Transcript
Speaker: The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Denteth.
Speaker: Hello, it's the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. It's me, Josh Addison, in Auckland, New Zealand. It's them, Dr. M. R. Extenteth in Guangzhou, China. how How are things? everything um Everything just normal laws of physics? yeah yeah Sorry, Josh, I'm just trying to... hold things down at the moment uh there's ah a lot of stuff floating in my office oh god the microphone's moving around the place uh this will look great on video absolutely great on video if yeah really selling it off for the the 12 people who watch the video episodes yes but but but yes but but but other than other than that things things just as normal
Speaker: I mean, I'm feeling lighter on my feet. I mean, i feel like a weight has been lifted off my back. I feel like I'm bumping into a lot of objects at the moment because they're just floating around me.
Speaker: I mean, very frankly, I'm just, I'm just i'm i'm feeling there's a ah lack of gravity in my in in my life at the moment, Josh. an Absolute lack of gravity. Well, that's all the puns I can stand. Maybe we should actually get into the main topic of this episode. None of those actually puns. None of those were puns.
Speaker: Well, yeah I suppose not, no. What were they? if A pun is only going to own work if you've set up the situation and then a person makes wordplay based upon that situation. We have not set up the situation. So it just sounds like we are speaking absolute nonsense. Now, admittedly, does listeners to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy are used to us talking absolute nonsense. What they aren't used to us doing is actually foreshadowing the nonsense we're about to discuss.
Speaker: Yes, so we should get straight ahead into it. But we're not going to because you and I both know what we're going to be talking about. So I maintain that those were puns because you knew what you were doing and I knew. Even if the audience doesn't know what you're doing, i do and you do and I think that counts.
Speaker: Something's really bringing you down, isn't it? there ah so Something's weighing heavily on me, yes, yes. No, no, no, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. stop it I'll stop it when I'm dead. Stop it.
Speaker: Okay. And you can't reach across the internet divide and kill me, at least not yet. Not yet. If patrons give us enough money, Josh will use that money to buy a robotic arm, which will be installed in my apartment in Guangzhou to allow him to throttle me remotely at a moment's notice.
Speaker: Ah, that'll that that'll be, that's that's the goal, really. That's just, you know, what more could any person want but the ability to throttle someone remotely? Anyway, that's that's that's pie in the sky thinking for now. let's um Let's play a chime and then try to make some sense of of everything we've just said and done.
Speaker: Let's.
Speaker: Right, so actually, if if you listened to the last episode, we did it, I'm pretty sure, in ah in a startling break with tradition, we actually said what we were probably going to be talking about in the next episode, in the previous episode. So if you were paying attention, you'd know that what we want to talk to you about today is Project Anchor, this mysterious NASA project that's been um been been doing some numbers on the social medias and what have you.
Speaker: it's it's It's an interesting theory. So perhaps we should look at it in a bit of detail. Just start things off Denteth, what is Project Anchor?
Speaker: Well, according to my sources, and those sources are random social media posts on the internet, so of course, highly trustworthy sources. Project Anchor is a NASA project, so it's a National Aeronautic Space Association project in the US with a budget of 89 billion US buckaroes.
Speaker: And it is a project designed to survive a very particular event, which is at some point in the month of August this year, 2026, gravity is going to be turned off on the Earth for seven seconds.
Speaker: And as you can imagine, this will this will wreak some amount of havoc. So NASA, apparently what they're doing is is building bunkers, because that's what NASA does. They build bunkers under the ground.
Speaker: It's true. I mean, they are they are about the national aeronautics of the internal Earth. NASA's really into its hollow Earth theories. If there's one thing NASA likes doing, it's standing on the surface of the Earth and going downwards. right That's what they're all about. And so they're going to do that. They're going to build bunkers for all the the most important people in the world so that they can they can ride out this brief gravitational anomaly, apparently securing important buildings so that they aren't damaged, so that they don't themselves float away, presumably, and that they also aren't damaged by things floating around and hitting them.
Speaker: Now, i've heard it I've heard a couple of different variations of the story and and what exactly the cause of this loss of gravity is going to be.
Speaker: In some tellings of the story, Project Anchor is somehow the cause of the gravitational anomaly, but most of the time when I've heard people talking about it, it's it's that Project Anchor is is the response to this gravitational anomaly and the claim is that... we're going to get gravitational waves from two different black holes intersecting over the planet Earth for that for a period of seven seconds, and that the intersection of those two gravitational waves will have the effect of negating gravity entirely on our planet for that time.
Speaker: i mean, I can already spot a number of issues, but please do continue. Right, well, and obviously this is conspiratorial because Project Anchor is being kept from the public at large because they don't want to cause mass panic because they're expecting a wide amount of death and destruction to result from this gravitational anomaly. But the thinking supposedly is that they there's nothing they can do to stop it, so they they're just keeping it entirely under wraps so that they don't add mass panic in the lead-up to the event itself.
Speaker: on top of all the, you know, causing extra havoc on top of the havoc that's already going to be caused by it. So, um I mean, the the puns do right themselves. This is indeed a weighty topic, if it's true, but we're... Yeah, one which deserves a certain amount of gravitas. Gravitas, indeed, or at least the second half of that.
Speaker: ah So how do we know about this, then, if NASA's been covering it all up? Well, apparently the project was leaked in November of 2024. And and like all good leaks, it first appeared on TikTok. So it started with a TikTok user by the name of fiery underscore by underscore nature. who put up a video about Project Anchor. She claims that she heard about Project Anchor from a post that randomly came up for her on her For You page on TikTok. So even though people date the org became public knowledge because of this particular post, it does appear that there was an earlier post, or at least it is alleged there was an earlier post on TikTok which actually revealed the information to the leaker herself.
Speaker: Yes, this this fiery by nature user. when When I've been looking at articles about Project Anchor, her post is the one that that gets mentioned. So that seems to be the earliest one that people can find that talks about this, but she suggests she got the information from somewhere else, so it is it is a little bit unclear.
Speaker: that I think her post was was was late last year, but it was really around the start of this year that it really took off. um and And there's one particular post on Instagram that seems to be the main one that gets forwarded around because this is the one that contains all of the details and and and the the facts and figures and and a bit of...
Speaker: Evidence isn't quite the right word, but some more claims, I guess. More claims. is what It is the most detailed, per se, of Project Anchor that we have.
Speaker: Yep. This Instagram post reads, In August, the world will lose gravity for seven seconds. Josh, I feel you should put gravitas in your voice. I can't form it.
Speaker: In August, the world will lose gravity for seven seconds. NASA knows they're preparing, but won't tell us why. In November 2024, a secret NASA document titled Project Anchor leaked online.
Speaker: The project's budget is $89 billion, dollars and its goal is to survive a seven-second gravitational anomaly. Key facts, duration 7.3 seconds.
Speaker: Expected casualties 40 to 60 million. What will happen? The first two seconds, everything not secured will rise. People, vehicles, animals.
Speaker: Seconds 3 to 4, objects will continue to rise 15 to 20 meters. Seconds 5 to 6, panic and chaos will ensue as people hit ceilings. Seven seconds, gravity returns and everything falls from height.
Speaker: Expected consequences, 40 million deaths from falls, infrastructure destruction, economic collapse lasting over 10 years, mass panic.
Speaker: Reason for the anomaly. The intersection of two gravitational waves from black holes predicted in 2019 with probability 94.7%. NASA has known about this for years.
Speaker: nasa has known about this for five years What NASA is doing, building underground bunkers for essential personnel, developing securing systems for buildings.
Speaker: Who will get spots in the bunkers? Government leaders, scientists, military personnel, and selected citizens with genetic diversity. Why their silent, an announcement, would trigger mass panic and chaos. Better to have 40 million unprepared victims than 8 billion in a state of panic.
Speaker: The leak has been ignored by the media as conspiracy theory, but an independent physicist confirmed the intersection of gravitational waves. His paper was retracted, and he has since disappeared.
Speaker: What you can do, follow the civilian survival protocol, stay indoors with a low ceiling, lie on the floor, face down, face down, That would mean when you come back down, you land right on your face. i know, that's a bad it's bad. That's bad. Hold on to something secured. 20 months until the event. NASA knows. Governments are preparing.
Speaker: They won't tell you. So, strong stuff indeed. um Tell me about this this independent physicist who confirmed it, but then his paper was retracted and he's since disappeared. what done What's that guy's name?
Speaker: What was this paper called? Josh, the answer to both of those questions is we don't know. a paper is never mentioned by name. The author is never mentioned by name. The journal it was published in is never mentioned by a name. There is no evidence for the author, the paper, or the journal.
Speaker: It's just an assertion and in an Instagram post. but But it's been doing the rounds, that post and others commenting upon it. Now, obviously, ne nasa NASA had to respond once this started hitting the news and people started talking about it.
Speaker: So NASA, they issued a statement. They issued an actual statement. They said the Earth will not lose gravity. Earth's gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass. The only way for the Earth to lose gravity would be for the Earth's system, the combined mass of its core mental crust, ocean, terrestrial water, and atmosphere, to lose mass.
Speaker: And others have noted that gravitational waves don't actually work the way people are suggesting they. I mean, we know that waves do intersect and they can cancel one another out of if there are different polarities they can add together and stuff like that. But gravity waves, they're not like that. People are treating gravitational waves like sound waves and thinking, well, you know, two waves intersecting with the same kind Yeah, that is right. Intersecting.
Speaker: Intersecting. Intersecting. Intersecting with the same... and so with and adverse amplitude will cancel one another out and cause silence. But gravitational waves don't work that way.
Speaker: And also the black holes that they're talking about don't exist. And frankly, it's all just nonsense. Well, I mean, you you say that, but but maybe we'll just have to wait and see. by doing you're doing that You're doing the precautionary thing, which is, well, you know. I think so. it's it It might not be true, but at the same time, we can lie face down on a floor and hold on to things secured. And maybe there's a possibility that actually we are wrong and the conspiracy theorists are right in this particular case. So, we should prepare as if the event is going to occur. That's what you're getting at there, That's I'm getting at, yes. But i mean we need to know when to prepare. When um when is this gravitational event ah supposed to happen? Actually, before you answer that, ah what's what's today's date?
Speaker: Today's date is the 13th of August, and that's both the 13th of august August, China Standard Time and New Zealand Standard Time. Right. Yes. No, it just slipped my mind. I'm sure that won't be relevant in just a few seconds. So tell me, when um when when is the gravitational anomaly that talked about in Project project Anchor? When's that going to happen?
Speaker: I mean, let me just let me just work out the calculations here. So it's the 13th of August now. The date of the event is on this particular point in time. I'm assuming that's US time as opposed to, say, New Zealand or China time. So if we take that into account, it was yesterday.
Speaker: It was yesterday. Yep. August 12th, 2026 at or UTC. know what that works out to at local time anyway.
Speaker: So yes, it um it was supposed to happen yesterday. Did you did you notice 40 million people dying yesterday? no but I mean, i mean i i was quite busy dealing with a broken refrigerator and an air conditioning unit. So I mean, maybe maybe a mass death event kind of s slipped me by while I was trying to communicate with the handy person in a language that neither of us understood.
Speaker: Did you notice anything? i've I've been looking at at news websites and, um yeah, precious little. Almost nothing about gravitational anomalies causing people to float into the sky then plummet to their deaths. It doesn't seem like it really happened at all.
Speaker: it does seem a bit a bit odd, doesn't it? the i I don't think the Earth lost gravity yesterday or early this morning. So, mean, what we what we're sort of obliquely hinting at is that this thing that people said was going to happen didn't so much happen as not happen at all.
Speaker: Which is a bit curious. of Of pretty much no one, I think. um but but but so But now we we actually get to point and laugh, perhaps. who what what What have people been saying about this, do we know? Has anyone said actually? That's the other thing. So because the event was meant to have occurred yesterday our time,
Speaker: We couldn't really do any research into what people think about the event not happening until earlier today. And I'm not seeing any chatter about the event not happening at all.
Speaker: It's almost as if people were talking about Project Anchor But no one was really believing the claims about Project Anchor. And this might suggest that maybe maybe it wasn't widely believed, if believed at all.
Speaker: Well, no. I mean, I'm actually, I'm just this right now looking at Fiery by Nature's TikTok. And um she's got she's got a follow-up post that doesn't even have bloody dates on them that I can see. She has a follow-up post where she mentions NASA's effect, where NASA says that that Earth isn't going to... can't can't lose gravity because gravity comes from mass. That thing that we read out just a minute ago.
Speaker: So she... I'm not going to bother watching it all all the way to the end, actually, but she she seems to be saying, OK, yeah, well, NASA said it's not going to happen. So the the the one person who everyone was was referring to doesn't seem to have placed a lot of stock into it. And I haven't... Yeah, it's hard to say. I guess it's so soon after that the time that it was supposed to happen that who knows, but... um Yeah, but there doesn't seem to be much the way, if any, discussion anywhere about the, oh, I mean i i thought was meant to happen today. There doesn't seem to be any reaction to the Earth not losing gravity. And, no, you might be right, maybe the people who were expecting it to occur
Speaker: threw out all their phones and electronic devices in preparation for the apocalypse and now driving around the outback of Australia, waiting for the eventual fuel wars to occur. But it does seem a little bit odd.
Speaker: Now, one thing that's interesting is that um there was yesterday, on the 12th of August, a solar eclipse which was visible from various areas in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker: um And so some people have... And and this, will obviously, you know we we know when eclipses are going to happen, and and NASA indeed did have on their website where they document when eclipses are going to be occurring.
Speaker: They've been saying for a while now, yes, on August the 12th, there's going to be this eclipse that you can see in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe that's coincidence, or maybe that could be part of how this thing got started, that people saw oh there is going to be a celestial event of some kind on August the 12th.
Speaker: And things snowballed from there. but Yeah, I mean, I would be curious to know whether that is a coincidence or someone was slapping known date onto vapid conspiracy theory. It's really hard to tell because we have so little information about the source of this conspiracy theory in the first place.
Speaker: We just have this particular post, a claim that Fiery by Nature saw information about this earlier on on TikTok, but no evidence of it, which might suggest that she is the inventor of this claim in the first place. I mean, this could be a birds aren't real thing all over again. Where, for people who aren't aware, there was a claim going around several years ago that the young folk on TikTok were idiots and they were spreading conspiracy theories around that birds aren't real, just showing that millennials and younger are the most stupid people of all time.
Speaker: But the real twist here was it turned out that older people were the idiots, because no one believed that birds weren't real. It was a game being played on TikTok, a kind of game which was going, look, give someone a ridiculous proposition, such as birds do not exist, and then see how convincing they can be in asserting that particular claim.
Speaker: So the Birds Aren't Real phenomenon was a game being played on social media that was misinterpreted by older people and taken as evidence of stupidity when it was, in fact, evidence of creativity.
Speaker: And maybe someone was trying to do the same thing with the Project Anchor hypothesis. Let's see if we can create... evidence, I'm putting here in scare quotes, for a claim that no one really believes, but wouldn't it be fun to kind of pursue?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. so nothing much seems it seems to have come of it it. It really did seem like you had this wacky idea that was bubbling around the social media a little bit, and it was wacky enough that when other people heard about it, people who who who could write the public interest-type stories for news websites said, hey, look look at this wacky thing that people are saying, and there was the world there was a story in it. But there doesn't seem to be much more.
Speaker: so um that that that That seems to be about all there is to say about Project Anchor, and we're only about 20 minutes into this episode. So perhaps, then, what we should do is relate this back to other times we've talked about conspiracy theories that predicted various events that never came to path and make this a stealth Back to the Conspiracy episode.
Speaker: Ooh-ah! a Buckle up. We're going Back to the Conspiracy.
Speaker: Because we did, it back all the way back in episode 170, didn't actually look up the date of that, but that was quite some years ago now, we talked about sort of prophetic conspiracy theories, and it was inspired by QAnon, because you may not remember, but QAnon you know qanon these days has has just become this the amorphous umbrella term for just anything.
Speaker: but Actually, i haven't heard a lot of qe about QAnon lately, now that I think about it. I mean, you do get the occasional discussion of what they wanted. so Yeah. so there's the occasional discussion of Trump making a post on Truth Social, which uses QAnon-related language.
Speaker: And there are still figures from the QAnon community who are appearing on right-wing influencer podcasts and the like. So the elements of QAnon are still around, but there doesn't seem to be this kind coalesced QAnon movement that we saw pre-Trump's first election success.
Speaker: So to a certain extent, it has it has moved on, and you might be right in thinking it's moved on because in large part they got what they desired anyway with both the first and second Trump presidency.
Speaker: Yes, but nevertheless, at the time we were talking about QAnon, which now that I look it up, was April of 2018. so there we go, more than eight years ago. Good God. ah At the time, QAnon had sort of had not yet turned into what it became, which was just the umbrella term underneath which all these various sort of right-wing-ish conspiracy theories... So basically any deep state conspiracy theory became a QAnon one, yes. They all just merged into QAnon. But originally QAnon was was another one of these prophetic conspiracy theories because the earliest claims it was making...
Speaker: is that we're all about the fact that Donald Trump was fighting against the deep state and all of these people, all all the people that right-wingers hated, your Hillary Clintons and and your David Podestas and all that.
Speaker: And your Barack Obamas. And your Barack Obamas. They were all about to be arrested. Trump and his people were going to swoop in. They were going to drain the swamp. Everyone was going to be arrested and everything was going to be great. And you don't have to do a thing.
Speaker: you could just say and And you could look at photos and find evidence of this. You'd see Obama wearing pants. Why was he wearing pants? Because he had an ankle bracelet on. That's the only reason why Barack Obama would wear pants, to cover up the ankle bracelet that had been put on him, because he'd already been arrested.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, well, that again, and that that was sort of a couple of steps along, really. Initially, they were saying this is going to happen. happen And as I recall, there were dates given at some times, or at least there would be cryptic or something very important is going to happen on this date.
Speaker: and so but And then eventually, after these claims that any day now all these people are going to be arrested and put in Guantanamo Bay, And yet these people were still very publicly walking around free as a bird seemingly. Then you got in the claim saying, oh, but yes, but they have been they've been tried in ah in a secret tribunal and and now they're having to wear ankle monitors while they're out on bail or something. near but and know and and So that was an interesting look at how some yeah people will double down on claims that something is going to happen that something doesn't happen and then do they drop it or do they do they double down and come up for it with a reason that either says okay you know it hasn't happened yet but it is still going to or it actually has happened yet and you're just not aware
Speaker: Because when it comes to this little, especially like the culty ones, the religious ones, we've we've all heard the stories of the cults that say the world's going yeah the world's going to i end on this date and people actually sell all their possessions and then all gather in one place and then nothing happens and they all act a little bit embarrassed and have to...
Speaker: he to have to suddenly buy their stuff back again or something. But there that didn't seem to happen with QAnon. The story just mutated.
Speaker: But back back in episode 170, back in 2018, we had a few um or a couple of a couple of more mundane, less supernatural conspiracy theories. do you i mean you say you say You say less supernatural ones. One of the ones we're going to talk about goes really weird places towards the end. Eventually, yes, it did go wacky at the end. So yeah how about we start with that one? Talk to me about NISARA.
Speaker: NISARA. So NISARA was the National Economic Security and Recovery Act. It was a set... I'm just literally reading the the search result here because otherwise I'm never going to remember what NISARA stands for. was a set of proposed economic reforms for the United States suggested by a private citizen by the name of Harvey Francis Boucher. Barnard during the 1990s. It was basically a way of working out how to get rid of income tax by putting in a national sales tax instead, and crucially, returning to a bimetallic currency as a basis for money. Now, Josh, why do people want to return to precious metals as a basis for their economy?
Speaker: I have never been clear on that. I know people always go about the gold standard. We need to go back to the gold standard. um oh Oh, Glenn Beck, and someone else I haven't heard about for ages. He was big on gold. Alex Jones wanted us to collect earth metals or something like that.
Speaker: i've I've never actually been able to understand the arguments in favour of a gold standard. I mean, it seems to be in part because these things are taken to be inherently valuable, unlike fiat currency where the value is decided by the the nature of trade. But the people who go, well, gold is naturally valuable, don't seem to realise it's naturally valuable only in so far as people are willing to spend money on it.
Speaker: Gold is valuable in the sense that it physically exists, unlike fiat currency, which is just a set of numbers on a spreadsheet. But gold's value is still decided by people making decisions about the value of gold in the same respect that people make decisions about the value of fiat currency. Owning gold doesn't naturally make you wealthy.
Speaker: It just means you've got money which is really, really, really hard to move around or transact with. Yes, no, when I hear people talking about inherent value, that just tells me they don't know what the words inherent and value mean. Something can't be inherently valuable. Things only have valuable to human beings. A lump of gold on an uninhabited asteroid in the middle of space has no value to anything. But anyway...
Speaker: Yeah, so so this this fellow, this um Harvey Barnard, he tried to get Congress to pass his National Economy, Security and Recovery Act. i that That did not happen. And and and he did he he did this in the most academic way possible. He wrote a book called Draining the Swamp, Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform, and then printed a thousand copies to send to Congress, thinking that they would simply read the book and go, oh my God, this is the greatest book I've ever read. Let's pass this theory now.
Speaker: all my Which, of course, always works. Always works. That's why my book on the philosophy of conspiracy theories just naturally changed the way that everybody talks about conspiracy theories, because people innately recognize the quality of a good argument and immediately change their ways on the basis of of the merits of such arguments.
Speaker: That's how nothing works always. Yes. Yes. ah But then things get interesting. so So Mr. Barnard, he published the text of his proposed bill online, and it was found by someone called Shiny Goodwin. And they were a shill for the Omega Trust.
Speaker: which apparently sold Omega units of prime European banknotes for as little as $100, which then and here here's where things sort of get get get get prophetical. Eventually, these Omega units were going to roll over and return millions of dollars in profit.
Speaker: ah You'll be surprised to learn this did not happen. Well, I mean, that's in part because of where these Omega units were being located. in in in In the firmament, in thin air, in the...
Speaker: Well, it's in part because the mr good the data on the beneficiaries of these units was located in one of the World Trade Centers in New York City. And what happened to the World Trade Center in 2001? Oh, yeah.
Speaker: ah oh Lots of people visited it. I mean, certain group of people visited it in a really novel way, thus we start making jokes about what happened on September 11th. Obviously, September 11th, yeah. yeah yeah Yes, no, in in August of 2000, the feds went and arrested everyone behind the Omega Trust because it was obviously a scam as people had put all their money into it and then nothing had come back. Apparently, yes, like you say, the explanations for why the money didn't didn't eventuate
Speaker: involved alternate realities, UFOs apparently came in there, claims that the you US government didn't actually exist, angelic intervention apparently some people purported as an explanation for why things hadn't worked out.
Speaker: ah But yes, so yeah, August 2000, people were arrested, but then supposedly all this all this data was destroyed during the World Trade Center attacks.
Speaker: and And obviously then they they get to chuck their conspiracy theories onto that and suggest that maybe that was the the real reason why the the Twin Towers were destroyed in a controlled demolition by the US government or something, something, something, something.
Speaker: And I mean, and the real kicker here was that Barnard is still alive at the time this is all going on, but he isn't a aware in 2000, 2001 about what shiny Goodwin is doing. He only learned about shiny Goodwin and her promoting the Sarah as something which Congress had passed, but it kept secret in 2005. And it's actually just before his death. And he actually gets incredibly annoyed that people are using his good idea as the basis of essentially a scam, which they are continuing all the way up until 2010, although he dies he dies beforehand, and just labels all of Shiny Goodwin's allegations as being a mere disinformation campaign, trading on his good idea.
Speaker: Yes, meanwhile, shiny goodness was by towards the end. Sorry, you just said shiny goodness, which I think is a great change, but not actually accurate. Sorry, we say shiny. it was S-H-A-I-N-I. So not not actually shiny, but shiny, good good win, rather, was referring to herself as the dove of oneness by this point.
Speaker: and making various claims about the International Court of Justice, ah the Vatican, the Rockefellers, the gold standard again, and so on and so on and so on. um And yeah, apparently this theory, it it didn't it didn't last, especially after everyone got arrested. And then yeah even even though it did carry on after 2001,
Speaker: two thousand and one From what I gather, anyone who tried to carry it on also invariably turned out to be some sort of a scammer. And eventually, once once just everything collapsed into fraud, the whole thing kind of died out.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there still seems to be some degree of Nassara stuff going on in the present day, because Nassara got replaced by Gisara, the Global Economic Security and Reformation Act. So it suddenly went from being not just a USA-related thing, but actually a global...
Speaker: set of transactions or these policy changes being enacted by global elites and that still seems to have at least some existence in the 2020s but yes it is it's no longer something that people talk about a lot it has gone from something which was relatively big in the very, very early 2000s to something which had a flash in the pan my moment in the 2010s and is now something only people like us talk about on podcasts that not many people listen to.
Speaker: ah But then when we were talking about this many years ago, we we went from Nisara to a similar sort of financially based... An earlier one. An earlier one, yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, kind of around the same time, but and but but on either side. Yeah, around the Iraqi dinar, maybe this one I'd heard about a bit more. I don't think I'd heard of Nisara at all until we talked about it, but I'd heard sort of reference to the Iraqi dinar. Well, the the reason i say it is earlier, because the Iraqi Dinar scandal relates to the Gulf War.
Speaker: And of course, there are two Gulf Wars. Yes. Both waged by a president called Bush, but one waged by a father and the other waged by Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And so it's true the Iraqi Dinar scandal had a resurgence with the second Gulf War under W. Bush, but actually the Iraqi Dinar scandal goes all the way back to the first Gulf War as waged by H.W. Bush. So the Iraqi Dinar scandal is...
Speaker: Initially quite simple, but becomes, like Nassara, incredibly complex with time. So after the first Gulf War, it was claimed by particular people that the US had seized most of the money in Iraqi banks.
Speaker: And they were going to rebuild the country. And then because the economy of Iraq would increase, all of those government-owned bonds in the Iraqi dinah would suddenly become incredibly... What's the word I want to use here? the value of the Iraqi DINR would go up. So the American government was essentially going, look, we're taking this money now, which has virtually no value because we just demolished a country. But then when we rebuild Iraq, the DINR is going to go up in value and then we can cash those bonds in and thus we American military personnel and executive branch members will become rich beyond the dreams of creosote.
Speaker: So people said, Why don't we buy some dinar as well and we can get in on that sweet, sweet cash injection? Yes. no Before before ah your various Gulf Wars, the Iraqi dinar was something like um three US dollars to a dinar.
Speaker: in part because because Saddam Hussein was a dictator who could sort of, could could could dictate certain things that pumped up its value. But then after the invasion, it crashed completely and it was like, there was it was around a thousand dinars to the dollar. So,
Speaker: Yeah, people people did the numbers and said, okay, well, if we get these Xenars, which are worth which which worth absolutely nothing now, and then they suddenly become worth 3,000 times what they are, once once once Iraq is back in that is up and running again, and the the Western powers that who actually control everything spike its value, will then well, then we'll be rich like astronauts.
Speaker: Now, that was that was, as you say, the start of things. A whole bunch of Americans, according to our notes from eight years ago, tens of thousands of Americans sunk millions of dollars into Iraqi dinars in the hope of these ridiculous returns.
Speaker: and but But things sort of sort of developed, especially, again, as we've talked about already in these conservative theories, as the predicted events fail to come to pass,
Speaker: you then start coming up with excuses for why it hasn't happened, why it hasn't happened yet, but why it is definitely still going to. And, yeah, there was all this all this all the stories of secret 1-800 numbers, non-disclosure agreements that people are being forced into, undiscovered mineral riches somewhere that were going to turn everyone's fortunes around, government tax shelters set up for dinar windfalls. There are claims that supposedly...
Speaker: The US government had trillions of dinars. Your your Bill Gateses and your Warren Buffetts had massive fortunes of dinars that they were going to become even even more rich by selling. And so this eventually lid lasted until the age of Twitter, which when twitter i i got on Twitter in 2008, as I recall, it had been around a little while before then. So it's that's sort of mid mid to late 2000s. It's still ticking.
Speaker: And, again, the same thing. it Supposedly, there were these sealed indictments that were going to be opened. Nationwide martial law was imminent. Mass arrests were taking place that were going to get everything back the way it was supposed to be and unlock all this all all all this this this bottomless cash that everyone can get into as long as they've bought enough Araki dinas.
Speaker: at In 2018, we said this is still a live theory today with people claiming the Revalue Day is just around the corner. Do you know if it's still a thing in the year of our Lord 2026? So the last time I looked into this was a few years ago and There were still people on places like Reddit and the like who were going, it's going to happen soon. So if you look at the kind of the genealogy of the belief in the Iraqi dina re-evaluation, After the first Gulf War, were going, well, it's taking a long time for the American government to do the rebuilding.
Speaker: And then, of course, actually the Stam Hussein rate regime continued to be in power. So then the second Gulf War occurred, right, and this is it. This is the point where the re re-evaluation will occur because of Reconstruction. So for at least the first...
Speaker: 10 years, people were going, well, American intervention militarily is going to be really successful for the Middle East and also, coincidentally, really successful for my bank account.
Speaker: But after the second Gulf War, it kind of all starts to peter out, and that's where the really strange views come forward, including the idea that they're keeping the Iraqi Dinar down.
Speaker: devalued because of the existence of a Stargate network in Iraq. So it doesn't just go supernatural, it goes science fictional as well. But there are still websites like Dinar, Chronicles and the like, who at least in April of 2025 claimed that the Dinar was about to surge in value.
Speaker: And that's in part because... The people who invested large sums of money into the DINR are still alive and are ever hopeful that they haven't made a bad investment.
Speaker: So there are still websites devoted to it's coming, it's coming. It just hasn't come yet. In fact, actually, found a DINAR re-evaluation claim from January of this year, where apparently the US s Federal Reserve is about to put a lot of money into the Iraqi central bank, which will mean that the evaluation is going to happen, although they do admit no re-evaluation date is confirmed at this time, but it is just around the corner.
Speaker: Right. I do have to wonder if um the rise of crypto has done anything to that, because there is an actual case where you had, you know, when when when your Bitcoin and the like first came out, they were just sort of a novelty.
Speaker: and people generally, genuinely did become fabulously wealthy by getting some Bitcoin very, very early on. And then suddenly they were worth 10,000 times what they used to be. So there is there is an an example people can actually point to of something like this happening.
Speaker: So I could imagine that that could possibly stimulate other other sorts of things of people saying, oh, you what would happen to crypto? yeah Look, if it could happen happen to crypto, it could happen to the Iraqi Dina or something.
Speaker: I don't know. But I i can... i can I can imagine scenarios that could fuel conspiracy theories like Iraqi Dina re-evaluation stuff into the present day, I guess is what I'm saying. but I'm looking at a website which its last update was the 12th of this month.
Speaker: Ooh, when gravity turned off, it all comes back around to Project Anchor. Look at that. It does indeed. The more DINAR you have, the more leverage you have, the more negotiating power, essentially arguing that, look, if you just tell banks that you have a large amount DINAR, then they're going to go, oh you want to buy more? We're not going to charge you an exchange fee for buying more DINAR. Negotiate with your banks now.
Speaker: So they are encouraging people to keep on buying a rocky dinar. and And the more dinar you have, presumably the heav the heavier they are, and you have them stored in some sort of Scrooge McDuck kind of money vault.
Speaker: And then when gravity turns off, the coins all float around you and you. You build a suit out of dinar notes to cushion you from the fall from 15 meters.
Speaker: Mm, mm, that makes perfect sense. It all makes perfect sense, except for when it doesn't. So, yeah, Project Anchor, interesting little blip. and more More interesting in that people, like, it actually got talked about kind of widely for a short while.
Speaker: for for something that really does seem to be like a silly little thing. And a thing that, as you say, it's not entirely certain that anyone anywhere actually believed it. But nevertheless, it it did the rounds.
Speaker: Yeah, I imagine there are actually quite a lot of attempts to replicate Birds Aren't Real, which then get a flash in the pan, they get noted, but no one plays the game.
Speaker: And my suspicion is Project Anchor is precisely that kind of thing, because it gives you the, oh, there's the retracted paper thing, and no one's kind of followed up on that to go, well, here's some quotes from it. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people really do believe this. And maybe by the time we meet in a fortnight's time, there'll be a large number of, I can't believe it didn't happen. But for the time being, I think it's reasonable to assume this may not be a theory that people believed. It may be a theory that people talked about, but not one which was a serious belief by anyone in particular.
Speaker: So there we go. That's that's Project Anchor and and conspiracy theories that make predictions about the future more generally. So that is the end of the main portion of this episode, but we still, of course, have to go and record a bonus episode for our beloved patrons. Those who, I'm ah pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong here, our patrons do generally float a few inches off the ground regularly.
Speaker: just in normal circumstances due to the due to the purity and and benevolence of them. but But Josh, that suggests that our patrons make up the majority of the population of the planet Earth, because that might explain why nobody noticed what happened.
Speaker: Maybe. Maybe Gravity just doesn't work for most people because they're all patrons of our um of our podcast. If only there was some way of checking exactly how many patrons we have, but as far as I'm aware, that that technology isn't available to us. So we'll just have to record a bonus episode and fling it out there and assume that all 8 billion people on the planet will be looking at it. So I guess we should probably make it good.
Speaker: Shame, then, that all we really have is we have an update on the whole Reckless Ben Lego being stolen. There have been actual developments in the case. There's been a bit of political shenanigans at home involving a surprising number of politicians called Chris. We have we have quite the Chris surplus here in this country, but but the the short version is that Chris said something about Chris. Chris was involved, and also Chris had comments to say about it afterwards.
Speaker: more detail on that. And um and a bit a bit of Charlie Kirk stuff. he's He's back, well, when I say he's back in the news, his his death. His corpse. yes His corpse is back in the news.
Speaker: may Maybe. i don't know. I haven't watched the televised stuff. But so, yeah, we'll well we'll talk about a bit of that. ah And so if you want to hear about that and you're a patron, that's just fine and dandy. You don't need to do a damn thing. If you're not a patron, just go to portrayon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the... of i Damn it, I'm going to look it up now. I'm going to look it up right now. i always say this every time.
Speaker: and and And I say you should just search for search for us because It's probably easier than... okay so if we go... if I find it, I can give you the actual yeah URL because I'm a professional podcaster, and this is what we do. we just make stuff up on the spot. Okay, if you go to patreon.com podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, that's the actual URL, or you could just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, or you could search for the name Denteth because, frankly, Dr. Denteth, your name is is fairly...
Speaker: i'm obviously not unique, but rare enough that that you pop up in the first search results. So anyway, there are numerous ways, is what I'm saying. What I'm getting at is that there are many ways you can go to patreon.com and find the Podcaster's Guide to Conspiracy and sign your yourself up as a patron. So quite frankly, you don't have an excuse.
Speaker: Well, unless you've got a financial excuse. I mean, that's that's perfectly fine. But otherwise, no excuse whatsoever. Or if you just don't want to, guess. No, that is not good enough No, that's not an excuse. No. Okay, fine. Yep, yep. You heard it first.
Speaker: ah But we're regardless of how you get your way to your Patreon page and what your excuse for not signing up to it is, goodbye to you all, each and every one of you.
Speaker: I'm off to re-evaluate my dinars.
Speaker: podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extenton. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
Speaker: You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
Speaker: And remember, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a stranger is just a friend you haven't met.
