Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
A Very Special Xmas Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
25 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M reminisce about one of the best years ever!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: A Christmas Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey! It's the podcast's guide to the conspiracy!
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and Merry Christmas and welcome to this brief little stocking stuffer of a Christmas episode of the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Jingle Bells Edison. They start with a J, I suppose. We have a ding-dong, merrily on high, Dr. Denteth.
00:00:57
Speaker
Where shall I say it? I'm... I'm... I'm Dr. Yippee-ki-yay. Dentist. That'll do.
Is 'Die Hard' a Christmas Movie?
00:01:05
Speaker
Yes, just a quick little... Did you know that Die Hard was not released at Christmas? No. No, I think it was released back in March. So even though it was set at Christmas, it was never released as a Christmas film. Which is leading to a whole bunch of people saying it's not a Christmas film because it was not actually released at Christmas. No, it is a Christmas film. Patient of the Christ.
00:01:28
Speaker
Life of Brian. The Passion of the Christ is an Easter film. Same thing. Life of Brian is an Easter film. Bit of both. Sometimes, Joshua, I don't think you were ever planning to be a Catholic priest after all.
Breaking Tradition: No Year-End Review
00:01:43
Speaker
Yes, anyway, it's...
00:01:45
Speaker
We recorded our final episode for the year, but we didn't do the thing that most respectable podcasts do, of course, at the end of the year and have a sort of a review, which of course is what we have done in previous years. But although I'm noticing podcasts seem to be a bit more reluctant this year to do a review of the year, I think because nobody actually wants to look back.
00:02:05
Speaker
on this particular year.
Year in Review: Conspiracies and Investigations
00:02:07
Speaker
And yet for us this year, I mean, it hasn't been a great year from a whole bunch of perspectives, but from a conspiracy theory perspective, it's been a bumper year. There's no way to deny it.
00:02:21
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I'm looking through the year's episodes. It's hard to actually see where there's a shift, to be honest. We started talking about the Rendlesham incident leading into the Whisperer in Darkness podcast back at the start of the year. We talked about... On that level, that's quite interesting that we got two episodes, sorry, two series of the Lovecraft investigations in one calendar year. I imagine that's one of the
00:02:48
Speaker
the upsides for audio recording is what else have you got to do? I mean, literally, what else have you got to do? Yeah, that's true. But we looked at a bunch of stuff. We was Shakespeare. No, that was the end of last year. It was the end of 2019. We looked at Nazis in New Zealand. We looked at mower bones in New Zealand, which some people insisted were giant bones. We looked at the case when a guy shot at the Queen when she came here visiting.
00:03:17
Speaker
decades ago.
Challenges with COVID-19 and Trump News
00:03:19
Speaker
If you're going to take a shot at the Queen. You best not miss. What else did we look at? We had a proper look at the Oklahoma City bombing that we've been meaning to talk about a lot. We had a proper look at Harold Holt, who we'd mentioned in the past, but we really had a proper look at
00:03:39
Speaker
And then I'm sort of, I'm going through the episodes trying to find a bit where things changed, but they never really did, I guess. I think if we were to go through the news segments of every episode or every news episode... Then things would get very, very... Well, both COVID-19-E and very Donald Trump-y. Yeah.
00:04:00
Speaker
Because, I mean, it wasn't this year that we gave up on the Trump, the Trump, the Trump, on the Trump moratorium. It was last year. But I mean, this year we pretty much gave up on news episodes towards the end because it was just all Trump and Covid and there was nothing actually interesting about the news. No, no. And actually, I think that's something we need to think about for next year.
Format Changes: More Side Stories?
00:04:23
Speaker
I initially thought the once-a-month news digest thing would be a really, really great idea. Now I'm beginning to think that maybe doing a little less news for patron stuff and slightly more interesting side stories for patron stuff might also be a better thing long term. I'm kind of just getting bored of the news.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's just not that new, really. But so what did we do? We had the episode where we just read through InfoWars and David Icke's website. That was good fun. We had a bunch of interviews. We did. And they were good interviews as well. Apart from various interviews with your academic
00:05:11
Speaker
contemporaries. We had another one from Joe, didn't we? We had, was it this year you had your little round table four way interview? We did, yes. But then you also you interviewed Byron.
00:05:27
Speaker
We had the episode we talked about him. Who I caught up with down in Christchurch just a few weeks ago. And he's been in the, David Ferrier has been published an article of his. In two parts. In two parts because he's been looking into the sort of the right wing white nationalist terrorist types down here in New Zealand and David Ferrier took an interest in that and then that leads nicely into of course with your interview with David Ferrier himself.
00:05:53
Speaker
Who has his own podcast now? He does, yeah. So is it actually his? I wasn't sure if it was him or his podcast or him guesting on someone else's podcast. I mean, she's not. Because he has talked about having recorded episode two. I think he's taking existing podcasters and working with them. Something like that anyway.
00:06:12
Speaker
But yes, and so which then led to the question, is David Farrier the most famous David we've had on this podcast? I think in this day and age, more people have heard of David Farrier than have heard of David Icke. Sure, I think David Icke's more niche, perhaps, like his follower count. I don't know, in the UK. David, yeah, yeah.
00:06:31
Speaker
I mean, he's been leading lockdown protests in the UK. It's a bit hard to tell how big the membership of those protests are, but they're certainly big enough.
00:06:44
Speaker
But on the other hand, David Ferriero's had a series on Netflix, so he possibly has the reach. I'm in no way besmirching the fame of David Ferriero. I think, however, contextually, David Icke, at least when it comes to discussion of conspiracy theories, is probably still going to win out just for the sheer fact that it's David Icke.
00:07:09
Speaker
Certainly when it comes to conspiracy theories, but just in terms of overall worldwide fame. If we want to boast about the famous people we've had on our podcast, we'd be better off boasting about having spoken to David Ferrier or having spoken to David Eich.
00:07:24
Speaker
I think I can trade on both bodies. There we go. Maybe we should just be properly non-committal. So what else did we do? We had numerous interviews. We had
00:07:40
Speaker
Unfortunately, I've got a little bit of a mix because I'm reading through our library in Google Docs of all the episodes. The problem is if you look at an old episode, even if you don't edit it, it still brings that up to the top of the list. Yes, which is very, very bad design. I keep going to say, oh, and we talked about... Oh, no, that was actually from a couple of years ago. I just looked at it while we were talking about it earlier on.
00:08:00
Speaker
But of course, obviously, the big thing is that we started Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
New Segment: Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre
00:08:06
Speaker
We did! Which? September. Oh, maybe... Yes, September, August, I think we started with Charles Pigdon. Charles Pigdon's Papa Revisited.
00:08:18
Speaker
Or what is wrong with conspiracy theories? And I think it's going quite slightly. I think it is, yeah. I don't know. I was worried a little bit, perhaps, that it might be a bit academic and dry for people who come here just to hear us talking about funny conspiracy theories. But people seem to enjoy it. I enjoy it, certainly. That's good. And I'm enjoying going back to papers I haven't read in some cases.
00:08:44
Speaker
in 12 years or so. So when I was rereading the David Coady the other day, I found references in the notes to my partner at the time. He said, oh, I now know exactly where I was when I was writing those notes up.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yes, certainly it's been interesting for me to see it. I feel like I'm at a bit of an advantage really, having had sort of like 10 years or so of this sort of condensed through you to me throughout the recording of this podcast. Then I have the benefit of that, to being able to read these things. It's nice to flex the old philosophy muscles again.
00:09:27
Speaker
I haven't. So Josh, do you think in a few years time I can get you to start writing papers on conspiracy theory? Theory? Given that I'm training you up with him, making you read all of these classic papers one by one every fortnight? Maybe I will. Maybe I'll be like, OK, here's a deep cut. Rocket Raccoon. Have you read the original Rocket Raccoon Marvel comic books? I have not. I read them. OK, let's go. Let's take another step back. When I was a kid,
00:09:56
Speaker
you used to get Transformers comics down at the local comic shop, but they weren't just regular Marvel ones, they were like reprinted ones from England or something. Oh yes, the English Marvel, which was a very different thing from the US Marvel. It was a weird thing. So you sort of had Transformers serials and then other weds. And so the backup story in some of them was Rocket Raccoon. And the original Rocket Raccoon story was that he was like, he was on a planet that was one big insane asylum. And he was basically, he was full of these genetically engineered animals.
00:10:24
Speaker
that had been created to be sort of companions to the patients and it was sort of the whole thing was automated and it was sort of run by like they were like robot clowns who were sort of the entertainment but they'd taken over and it was all weird. So that's what Rocket Raccoon originally was. He was sort of the hero of this asylum planet fighting against evil clowns and at the very end
00:10:48
Speaker
they get these books which were the combined knowledge of all of the psychiatrists who had been working on with the patients in the past and they feed it all into this big machine that ends up spitting out helmets that can cure any insanity and they cure all the people of all their mental illnesses and then go off into space or something. But I'm starting to feel like I'm the machine that you're feeding all the knowledge into and eventually I'm going to squirt out sanity helmets. And then I'm going to wear you like a helmet.
00:11:18
Speaker
Or like, Mr Bean, where's a turkey? So I think, I think in this analogy, you sir are Rocket Raccoon. I am willing to take that mental arm. Anyway, so, what else? I mean, there was...
00:11:36
Speaker
Then of course elections. We had the local election and the US election which were too big to not talk about. Now what is interesting is that despite the fact there was a lot of media inks built on the phenomena of Billy T. K. Jr. and Advanced New Zealand slash the New Zealand Public Party to the point where they looked like they were an incipient threat to the very demos of our society.
00:12:04
Speaker
they ended up doing not particularly well at all. And our election was remarkably sensible and also remarkably centrist, which is an issue we have in this country, which is an issue for another time. And then a few weeks later, we had the US. Yes, which continues to be just a rolling pile of crazy.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think no matter what happens with my movements next year, we're going to have to do a post inauguration episode anyway, just to see whether on January 21, us time, things are a lot worse, or only ever so slightly better. Yeah, I mean, the question is, how
00:12:55
Speaker
It sort of comes a question of sort of numbers, really. I mean, is it just that you have a small number of crazies who are the loudest and most Americans are actually just want things to carry on? Or is it actually a big groundswell? Or of course, the other issue is that maybe you do have a small number of crazies, but a small number of crazies can do a large amount of damage if they want to.
00:13:17
Speaker
Well yes, and I mean this is a discussion I've been having with people on belief in conspiracy theories in general. So the paper I gave down in Christchurch, week before last,
00:13:29
Speaker
was looking at how I kind of squared the circle between the idea that I think we should treat conspiracy theories seriously and the fact there's obvious problems when you've got people believing in COVID-19 conspiracy theories because they end up being vectors for the disease and the fact that no matter what we think about the size of the people who believe that the election was stolen in the US,
00:13:54
Speaker
There's still social harms being done by those people engaging in rough housing on the streets and threatening officials, undermining democratic processes and the like. And part of that is sometimes it doesn't really matter if a view is a minoritarian view.
00:14:13
Speaker
if the consequences of some people believing it have outsized effect, which is the issue with COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Because COVID-19 is quite infectious, even if not many people believe it's a false pandemic, or simply suspect it's no worse than the common cold, if that means they don't wear face masks,
00:14:36
Speaker
Or they don't socially distance or they don't wash their hands That makes them a vector for an uncaring disease because the disease doesn't care what you think about it No, it's just going to spread in the same respect if you've got underlying trust issues in your democracy anyway the situation where people are then
00:14:56
Speaker
causing even more harm to that notion of trust. Even if there aren't that many of them, it can have an outsized effect for how society works. And so there is this big question I'm grappling with, which is, I'm still committed to the ideals of particularism.
00:15:12
Speaker
that we need to treat conspiracy theories seriously, because we need to be vigilant about conspiracies. But at the same time, we do need to have an ethical discussion about how we go about those investigations in order to mitigate the bad effect of talking about these things publicly, if it's going to a, lead to people finding out about these conspiracy theories and adopting them, or b, causing people to act in particular ways.
00:15:42
Speaker
I saw one person just recently saying that seeing parallels between the American response to COVID-19 in some cases and the poor state of sex education in America,
00:16:00
Speaker
either distrust of or weird ideas around the concept of prophylactic measures seem to be a sort of drawing a parallel between the idea that comes out of the likes of abstinence and the education that contraception is nonsense to the idea that it will be preventative measures against COVID are a waste of time, not worth dealing with and what have you.
00:16:27
Speaker
But anyway, so far I think the worst thing about 2020 is that for once all the unoriginal pricks on Twitter moaning about what a trash fire of a year this was are going to have a point. Every year at the end of the year people go, oh my god this year was so terrible.
00:16:47
Speaker
first showed up 2014 I think was the first year when just everyone seemed to be saying that and the reason they were saying that was the likes of the Ferguson riots and so on which essentially they were saying 2014 was a terrible year because white people suddenly became aware of problems that black people had known about for decades so I always thought
00:17:05
Speaker
I always gave a bit of side-eye to the people talking about how terrible that year was, and it just never seems
Reflecting on Increased Conspiracy Discussions
00:17:10
Speaker
to let up. But this year, frankly, now people do actually have license to talk about what a dumpster fire of a year this year was.
00:17:20
Speaker
Then that being said, for the work I do, it's kind of been marvelous, and that's a terrible thing to say, but there has been a lot of call for my expertise, both within media commentary work, but also academic work. It's the year in which I was finally offered an ongoing position within a university, given my expertise on this particular topic.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I did spend a large chunk of the middle of the year basically fending off journalists who wanted to ask me questions about things. So in many respects, it's kind of been great at the same time, as I keep telling people, would be quite nice to be studying this year from the perspective of history and not having to live through it at the same time.
00:18:15
Speaker
A favourite episode of the year? Kind of all blurs together. I have to say our new series, which is still professionally called What the Conspiracy, because we still haven't come up with an actual name where we're telling each other about particular conspiracies that the other presumably hasn't heard of. I thought that was a marvellous
00:18:42
Speaker
introduction because it's just a neat way of doing things. So I really enjoyed both my being the host and your being the host. I'm looking forward to more of that next year. I've got a list. I do have the advantage. I need to start coming up with some ideas myself.
00:19:04
Speaker
possibly my favorite episode was the Loose Change one. It was just something that was weird we hadn't talked about ever in any detail, and also because I had never actually watched all of Loose Change. Again, like you just said, a really interesting topic to look at historically wasn't something I think I would have wanted to have spent much time on at the time it was first going around and everyone was talking about it.
00:19:31
Speaker
Which is why Eleven, the new documentary by Dylan Avery, is something that we're going to need to watch in preparation for next year. Yeah, I think we will. I think we will. Is it out now? Or is it just coming out? No, it might be about to...
00:19:49
Speaker
I'm out. And yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting to watch this new documentary by Dylan Avery, looking at what I call it 11. It's actually seven, looking at the collapse of World Trade Center building seven for the sheer fact that it's kind of been funded by architects and engineers for 9-11 truth.
00:20:12
Speaker
And no matter what you believe about 9-11 and the set of inside job hypotheses, I do think Dylan Avery is the wrong person to choose as your person to make a documentary, in part because they obviously don't come at the topic
00:20:33
Speaker
with a sense of neutrality. Now I'm not saying documentarians have to be neutral, but I do think if you're trying to persuade people to believe your particular conspiracy theory of an event, you're probably better off getting a documentarian to provide you a documentary that has no associated history with your movement. But also secondly,
00:20:56
Speaker
As we discussed in the episode of Loose Change, Loose Change has had several different cuts where he's changed the story to get rid of problems in previous versions of it. And that just doesn't give me confidence that he's going to be very good as a documentarian generally.
00:21:21
Speaker
No, no. I mean, we said he if not if not set the template for that sort of documentary with loose change, he certainly popularized it. But that was a long time ago. If he takes the same approach now, I think it's just going to look be a bit old hat.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, precisely. No, so it's one of those things. We all watch it, but it's hard to go into it with a charitable point of view, given that documentarian's history. Not because of the movement, but because of the documentarian. I think he is entirely the wrong person.
00:21:57
Speaker
to choose to do a a documentary. Although I think that also speaks to maybe a lack of PR Nels on the part of Architects and Engineers for 9, 11 Truths, for either A, not recognising that, or B, not being able to find anyone else to sponsor to make a documentary about the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7.
Future Theories: Vaccines and Brexit
00:22:22
Speaker
But anyway, that's looking forward to the future. We're meant to be looking back over the year that was, but frankly, I think you probably have the better idea because looking back over the last year, mildly painful. I think that's probably enough. Do you have more predictions?
00:22:42
Speaker
Well, I mean, the obvious thing would be they're going to keep coming up with variations on the election that was stolen from Donald Trump. I mean, those aren't going to go away even when Biden gets inaugurated. So they're just going to keep festering, I assume.
00:22:58
Speaker
Otherwise, I mean, and again, the bloody COVID stuff is probably not good. Like, vaccines are starting to come out and so on. Yeah, and precisely. We are going to get a new crop of anti-vaxxed conspiracy theories around the various different vaccines that we're going to see. Because you've not just got the Pfizer and the Moderna one. You've got the Russian vaccine. You've got the Chinese vaccine. You've got a variety of other smaller vaccines, which look to be even more
00:23:28
Speaker
more effectatious than the Moderna and Pfizer ones. We are going to see conspiracy theories galore. I mean, we're already seeing them. Alex Jones is talking about how six people died in the testing of the Pfizer vaccine. And he's going, look, they're trying to cover this up and people are going, but they actually got the information from
00:23:53
Speaker
from the actual paperwork. So if they're hiding it, they're very much hiding it from plain sight. And it's true, six people did die during the development of the vaccine. Three of those people were in the control group, so never got the vaccine at all, which means actually only three people who got the vaccine died. And I think two of those were really, really old. So they actually just died of natural cold.
00:24:20
Speaker
causes and one might be a slightly suspicious death, I haven't actually looked into that, but it does seem as if the case of kind of trying to make the claim that A, they're hiding it and B, it's bad, but A, they're not hiding it and B, it looks like they actually have explanations for every single case.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yes, I suppose perhaps a little depressingly, I think that is the right, the biggest conspiracies we'll see next year will be new ones, but based on the ones we've already... Plus there'll be a whole crop of new Brexit conspiracy theories as the UK suddenly works out that it's not important.
00:25:00
Speaker
and is going to have to explain why the world is picking on it because the UK is about to discover it's not quite the nation state it thinks it is. Yes, yes, that'll be interesting to see.
00:25:16
Speaker
Michael, is that it then? Should we? Yes, I think we can now call 2020 to a close, thus guaranteeing that in the next six days, something awfully big is going
Conclusion: Holiday Wishes and Historical Reflections
00:25:30
Speaker
to occur. Yep, definitely.
00:25:32
Speaker
Okay, so if you if you're listening to this just before Christmas when we plan to put it out Merry Christmas, you know if you waited until after Christmas I think Christmas Day actually on Christmas. Yeah Christmas Day Well, if you're keen enough to be listening to podcasts on Christmas Day, then some people I hope you're having a good one. Yep Otherwise if you're catching up on your podcasts after a well-deserved break
00:25:53
Speaker
For those of you we're going on holiday as any sort of an option. Then I hope you had a good Christmas and a happy new year and all of that business. And we'll talk to you again soon-ish.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yes, sometime next year. Or this year, depending on when you're listening to it. Oh, that's true. I mean, this could also be dusty voices from the long distance past, telling you about the case of what is a United States? What is a COVID-19?
00:26:23
Speaker
Why do you keep using this word podcast? Yes, I can only imagine what our distant ancestors will make of this. In fact, actually, I can't because I don't really care. I just think of this in the respect to the kind of future imagined by the novel Galapagos, where we just basically evolve into a lovely otter-like species that just swims around having sex. Excellent.
00:26:54
Speaker
Oh well. Happy Swimming Campers. Happy Swimming. Sex Offers. We'll talk to you next slash this year. That's me speaking also. No, I got that.
00:27:10
Speaker
You've been listening to Podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, posted by Josh Addison and Ndenter. If you'd like to help support us, please find details of our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbing. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.
00:27:38
Speaker
you