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A Kick in the Listicles
21 Plays2 years ago
Ah, listicles - the lowest form of low-effort content. Except, of course, for the content that consists of reading out listicles and reacting to them. And that's just what M and Josh are up to this week, when they're not discussing X-rated autocorrect fails or X-rated VPN fails! You're welcome.
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Listicles
00:00:00
Speaker
So, all set? Sure am. Well then, let's get out there and tickle some lists. Er, you what? You know, list tickles. What we're doing this episode. Keep up, Joshua. Yep, we're doing listicles. Pronounted however you like, they're lists, they tickle your fancy, hence the name, and this episode is full of them. Hey, I'm sorry, did you think... Listicle is a portmanteau of list and article. You know that, right? An article in the form of a list?
00:00:28
Speaker
I find my etymology much more plausible. Yeah, if by plausible you mean wrong. Maybe I do. Don't police my language use, you elitist rapscallion, by which I mean a shallot that culturally appropriates African American musical stylings. That's not even... Fine. Fine. Fine. Let's just get on with this list-isode. That would be an episode in the form of a list? Yes.
Hosts' Humorous Introductions
00:00:55
Speaker
I don't get it.
00:00:59
Speaker
Neither does your mind. The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em Dent.
00:01:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and in Zhuhai, China, we have associate professor of philosophy classified as furniture for tax purposes. It's Dr. M.R.X.Dentith. You can find me in almost every single IKEA catalogue except in Finland. In Finland, the M.Dentith range has been replaced by the Yuhao Riker range.
00:01:38
Speaker
Oh dear. What section are you under? There's a meatballs joke somewhere. I can't quite make it. No, I'm definitely two other trees. Okay. Now, sticking with an immature prurient tone, I would like you to read out the last email you sent to me before we started recording this episode.
00:02:02
Speaker
Ah, alright, only did you find my emails, and also hope that, because I sent that on the phone, so hopefully it's safe. Oh yes you did. A phone on which it autocorrects not to spoil anything did not work as it should have. Currently away from home, so can't check. It might be five or, five or one minutes late.
Shopping Misadventures
00:02:24
Speaker
It should be five or ten minutes late. I got delayed due to helping a colleague buy some cochoree.
00:02:30
Speaker
Helping a colleague buy some cockery. Honestly. But actually, what's made even better? So whilst I was at the supermarket, I was helping my colleague Pompeo with supermarket shopping and also homewear shopping at the nearby apartment store. And I discovered in the supermarket a brand of funky nuts with three layers sensory
00:02:55
Speaker
and also a brand of, and I need to actually zoom this in, a brand of bed linen whose logo is Continuous Exploration of the Continuous Discovery of the Miracle. And so I think when you buy the bed linen, you're also buying a religious experience. Well, that sounds good.
00:03:19
Speaker
That was all, basically. I just wanted to say cockery on the podcast and have an excuse to do it. And I do not blame you whatsoever. Now,
Concept of Listicles and Conspiracy Theories
00:03:31
Speaker
speaking of continuous discovery, we're going to continuously discover a good 40 things, I think, in this episode.
00:03:40
Speaker
interesting about this so we're doing a listicle episode as the intro suggests we used to do these on the scene every now and then which was basically our crib for we have no content we need content this week there's a listicle there are fewer listicles out there than there were a few years ago although it's popular
00:03:59
Speaker
But I also think it's also a lot harder to find listicles of weird conspiracy theories now, because in the old days when we did listicles, they were usually listicles written by a certain kind of conspiracy theorist, the kind of conspiracy theorist who believes unwarranted conspiracy
Challenges of Finding Rational Conspiracy Theories
00:04:19
Speaker
theories. So we'd have great fun going through and going, well, that's just common knowledge, that's not a conspiracy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:04:26
Speaker
Now the thing is, if you actually put a search in for a rational conspiracy theory list into Google, Google goes, hmm, we're meant to be against helping people find this misinformation these days. So they, it's very hard to locate these lists, they actually might be out there. But we're not really moving in the kind of crowd.
00:04:48
Speaker
which provides us with those lists. So it might be there are fewer lists out there, or it might be it's harder to find those lists, but they're still there. Could be well.
00:05:01
Speaker
In any case, we have two of them, and we're going to talk about them now. We are, we are, we are. But I think, very importantly, what we should do before we talk about them is insturt. Insturt? We should just insturt. Josh, insturt now. I will.
00:05:26
Speaker
Right, so we have a listicle each. I'd say we should alternate between the two, but one of them is 10 things long and one of them is 30 things long. So that's not really going to work. So maybe we should just take them one at a time.
00:05:36
Speaker
Indeed, let's start with the waking times, which is currently loading up on my device due to VPN related issues. We're working on a device on one end which has no VPN active and device on the other end which does have a VPN active, although actually it turns out that maybe the VPN is not working on my phone now because let me just see whether I can get this listicle to load.
Humorous Tech and Language Misinterpretations
00:06:01
Speaker
Josh will have great fun editing around the
00:06:04
Speaker
the problems of tech things here. If I say it again, monstrous rubbercock, monstrous rubbercock, and then Josh would go, well, that's perfect for a podcast. Do you want to say it again? Monstrous rubbercock. Yes. Although it actually does sound, if you say it too quickly, it becomes monstrous robocop, which seems like a weird spin-off film in the robocop series. Basically robocop too.
00:06:31
Speaker
I'm sorry. I have to say, sorry. We've got to Michael Ironside. Yes. I have to I have to confess this. The list we're looking at first is from the Waking Times, WakingTimes.com. And depending on my level of awakeness and emotional maturity, every time I see this URL, I always either think of it or is immediately see either Walking Times or I'm not proud to say this or Wanking Times. Honestly. Yeah. Anyway.
00:07:00
Speaker
Now this list comes from Gary, and because it's an American site, Zee McGee, which makes sense if it's Gary Zee McGee, it wouldn't have that zinger. Gary Zee
Libertarian Conspiracy Theories Discussion
00:07:09
Speaker
McGee, staff writer of The Waking Times, and it starts with a quote, the general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know Noam Chomsky.
00:07:21
Speaker
So this one is very much the libertarian, or not really sovereign citizen, it's pretty much just a libertarian conspiracy list.
00:07:32
Speaker
some of which as we'll see is debatable whether it's conspiratorial but nevertheless what are some things that we're not supposed to know? Number one it is nearly impossible to pay off the national debt and this starts with a quote everything seems to start with a quote nothing is so well calculated to produce a death like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt William Cobbett. Now
00:08:00
Speaker
I mean, the point is here is that, yes, money is created out of debt. In America, at least, the national debt is $20 trillion, which means every American would have to pay. How do they work it out? It has $62,000 to pay off the national debt, and this is craziness.
00:08:19
Speaker
Some people say you couldn't even do it and basically every country is in debt to every other country. It says it's the height of insanity, which I mean I kind of agree with. I tend to think global finance is a very, very stupid system.
00:08:32
Speaker
It's a very stupid system. But on the other hand, the whole point is that it's a consensual hallucination. It works and exists because we all agree it does, not because of any outside objective. Money is a social construct. The idea of value is a social construct.
00:08:51
Speaker
It's very culturally contingent as to what is valuable versus what is not. As people point out, the Spanish were kind of astounded that the mayor and the Azteca treated gold as if it were a common metal, because for the mayor and the Azteca, gold was a common metal.
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, so Spanish is going, no, that's the most valuable stuff, which means we need to take it all the way back to Spain, where it will be valued properly. Money is a social construct, and so any system which relies on transactions that use money as your base unit
00:09:24
Speaker
are going to be when you start drilling down into does this all make sense you go well I mean it's kind of unicorn at the bottom so of course it doesn't really make sense but it's a consensus system by economies around the globe so it doesn't make sense but it makes street sense
00:09:42
Speaker
Now, this leads us into point two, of course, which is there is no underlying thing backing money. It's all an illusion. I feel there's a parenthetical comma man exclamation mark, close parentheses. Which again is like, but yeah, I mean, what money money's, it's just like these days, it doesn't even exist physically most of the time. It's numbers on computers shuttling back and forth. Like what
00:10:08
Speaker
What do you think? I know people talk about, oh, back when there used to be a gold standard, at least this one, this one, when it talks about a gold standard admits that even gold only has value because we've all agreed since time immemorial that it's valuable. And once again, see my comment on the Azteca and the mayor who didn't consider gold to be valuable at all. Now, this one also starts with a quote.
00:10:28
Speaker
Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver, or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. The notes have no values for themselves." And this is a quote from notable DC superhero, The Treasury. Hmm, I used to have a copy of The Treasury, number one. Yeah, wasn't that written by Garth Ennis? A lot of knob jokes for a, a conspiracy thriller set in the DCU.
00:10:54
Speaker
Hmm, surprisingly so. Now, I think we're through the financial stuff. Now we're getting into other things. Number three, you're not supposed to know how to live off the grid. And this is a quote from Gandhi. Live simply so others may simply live. Now, I don't think Gandhi was a great sovereign citizen living off the grid kind of guy.
00:11:16
Speaker
Not so much. But essentially it says you can be a lot more self-sufficient. So catch rainwater. The more windmills you build and solar panels you erect, the less you'll need to pay the electric companies. The more composting toilets you install, the less you have to pay for plumbing companies. I mean, this is one of these things where
00:11:36
Speaker
There's no conspiracy. People can and do live off the grid. I mean, one of the big movements that's going on at the moment is people installing solar panels on their homes to reduce their electric bill down. And the fact there are systems now in place where technically you'll be able to sell your excess power if you generate it back to the electrical companies. So not only will you reduce your bill, in some situations you actually might be given money by the electrical company.
00:12:06
Speaker
for the power you're generating for the grid. And combustible toilets, I mean maybe this is not so well known in the US, but people back home in Aotearoa New Zealand play around with having combustible toilets in their homes. I know of a former HOD of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, Tim Deere. He put a combustible toilet in his home. One of his daughters refused to use it.
00:12:32
Speaker
Now, I believe you're saying compostable toilet, but it sounds a lot like you're saying combustible toilet, which is quite a different kind of thing. I can imagine Tim installing a combustible toilet and a compostable toilet. Now I'm going, did I actually say? I know I'm not quite sure which word is which, but anyway, Tim Deere installed a toilet and one of his daughters refused to use it. Oh, I count of the combustion.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, again, it's conspiratorial in that it's a thing they don't want you to know. Like it says in short, the more independent you become, the less codependent you'll be on the state. And the state doesn't like that because they like your money way more than they like your freedom. But the thing is, it's not the state that likes your money, it's the corporations that like your money. Because when you're talking about the US or even parts of Australasia, a lot of the companies which run the utilities are
Critique of US Systems and Policies
00:13:24
Speaker
if not private, at least partially privately owned with a profit motive. I mean one of the big issues in the cost of living crisis in the UK is that the power generating companies are not publicly owned, they're privately owned and so they're making huge dividends whilst also increasing the price of electricity. So it's not that the government doesn't want you to know it,
00:13:49
Speaker
It's the businesses. They're the ones who are keeping you down, man. This is why everyone should become a communist. Well, I mean, that kind of gets into number four, planned obsolescence, which again, not...
00:14:04
Speaker
not strictly a conspiracy, but sort of a thing that companies play. It started with light bulbs, didn't it? That was the first thing where they deliberately made them to last a certain amount of time, when in fact they could last a lot longer if they wanted to. Yeah, there's a one or two original Edison light bulbs, which are still running after all these years. So it's sort of, it's a thing
00:14:29
Speaker
that, yeah, companies got together and decided on, and certainly don't make noise about it. They don't proudly say, hell, yes, we've made sure that you'll have to keep giving us money by deliberately making stuff of it crap. But it's, yeah, it's more an open secret than a conspiracy, I'd have thought.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, the thing is, depending on where you are in the world, planned obsolescence is more or less of a problem. So I recently replaced my iPhone in China. Now, if I was replacing my iPhone in Aotearoa, New Zealand,
00:15:02
Speaker
I would probably have needed to take the phone to a recycling depot in the hope that that recycling depot would actually do something with it rather than add it to landfill. But because Apple China operates a trade-in slash rebate deal, I was able to have my phone evaluated, sent off to a factory for dismantling,
00:15:23
Speaker
and then I was given a rebate for it so yes the phone has a kind of planned obsolescence in it and that eventually the battery dies and because there's been a demand for smaller phones we've got to a point where things are not user serviceable anymore because if you want a watertight phone you can't make a battery that pops in and out with ease and so there's planned obsolescence but there are also
00:15:48
Speaker
ways to get around the obsolescence by allowing things to be upgraded, changed, or recycled with time. So it's a slightly more complicated situation than maybe these people are claiming. However, the next one, civil asset forfeiture.
00:16:08
Speaker
With a quote here from Ludwig von Mize, the state is nothing more or less than a bandit gang writ large. Those von Mize's people, they really, really like the idea that taxation is theft. Now, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. For forfeiture, that actually does seem like theft. Actually is theft, yes. Taxation is not theft. Civil asset forfeiture, actually. And the worrying thing is, they're talking about bringing that in back home. So the Proceed of Gangs Bill.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard that in America, the amount of stuff, the value of things taken by the police under civil asset forfeiture is now greater than the amount of stuff stolen from people in burglaries.
00:16:55
Speaker
and robberies, the police, because as they've got set it up now, the police can basically just take your stuff and then you have to go to court and try and get it back. Which if the police can say they've got calls to search your car and in some cases causes. I approached the person in the car. I thought I could smell marijuana smoke, which means I was then able to search the car and I found suspicious packages which might have been used.
00:17:25
Speaker
in criminal activity. These Amazon packages in his backseat, they could be stolen. I mean, they have his name on them, but he could easily have just stuck that on as I was approaching the car. So we think that these are things being used in the planning of a crime. So we will now seize them. And yes, if you do want them back, you will have to go to court to get them from us. Yeah, so I think some of that's it for Fortuna's Bullshit.
00:17:50
Speaker
No, no problem. It is worrying that we are talking about having such a bill back home, especially since as it's a gang related bill. And given that we have systemic racism in the police and unfortunately gangs are associated with Polynesian and Maori people back home. This seems like just another case for allowing the police to be particularly racist to a marginalized community in our society back home.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yes. Now, this is an interesting one, number six in a list of such a libertarian bent. It's about the fact that the US imprisons more of its population than any other country and profits off it.
00:18:33
Speaker
Now this has a quote by either Stephen Colbert or Stephen Colbert, depending on whether we're talking about the creationary right-wing host or the lovable rogue who hosts a late-night torture. He says, some may say that jailing people over their debts makes poverty into a crime. Well, if that's true, maybe we should just cut out the middleman and put all poor people in jail. Of course, this will require new prison facilities, which we can build using people who can't pay their prison fees, not as workers as the bricks.
00:19:02
Speaker
As the bricks. Yes. So basically, so it's interesting that he said this one talks about, yes, the US prison population has ballooned. The US and prison is more of its population than the country by percentage.
Libertarian Views on Taxation and Statelessness
00:19:19
Speaker
It admits that crime is at a historic low. I don't know about it depends how you define historic, but I believe, yeah, pretty much worldwide crime has been steadily decreasing since the 90s, although crime reporting has been shooting up.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, because as as crimes become less frequent, criminal activity becomes more noticeable. And when criminal activity becomes more noticeable, the media reports upon it because it's a news story. But unfortunately, that then has the consequence of people thinking that crime is going up because it gets reported more often.
00:19:47
Speaker
as people like to point out, spousal abuse and spouses killing their partners were a lot more common in the middle of the last century to the point where it just didn't get reported upon because of how common it was and then as it became less common suddenly it became more newsworthy and people thought that abuse was going up when actually it was trending down.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that the person then points about the deplorable fact that big corporations are making a killing off the prison system.
00:20:18
Speaker
So for something which so far has been sort of ticking all the libertarian talking point boxes to then go anti-corporation, anti-privatization. But you see libertarians of the stripe who work for the wanking times are the kind of people who are anti-mega corporations. They really only like small to moderately sized businesses because they do treat big corporations as being almost de facto government entities at this stage.
00:20:47
Speaker
But then we get straight back into more familiar territory with number seven, forced taxation is theft. Since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. Edward Abbey. I have no idea what that quote has to do with that taxation is theft.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yes, I mean basically the fact that you're required to pay taxes by governments who allegedly, who supposedly have the monopoly on violence, means that paying taxes is extortion, and you should only pay taxes if you feel like it, and roads and hospitals happen by magic. As does plumbing. Plumbing. You know what I'm hoping makes a comeback? Cholera.
00:21:33
Speaker
Bit of cholera, I suppose, yeah. Take a bit of a nice change, I suppose. Different kind of pandemic, although we've talked about that before as well. We have indeed. Now, number eight. As an interesting one, you're not allowed to be stateless, but you can be. A man without a government is like a fish without a bicycle. Alvaro Coplovich.
00:21:56
Speaker
which was originally as a woman without a man, it's like official, isn't it? Dorothy Butler or something, I can't remember. Anyway, yeah, so basically, a little bit about the fact that yes, we have difficulty imagining the fact of not being sovereign of yourself and stateless, but basically says, but you can be.
00:22:20
Speaker
Doesn't really seem to say how? Well, they do have an example of... They have links to other people who claim to have become stateless. Yes, and of course you get the classic cases of the people whose passports have lapsed as they've moved from one state to another, so they get stuck in an airport because they're in a kind of administrative limbo. You get the people who seestead, who live in those weird self-states that they've declared.
00:22:45
Speaker
like, sea land off the coast of the UK.
Police Obligations and Legal Duties
00:22:50
Speaker
Which is not technically being stateless, because you actually are a member of a state in that situation. You're just not a member of a recognised state, because as the UK government points out, they may think they're stateless, or at least they may think they're citizens of sea land. But as far as we're concerned, they're actually still British citizens, no matter how often they say, Oh, no, we're not. Oh, yes, you are.
00:23:12
Speaker
Now, number nine, number nine, I have mixed feelings about the actual the list list entry is the police are not legally obligated to protect you, which is something we've we've seen it's proven numerous times over the years. Who's the quote from for this one? Oh, that would be notable world famous great philosopher Stefan Molyneux. There is no weakness as great as full strength.
00:23:37
Speaker
Not sure where he's getting at there, presumably something he said in between while hunting. Being a racist. And also being a racist. For a new pair of calipers to measure his phrenology skull with or something. Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
But yes, basically, the police don't have a duty to protect. I don't know precisely what the laws are in New Zealand, but there have been numerous cases, most recently of Aldi, of course, where it's been shown definitively that the police is number one. According to their training, I believe in many cases, the number one thing is keep yourself safe and they don't actually have a legal obligation to protect people.
00:24:20
Speaker
Look, Josh, I wouldn't want to be protected by Sting, even if he did throw himself in front of me whilst a bullet was being shot in my direction. Well, I guess that's fair, yeah. I mean, there is already a fortress around my heart. I don't need Sting getting in the way of that. No, that's fair. Which leads us to number 10, last entry on this particular listicle. We live in an oligarchic plutocracy disguised as a democratic republic.
00:24:45
Speaker
So,
US as an Oligarchic Plutocracy
00:24:46
Speaker
OK, I see you see what you mean here now. Now he's saying, yes, we don't like the oligarchs and the big megacorps. Now, this is one of those things where now this is, of course, a US list because they're talking about the US Republic. And it is one of those things where.
00:25:02
Speaker
I mean, there is some truth to this claim. Given that the way that power works and money works in the United States of America does turn out that rich oligarchs have a lot more political power than average voters do,
00:25:19
Speaker
and that is routinely downplayed or ignored by the American political class, both on the left and the right. So there are some detractors, your AOCs, your Bernie Sanders and the like, who do point out about the power dynamics of capitalism in the American Republic. But by and large, there is some truth to the idea that the American democracy is not as democratic as maybe Americans think.
00:25:47
Speaker
and rich people like your Elon Musk's, your Jeff Bezos, and the like, they have a lot more power than they ought to. Yes. That's the end of that list, although I see down at the bottom it has about the author. Mr. McGee is apparently a former Navy intelligence specialist turned philosopher, who's the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. I just see the Birthday Suit of God appears to be a work of fiction about a fictional philosopher.
00:26:16
Speaker
teaching God how to become a better God. The birthday suit business is like stripping reality down to its roots, although I noticed the cover of the book does appear to have a naked woman on it, with a book covering her naked bits, just because... Scandalous behaviour. Okay, well that's one mystical out of the way.
00:26:39
Speaker
But luckily for us, none other than Popular Mechanics published 30 crazy conspiracy theories that people actually believe. Just like last week, I think. When was that? October 26. How about that? So just in time for us.
00:26:54
Speaker
Now this is by Charlotte Chilton, and you say October 26th, 2022. Conspiracy theories are not a new concept, but they've taken on a new life thanks to the internet. Even in recent years, we've seen more than our fair share of misinformation online, some rooted in historical details, others in fear. Here we take a look at the craziest conspiracy theories that people have actually believed over the years, from an earth within Earth to Prince Charles liveting as a closeted vampire.
Popular Conspiracy Theories Exploration
00:27:23
Speaker
So let's go down. So I think a bunch of these, we can say, okay, yep, know it. And I think it starts with the classics. No, I do want to point out, because you're looking at this through the web interface, aren't you? You have to kind of click through a gallery. Actually, this one, I've got it's the page also does a thing. So you don't say because on the phone, it's a much easily, much easily, much easier to read formatted list.
00:27:51
Speaker
I stand by what I originally said, you elitist rapscallion. Indeed. So number one, the moon landing was fake. I mean, we've talked about this. I haven't talked about it in a while. Probably a good one to revisit in one of our revisit episodes, but not this episode. Number two, the government killed JFK.
00:28:15
Speaker
Now, this is interesting for the sheer fact that it's one of the few conspiracy theories where belief is increasing over time. So I think over 56% of the American population now believes in a conspiracy to kill JFK, as opposed to the lone gunman hypothesis, which is not a conspiracy theory, given that if that theory is true, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in his assassination attempt on attempt success on JFK.
00:28:43
Speaker
Indeed. Sorry, I forgot that I come from a reality where JFK is still alive and is the eternal president. Yes, it's easy to forget. Number three, COVID-19 was engineered by the media, interestingly. So this isn't a lab leak or a biological agent thing. They think that the virus, some people think the virus is a hoax that was engineered by the media and global elites to control the population.
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a population control conspiracy. So this one says there is no virus at all.
00:29:18
Speaker
simply that they just want you to think of there is. Interesting that it's not the claim that COVID-19 pandemic was engineered by the government. It's first and foremost a media plot. It's kind of an interesting framing because they didn't say, oh, it's the government and the media, but they're framing it as a media plot. I'm not quite sure why, why say it's the media and then go, oh, but by the way, it's the media and the government.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, odd thing, but there we go. Number four, Earth has been sucked into a black hole. So this appears to be CERN stuff. Some people think that when CERN, when the Large Hadron Collider turned on, we created a black hole that sucked in the Earth, and we just haven't realized yet for some reason.
00:30:10
Speaker
You think it is? Yeah, I'm wondering whether this was believed back in 2012, because they point out it's one of the 2012 doomsday conspiracy theories or doomsday hypotheses. I'm wondering whether anyone actually still believes it now. I'm wondering whether in 2012, because oh, by the way, the youth is now being destroyed by a micro singularity that will grow into a black hole with time.
00:30:35
Speaker
But whether anyone actually believes that we now live in a planet that's being sucked into a black hole and yet everything appears absolutely fine outside, that, I'd be surprised if anyone actually believes that here and now.
00:30:50
Speaker
Now, number five is an interesting one. Number five is the theory that Disney created Frozen, the movie Frozen, as a distraction. I think I have heard this before. Some people have suggested that they made the movie and specifically called it Frozen so that when people look up Disney and Frozen, you'll get stuff about the movie rather than all the theories about him having his head cryogenically frozen at some point.
00:31:14
Speaker
which i thought it was just a thing because obviously because what uh frozen is based on the what is it the ice queen or what's the what's the theory based on the ice queen and they figured having a um disney doing its whole thing about our boys won't won't have anything to do with anything that's the slightest bit girly so we won't we can't use the word queen in the title let's just call it frozen the same way they called rapunzel tangled the next time but
00:31:40
Speaker
Anyway interesting interesting little sort of meta media theory there I suppose. Yeah it's one of those cute little theories I wouldn't be surprised started out on reddit as a bit of a joke and then people went I mean it's vaguely plausible although if
00:31:57
Speaker
Walt Disney Corporation was concerned about people doing a search for Walt Disney Frozen. You do have to wonder why did they wait so long to make Frozen the film when they probably could have done something a lot earlier?
00:32:11
Speaker
Was there a sudden surge of people looking up about Walt Disney's head? And then they went, look, we now need to rush a film into production. How long will that take? I mean, casting, rendering, writing, probably about three years. So we'll have a solution to your problem in about three years time. Well, fantastic. We just need to pervericate for three years and then the problem is going to disappear.
00:32:35
Speaker
So then, number six, another classic, the Denver International Airport is Illuminati's headquarters. Really, you must go to Denver at some point just to visit the airport. From the looks of it, they're doing renovations at the moment and they're having a lot of fun trolling a certain kind of conspiracy theorist that thinks there is something to the Denver Airport conspiracy theory. And for those of you who don't know about the Denver Airport conspiracy theory, the Denver Airport has
00:33:03
Speaker
some pretty weird murals which are very apocalyptic in style which have led people to believe it has a kind of encoded message about the New World Order or Illuminati plan in the same respect the Georgia Guidestones were said to be a kind of indication of what how global masters and mistresses want to do. And wasn't there there was something about underground tunnels as well wasn't there which were
00:33:32
Speaker
perfectly legitimate, but some people... Well, so there are underground tunnels at Denv Airport, because there's a large international airport... I mean, like most airports, I don't know, tunnels for maintenance and stuff. They need to be able to ferry personnel, luggage and the like beneath the airport from one location to another. The claim is that there are even more tunnels beneath the Denv Airport, where the Troglodytes, the Chuds and other people live.
00:33:57
Speaker
Now, items seven and eight are sort of appear. Number seven, the earth is hollow. Number eight, the world is flat. Take your pick. You can't really be flat and hollow. I suppose you could be. You could be the Peter bread earth hypothesis. It's flat, yet hollow on the inside. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, also saying the hollow earth and also people who think there's an earth inside the earth.
00:34:25
Speaker
as dramatised and as illustrated in that recent documentary Godzilla vs Kong. I see, I was thinking the mockumentary that I think we watched together, which has Gary Busey as a Nazi scientist in the centre of the earth,
00:34:44
Speaker
I don't remember that, and I feel I would have to have remembered Gary Busey as a Nazi scientist at the centre of the Earth if I'd seen that before. Maybe I watched it with Matt and Richard. It was. It was an asylum film. So that tells you everything you need to know. Moving on, Prince Charles is a vampire, which I know we've mentioned before. It might have only been in a bonus episode.
00:35:07
Speaker
it might have been the real one. I don't know. It's basically the fact that Prince Charles is a
Simulation Theory and Ancient Myths
00:35:12
Speaker
big fan of Romania. Well, sorry, sorry. King Charles. I actually made the same mistake. October 26th, he was King Charles at the time the Serdica was written. I also made the same mistake today when talking with a colleague about
00:35:30
Speaker
Racism in the royal family and talked about when we print actually I think you find it's King Charles because the rumors are the person who made the derogatory comments about Meghan Markle was indeed the monarch King Charles Justin surely this well his father probably also made some jealous comments as well And now if there's anyone who looked like a vampire by the time they died the other thing of course is
00:35:59
Speaker
The Winters, or the Coburg Saxons, being German royalty, and given that German royalty were also the royalty of Romania, so the last queen of Romania was related to the German royal family, because the Romanians basically imported lower ranked German royals to be their kings and queens for a period of time when they were being kind of controlled by places like Prussia.
00:36:27
Speaker
So there is a connection between Transylvania and the Royal Family, and this has been hit upon by people like David Icke, who goes, well, you know...
00:36:38
Speaker
Transylvania is where vampires come from. The royal family is connected to Transylvania through marriage. The royal family is said to have porfir, the blood disease. I mean, who else would have porfir but vampires? Epsofacto quod orat demonstratum, buttros buttros gali, Prince Charles is now King Charles, King Charles is a vampire.
00:37:04
Speaker
King Charles the Vampire King, all hail. Moving on to number 10, Bigfoot's real. In the introduction, they referred to Prince Charles as a closeted vampire. I mean, there's no mention about it, is he? Well, I mean, he might be amongst his friends and family. Maybe I suppose. Has anyone in the media said, I say, Charlie boy, are you a vampire? And I go, oh, thank God somebody's asked. Yes, yes, I am.
00:37:32
Speaker
Anyway, Bigfoot is real, doesn't really say anything more than that. Bigfoot's real. And I mean, is that a conspiracy? I mean, does the American government go around denying? It's only a conspiracy if it is being actively covered up. But I guess we can take that implication. I don't think there's any active cover. I mean, you might say there's a resistance to believing in the claim that Bigfoot is real. But I think that might just be the general populace and not the government telling people not to believe in Bigfoot.
00:38:01
Speaker
So number 11, the Nazis had a secret base in the Antarctica surely, or in Antarctica, but whatever. It's no cockery as far as typos go.
00:38:14
Speaker
I assume this is the one, or somewhere else. There was the Nazi base that was allegedly called the Base of Aces, which led that cracked columnist to suggest, wouldn't it be funny if Ace of Base was actually to do a reference to a Nazi submarine base and then discover that they were actually originally a neo-Nazi band, or at least some of them were, and that certain, some of their videos definitely appeared to have anti-Semitic imagery.
00:38:39
Speaker
And at least one of their songs is bashing the notion of a welfare queen. It turns out Ace of Base is actually quite horrible. And we kind of didn't see the sign. We didn't see the sign. Oh, dear, we didn't. Number 12, we're all living in the Matrix.
00:39:01
Speaker
people think we're living in a real-life simulation, this theory is supported by crazy coincidences and happenings. And happenings. And happenings. It's like, so bonus episode listeners last week will be aware that I somewhat cracked up at David Icke writing, has been predicting, so making claims without current events or claiming current events are going to happen.
00:39:26
Speaker
Well done for claiming that events are going to be ongoing. And this is the case of the theory is supported by crazy coincidence and happening. So not just coincidences, but just things that happen. Yeah. I mean, the argument I've heard is that eventually we will
00:39:49
Speaker
like with advances in sort of VR technology, it's conceivable, it's certainly possible we could eventually create a virtual reality indistinguishable from actual reality. So Josh, are you talking about the film The 13th Floor? Pretty much, yeah.
00:40:06
Speaker
which is a virtual reality inside a virtual reality. So the idea is that, yeah, virtual reality will become distinguishable from reality, and then it could be possible for the virtual reality to create a virtual reality within that virtual reality. And then it could, you know, after enough time, that could carry on almost indefinitely. And if that is the case, then statistically, we're more likely to be one of the
00:40:34
Speaker
one of the simulations in the middle, then it just so happened that we're the first original reality. But that's kind of an argument that doesn't require nesting realities. It simply says, look, a sufficiently advanced culture is going to be able to generate a near infinite number of virtual instances where they're running simulations all the time.
00:40:54
Speaker
statistically if that is the case we're more likely to be in an instance than we are in the real world so therefore we probably live in a virtual reality the more interesting philosophical argument actually deals with quantum physics so as people point out once you start looking at the quantum realm everything kind of
00:41:15
Speaker
and I'm using very loaded terms, kind of devolves into a random static in the background. So the further you look into quantum mechanics, the kind of more bubbly and vague the laws that determine how quantum reality works. And some people have postulated that's precisely what you would think to see.
00:41:35
Speaker
if you were creating a simulated reality, and it worked well enough that you don't need to detail every fine grain point particle in the system. You simply have at the very edge algorithms that give you the right kind of answer, because people aren't going to be looking at the fine grain details.
00:41:55
Speaker
Which means if you actually discover that things are fuzzy at the edge, that's indication you're looking at where the code breaks down and they're just using algorithms to generate background noise to mask the fact they're not going any further with their calculations. All of which get a little bit sort of Pascal's wager, Rocco's Basilisk sort of stuff. They are thinking your way into a situation which doesn't really seem to be how it works. But let's get into much more solid ground. Number 13, the moon isn't real.
00:42:26
Speaker
It's not real. I mean, Josh, it's just a paper moon. Some people think it's a projection. What does David like think it is? Does he think it's hollow or it's not there? Well, it's hollow and it's also broadcasting. So it's rebroadcasting a message from Satan slash Saturn.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Ah, number 14, the Titanic didn't actually sink. Ah, yes, because it
Historical Conspiracies Reviewed
00:42:53
Speaker
was the Olympic that sunk instead, and they just changed the name badges. Yeah, why would they do that, insurance or something? Yeah, well, some kind of insurance fraud. So that's the claim, but I mean, it doesn't change the fact that a ship did sink and a lot of people did die.
00:43:11
Speaker
Number 15 Apollo 17 wasn't to the last moon mission. Well, I mean Josh You've you've watched the documentary film Apollo 18 haven't you? Oh, yes Actually, no, but I know what's happens in it. Yeah, it's a it's a felt a found footage documentary space movie Yeah, where they where they bring something. Well, so something gets on board the capsule from memory It's very very bad, but it's a documentary so it doesn't matter whether it's bad or good. It's just facts exactly
00:43:39
Speaker
And of course we've all seen the documentary Moon Trap, where noted astronauts Bruce Campbell and Walter Koenig go off to the moon and encounter notebooks. And some of us have even seen the notable weird sequel Moon Trap 2, Trap Harder.
00:43:57
Speaker
not sure if i have or not but i would not recommend it it has it has so little to do with the first film although admittedly the acting in it is so atrociously non-uniform
00:44:14
Speaker
And it's got the rich guy from the nanny playing the villain. And it's going to- That's right, Sheffield. Yeah, at any moment, I'm expecting you to summon your butler who did eye roll about being in the scene. Okay, now we're starting to get into the ones that I really don't see how they count as a conspiracy, because number 16 is zombies can rise from the dead. At least that's something they don't want you to know when they're covering up, not seeing a conspiracy there.
00:44:43
Speaker
And I say the belief in the zombies can be traced back to ancient Greece where they buried their deeper stones on top of them so they couldn't return from the grave. Now, they didn't...
00:44:53
Speaker
bury the dead because they thought they were going to come back as flesh or brain eating revenants. They buried the dead in that way to stop because your spirit or soul essence was attached to your body and so they were trying to stop kind of ghostly emanations from leaving the grave. So I don't think the ancient Greeks were concerned about zombies.
00:45:17
Speaker
This one is interesting. Number 17, Bill Gates is making fake snow. Apparently last year there was a thing on TikTok about that Bill Gates was making fake snow that burns instead of melts, which was actually a new one on me. Don't know what that was. Yeah, although that's that's also one of those things where people don't realize just how dry snow can actually be because people assume our snow is wet.
00:45:43
Speaker
wet things don't burn, but in really, really dry environments people die of dehydration because of just how dry Arctic or Antarctic weather can be.
00:45:55
Speaker
Number 18, one I'm not familiar with, the Betts Mystery Sphere, which apparently is alien material, whatever it is. Some weird sphere that a couple thousand Florida... My mythology is not an area I spend a lot of time in, so I don't think I know what the Betts Mystery Sphere is.
00:46:14
Speaker
No, maybe one to look up another time. But now we're getting into the real stuff, the real hard-hitting controversial conspiracies. Number 19, Amelia Earhart was eaten by crabs. Now this has been one of the theories to explain her disappearance that perhaps she actually landed, crash landed on a deserted island, died and her body was eaten by crabs. But the fact that this isn't a conspiracy listicle, what are they hinting at here? Is there a conspiracy among the crabs?
00:46:44
Speaker
that we don't want to know about us. Do we not know this because the media is in the pocket of big crab? I mean Josh, are you not aware of just how many people crabs are eating on a day by day basis? Obviously not, because they don't want me to know. They don't want any of us to know. No, no they don't. You know, crabs. You cannot. You cannot trust a crab. Oh well. I was about to make a joke. I've got crabs in my pants right now. But that's, that's, actually I really hope that isn't true.
00:47:15
Speaker
Number 20, the Loch Ness Monster lives in Scotland. It wasn't going to live anywhere else, but I guess the Loch Ness Monster exists. It would actually be more interesting if the theory was the Loch Ness Monster currently holidays in New Jersey. Then you go, oh, that's an interesting theory. But Loch Ness Monster being near Loch Ness, that
00:47:40
Speaker
That doesn't seem really blowing your mind. No, no. Number 21, 5G causes cancer and COVID-19. Yeah. Boring. Yeah. We eventually talked about those kind of theories quite a bit in the past. And why talk about that when we can talk about number 22, a solar flare caused the Titanic to sink. But I thought it didn't sink. I thought it was the Olympic that sank.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, as we've seen, conspiracy theorists can hold multiple contradictory beliefs according to that study that said exactly that and nothing else. So how does the solar flare explain how the Titanic hit an iceberg?
00:48:22
Speaker
Supposedly,
Cryptids and Natural Phenomena Theories
00:48:23
Speaker
the Northern Hemisphere was experiencing a quote, moderate to severe magnetic storm on the night of the ship's collision, saying it could have affected the ship's radar and radio rescue signals, which if it's true, isn't any sort of a collision, a collision conspiracy. I see it reading the word collision on the screen in front of me.
00:48:43
Speaker
So weird. Number 23, something we haven't talked about in a long time, the Black Knight Satellite. I'm sure we've mentioned it. Oh, no, I mean, I'm sure we did a episode of that back in the early days. Yeah, back of that in the bureau and other weird things floating around in space. It always makes me think of a brand of licorice. It does, yeah.
00:49:02
Speaker
Black Knight Licorice, yellow black bag. But enough licorice, we've got more important things to talk about, such as 24 sirens were responsible for shipwrecks.
00:49:15
Speaker
I mean, I guess it's a conspiracy if they talked amongst themselves. Let's go. Let's go. Wreck a ship. I mean, I'm presuming they had to because they would have had to chosen what song to sing. Well, I suppose in some cases, sirens also did work alone. So in that case, there's no there's no conspiracy at all.
00:49:33
Speaker
Interesting illustration there, though. I haven't seen, it's sort of nothing to do with a ship. It's a guy in a dinghy with some sirens swimming in the water up to him. But they, rather than being portrayed like mermaids, they have two legs, two sort of scaly fishtail legs. They're like, they're like, instead of being like a woman from the waist up and a fish from the waist down, they're a woman from the waist up and two fish from the hips down.
00:49:59
Speaker
I'm now thinking of Red Dwarf when the cat in Better Than Life decides his girlfriend is going to be a mermaid. And it's a person where the top half is a fish and the lower half is a woman. And this is going to be... That's the wrong way around. And the cat's going, it's definitely not the wrong way around.
00:50:19
Speaker
Oh, I spoke too soon. Number 25 is Planet X is home to a world called Nibiru. I think Nibiru is part of Planet X. I thought Nibiru was a planet of its own, a different Planet X. It does seem to be an inflation of more than one theory there.
00:50:36
Speaker
Anyway, I plan to ex-Nibero call it what you want. It means the death of us all. 26. Queen Elizabeth I was a man. I mean, even if he was, not anymore dead. Not anymore. Some believe that Queen Elizabeth I died as a child and to prevent the end of the royal line, she was replaced with a young boy. I mean, surely there must have been a girl around that would have saved them a bit of... Yeah, so by this theory, it wasn't
00:51:05
Speaker
Elizabeth I was a man. It was the pretender who played Elizabeth I for most of the rain was in disguise. Very strange. Seems a bit pointlessly complicated.
00:51:20
Speaker
Well, but then again, the British monarchy is complicated. That's true. As I was explaining to my colleague Pompeo earlier today whilst doing the shopping, I was explaining the origin of why there is a Lord of the Privy, because we were talking about how it is alleged that
00:51:39
Speaker
former Prince Charles, current King Charles, doesn't even squeeze the toothpaste for his toothbrush. He gets a servant to squeeze the toothpaste out on his brush before he goes to brush his teeth. Well yeah, in the old days, there was a Lord of the Privy who literally lived beneath the toilet that the monarch sat upon and wiped the monarch's bottom. And because it was recognised it was such a horrible job,
00:52:05
Speaker
these lords of the privy were awarded later in life with titles and land because you go yeah you you spent 20 years wiping my deer ear so for that you will get rewarded because you did spend most of your life in a small box smelling a feces yeah
00:52:23
Speaker
Now we're almost out of time, which is good, because we're almost at the end of the list. And I have to say it ends with more of a whimper than a bang. We've got 27. The COVID-19 vaccine has a 5G chip inside of it. And we've already done COVID-19. We've already done 5G in this list. Although it does mention that time when people began circulating a supposed diagram of the chip that was inside COVID-19 vaccines and ended up being a circuit diagram of a guitar pedal.
00:52:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's a useful thing to have installed in the human body. You want to go a bit of wah-wah? A little bit of wah-wah. Source things up a little. 28 chemtrails, blah, blah, blah. We all know about chemtrails. Number 22. It's the luckiest monster again. Only this is the abominable snowman lives in Asia.
00:53:09
Speaker
I have. When we had Bigfoot at the front there, they didn't say Bigfoot lives in something, didn't they? They said Bigfoot is real. But when it comes to the Loch Ness Monster and the abominable snowman, they feel it's important to tell us where they live. You'll be astounded to find out that people claim that Yetis live in Tibet.
00:53:32
Speaker
And again, they refer to this as a conspiracy. They say the lure of the conspiracy, large foot tracks found in the snow of a two legged human like him. How is it a conspiracy?
00:53:42
Speaker
I mean, I guess once again, if there's an agency of some kind which is devoted to denying the existence of these things. But the problem with all of these theories is that there are still active investigations into the Loch Ness Monster, active investigations
Podcast Format Reflection
00:54:01
Speaker
looking for the existence of Sasquatch or Bigfoot, active investigations going on into Yeti, some of which have funding from
00:54:12
Speaker
various organisations around the world. It seems that if people are trying to suppress the truth, they're also allowing actual investigations into the existence of these cryptos to go ahead at the same time. It seems like a really slapdash conspiracy, unless you assume that those active investigations are part of the conspiracy.
00:54:32
Speaker
And then finally, item number 30, internet routers can lead to harmful 5G radiation, which I think is basically just them giving them an excuse to have a chuckle at those people who put Faraday cages around their wireless routers to protect from the harmful radiation, and then started complaining that their wireless wasn't working. I mean, that was funny.
00:54:56
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, there's some old conspiracies, a couple I hadn't heard specifically before, and a couple that weren't really conspiracies so much as just odd things. I think, I assume that originally they were going to call this list simply things that make you go, hmm, but then realized that CNC Music Factory beat them to it by about 30 years. So they had to come up with something. And also the SEO for things that make you, hmm.
00:55:23
Speaker
people to start searching for. Wouldn't have been great. Wouldn't have been great. Yeah. So there you go. A couple of listicles. They contain stuff. We talked about that stuff. What more do you want? God damn it. What more do you want?
00:55:34
Speaker
actual content? Honestly, the things you come up with, what will you say next? Now, we do, of course, have a bonus episode for you this week. Last week, we got started recording the bonus episode, and then I realized I hadn't plugged the bonus episode in the main episode. So this time we were to plug that bonus episode extra. No, no, see, you know, you now have to plug last week's bonus episode, because we've got a deficit.
00:55:58
Speaker
So you need to talk about what we talked about in last week's bonus episode, and then make sure you talk about this week's bonus episode, because otherwise we're going to get into a very awkward situation. Some sort of a death spiral, yeah. Like in last week's bonus episode. Well actually that's actually quite a neat thing, plucking what we talked about last week, and never telling people what's coming up this week.
00:56:19
Speaker
So last week we talked about Kanye West, Dirty Bombs in Ukraine. We realised that the week before last we'd been talking about Liz Truss possibly getting rolled pretty much exactly at the time as she was getting rolled. We had a bit more of the chess anal beads thing and we talked about Proud Boys in New Zealand, which quite frankly nobody wants to talk about because screw those guys.
00:56:41
Speaker
Have you watched Web of Chaos, the new conspiracy? No. I also have not watched Web of Chaos. It does seem to be... I mean, Short and Plunkett seems very angry about it. And if Short and Plunkett is angry about it, it's probably worth watching. Probably a good thing. I haven't read... Dylan Reeves got a book, doesn't he? Yes. Yes. I haven't read that either. Probably should. Fate believe. Yeah, I'm... So this is going to sound very, very bad. But I'm...
00:57:10
Speaker
A conspiracy theory book written by a non-academic is not high on my list of things I need to read. Which is not to say that Dylan's book is going to be bad, but at the same time, if I'm going to be- You have a long reading list. Yeah. And academic material is always going to be preferable to interested amateurs like Dylan, but at the same time, not actual research academics working on conspiracy theory.
00:57:39
Speaker
Nevertheless. So if you read it, you can review it and tell me about it. Maybe I could. Maybe that's not a bad idea. Yeah. We could even use some of the podcast monies to buy you a coffee. Oh, we could. We could use the funds given to us by our patrons who in exchange get bonus content such as this week's bonus content where you'll never believe it. We've got another listicle.
Patron Engagement and Content Promotion
00:58:04
Speaker
We have another listicle in the bonus episode. This one's from Teen Vogue and Teen Vogue has a bit of a reputation these days for quality reporting. So I'm quite curious to see what things that no one else will talk about. Yeah. And we probably have to mention the whole attack on Paul Pelosi thing as well, because it was surprising. Perhaps not surprising.
00:58:25
Speaker
more depressing than anything, the way conspiracy theories around that popped up instantly and had no... Until the point we even the CEO of Twitter, who is now Elon Musk, was trading in conspiracy theories around the attack on the Pelosi household.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yes, so we'll talk a bit about that as well. And if you're interested in hearing about some of those things or hearing about the things from last week's one, because if you become a patron, you get access to the whole lot of them if you really want. Become a patron. Go to Betrayum.com. Look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Do whatever it is you do there. I should know. I'm actually a patron of other people. I've done it in the past. If you do, go and look.
00:59:03
Speaker
at the past catalogue of patron bonus episodes. There's a period of time before we started doing these joint patron episodes where I would just record five minute segments between talks at conferences talking about what I heard or random items in my hotel room. There's a wealth of content, some of which is not worth listening to, but it's still there. It's still there.
00:59:28
Speaker
We're so we are so good at selling. Oh, just excellent. Self promotion. That's that's our watchword. We're always down playing the stuff we do to not to not to encourage people. Well, we should really be doing the bonus episodes. They're actually the best stuff we do. We actually have more fun recording the bonus episodes than we do the main episodes. You may think that we make tasteless jokes in the main episode. You don't know the kind of thing we talk about in the patron bonus episode.
00:59:56
Speaker
And now I'm going, am I selling it or once again? I think once again you're making this actual podcast sound like crap. Yeah, we really are not good at this.
01:00:06
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, our podcast. Listen to it. Oh, hang on. You just did. Gotcha.
Conclusion and Patreon Support
01:00:11
Speaker
Gotcha. Thanks to me. You fell for a hook line and sinker, but also be a patron anyway. OK, that's it. I'm done. I'm done. We're over time. We've we've we've poured our blood, sweat and tears into this episode, by which I mean clicked on a couple of links and read what they told us. So really, I think the time has come to simply say goodbye. Lassitude.
01:00:36
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy stars Josh Addison and myself, associate professor M.R.X. Denton. Our show's cons... sorry, producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor. You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com, and please do consider joining our Patreon. And remember, nothing is real.
01:01:05
Speaker
Everything is permitted, but conditions apply.