris, the Togo unit employed gruesome tactics to secure specimens of select body organs. If Ishii or one of his coworkers wished to do research on the human brain, they would order the guards to find them a useful sample. A prisoner would be taken from a cell, guards would hold him down while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an axe. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist and then the crematorium for the usual disposal. Prisoners were injected with diseases disguised as vaccines to study their effects. To study the effect of untreated venereal diseases, men and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. A special project codenamed Mauta Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and sometimes referred to as logs, as in how many logs fell. This term originated as a staff joke because the official cover story for the facility given to local authorities was that it was a lumber mill.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. So far, I'm gonna argue that this is worse than MK Ultra. Yeah, I didn't say it wasn't. Yeah, no, I know. I just I'm putting it out there, I feel like, of the two.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, one is physical torture, the other one is psychological torture. I don't think we can compare it. Yeah, it's not. They're both they're both bad. Um and there's a reason that the CIA didn't really do this, but we will get into that. Okay. Thousands of men, women, children, and infants interned at the prisoner of war camps were subjected to bisections, which is a surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with central nervous systems, to view the living internal structure. It was often performed without anesthesia and usually lethal.
SPEAKER_02I was just gonna say, I bet this is without anesthesia, too.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. In a video interview, former Unit 731 member Aqua Fukumatasu admitting to having bisected a pregnant woman. Visection were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases, removing organs to study the effects of the disease on the human body. I I will say America has done this many times, but we don't talk about it because they only did it to black women. So I don't like that. They used to say that uh black women were couldn't feel pain. Couldn't feel pain, so they would never use anesthesia. So they would just cut them open without it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it's not just Japan. Yeah. Again, if there's evil to be had, it's been done here. Right. Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Limbs removed were off were sometimes reattached to the opposite side of the victim's body. Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and their esophagus reattached to their intestines. Parts of the organs such as brain, lungs, and liver were removed from others. Imperial Japanese Army surgeon Ken Yuasa said that the practicing vivation on or on human subjects was bright spread even outside Unit 731, estimating that 1,000 Japanese personnel were involved in the practice in mainland China. Yusa said that when he performed vice actions on captives, they were all for practice rather than for research, and that the such practices were routine among Japanese doctors stationed in China during the war. The New York Times interviewed a former member of Unit 731, insisting on anom on in the non- Oh my god, I can't talk today. Anonymity? Anonymity. Thank you. Insisting on anonym insisting on anything. They wanted to be anonymous. Anonymity. A man anemone. Anonymity. They wanted to be anonymous. Yep. Anony. The former Japanese medical assistant recounted his first experience in bisecting a live human being who had been deliberately infected with the plague for the purpose of developing plague bombs for the war. Uh the sorry. It's okay. So this is a quote from him. Okay. Um The fellow knew that it was over for him, so he didn't struggle when they laid him in the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly. And his face was twisted in agony. He made this horrible, unimaginable sound, and he was screaming so horribly. And then he finally stopped. And this was all in a day's work for surgeons, but it but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time. That's so horrible. I don't feel bad for him. Fuck it.
SPEAKER_02Not the guy right. No, I'm personal on me. I don't care. Yeah, I hope it haunts you. Ugh.
SPEAKER_01Unit 731 and its affiliated units, Unit 1644 and Unit 100, among others, were involved in research development and experimental deployment of epidemic creating biological weapons and assaults against the Chinese populace, both military and civilian, throughout World War II. By 1939, Ishii had condensed his laboratory discoveries to six potent pathogens: anthrax, typhoid, paratyphoid, glanders, descentary, and plague-infected human fleas. Ew. These agents were robust enough to ignite epidemics of cons of considerable magnitude and resilient to aerial dispersal. This marked the initiation of a later phase of Ishii's elaborate screen scheme, conducting field trial through military expeditions on unsuspecting civilians, aiming to devise a method of dissemination that would efficiently spread the pathogens in optimal concentrations for maximum devastation. His experiments involved developing biodegradable bombs that house live rats and fleas infected with diseases designed to explode mid-air, ensuring the safe defense descent of the infected creatures to the ground. Additionally, he deployed birds and bird feathers contaminated with anthrax for low-flying aircrafts.
SPEAKER_02How you have to be like you have to have so much time to think about all of these things. That is crazy. Like who how did you even come up with this? Like what your first thought was, oh, we need biomedical weapons.
SPEAKER_01Steppen said that, like, or at the beginning, it said that like he was on a two-year expedition looking at American and European research centers, and then he came back and started working on this. So what did he see in America and Europe during World War II?
SPEAKER_02Eugenics, uh definitely.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we just read last week about I mean, not last week, yeah, but we just read a few minutes ago everything that I said that the Nazis were doing that became ultra or MK Ultra.
SPEAKER_02Ultra, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And this was happening at the same time that they were doing project artichokes. So, like, what else were they doing that was destroyed in the files?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yep.
SPEAKER_01We'll never know. No, we won't. Because they were destroyed. Human targets were used to test grenades at various distances and positions. Flamethrowers were tested on people. Victims were also tied to stakes and used as victims to test pathogen releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and sharp shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments and explosive bombs as well as bayonets and knives. My God. A quote saying, to determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of sharpenel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped unprotected to wooden planks that were stacked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. It was surgery for most autopsies for the rest. Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and non-infected prisoners to transmit syphilis as the testimony of prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between victims.
SPEAKER_02I was wondering when that was gonna happen. I knew that forced sex was coming.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course. Um, so one of the prison guards said about this method of transmission. Infection of venereal diseases by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members dressed in white laboratory clothing, completely covering the body with only eyes and mouths visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, when infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot. I feel like I would rather get shot. Me too. Me too. After victims were infected, they were bisected at different stages of infection so that the internal and external organs could be absorbed as the disease progressed. Testimony from multiple guards blames the victim or the female victims as being host of the diseases, even though they were forcibly infected.
SPEAKER_02Ew. That's disgusting. This is so gross. I wish I was done. Yeah, I wish so too.
SPEAKER_01This is not funny. No. Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant for use in experiments. The hypothetic the hypothetical possibility of vertical transmission, which means like passing it from the mother to the daughter, of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for that torture. Fetal survival and damage to the mother's reproductive organs were objects of interest, though a large number of babies were born in captivity. There were no accounts of any survivors of Unit 731, children included. It is suspected that the children of the female prisoners were killed after birth or aborted.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so these like accounts, the quotes that you're they're all from prison guards. There. Yeah. Victims.
SPEAKER_01Yep. While male prisoners were often used in single studies so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this reality. And he quotes: One of the former researches I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys out of the cell and opened one of the ones that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her. The other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She still had several fingers missing and her bones were black with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her, anyways. Then he saw that her sex organ was festering with pus oozing to the surface, so he gave up that idea, left and locked the door, then later went back to his experimental work. Unit 731 conducted a wide range of experiments beyond biological warfare, including torture, chemical exposure, and physiological manipulation. Prisoners were subjected to extreme methods of physical stress, including prolonged starvation and dehydration, exposure to low pressure chambers until their eyes burst, suspension upside down until death, crushing with heavy objects, electrocution, forced dehydration using hot air fans, spinning and centrifuges until death, exposure to extreme heat and burns, injection with animal blood, injection with seawater, burning alive or alive burial.
SPEAKER_02At what point there's no way that all of this, I mean, you said that the point of some of this is literally just torture.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. 100%.
SPEAKER_02There's no way that you can make a scientific argument for honestly, even the scientific purposes. It's disgusting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, and that's what they said with the MK Ultra. Like eventually they're like, there's no research purposes. They were just like, what if this happens and tried it? Right. Like to be able to even do this kind of stuff in the name of scientific research, you have to be broken. You have to be evil. Yeah. So it's pretty easy to see. And and to sign up to be like a guard here and to witness it, again, you have to be a psychopath. There has to be something wrong with you. So it's not hard to imagine that the people who would be involved in the scientific part of this would easily just go to torture.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just translate.
SPEAKER_01It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. At death, the corpses would only weigh about a fifth of normal body weight. Victims were also exposed to a wide range of toxic agents, including mustard gas, luazite, cyanic acid gas, white phosphorus, atamcyte, and phosgen. I probably pronounced a couple of those wrong, I'm sorry. Unit 731 operated a facility dedicated to gas chamber experiments. Again, he studied in Europe. Victims were placed in sealed chambers wearing either full uniform, partial gear, or no protection. A former army major and later professor recalled, in 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. A glass walled chamber about three meters square, 97 square foot, and two meters, 6.6 feet, high, was used, and inside it a Chinese man was blindfolded with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was atomcy, which is sneezing d sneezing gas. And as the gas filled the chamber, the man went into a violent coughing convulsion and began to suffer extre extrusiating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I watched for about 10 minutes, I could not stand it anymore and left the area. I understand that other types of gases were also tested there.
SPEAKER_02I just don't understand how this was allowed for so long.
SPEAKER_01For s it was only I know I'm not gonna say like it was only but it was only a few years ago. It went from like, what did I say?
SPEAKER_0230 nine to 43, I think is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, something so it really wasn't that I mean that is years of torture to the Chinese, so I'm not trying to like downplay it, downplay it, but it compared to yeah, 1933 to 1945, so it was oh I guess that was a while. That's still 10 years. Oh that okay, yeah. I thought it was shorter in my mind, sorry. 12 years is a long time of torture.
SPEAKER_02It is a long time, and I just don't understand, like, where are where are the police? I mean, these are the police, that's the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01Oh and they were hiding it behind a lawn company.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, where did all the timber go? Did no one ever ever question why they didn't have any lumber coming from this place?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Unit 731 also studied blood loss and incompatible blood transfusions. Former member Akawa Fukumatusu stated that some prisoners had 500 milliliters of blood withdrawn every two to three days. Experiments with incompatible blood types were conducted. Unit member Nao Ikida recorded, in my experience, when type A blood 100cc was transfused into an O type subject whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees Celsius. 30 minutes later, the temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with a slight trepid trepidation. 60 minutes later, the pulse was 106 per minute and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. Two hours later, the temperature was 37.7 degrees, and three hours later the subject recovered. When A B type blood 120 C was transfused to a O type subject, an hour later the subject described melee and psychore in both legs. When A B type blood 100cc was transfused into a B type subject, there seemed to be no side effect. Prisoners were also exposed to biological toxins, including tetrodoxetin, which is from the pufferfish, heroin, Korean bindweed, bactyl, and castor oil seeds. In 2002, Cheng Day, China, the site of the one of the plague flea bombings, held an international symposium on the crimes of bacteriological warfare, which estimated that the number of people slaughtered by the Imperial Japanese Army's germ warfare and other human experience was 580,000. My God. So in the 12 years, they killed 580,000 people.
SPEAKER_02That's so many people.
SPEAKER_01After the war, 12 Unit 731 members were tried by the USSR in 1949, war crime trials, and sentenced to prison. However, many key figures, including Ishii, who again is the one who ran it, were granted immunity by the United States in exchange for their research data.
SPEAKER_02No. Why? So we can have biological weapons too?
SPEAKER_01The Truman administration concealed the unit's crimes and paid stipends for two former personnel.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_01On August 28th, 2002, the Tokyo District Court formally acknowledged that Japan that Japan had conducted biological warfare in China and held the state responsible for the related deaths. So that goes back to why was MKUltra not as bad? Because it was happening at the same time we were doing um Artichoke and then we just got their research.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So we didn't have to. We didn't have to. Yeah. We already had the results. Ugh. That was disgusting.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome. Sorry, guys. Horrible. I was sick and miserable, so I thought I would make you guys sick and miserable too.
SPEAKER_02Well, it worked.
SPEAKER_01That's horrible. Next week I am going back to I I need to do something light. I need to do something silly. Next week I am doing aliens again. I need a mental break from yeah. What's the past two episodes?
SPEAKER_02What is crazy is that like it's not surprising that any of this happened um anywhere, right? Whether it's United States, Japan, whatever. It just is so uh to like think about it front and center. It just is disturbing.
SPEAKER_01And to know that things like this are still happening in the world today. We're just not gonna find out about it till years later when we find Israel's documents.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, my topics are a lot lighter than that.
SPEAKER_01That is why I went first this week, so that we um have a little levity after that fun stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So uh there's only a couple things. I basically just like uh I've seen a couple weird things on TikTok recently. So the first one is uh I don't know if you've seen the tree guy on TikTok.
SPEAKER_01The guy who's like who's convinced his tree is moving. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So there's like eight episodes of this guy who is like something's weird with this tree. It starts off pretty like innocent. Something's weird with this tree. I've grown up here, I don't remember this tree being here. Yeah, and then it just transforms into this like experiment. Closer, yeah, it keeps moving closer, and then he puts string around it, and then he comes back the next day and it's loose. So the tree moved, and then he goes on to be like, it doesn't even look real anymore. And I just feel like this is how mass hysteria starts. Do you do you believe the tree is moving? I want to know. No, I don't believe that the tree is moving, however, I think it is suspicious that he suddenly is like in legal trouble for doing this.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I didn't know he was in legal trouble for doing it. Yeah. What kind of legal trouble?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I don't know if it's I'm pretty sure it's like the FBI. They were like, you need to stop doing this. This is spreading a false narrative. Blah blah blah. But I that doesn't make sense to me because how many false narratives are on the internet? Right? Like all of them.
SPEAKER_01I don't know why this specific tree. Is it like it's real that the FBI cares? I just got no no no.
SPEAKER_02This is uh reports, like I saw news reports, those can be AI generated, true, right?
SPEAKER_01So I don't know if have you seen any from like a reputable news source.
SPEAKER_02I I can't say that I have, no.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So I will do more research.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can look into it more too, but it's just like I was intrigued by this at first because I don't believe that we're living in a simulation. I don't believe that the earth is like pixelated or anything like that. I don't believe that. I do believe in timelines though, like I've said many times. So that tree is just hopping between some? Maybe. Or maybe it's just like that tree is in a different timeline, and that timeline is changing differently than this one. Okay, so I don't know. I still don't think it's real, but if if it were to be real, that is the only like plausible uh not even plausible, that is the only thing that I would be willing to accept.
SPEAKER_01I was a tree, and I had the ability to fuck with someone by moving.
SPEAKER_02I would do it. Absolutely would. Well, and then you see all the videos of like walking trees. Yeah, I would get closer and then I would sit.
SPEAKER_01And I would get closer again, I would sit, and then I would go back to my original position.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I would really mess with I would, I would. Ugh, yeah. So uh that guy was just interesting to me, and then I had just briefly seen that he was actually in trouble for doing this, and uh I would have to research more. Why are you in trouble for telling a lie? There's so much more.
SPEAKER_01I'm not texting, I am researching tree man and the FBI, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. It's very weird. Um the other thing that I am sure everyone has seen is the guy that they put on Fox News clearly wearing a mask. You've seen that, right? Yes. He is clearly wearing a mask. So why? Like, are you trying to Sorry?
SPEAKER_01I put Tree Man and Thorn Bradley came up, so I just Oh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You don't know who Thorn Bradley is.
SPEAKER_01Do yourself a favor and just search him up on TikTok. And thank us later. Thank us later.
SPEAKER_02It's for science.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Just watch it nice and slow for science.
unknownBut yeah.
SPEAKER_01You can't find tree man. What's tree man's name? Putting uh um here.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I don't have my phone.
SPEAKER_01We'll research and talk about it next week.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but the guy that they just had on Fox News that was wearing a mask. Why? Yeah, why was he wearing a mask? And why would you do such a piss poor job of covering it up?
SPEAKER_01Literally see it.
SPEAKER_02Lifting. Like are and some of the theories are like, like you see the the deep conspiracy theorists on TikTok who are like it's happening. They're coming out into real life, they're you know, slowly subjecting us to lizard people.
SPEAKER_01I think my theory is they're testing us, they want to see if we notice.
SPEAKER_02Oh, we did.
SPEAKER_01We did. Well, it's so obvious. I think they didn't mean for that like they didn't mean for it to be that obvious.
SPEAKER_02They wanted to see if right, if we would know, yeah. Ugh. It's just so weird to see, and not even like like this is not AI. This is like real. Weird. Yeah, it's so weird. So that was another weird thing that I saw on TikTok that I was like, is this is he a lizard man? Is he a robot? Is he an alien?
SPEAKER_01Well, he was supposed to be like a real guy, yeah. I can't remember his name. It's Howard something, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's supposed to be like a military general or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then Howard didn't even look like the guy in the mask.
SPEAKER_02No, no, you see videos of the actual guy, and it's like that it's not what are you trying to do here? Yeah, like it's yeah, it's weird. Um very weird.
SPEAKER_01Was that it? Yep, that's all you got? Yep. Okay, well, there's your lip at stop talking. My brain needs to shut off. There is your entertainment after the story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I just and I mean there's so many. After you research conspiracy theories on TikTok so often you start seeing the same things, so you kinda gotta start saving them. So I have to dive deeper. So many. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You said you had to dive deeper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Not to find those ones. But like, no. Where's the deep dive? You shouldn't even know Tree Man's name. You're right. No, no, no. To find things that are like not the same consistently on TikTok. Yeah, you gotta go other places. Yep. Gonna ask you if you would rather have been part of the MK Ultra experiments or the Japanese bio war. MK Ultra. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Easy. I can't handle physical pain. I mean, to an extent I can. Like I have tattoos, but that's no. I would much rather be psychologically out of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Then I want to be tortured. The prostitutes they hired.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just that was a joke. Okay. I joke. But how much did you get paid to fuck with a man? Yeah. Sign me up. But you had to have sex with them. So that's where I like, uh. Yeah. Don't want that.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. And if you guys know anything about the tree guy, let me know because genuinely I'm interested.
SPEAKER_01If you guys know anything about the topic I researched today, I'm super interested in it. Can you guys let me know?
SPEAKER_02Can you just do my job for me? And then I will take your notes and do a part two next week. Yeah, with the stuff that you find out.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of research topics that she had that I did more research on. Because I I'm a psycho, and if I like hear something, I need to know everything I can about it. So remember our debate two day two weeks ago now, um, about whether it was aliens or Nazis?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, I'm convinced it's Nazis now.
SPEAKER_01But I have convinced her. I did more research. So the flugel, whatever, yeah, whatever the flugel rods that the aliens said that they flew in on, the ones with the Nazi symbols. Turns out in World War II, the Nazis were researching circular warcraft that they called flu rods.
SPEAKER_02I didn't know. If I had known that, I I wouldn't have fought so hard for aliens. Okay. I wouldn't have fought that hard.
SPEAKER_01We for the people who listen and who have made it this far. Yeah. I was right. I think I think you might have been right. They're Nazis. Not aliens from the middle earth.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, Richard Bird. Sorry about that. I wonder what they poisoned him with. Maybe it was LSD.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, probably. Because we got the research from the Nazis from that time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I bet it was.
SPEAKER_01I bet it was. And that's probably how he saw like the TV and that's why he started tripping balls. Magical stuff. And they were learning how to suppress your memory. Yes. Oh my god. Full circle.
SPEAKER_02Do you have any beef of the week? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What's your what's your beef of the week? Given that I'm with it. My beef of the week is summer clothes. So the weather here in Michigan is getting hot. And uh consistently, my beef with summer is not that it's necessarily hot, it's that it is an uncomfortable hot. It's never just like a nice warm. It's always humid, it's always sticky, it's always a sweaty situation. And I hate it. That's my beef. So summer clothes in particular are it's just hard to find something that is going to be comfortable because you don't you want to wear less clothing. Right. So it's hard to find something that is comfortable, but still like and I'm thinking specifically like for work. Now I'm in an office all day, so um air conditioning is a thing. I'm privileged in that in that sense, but like I just don't it's so hard to find clothing that you just feel comfortable in in the summertime, is what I think.
SPEAKER_01I agree. Because like I don't like to show off too much of my body. But when you wear like clothes, yeah, especially like form fitting clothes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's what a lot of summer clothes are. Like you can't just buy like a and if you do buy a flowy like tank top, you just end up looking frumpy. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's not there's not a good dresses are a good option, but I don't want to wear a dress every day.
SPEAKER_01Especially when it's like really windy like it is here. Yeah. And then you have to wear like the shorts underneath it, and then you chase. I just I don't like it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. No. That's so my beef of the week is just summer. Clothing shorts are okay, but there's never a good length of shorts, it's either like all the way down to your knee or all the way up to your butt cheek, and it's like there's no good in-between tank tops are okay, but I also have uh HS, so I don't like to necessarily show my underarms all the time, and that's a problem, so it's just like it's so annoying. I feel it, I feel it. Yeah, what's your beef?
SPEAKER_01That Trump is still alive. That Netanyahu is still alive.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes I don't expect what comes out of your mouth. I just I should learn to expect it, but I just You know who I am as a person. I do, I do.
SPEAKER_01Israel is my beef of the week. What they did to the volunteers who were going to try to blockade them, raping all of the women there who weren't even Palestinian, the Australians who they just with dogs, and then saying that rape with dogs doesn't count even though that's what Hitler did to you guys.
SPEAKER_02I did not know about that. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_01Israel, Israel is my beef of the week. And Trump. I like your bracelet. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but whatever. Yeah, that's my beef of the week.
SPEAKER_02The world sucks, that's it. Yeah, basically. Definitely. Yeah. I didn't I didn't have a lot. I noticed that be nice to me.
unknownPlease.
SPEAKER_01Summer clothes and genocide.
SPEAKER_02Um I need you to pick a beef of the week that is normal. I mean, it's normal to not support genocide, but I need you to like pick a first world problem. Maybe not necessarily right now, but like in the future.
SPEAKER_01Tell Israel to stop doing fucked up things. And then maybe I can focus on world problem. First world problems. First world problems.
SPEAKER_02I would love that. I would love to be able to just do it. I would love if they just listen to thank you, thank you, thank you. Some white American.
SPEAKER_01Well, more likely to listen to you than me. That's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_02If anyone has a chance, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So you guys listening, use your voices, speak out, sign positions, go to Palestinian rallies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Yeah, this one was a little lackluster. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01Um to be fair, we didn't expect to record two episodes today. Um, this is true. In Stephanie's defense, we uh planned this uh so it's pretty last minute yesterday. So I I had already knew I was gonna be talking about unit 731. So I didn't have a single note done, but like I had watched videos about it, so I kind of knew what I was gonna be talking about, so it was easier for me to get the notes done.
SPEAKER_02Um Stephanie had to like come up with something yeah, and also you are so knowledgeable in so many different conspiracies already. Yeah, like you already have things in the back of your mind that you're like, oh, I can talk about this, I can talk about this. Genuinely, I just look up conspiracies. Like, I don't already have something that I would like to talk about planned, so it is a little bit hard to do. I watch a lot of documentaries. I don't.
SPEAKER_01I l I love documentaries. I have a document slot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And also, like I mentioned when I got here, my brain, I just feel like my brain is disconnected the last few weeks. It's like gone.
SPEAKER_01I wish I could disconnect my brain sometimes.
SPEAKER_02In another century. I don't know where it is, but I would like for it to come back, please. I'm gonna put up missing poster. Uh, is there anything else we want to talk about? I don't think so. Sorry, this one was a little shorter, but you know, sometimes you gotta take a break from the crazy.
SPEAKER_01That is all for today's episode of Plot Twists and Punchlines. Follow our TikTok at plot twist underscore punchlines pod and on Insta at plot twist underscore punchlines underscore podcast. Steph, tell them where they can find you.
SPEAKER_02You can find me on Instagram at Steph Smiles XX or on TikTok at Vessel V-E-S-S-I-I-L.
SPEAKER_01What about you? You can find me at TikTok at Mel of a Time. It's like Hell of a Time, but with Mel and only one L's.
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SPEAKER_02Read your own damn lines.