Endless Thread - Snacktime: Passports and Space Trains

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

In this Snacktime episode, Ben and Amory talk about vaccine passports in Texas and the out-of-this-world contents of a mysterious box.

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Amory. Ben, hang on one second. Perfect. This is the beginning of the podcast episode. I had to turn up my headphones just a little bit. Let me hear the beat in my headphones, said Amory. The beat.

So, Amory, you know, we're just hanging out. We're coming back to say hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Just to give you a couple of quick stories. And I have a very short story, very, very short. A micro story.

A micro story. But I'm dragging it out as long as possible. Just kidding. Okay. So you know, Amory, I'm sure, as a extremely popular YouTuber, you know that in the online world, authenticity is everything, right? That's right. Gotta be authentic.

Keep it real. Keep it real. This story is sadly not about that because it's about politics. So it's not really about keeping it real. A person can do. Run for office and pretend to love other people and care about them so deeply that and yet somehow believe that you are the only person that can lead them. Well, this is like, I think this is a story about the weird world we live in now where, like, if you don't see it in your own little filter bubble, it doesn't exist. And what I mean by that is, like, as a politician, we all know that politicians, you know, have a propensity sometimes to do one thing and say another, right?

No. I know. You're shocked. We're all shocked. We've heard of it. But there are some people that are. pointing out this week that in the age of the internet that we're in currently, this is getting actually kind of ridiculous. So I just want to give one example of this. Do you know what a vaccine

passport is? I do. Hit me. Well, if I understand it correctly, I thought that this was, oh gosh. Oh, she's on the spot now. Well, here's what I think. I thought that vaccine passports were like, once you get your vaccine, it demonstrates that you have been vaccinated, and then it is, it's your proof to kind of move through the world henceforth as a vaccinated person. Yeah, that's kind of the deal. Yeah. Okay. That's right. I mean, vaccine passports, it's not an official term, but it's something that, you know, people are talking about more and more these days, is more and more people, thank goodness, are getting vaccinated. So do you know Governor Greg Abbott? Do you know which state he's the governor of?

I'm really throwing your curveballs right now. Wait, wait, wait. Texas. Well done. All right. Yes. Amory works at a news organization. Well done, Amory. So this week, Governor Greg Abbott did something very Texas, which is to say that he kind of went against the grain and he banned.

leaders of state agencies and other taxpayer-funded entities from requiring vaccine passports, so-called, joining a growing number of Republican leaders who have pushed back on the idea of showing proof of vaccination for service. I'll read this statement, and then he posted on Twitter, of course, where else? Texans shouldn't be required to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives. That is why I issued an executive order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas. We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health. And we will do so without treading on Texans' personal freedoms. What do you think, Amory?

From a political standpoint? I don't know. What does it make you think about? This is the age-old question. of our civil liberties coming head to head with the idea that if we live in a society, and we take advantage of the benefits of living in a society. We live in a society. Dot, dot, dot.

If we do. Yeah, fair. That, you know, don't we hold a certain level of responsibility to help protect that society that we live in by doing everything that we can to keep ourselves and our neighbors safe? We're basically talking about like safety of the group versus personal feelings of the individual. One important thing to say, of course, is that this executive order has nothing to do with private companies and businesses, right? Because you can't really tell, you know, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, that's kind of like a, another. No, no zone, right?

It's like telling private organizations what they can and can't do or require, you know, whether they can kick somebody out of their business for not having a vaccine card or not. But here's the funny thing. This statement from the governor of Texas went out all over the place. But some reporters who regularly access the capital, like the capital building, like, you know, the parts of government that this executive order relates to, have pointed out that long after this executive order was issued, they are still required to show their vaccine passport in order to access government buildings.

Wow. So what's interesting about this to me, right? Like I think it's an example of like riling up your base and saying like, I will not stand for X, Y, or Z. You can essentially do that on Facebook or Twitter and just never even really implement it. And nobody will really notice. I mean, granted, people have noticed.

But presumably the people who are like, yeah, man, Texas, those folks are not necessarily accessing the capital on a regular basis, maybe. and don't seem to have noticed or have cared all that much about this kind of hypocritical situation that the governor has put himself in. Oh, a big old eye roll for that. I mean, presumably they'll implement it, you know, soon,

but it's just one of those things where it's sort of like, like you said, it's performative, right? And especially online, there's a lot of stuff that's performative. And this is going viral as we speak And I'll be interested to see how it plays out Okay, well, in a minute then I have a story for you that is otherworldly Mm-hmm, can't wait

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at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, so I have two questions for you, Ben. First up, have you ever gone to like a flea market or a thrift store or an estate sale? better yet in a state sale, and found something that clearly was of someone's creation

that just feels like you have hit the jackpot. Too specific a question? I mean. You know, like someone's old reel to reel or something like that. I think I may have discussed this item before on the show. I do have a teal. sweatshirt with bubbly white letters that says super grandma on it that appears to be homemade that I bought at a thrift store that was at least the first shot in wooing my wife.

I no longer fit into it, but it was the first shot. And so I hold on to it because it was the thing that first made her notice me as a ridiculous individual. So, yeah, I'm going to go with that. Separately, I've been to, I think, one, like, real official estate sale in, I think it was like the Hollywood Hills, maybe. And if you've ever been to an estate sale, they're freaking weird, man. Yeah.

They're weird. It's really weird to go through presumably a dead person's stuff. Mm-hmm. Well, when it's stuff that we're talking about, you know, not. Not the homemade sweatshirt, but like an old fancy, empty suitcase or something. Like, yes, you're like, wow, look at all this stuff. But when it's clearly someone else's creation and you feel like you're getting a little window into who this person was without any further context or commentary around it, it leads to strange places sometimes and can kind of take on a life of its own. Okay.

And that's what this story is about. Perfect. So hats off to a listener of endless thread named Mike. Mike reached out to us about something called the Alien Puma Space Train. Does this sound familiar to you at all? You can't tell this story. We're supposed to do a six-part series on this story. You can't just tell this story.

Consider this the introduction. Okay. Okay. All right, as long as we get to go deeper someday. Okay. Well, what do you know about this story? What do you know about the alien Puma space train? I mean, I've seen the diagrams and they are wild.

Okay. I know that someone drew what appear to be highly advanced forms of alien traveling technology. Mm-hmm. and people discovered it, and it's been an internet mystery ever since. That's what I'm going with. More specifically, a Redditor seven years ago posted on the what's in this thing subreddit. Not what is this thing. I didn't know this one existed.

What's in this thing? They posted this old wooden box. It looks kind of like a briefcase except wooden. and it's a box full of really kind of wild and imaginative drawings. But they really run the gamut, right? So you've got this like hand-drawn, beautiful, periodic table of elements. Yeah. You've got some very detailed, mechanical, like this, we don't know what this person did for a living,

but, you know, you look at this and you would say they were some kind of scientific illustrator, or they were an engineer. Just really stunning, precise drawings. You have maps. This person was like a skilled cartographer. Maybe they traced some maps or something, but just really beautiful. I'm glad you said cartographer

because I really would have given you a hard time if you didn't use that word. Oh, well, you're welcome. I'll try to sneak in one cartographer per episode from here on out. But you also have these drawings of potentially some sort of alien invasion that this person believes they witnessed

in Florida, somewhere in the Tampa area, in Florida. Of course. And there are several drawings of a kind of four-headed monster that is, I guess, supposed to be a depiction of Ezekiel? I mean, there are like biblical, there are hints of biblical relevance or biblical. tie-ins and this foreheaded monster has the head of a lion, a man, an eagle, and an ox. It's a man in figure, but then has these...

But when you say lion, don't you mean Puma? It could be a Puma, but where the Puma comes in, more specifically, so there's some sort of flying object overhead. And below that, there is a train on tracks that appear to roll. run over a bridge that's over some body of water. And the body of the car of the train, at least one side of the car, is a Puma. And that's where this Puma space train comes from, that there's this flying object that maybe held some sort of alien life form in it, but then this forehead monster appears kind of hovering in other drawings with this,

unidentified flying object and it's hard to even put these into words they are stunning yeah the drawings are crazy the drawings are wild puzzling yeah they are a little troubling they're totally imaginative and so when this gets posted on reddit the reaction makes perfect sense that this is like oh my god what are these drawings who was this person what were they thinking and there are some really interesting pieces of the puzzle here, which is the person was a, I believe he was Danish. I believe he was born in Denmark in the early 1900s. And he came to the United States in the 20s.

We don't necessarily know how or why. His name was Daniel Samuel Christensen. This guy was also mentioning UFOs before UFOs were really. talked about and buzzed about. You know, he was writing some of this stuff in the in the 30s and 40s, or at least some of these drawings are dated to the 30s and 40s. He has several pages of description of some sort of alien encounter that he, or alien invasion that he witnessed in Tampa in 97, July 7, 1977, so 7777 was the date. There's also a drawing of, of a gift that he made for his wife, Nadia.

I mean, he calls it a noise machine, but it's believed to be some sort of artificial gravity machine that he built in their attic. Sure. And you just don't know what to make of all of this, but I guess it's gotten me thinking really deeply about what we leave behind. This is kind of a dark thought. But if either you or I were gone tomorrow, Ben, what is the thing in our house that people might find of ours and go like, what does it mean?

You know, what were they thinking? Where, you know, were they on drugs? Did they actually have some sort of encounter that they couldn't put into words? Did they, to me, it's like it kind of celebrates. the individual and how singular we all are and how there's this group of people on Reddit. There's now an alien Puma space train subreddit that has nearly 4,000 people in it that we're really trying to figure out this guy's story. And they made a whole PowerPoint presentation about everything that they knew and all of the clues that they had followed with regards to the drawings and what they might mean. And as someone who, doesn't believe in an afterlife. I mean, I'm not religious at all.

I don't believe that there's like a, you know, a heaven or a hell after we die personally. I just don't. But... Okay, you were about to make me really mad and say as someone who doesn't believe in aliens. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. But you said afterlife and I can accept that, I guess. Oh, hell no. Aliens are for sure real.

The truth is out there. But as someone who doesn't believe in the traditional models of an afterlife that we hear, I do very much believe in an afterlife in the sense that our work and our art, if we make art, and our like even our idiosyncrasies that we have as individuals, that stuff does live on. You know, you have no idea who will find your box of very imaginative drawings and will start a community on Reddit devoted to it in which people dig into your life and want to know everything about you. You have no idea who you will inspire. You have no idea who will pick up that, that, like, weird thing that you do. You know, you just don't know. I mean, I think it's really interesting to imagine on a personal level, but also, like, on a large scale. how our like weird routines would be sort of translated by some future anthropologist, if that makes any sense.

So like I think I'm totally with it. I'm with you. I think it's such a weird thought experiment. Yeah. And I just want everyone to just go make your alien Puma space train, you know, whatever it is. Like do that thing. that thing and leave it behind for other people because you just have no idea the sparks that you will set off. I mean, that's a really nice thought, Amory, but when in the year 2,777, when these freaking monsters come and rip everybody's faces off, then maybe, you know, maybe salt the mystery, guys, because we might be getting ready for some bad best stuff. You know, that is a terrific point. But in the meantime, make wild stuff and share it with the world, will you? Barry it in the woods.

Yeah, plant little Easter eggs for people, for generations of people in the future to find and be amazed at. All right, well, whether you are debunking executive orders, on the internet or solving Puma space train mysteries or creating them in real life. We hope you're doing well. We just wanted to pop in and say hi and stay in touch. Also, thanks to everybody who sent us photos of their plants. Oh, made my day. You guys are the best.

You made our day. You really did. So thank you for that. Keep sending them if you want. And your drawings while we're at it, right? Yes, send us your Puma space train. If you've got a Puma space train, if you've got a Gita space train. Yeah.

Whatever it is. Ocelot. Whatever you need. Whatever you want to send. We appreciate you. All right. Until next time. Bye.

Bye.