CLASSIC: Why don't nations trust NGOs?

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.3 • 10.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On paper, non-governmental organizations often sound like something everyone can get behind: these institutions are often dedicated to addressing some of the most dangerous, long-running problems on the planet. It may be surprising, then, to learn that a growing number of nations are taking increasingly aggressive actions to ban NGOs, especially foreign ones. Supporters of NGOs argue these nations are attempting to fight progress in hopes of saving their own corrupt regimes -- but the opponents inside these countries claim many of those do-gooder NGOs are more sinister than they'd have you believe: instead of saving the world, critics argue, these insitutions are foreign-owned fronts for everything from illegal activities of intelligence agencies to acts of industrial espionage, forced regime change and more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to our classic episode fellow conspiracy realist. I think we should start this one by thanking
0:07.8	everyone who legitimately volunteered their time and their energy to work with an NGO, legitimately.
0:17.8	Yeah. Yeah. Because some of them are great. And the stuff they do is awesome.
0:27.7	Yeah, yeah. EGio, non-governmental organization. It's something everybody can get behind you.
0:34.3	Like imagine you're on your first date and you're you know your meeting a
0:39.4	mysterious uh lady and you see what do you what do you do for work and then she says well i've
0:44.9	dedicated my life to uh saving children from old landmines like holy crap you're amazing yeah
0:52.7	i i sell loose cigarettes by the Wawa.
0:55.9	You know what I mean?
0:56.7	We're a match made in heaven.
0:58.1	Is Wawa like a measurement?
0:59.6	Is that like a way, is that like some sort of metric system?
1:02.3	It's a chain of like convenience stores.
1:03.9	I thought you meant like, by the truck load, by the Wawa.
1:06.4	Oh, I like that too.
1:07.5	I like it as a unit of measurement. Guys, you know, there's a non-governmental organization in South Carolina that I just learned about called
1:14.6	El Chippo Gas and they're everywhere.
1:17.9	And they're an NGO?
1:19.1	No, no.
1:20.3	I guess technically there are a non-governmental organization.
1:24.0	Yeah.
1:24.1	Yeah. So what is not a non-government?
	...

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