From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.

You can turn back now, or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

A production of I Heart Readie.

Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

My name is Noel. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul.

Mission Control. Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. And that makes this.

The stuff they don't want you to know. Folks, you may have heard the old saying,

give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world. They're

there's so many versions of this phrase that the etymology of it or the origin can be a little

bit tough to trace. I think many of us in the audience have heard some version of that idea before.

Maybe a Mr. Robot. It comes up in that show. And it's a neat quote. It's a little oversimplified

sure. But there's no getting around it. Really, money makes the world go round. And whether you

love or hate the world's financial system, you know that banks are necessary. So it makes sense

to wonder how much power this gives people running banks or running investment arms. That's really

what we're talking about today. You know what? What kind of power do you wield when you are in charge

of investment? And venture capital. And venture capital. Yeah. What kind of power do people like

CEOs, board members or oddly enough, the CIA have when they get in the world of venture capital.

That's yeah, this is a CIA episode for everyone who didn't didn't see the title. This is one

that freaked us out. I mean, before we get started, I think maybe it would be helpful for us to

to give a little foreshadowing. We talked about the CIA and venture capital a while ago, a number of

years back when we learned just how many pies they had their fingers in. Do you guys remember that?

I do. It's been a while. Is that around the time we hit air America and some of those other

...