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Patron Bonus Episode - It's a god damn clip show!
25 Plays3 years ago
Last week Josh and M reminisced about the podcast to their patrons. This week, you can listen in as well!
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Transcript
Celebrating 300th Episode
00:00:07
Speaker
It's the podcast's guide to the conspiracy patron bonus episode.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to an exciting 300th episode celebration of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. This is our patron bonus episode that goes along with our Rapture-based episode, We Get Left Behind.
Clip Show & Podcast History
00:00:33
Speaker
And Josh and I have decided to finally, after all these years, do what every low-budget sitcom does eventually, which is a goddamn clip show.
00:00:45
Speaker
And so we've got a lot of clips, because Joshua, I don't know about you, but there's a lot of history to this podcast. There's a lot of things to think about, a lot of things to say, and a lot of things to reminisce about.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yes, and with such a lot of things, maybe we should stop beating about the bush and dive straight into it. Starting, of course, back in the misty past of 2014. Oh, 2000 and 14. Does it ever sink into you sometimes when we talk about, gosh, how long ago it was, 2014?
00:01:19
Speaker
like the extent to which we're living in the future these days is just a little bit frightening, I find. It's a point where I even went by a different name back then. I mean, it's just weird. So let's start off with the seminal, the start, the beginning of the podcast.
The Mystery of MH370
00:01:36
Speaker
Let's talk about MH370. The final recorded words by anyone on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 were simply
00:01:48
Speaker
Good night, Malaysian 370.
00:01:51
Speaker
Moments later, the flight turned off its scheduled route and veered 15 degrees to the right, never to be seen or heard from again. It's now been three months since the flight disappeared, and despite a flurry of activity off the coast of Australia, when it was thought the black box recorder had been located at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, we seem no closer now than we were then to knowing what happened to the passengers and crew of Flight MH370.
00:02:21
Speaker
So, MH370, the first and possibly last conspiracy theory of this podcast, because I believe we have promised on numerous occasions, if MH370 is solved, that's the podcast over and done with. Yeah, yeah, no, we have. It was, was that episode three or four? Episode four. Episode four, yeah, sorry. The first three were a bit of... The conspiracy conditions. Yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, and it just kept going. It kept going and going. So, you know, that was basically live. That was current news when we first started talking about it. And then over the years, it's just refused to go away to the point that I don't doubt there'll be more. It hasn't really entered the halls of proper conspiracy theory yet, I guess. There's been a lot of books. I mean, we reviewed a book on image 370 last year. Yep, no, that's true. That's true.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I eagerly await whatever revelations may come out about MH370 in the future.
Conspiracy Theories on Celebrity Deaths
00:03:27
Speaker
Now, MH370 kind of is an ongoing concern. One thing we have talked about a lot over the course of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy are celebrity death conspiracy theories. And here's a clip.
00:03:59
Speaker
Did Sid Vicious kill Nancy Smudgeham? Was he killed by his mother? The mysterious death of Bruce Lee? Was he poisoned? Was his son killed because he knew the identity of his father's killers? Who killed Tupac Shakur? What happened to the notorious B.I.G.? Did Paul McCartney die in the 1960s? Does this explain the frog chorus? All this and more on Unsolved Mysteries of the podcast as Guide to the Conspiracy.
00:04:36
Speaker
Now, all I've got to say about that is we used to be a lot more inventive when it came to the intro to this podcast. More energy, I think, and everything was bright and new. That was the start of episode 14, where we talked about a bunch of celebrity deaths, and it proceeded by nine episodes, episode five, which was just all about the death of Kurt Cobain. Oh, and we've put a clip for that.
00:05:02
Speaker
You're relatively ambivalent towards the musical merits of Kurt Cobain and Ivana. I am actually quite ambivalent towards grunge as a genre, truth be told. I kind of avoided that part of the 90s. Too much flannel, I felt. Far too much flannel. Now, the death of Kurt Cobain is kind of an interesting conspiracy theory, isn't it?
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's interesting in kind of what it says about the people who put it forwards, I guess. It mostly just seemed to come out of the fact, well there seemed to be two sides, but one of the fact was people liked Kurt Cobain and didn't like Courtney Love. Which is ridiculous, because Courtney Love was the much better recording artist.
00:05:45
Speaker
Well, yes, no, I'm sympathetic to arguments of whole being superior to nirvanability, right? People didn't like her in the same way that when John Lennon was killed, Yoko Ono lives, people tried to justify it. I'm sorry, Josh, I'm not one of those people who believes that John Lennon is dead by any chance, aye? Yes. Oh, OK.
Misconceptions & Crime Scene Theories
00:06:07
Speaker
That's interesting. And the other side of it was just simply a bit of sort of the amateur reporting. We see people who had
00:06:13
Speaker
access to the crime scene or access to information about the crime scene who didn't think it looked enough like a shotgun suicide for their liking. Yeah and that kind of gets into an interesting thing we're seeing with a lot of conspiracy theories we've looked at over the course of our tenure at the podcast as Guide to the Conspiracy which is the idea that people have an idea of what a crime scene should look like
00:06:39
Speaker
So when it doesn't look like that, they end up going, oh, there's something suspicious about this.
00:06:47
Speaker
Especially when their idea of what a crime scene should look like is informed entirely by shows like CSI and murder mystery movies. Or comics making jokes about the death of Kurt Cobain. Now I should say, for each year, Em and I have both picked an episode or two... Well, as you know... All right, so let me put this out. For each year, I've chosen an episode. You've chosen an episode or two.
00:07:14
Speaker
Well, yes, I've chosen everything. These ones, basically because they were both celebrity death ones, I figured they were worth mentioning in the same breath. I will be honest, I don't know about you, but when I've looked for each year at the most memorable ones, they tend to be memorable to me for fairly egocentric reasons. So in this case, the death of Kurt Cobain was the first one that I kind of took a point on. I did the research and presented it to you. Because of my notorious hatred of grunge.
00:07:44
Speaker
And I think kind of the same with the celebrity death ones as well. I don't think that was the last time we talked about dead celebrities. Well no, I mean there's an entire thing about Tupac Shakur which comes up several years later. So shall we move along to 2015 then? Yes, let's start with what I'd like to think of as our first concept episode, 40 minutes of the classics. So how's America?
00:08:10
Speaker
Big. Big and brassy. Filled with people. American people. Highlights of the trip so far? Travel pillows. Really good to the neck. Love em. What about New York? You're seeing the attractions Coney Island Empire State Statue of Liberty? Must be to ground zero, shall we? Yeah, yeah, they were nice. Big and brassy. Filled with people. American people? Yeah, for the most part. You're not exactly selling me on the place. I mean, it's as if you're not there. Or are you?
00:08:39
Speaker
Well obviously I'm not. I mean, we're pre-recording this a few days before I leave. At the moment we're both sitting in my bedroom pretending this is next week's podcast. Oh, magic of internet radio. It sure is magical. Now if you don't mind, it's actually early morning here and I want to go watch the sunrise for the top of the Empire State Building. Gotta get in early and beat the crowd. Let's off to find decent coffee. God, but American coffee tastes like mud. So, that's a terribly cliched ending. Very predictable. Pretty terrible, really. Yeah, not my best work.
00:09:09
Speaker
What are you gonna do to appease our loyal listeners? Clever.
00:09:28
Speaker
Now, of course, our listeners, who, listening back in 2015, may well have thought of that. But to my mind, what's interesting about that episode is, of course, that episode coincides with my trip to America to attend that big conspiracy theory conference in Miami.
00:09:47
Speaker
Which you crowdfunded, as I recall. That was the Miami one, wasn't it? It was. And then I capitalized upon that by interviewing almost every single person I met, giving us several months worth of content for the podcast. Yes, we dined out on your interviews for quite some time.
00:10:10
Speaker
But in lieu of an actual episode that week, of course, you said 40 minutes of the classics, and that's what you delivered. We have recorded a few bits and pieces so that people who actually sat through all of it would actually get a few minutes of comic interludes from time to time. I am quite curious to know whether anyone actually sat through it, but you know.
00:10:31
Speaker
it was content and we provided it and at that point in time we did not have a patreon in any way shape or form so basically people listening to it and not giving us money they were just fans
00:10:46
Speaker
So 2015, episode 38 occurring in episode 15 was when we first took a proper look at false flag conspiracy theories, which of course have dogged us and the conspiracy theory world in general ever since.
00:11:06
Speaker
I picked this one. Shall we play the clip first? We shall indeed. Right, before we get started, I think we need to set some ground rules given the subject of this week's episode. Cars. No, no Germans. First of all, I think we can agree that World War II jokes are out. Agreed. Don't mention so much. Watch it.
00:11:24
Speaker
Secondly, no cracks about German being an angry sounding language which you then prove by shouting words in German at the top of your lungs. No, no, that's lazy comedy. Now what about references to the famous Teutonic efficiency and work ethic? Mmm, positive stereotype is still a stereotype. That's out too. Fear enough! So, what does that actually leave us?
00:11:51
Speaker
Let's see, the song 99 Red Balloons, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose last name is the German word for cabbage, and references to the movie Mallrats about the backseat of a Volkswagen being a euphemism for anal sex.
00:12:06
Speaker
You know, that's not a lot to work with. Still, I suppose after the puerile depths we plumbed last week, it'll be nice to talk about something more staid and respectable. Like Volkswagen cars and their emissions. They're dirty. Dirty emissions. Filthy. Gaseous emissions. Precisely. Let's put on the dignified front I know we're capable of and begin.
00:12:36
Speaker
Now that's not the right clip because I've put false flags into a different, because we talk about false flags in two sections here. It's actually the VW emissions scandal, which was another thing we covered back that year. Another one of the ones, that was episode 70, another one of the ones that kept going for a good wee while. Would it be safe to say that one's over?
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, so one of those things where because it was a warranted conspiracy theory and it was shown to be a warranted conspiracy theory, kind of immediately when Volkswagen went, oh by the way, actually we did conspire, it kind of
00:13:13
Speaker
did end as a conspiracy theory in the pejorative then. Although I believe we did actually talk about the fact that there are still financial repercussions to the emissions scandal up to this day. We talked about update last year where VW is still paying out money for the things they did back in 2015.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yes, that was episode 70. Do you have the episode 38 clip there? I believe it's actually this clip right here. So as a more general summation and sort of to set the theme for this little series that we'll be
00:13:51
Speaker
Nope, that is a completely... I've completely lost the file there. Hold on whilst I check what's going on there. I do seem to... Because I do remember making the clip. And now I have...
00:14:09
Speaker
No idea where it's disappeared to. We'll just have to assume that it's gone. It's been lost to the history. It was a lovely thing about false flags, about false flags, false flags, false flags, false flags. And that's the episode where I first decided that false flags were the lupus of conspiracy theories, a reference to the TV show House, which I don't know if it was even still on the air in 2015. So it's thoroughly dated now, but frankly- Does anyone talk about House anymore?
00:14:37
Speaker
Does anyone talk about house anymore? Not really, I don't think so. No, I think it's kind of gone. Yeah, so I always wanted that to be a catchphrase. I really hoped that one would catch on, but if it hasn't now, nobody remembers house anymore, so I don't think it's going to. I think I'm just gonna have to give that one up. Indeed. But you know what we're not going to give up?
00:15:01
Speaker
You, nor are we going to let you down or run around and desert you? No, we're never going to give up David Icke. Talking about David Icke, let's move forward to 2016 and hear from the man himself. One of the people that an insider who told me about the reptilian connection to the royal family also told me in 1998
00:15:26
Speaker
that Jimmy Savile, the BBC entertainer, was very, very close and an inner circle, buzz and buddy of the royal family, and was a pedophile, a necrophiliac, and a procurer of children for the rich and famous. Now, all these years later,
00:15:49
Speaker
She has been proved absolutely right by a mass exposure of a record-breaking pedophile and necrophiliac, which is why he volunteered to be a porter in hospitals, and a close associate, not only of the royal family, but of Margaret Thatcher, whose government in the 19...
00:16:18
Speaker
has been the focus of another scandal involving political pedophilia. So this person who was extraordinary, spot on, 100% accurate about Jimmy Savile in 1998, 97, 98,
00:16:39
Speaker
was one of the sources, one of the sources about the reptilian connection to the royal family. And this is what you do. You put the information one after the other.
00:16:53
Speaker
So that was actually a case of us literally talking with David Icke. That's not a snippet of an interview we took and played on the podcast. We were actually talking with David Icke. So when it comes to memorable episodes, I think that's probably, for me, possibly the most memorable episode ever.
00:17:13
Speaker
We actually talked to David Icke. What's interesting about this episode, so David Icke's people contacted me to see whether I wanted to talk with David before he came out to give a talk in Auckland and I kind of got the feeling that they'd done very cursory research because if they'd actually researched me they'd realised that I'm not really sympathetic to David Icke but at the same time they're saying do you want an interview.
00:17:37
Speaker
So I said sure, I'll do the interview with David Eink, that seems like a good idea, it's good for the podcast, interested to talk with him. We put the podcast out, we did not put the opening sketch onto the initial version of the podcast.
00:17:55
Speaker
in part because the initial opening sketch of the podcast is making fun of the idea that David Icke believes in alien chapshifting reptiles with a running joke about Josh wearing a human suit over a lizard suit over his actual body. So there was levels of subterfuge going on when it came to that episode.
00:18:19
Speaker
I remember recording it. I remember the two of us sitting there afterwards going well. That happened. I think we only spoke for about five minutes and then he spent the next 45 minutes just perveracating without any need for input.
00:18:37
Speaker
I mean, actually, that was one of the criticisms that people had about her episode. We kind of let him talk. But I thought that was kind of the point of what we were doing. We knew what our audience would be. They wanted to hear David Icke say David Icke things. They didn't really want to hear us talk about David Icke. They wanted to hear us present David Icke in his full David Icke in glory.
00:19:01
Speaker
I think, yeah, I think some of them wanted us to sort of challenge David Eich in the possibly naive assumption that we two amateurs would be able to somehow stump or confound him and get him to show that his views are all a load of nonsense. But I think it was quite apparent that he's heard every objection there is and is pretty much unstumpable.
00:19:27
Speaker
So yes, I think just winding him up and letting him go was the most entertainment we were going to get.
00:19:32
Speaker
Now, you chose David Icke for 2016. I actually chose Ace of Bass for 2016 for the sheer fact that A, I still can't quite get over the fact that when you actually start exploring Ace of Bass the band, it becomes quite clear very early on that at least the mastermind behind the band was not a very good human being.
00:19:59
Speaker
But the other thing which is interesting about 2016 is that we start talking about a certain Donald Trump.
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh no, sorry, my mistake. My mistake. There's absolutely nothing interesting happening in the world, though, except for that election in America, I suppose. But then who's interesting in there? Why should we even bother? Yeah, so this is Donald Trump character? Donald Trump? Something like that. The name name is self-familiar. Trumpo, Trumpo, Donald Trumpo. Famous screenwriter. I believe he's running for president.
00:20:37
Speaker
I never heard of the man. What, has he done something odd and controversial? You know, you asked me that question and I just don't know how to answer that, whether facetiously or seriously, because frankly the answer is both. Yeah, well he got into a fight with a baby today. He did well. Yes. Didn't actually get into a fight with a baby, but certainly ordered one. Had a war of words with a baby. Donald Trump had a war of words with a baby.
00:21:04
Speaker
Mm. Which was which he was doing so well. He was he was he was like, Oh, that's yeah, bless the baby. I love babies. Don't worry about the baby. And the in a minute later couldn't handle it any longer. And I was like, you know, I was just kidding. Get out. I have to say you're doing you're saying he's doing so well. You're saying for five seconds, five seconds he sounded like a human being. That's Donald Trump doing so well in an election campaign. Kind of as
00:21:31
Speaker
So yeah, 2016 Donald Trump seems ever so slightly low key as opposed to inciting insurrection 2021 Donald Trump. Yeah. Yeah, now you mentioned Ace of Base actually. And I have to say that we had a news article on Ace of Base, which is one of my favorite bits of writing that I did.
00:21:59
Speaker
for a new section, the punchline of which was, the Venga bus may be coming, but where is it taking us to, Auschwitz?
00:22:10
Speaker
which was then followed and frankly I have never felt more more in sync with you than when I wrote for you the dialogue dude full stop dude exclamation mark dude full stop dude full stop and you delivered it perfectly with no prompting or directorial input for me exactly the way I was intended it I was I was ever so proud
00:22:36
Speaker
I have to say, I think one of the great things about our working relationship here is we do know how to write for each other's voice. Yes, definitely.
00:22:47
Speaker
Um, I also, I briefly mentioned, um, I'll be, I mean, David Ike outshines everything. My only other really memorable one was the one we did about David Grimes, which was that paper that people talk about every now and then where he so supposedly looked at the statistical likelihood of a conspiracy being able to, or how long, how long this paper is a bug bear to me and my own writing.
00:23:09
Speaker
And sort of the end sort of gave a mathematical values for exactly how long we could have expected it you know if things like the moon landing conspiracy theories were real how long we could expect it to go before someone blew the whistle on them to what have you and yes so we sort of pulled that one apart but um
00:23:26
Speaker
That was one of my other favourite bits of writing where I wrote an imagined titanic battle between you and Grimes that involved sort of earth-shaking war cries and giant ebon blades and what have you. I was frankly having too much fun to be stopped.
00:23:45
Speaker
2016 was a good year. It was kind of before the Trump presidency when things felt like they might be okay. But that was not to last. Time marched on, as it inevitably does, and we ended up in 2017. And now here's where our false flags come in. This was your idea, I'm pretty sure, wasn't it? To do a whole series of false flags.
00:24:09
Speaker
In part because I'd actually been taken to task by Curtis Hagen, friend of the show and also friend of mine within the conspiracy theory theorists community, who had actually sent me an email going, really would be quite nice because I know that you're sympathetic towards conspiracy theories to actually mention some conspiracy theories which are warranted because otherwise the show does kind of come across.
00:24:35
Speaker
as making fun of conspiracy theories all the time. And I think we both recognise when that email came through that actually, yeah, it would be a good idea to spend some time talking about conspiracy theories, which turn out to be actual conspiracies. Yep, so we went through all the big ones. We had the Gleiwitz incident and we had, I don't actually have to list in front of me now and I can't be able to look it up, but we went through a bunch of known documented
00:25:05
Speaker
the LaVonna Faire, a few others, instances of things that were honest to goodness, proper false flag events that were true and real and happened. Yeah, let's play that clip. So as a more general summation and sort of to set the theme for this little series that we'll be going over for the next, I don't know, some episodes,
00:25:28
Speaker
This isn't about to be the podcaster's guide to false flag conspiracy theories exclusively, but it'll be a theme for just a little while now. That would be a bit of a mouthful. It really would. Must not say, just like your mum. Yes, but as an overall project, as you say, we can look at this after the fact and see obviously, knowing now what we do, we can say that these things are clearly false flags. But I guess it's the project here to say how we evaluate claims that
00:25:58
Speaker
claims in the here and now that something is a false flag. Is that what we're wanting to work towards? It is part of the story. Of course, one of the issues in events in wartime is that much of the information that we need to be able to evaluate these events
00:26:14
Speaker
really only comes out well after the fact. I mean, especially when you have a very closed isolationist nation like Russia, it's very hard to get information about what happened during those conflicts until years and sometimes decades after the event.
00:26:32
Speaker
But of course, at the time, people were suspicious. The Jewish Commission was suspicious about the Moscow show trials. People in Finland, of course, were very suspicious about the act of aggression they had supposedly performed with regard to Russia. But proving those things in the moment turns out to be rather difficult.
00:26:53
Speaker
And it's very easy to dismiss these claims as being mere conspiracy theories, because state actors, like the Soviet government, deny them. And of course they have the kind of official authority where you'd go, well, you know, Stalin's a... he's a good chap. Stalin wouldn't lie to us about this, so it must be the Finnish who are being deceitful at this particular moment in time. Mmm.
00:27:21
Speaker
which was a good setup for all the ones that we did end up going through. And it was nice to see just a few weeks ago now when we did the
00:27:33
Speaker
the daring to care about 9-11 false flag conspiracy theories. All of these things are kind of popping up as things that people who want to say that everything's a false flag sort of appeal to. And it is nice to know what they're talking about, I guess.
00:27:54
Speaker
I mean, I saw this one thing which both came out when we were talking about false flags back in 2017. And also when we looked at Amy Baker Benjamin's dear to care paper, we probably should do a proper look at the ruckstag fire at some point. Yeah, yeah, that one is it remains contentious to this day, I think.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, I believe most modern historians don't think the Nazis set the fire, but they did make use of the fire to blame the convenient suspects, the communists. So it would be good to actually look at the state of the literature back before World War II and also now and see why the narrative might have changed and what that means about the way that we evaluate new evidence.
00:28:47
Speaker
Which actually makes me do think we should also do the donation of constant tea at some point.
00:28:54
Speaker
No, put it on the list. I am literally about to do it. If I can actually find out where we've actually put the list in our... Oh, there we go. There's a list of possible episodes. Now, whilst I'm updating that, why don't we take a listen to our next foray into the world of celebrity conspiracy theorists?
00:29:24
Speaker
Tonight, how does it feel to be so rich you can basically invent your own reality? Here's a famous actor who's a fan of loose change. There's a growing number of stars who think the world is flat. And what about the actress and playmate who popularised anti-vaxxer conspiracies all over the world? Does their spectacular wealth and influence give them access to information the rest of us don't have? Or maybe they're just so famous that no one will tell them when they're talking bollocks.
00:29:51
Speaker
Take a look into the glamorous world of champagne chemtrails and reptilian dreams as we- Oh, sorry. Sorry. Look, I appreciate the effort you've put into this. Your Robin Leech impression was possibly Australian, but Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous went off the air in 1995. Some of our listeners, I'm assuming, weren't even born then. Well, what's a more modern reference for celebrity lifestyles then?
00:30:19
Speaker
Is Crib still going? Let me check. Yes, it sort of started up again recently, but it's been off and on for ages, and it's almost 20 years old as well. Well, maybe. And before you ask, the Good Charlotte song, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, is also 15 years old. You know I love a musical parody, but out of date is still out of date.
00:30:48
Speaker
Well, what are the kids into these days? I think we're firmly established that neither of us really know what the kids are doing these days. They'll be snapchatting their Instagrams and live blogging, YouTube, fidget spoons. I don't even know where I'm going with this. Bugger. Guess there's no getting around it. We're out of touch. As out of touch is a celebrity conspiracy theorist. And he saves it with a segue. Hats off to you, sir. Hats off, indeed.
00:31:17
Speaker
Now I have to say, I'm pretty astounded by the fact that even when you stop doing your Robin Leach impression in that clip, you still sound like you're doing your Robin Leach impression afterwards.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know, maybe it just rubs off, I don't know, it sticks in the brain. Lifestyles of the rich? See, I can't even do it now. I used to even do it back in the day. I don't know that I could actually have said to have been able to do it either, but I think I'll leave the accents to you. Oh yes, I mean, my French accent is a messin'.
00:31:54
Speaker
and your Churchill is the toast of Croydon. Meanwhile, my tricky-dicky impression is taken to be one of the best, where one of the best is very contextualised.
00:32:08
Speaker
I had another minor pick for 2017, which is when we talked about speculative conspiracy theories. Oh, and we've got a clip for that too. The birtherism that just keeps on going, even though there is no longer a need to delegitimize
00:32:24
Speaker
Obama's presidency. Well, except there might be a further need to delegitimize Obama's presidency. So, for example, in the Mandela Effect universe, Donald Trump is about to enter office with the lowest approval rating of a president elect in American history. So he's already deeply unpopular with the American people.
00:32:48
Speaker
And thus there's going to be a certain amount, I suspect, in the first few months of Trump's reign, as people realize that he won't be draining the swamp, but actually building a bigger swamp, where people look back upon Obama and go, oh, if only he could have run for a third term. And so there's going to be a need to continue to delegitimize Obama for at least the first term of a potential Trump presidency. So that people go, oh, but he wasn't a real president though, was he?
00:33:16
Speaker
I mean he was probably a secret Muslim and also not born in Hawaii. So I mean really we can't idolise a fraud. So my suspicion is the birther stuff will continue to go on whilst Trump is president in the Mandela Effect universe because they kind of need to continue to set up Obama as the enemy in the same way that Bill Clinton continued to be delegitimised during the Bush years.
00:33:46
Speaker
Which is my bit of speculation. Which, how do you think that panned out? Well, I don't know. People don't seem to give a shit about Obama anymore. Well, I mean, I guess they do. But he certainly seemed to take a backseat to the likes of the Clintons and the Bill Gateses.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that was something I wasn't expecting because you're quite right. Trump really did continue to litigate against the person who lost the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton. And whilst there was kind of talk about the Obama presidency doing the kind of surveillance on the Trump campaign and maybe running a deep state in the background, Trump very much talked about Clinton, Clinton, Clinton. Hmm.
00:34:42
Speaker
The reason I put that one in, and I see it labeled at episode 123, I think that's where we started to fall foul of episode misnumbering, because now that I'm actually looking at the notes for it, we had it down as episode 122, so I don't quite know what's going on there, but anyway.
00:34:59
Speaker
it's the one I'm thinking of and it's quite possible it wasn't because it is like a long time ago, four years ago. It was because this was, it was at a time when you were in Romania, I guess, 2017. Yep. And so occasionally sometimes we could get together and record an episode and then sometimes the time zones wouldn't work out and
00:35:21
Speaker
we'd sort of record half an episode each or what one of us would record a bunch of stuff and then the other would just record their commentary to it and then you'd take the lot and Frankenstein them together into a whole episode and there was one episode where I just happened to say is there
00:35:39
Speaker
is there a sort of conspiracy theory that's not saying, here's a thing, here's a conspiracy that happened, but a sort of speculative one where people have theories that here's something people would do if they could get away with it or sort of conspiracy theories in a future tense rather than a past tense. And you said, actually, that's an interesting point. And we talked about in a later episode and basically it was like, Hey, I made an interesting point. And that's, that's entirely my motivation and talking about it now.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah, and actually when I think about those initial episodes we made when I first went to Romania, of course, it's kind of fascinating because initially we actually thought that when I left for Romania, that was the end of the podcast. We even recorded a final episode and then a kind of postscript episode, the exit interview with you.
00:36:30
Speaker
And then we thought, well, you know, I'll do a few bits and pieces recorded from Romania. You can do a bit of commentary on top of that. And then we continued doing that. And then I discovered that actually doing the kind of Frankenstein's monster thing of trying to make the bits work didn't really work out. And I went, we could just do it over Skype. And then we did.
00:36:57
Speaker
And over the years, Skype got worse and worse. But then you were back in the country, and then now we have Zoom, which seems to actually have decent quality most of the time. Most of the time. Most of the time. Internet connection permitting. And you'll soon be winging your way off to China, and it'll be back to being Zoom full time.
00:37:21
Speaker
It will be, but we'll have better cameras. Yes. Yes, possibly we should say right. This is a Zoom episode we're doing right now because it's a patron bonus episode. We don't normally record video for those anyway. And as it so happens, we're in different cities at the moment anyway. So it's because I have I've come down to surprise one of the patrons of our podcast.
00:37:45
Speaker
And it works out even better because for some strange reason the lights in my house have stopped working. We blew a fuse in the kitchen
00:37:56
Speaker
And now, even though the light fuses properly reset, the lights in the house are all out except for in the kitchen. And I have genuinely no idea what the hell is going on. But that means I'm currently lit only by the light from my monitor screens, which gives a slightly spooky effect, but probably not what you'd want for a video episode. Wow. You know, you could always plug in that ring light into a USB port. I could. I don't know if it would be enough by itself. But anyway,
00:38:26
Speaker
So that was 2017. 2018. Okay now here's another big one. Episode 170 of episode 2000 of year 2018 was the first time we devoted a proper episode to looking at QAnon. I don't think we even really called it like we were still referring to it as the oncoming storm. We were in fact.
00:38:48
Speaker
Here's a clip. And we're back. Back to talk about the storm. Not, I should point out, the storm that lashed Auckland a couple of days ago and knocked over lots of trees and cut a whole lot of power. But the storm with capital letters. The one in England was the beast, wasn't it?
00:39:09
Speaker
But that was an actual storm, not a not a beast at all. Yes. And actually, this is where metaphors get very confusing, because it was an actual storm. The oncoming storm we're talking about is a metaphorical storm, and not a literal storm. Unless Donald Trump was talking about a literal storm, at which point he has predictive weather powers that have hitherto been unseen in American presidents.
00:39:34
Speaker
Although I'm sure someone's going to write in and say, turns out that actually Gerald Ford was actually very good at predicting storms, as was Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. So yes, we were talking about QAnon, but it hadn't actually taken on that formal name. It still had a variety of different names, depending on what people were focusing on.
00:40:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I remember in the early days, they hadn't really latched on to the pedophilia child kidnapping, blood drinking, adrenochrome harvesting side of things. It was really just Donald Trump was going to drain the swamp. He's going to arrest Hillary Clinton and John Podesta and George Soros and all the people whose politics you disagree with and put them in front of secret military tribunals. And it was sort of,
00:40:30
Speaker
as it gathered steam and started to suck in all the other existing conspiracy theories those bits got bolted on to it but at that stage it was it was kind of a different beast from what it's turned into today. Yeah I don't think we could have predicted in 2018 what QAnon was going to be in 2021. Yeah I mean I still
00:40:57
Speaker
It's got into the popular consciousness, certainly. I never, I still to this day, I'm not sure how much of it is a small number of particularly loud voices or a large groundswell. I mean, your interviews with Joasinski, he seemed to think it's not that big of a thing. It's just got people's attention.
00:41:22
Speaker
And maybe it doesn't need to be that big of a thing if it's still inspiring. So, I mean, we've talked about how a lot of the cure and especially the baby eating side of things has its precursors and the satanic panic of the 1980s, which of course goes all the way back to the protocols of the elders of Zion and before, I'm sure.
00:41:44
Speaker
And so, you know, people went to jail in the satanic panic. So even if even if only a few people believe that it's had real consequences. So maybe if QAnon doesn't have that large of volume of supporters, it can still do damage as, say, inspiring people to invade the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is the point I've made several times talking with journalists. I believe Joe and the polling, which indicates that actually QAnon is not a particularly big section of the American conspiracy theorist community. It's probably less than two or 3%. The problem is the people who subscribe to the QAnon hypothesis are very strong in their belief
00:42:31
Speaker
in the QAnon hypothesis. So there aren't many of them, but they're very interested in doing something about their beliefs.
00:42:43
Speaker
And I think in that extent, it's probably similar to the various terrorist organizations, even your white nationalist terrorists and your Islamist terrorists, they're small, they're not representative of their wider community, perhaps, but they're committed enough to actually do some damage. Precisely. Now, you had another clip for 2018 that was memorable for you for a closer personal connection, perhaps?
00:43:12
Speaker
Yes, and we'll let the clip stand for itself. So I'm going to start today's story with a little bit of an anecdote, which is going to sound like it's the setup for a joke, because literally about a week and a bit ago, I was having lunch with a Russian and a Ukrainian.
00:43:30
Speaker
and we were talking about current events and the Russian, who also happens to be American, said, oh, I'm a little bit sad because my friend's just been assassinated and the Ukrainian said, oh, do you mean Arkady Bachenko? You know him and the Russian said, yes, I've just found out that he's been murdered and it looks like Russia was responsible.
00:43:54
Speaker
And the Ukrainian nodded his head very sagely. And then a few hours later, the Russian, who I should point out is also American, then sent me a Facebook message and said, no, no, it's fine. My friend isn't dead. And I was going, what do you mean he's not dead? I'm seeing news reports on Twitter about his assassination right now. And she said, no, it all appears to have been some kind of weird hoax.
00:44:19
Speaker
So this story I find to be quite fascinating because I didn't find out about it via the news or via social media like I normally did. I found out about it over lunch.
00:44:32
Speaker
And yes, that was a very weird circumstance. Doing lunch with someone who was upset because her friend has been murdered and then going for a drink with her later on that day to find out that actually it was a massive sting operation against the FSB.
00:44:52
Speaker
What's happened to him lately, do we know? I had no idea. I mean, I know that there was an investigation into the hit on him. Russia, as usual, claims that, A, they weren't involved and the people who definitely weren't involved may well have worked for Russian state intelligence in the past, but definitely weren't working on their Aegis at the time of the attempted assassination. And look over there, it's a war that's flying through the air. But I mean, the Russians, they
00:45:20
Speaker
they do seem the type to hold a grudge. So I do wonder if Mr Babchenko will be looking over his shoulder. Yeah, I don't know where he's living now. I wouldn't be surprised if he's living somewhere which is a little bit harder for Russian intelligence agents to get to. Although, as we've seen,
00:45:42
Speaker
They can kind of get anywhere. Yes, we've had the Screepiles and most recently Alexei Navalny, who's getting into all sorts of scrapes now, right at this moment. Which I see might be a bit of a diplomatic issue between Russia and the US, since a lot of people, particularly both Democrats and Republicans, are asking the Department of State to formally condemn Russia's arrest warrant for Alexei Navalny.
00:46:13
Speaker
So we'll see how that one develops. But moving on to 2019, now you and I both have the same pick for most memorable episode of this year. And it's an episode that has become memorable in retrospect. Yeah, let's play the clip.
00:46:29
Speaker
This week we're bringing you a disturbing but also relatively minor story you probably haven't heard of. Although you probably know of similar stories, especially if you're a long-term fan of this show. So our story today concerns when Katie Groves, the alleged survivor of an American government-run child snuff factory, located 45 minutes drive from the centre of Austin, Texas.
00:46:52
Speaker
Now, if you're squeamish, please be aware that we will be discussing not nearly real death, but discussing the murder of children, also a little light cannibalism. So this was Uncle Sam's Snuff Factory, which I believe, as we've discussed on previous episodes, we might be the only podcast to have ever mentioned it.
00:47:15
Speaker
And the reason why we say we might be the only podcast we've mentioned it is that it's the only one that gets a significant number of comments on YouTube. On a kind of recurring basis. Which leads us to suspect that maybe when people go to search for information on Uncle Sam's Snuff Factory, we must be pretty high up the search results.
00:47:37
Speaker
which means not to be too self-deprecating, there probably aren't very many other people who we're competing with.
00:47:46
Speaker
Which is kind of interesting, because the actual thesis of Uncle Sam's Snuff Factory is ye bog standard sexual perversion conspiracy theory, where political elites are using children for their own particular end. But it seems that this particular version of sexual perversion conspiracy theory, we're the only people to have kind of picked up upon Katie Groves' claims.
00:48:12
Speaker
And you were pointed to it from a Reddit post or something, was it? I was. It was one of those weird things where someone said, maybe you might want to take a look at it. I did. I sat on it for a long time. Then one day I thought, why not?
00:48:28
Speaker
just take a look at it we did we found nothing of particular substance to the claims themselves and yet we can week out we get comments on the youtube version of the podcast and not just not josh's version of the video podcast the
00:48:49
Speaker
audio kind of weird thing that PodBen does where it'll create a YouTube video of an audio podcast, we'll get comments on that which either are you have no idea what you're talking about or thank you very much for drawing attention to this very important topic. Yeah and that's it's just been a little bizarre quite frankly because
00:49:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it does seem, there's not a lot new to it in terms of, again, going back to the satanic panic and earlier, its claims have been around for a long time, just these specific ones. It's the sort of thing that you would expect a reporter to stumble across and think, oh, there's probably a story in this and dash an article off, but it just doesn't seem to have happened. No, and I think it's in part because
00:49:45
Speaker
And I this is me engaging in a bit of folk psychology here, but actually watching the videos with Katie Groves, I can't help but think that there's another explanation for her claims, which isn't the existence of a snuff factory beneath Austin, Texas. Yeah, as with when we've talked a couple of times think about targeted individuals, it's like, well, the
00:50:13
Speaker
like we're not neither of us as a psychologist, but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of difference between what these people are saying and what you would expect to hear from someone who's suffering from some form of schizophrenia or similar mental affliction. Yes, I think that is a fair representation of what you see in those videos.
00:50:41
Speaker
But anyway, let's move on to last year, given that it's now 2021 for God's sake. How did that even happen?
00:50:50
Speaker
I mean, most of us didn't think we'd get out of 2020 alive, or indeed thought that 2020 could possibly end, given it did feel like one of the longest years on human record. It did. But no, 2020, I mean, it's all fairly fresh in the memory there. The only one that really stands, I mean, I suppose 2020, we started our what the conspiracy segment,
00:51:12
Speaker
We did. We started Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre. Or does that go back to 2019? I haven't actually checked when the, when the earliest episode was. Oh, good point actually. I haven't thought of that either. I think it might be early 2020. I can actually look that up in a second. So we sort of had some significant episodes in terms of firsts and trying new things and what have you.
00:51:38
Speaker
Um, here we go. I've got the list here. I've got the list. Where is it? Uh, God, there's so many episodes to scroll through. Here we go. It started, oh no, uh, May 2020. Yep. There we go. So 2020 was the year we started Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre and we started our other, our other new What the Conspiracy segment. Um,
00:51:59
Speaker
What you all said, but in terms of actual memorability, the only thing that sticks out in my mind is the Bill Gates episode where we, for ages and ages, said, oh, we should do an episode about Bill Gates. Everybody talks about Bill Gates. How come Bill Gates is the one that people fixate on in the same way they used to about George Soros? And we did that episode and then it got yanked from YouTube. Now, here's a clip.
00:52:23
Speaker
So this is a question that I've wanted answered for a while myself, basically, which is, when and why did Bill Gates become the new George Soros? Just all of a sudden, he was Bill Gates was the guy who was popping up in all the COVID conspiracy theories and probably a few of the 5G ones as well.
00:52:40
Speaker
And it is a relatively recent phenomena, the idea of Bill Gates being behind these conspiracy theories. Because for a long period of time, the ultimate conspirator in politics was, of course, good old George Soros. And having spent time living in Eastern Europe, I became very familiar with George Soros-related conspiracy theories. And then suddenly, Bill Gates enters the scene, and almost all Western conspiracy theories now reflect upon him,
00:53:10
Speaker
and Soros is almost relegated to being a third-rate Eastern European villain these days. So, yeah, what's kind of interesting about what happened with that episode is that we did an entire episode based around debunking the idea that Bill Gates should be blamed for all the ills of our society, but YouTube didn't agree, did it, Josh?
00:53:37
Speaker
No, YouTube seemed to think that we were advocating these conspiracy theories. And I mean, this was when they were trying to start to crack down on the COVID misinformation. And yeah, the video got yanked for under the category of medical misinformation. And it said, you can appeal. And I appealed saying, no, we're not spreading these theories. We're critiquing them. We're debunking them.
00:54:04
Speaker
and just got the reply, no, still stands, it's gone. And that was the end of that video on my YouTube channel. Did it go up automatically on yours?
00:54:15
Speaker
Well, I mean, I would have received a strike notice if it had been an issue. So as far as I'm aware, it's still up on the YouTube channel for me. I do wonder if I just tripped it because in the description I was like, you know, when did Bill Gates become the new George Soros? Which I sort of which, you know, we in the context of the episode is clearly, you know, when did Bill Gates become the person who conspiracy theorists fixate on in the same way that they used to fixate on George Soros? But I can understand
00:54:45
Speaker
that took a person giving it a cursory glance or a poorly trained algorithm, it could look like we were saying, you know, Bill Gates is the guy who's now responsible for all the world's evils, not George Soros. But yeah, it's still, I mean, I said it when we first talked about this, you know, you know, you're dealing with a giant faceless global mega corporate, but it is still a little bit confronting where you have that fact actually, actually shoved in your face.
00:55:14
Speaker
And this is the point in time where if we were going to go into political commentary, we talk about this is the danger of social media sites like your Twitter's your Facebook's and also your YouTube's being able to have so much control over what
00:55:31
Speaker
aren't technically public forums, but which are effectively acting as them in our nation states, in that when you've got algorithms making decisions about content, you get false positives, like our episode on Bill Gates.
00:55:53
Speaker
being cancelled and I'm putting that in scare quotes there in case people are concerned that I'm turning into a right wing spokesperson like Ben Shapiro being cancelled because they've been interpreted in the wrong way. Yes, interesting. Also just the whole
00:56:13
Speaker
picking and choosing who to cancel like we all well we you and I and probably most of our listeners thought it was great when Twitter unilaterally decided to yank a whole bunch of white supremacist type
00:56:28
Speaker
but then we've seen just today, I believe, Reddits in some way put the kibosh on that Wall Street Bets account that's busy screwing with the stock market and inconveniencing large hedge funds and billionaires. So that definitely cuts both ways.
00:56:48
Speaker
But anyway, there's a worry here about the exercise of control by corporations over things which aren't technically public, but have kind of effectively become the de facto public square. Anyway, that's enough of that. What was your pick for 2020?
00:57:07
Speaker
Well, mine was our delightful, and I say our delightful, my delightful discussion with David Ferrier, which you notably were left out of. Right. Time for another exciting episode of the podcast. Looks like I'm going to be right on time. We managed to book a studio for this recording last week. Sound quality is a bit rubbish. Right now, just need to enter the passcode. Well,
00:57:35
Speaker
Well, maybe I entered it wrong. Let's try the N. 42, 42. Hmm. Oh, maybe I should try knocking. I can see him in there. Hold on. That's not David Farrier in there, is it? David! David! M! M! Ah, bloody soundproofing!
00:57:59
Speaker
Hold on, is that someone trying to get in? Oh, no, just ignore her. Look, I really want to talk to you about my documentary idea. It's called Dark Floridus, because it's all about fluoride conspiracy theories. Oh, God, no.
00:58:15
Speaker
Now, one thing I want to note about that clip is that over the course of the podcast, your acting has gone from strength to strength, whilst my acting has continued to maintain a monotone of emotional emptiness. I have to say it is I find it easy acting when all I'm acting as is me.
00:58:43
Speaker
Um, so again, I think, I think a case of each of us writing to the other's strengths, perhaps. I just find it disturbing. They did years and years of speech and drama training and I'm good at public speaking, but
00:58:59
Speaker
emoting as a version of myself, still not so good at. But then again, maybe I'm not good at that in real life. So maybe it's an accurate representation of me as a person. Maybe I'm just empty inside. Yes, but nevertheless, yes, a good episode, good interview. Young David Ferrier is, he's kind of becoming our competition now, isn't he? He's... Well, he's got his arm cheered and dangerous podcast.
00:59:22
Speaker
But he does seem to be getting well into the conspiracy theories. I have to be, I'm a little bit worried about David. He's almost starting to sound like the people who he critiques in his
00:59:36
Speaker
he's sort of seeing QAnon everywhere and I worry that he's inflating it a little much. Especially when he interviewed Joe and didn't seem overly, he sort of seemed to be, you know, Joe says that the polling shows QAnon's not that big, but it feels big. And I don't know.
00:59:56
Speaker
Although that being said, Joe thinks that's an issue with almost the entire journalistic class, as was discussed in the interview I did with him after his interview with David. It does turn out that when Joe gives the facts to journalists, journalists go, yeah, but that's not how I feel it looks like. And Joe goes,
01:00:18
Speaker
Don't care what you feel it looks like, this is the actual hard data. If you're going to say it feels different, you also need to explain why the polling mechanisms are bad.
01:00:30
Speaker
But anyway, jolly good episode nonetheless. And that's it, it's now 2021. We've been at this for way too many years. I guess we'll be celebrating the seventh anniversary in May of this year, 300 episodes. I do have to wonder how
01:00:53
Speaker
like 300 seems like quite a long run just for a podcast in general. How do you think we compare to other long running ones out there?
01:01:04
Speaker
that's a really good question because I mean we've we've never broken big we've always just been a middling podcast which has been quite content to follow our own interests so we haven't been honing the podcast according to episodes that work that get
01:01:24
Speaker
bigger viewing figures or higher retention rates. We simply reinvent depending on how we feel about things. So I suppose in one respect the fact we've managed to go on for seven years and 300 episodes is kind of a testament to the fact that we enjoy doing the podcast.
01:01:47
Speaker
and it doesn't feel like a chore it's not one of those oh god we've got to record another podcast episode this week we seem to find a way to make it always work and we keep reinventing things not because we're chasing an audience but rather because we'll actually sometimes change is simply what we need to do
01:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, I just I keep having visions of at some point in the future beat some sort of light puff piece thing of New Zealand's longest-running podcast isn't what you might think. It's these two randoms talking about conspiracy theories.
01:02:27
Speaker
But wouldn't that be a great footnote to history? Well, it would, I suppose, yeah. I just don't know if we actually are New Zealand's longest running podcast or not. I would not have a clue. Actually, I have no idea. I mean, actually, the bigger question for me, given that I'm now associate professor of philosophy at Beijing Normal University, I am quite curious to know whether when I arrive on site in Zuhai,
01:02:52
Speaker
whether there's any discussion as to what the podcast should sound like when you've got an associate professor and senior faculty member at Beijing Normal University doing work. I mean, they haven't said anything as of yet, and I think we're such small fry that no one particularly cares, but also might be in our interest to not become big now, so that we're actually not noticed by the kind of people who might go,
01:03:20
Speaker
Why are you talking about that thing? And why are you making those particular jokes? Yes, we'll have to see. So yeah, it will be a, it will be another, yet another interesting new chapter of the podcast, It's Guide to the Conspiracy, once you eventually get all your business sorted out and when you way over to China.
01:03:40
Speaker
And the thing is, we've got so much to do. I mean, I did a calculation as to how long it might take to do all of the conspiracy theory masterpiece theater, and we've got several years of content there. Our new what the conspiracy segment I think will be quite a promising way to do things every other week. So there's a lot more to look at.
01:04:05
Speaker
and I think it's kind of a breath of fresh air we've found something new to do and it's kind of rejuvenated the podcast yes so I guess here's to 300 episodes more yeah and a clip show of a clip show yes it'll have to happen and of course obviously thank you to you the patrons who are listening to us
01:04:29
Speaker
Now I am thinking we might release this episode to the general public a week or two later after the patrons because a it's quite an interesting delve into the history and b it's also quite long so it's the kind of thing which other people might want to listen to but we will allow the patrons to have at least a week of exclusive I can't say exclusivity that's the one
01:04:57
Speaker
So you get it first and we and we often don't release the patron bonus episodes no to the public but I think this might be might warrant one that deserves general release. Right but you're right it has been a long episode we've had lots to lots to go back over so maybe we should call it to a halt now. Any last words? Bozums.
01:05:23
Speaker
Those are, those are some fairly good last words. I was just going to go with goodbye. No, you weren't going to go to penis. I mean, we started the podcast with a penis. We should probably end our 300th episode with a penis as well. Okay. Goodbye. PS penis. Penis. Penis class.