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Is Anything New Under the Sun?
320 Plays15 days ago
It's been way too long since we've encountered any truly novel conspiracy theories, so this episode Josh and M go on the hunt, browsing various sites and networks in real time to see if there's anything new and interesting out there. Results are... mixed. But we do get to talk about phlogiston at one point, so that's something.
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Transcript
Introduction by Hosts
00:00:07
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Denteth.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, it's the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy with me, Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand, and then Dr. MIRX Denteth in Guangzhou, China, and and workers making banging noises in the background, but not all the time, just sometimes, just enough to keep you on your toes.
Recording Challenges: Drilling Noises
00:00:44
Speaker
Well, precisely. So people will be aware that for a few episodes, we've had issues with drilling sounds, which have delayed recordings. And today, this afternoon, they decided that they would start drilling and banging again. Now, at the moment, the noise isn't so bad it would actually stop us from doing the recording.
00:01:04
Speaker
But I have this horrible feeling that something is about to happen. So there will be this kind of underlying simmering tension happening. in this week's episode.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yes, yes. So we we'll see. but it seems okay for now. So I guess we'd better of crack into it fairly quickly.
Conspiracy Theory Exploration Begins
00:01:21
Speaker
um What do we have to talk about this week? We don't know. We're basically... Well, I mean, we kind of... vote So we had a plan. We had a plan.
00:01:30
Speaker
So after the last ip episode where Josh reminded me of the good old days of conspiracy theory theory, when you had wacky Illuminati plots about the the children of celebrities and Masonic imagery and music videos being prime conspiracy theory news... We thought we should go back to that kind of material or actually in our respect, actually start looking at that kind of material.
00:01:57
Speaker
So we thought about for a week, what kind of topics might we find? And the issue is either my ability to search the internet has got progressively worse in the last 20 years or those kind of wacky conspiratorial topics are much thinner on the ground. Because I don't know about you, Josh, but when I was doing searches for contemporary conspiracy theories, I was largely just getting the standard political conspiracy theories you would expect, various conspiracy theories about the most recent assassination attempt all on Donald Trump. and The most recent conspiracy theories about what's going on between the US, Israel, and Iran. The most recent conspiracy theories about the US's moving away from NATO, etc., etc. What I wasn't seeing are numerological codes about the birth of children mapped onto astrological signs as we go into the House of Atreides with respect to the most recent release of the Zazie Beach film, They Will Kill You.
00:03:07
Speaker
No, and we bloody should. That's the sort of stuff we want. So we thought we we were we're just going to spend an episode live.
Live Search for New Conspiracy Theories
00:03:15
Speaker
I mean, i mean with obviously you're not listening to it live, but we're going to be doing this live, just seeing if if there is anything new under the sun in the world of conspiracy theories. Can we actually find something new and interesting and novel? Or is it all just the same old crap?
00:03:31
Speaker
This is either going to be very interesting or very depressing. Now, we will point out... If you have a topic you would like us to cover, you can, of course, get in contact with the podcast's Guide to the
Listener Participation and Patron Obligations
00:03:44
Speaker
Conspiracy. There is an email address which is mentioned either somewhere towards the beginning or the end of the episode.
00:03:50
Speaker
Josh and I are both available on Blue Sky. we're somewhat receptive to psychic messaging, but it can get a little bit gabbled. But if you do have a topic you want us to cover, please do get in touch.
00:04:05
Speaker
And if you're one of our patrons, of course, you can you can always suggest something. And we're we're pretty much legally required, I think, to to
Reddit Finds: Humorous Conspiracies
00:04:13
Speaker
talk about that. Or if not, there's some sort of some sort of demonic Faustian type bargain, some sort of some sort of curse that means if we don't do what you ask, we're going to melt or have our have our have our toes fall off or something.
00:04:26
Speaker
It reminds us, we have a new ah new patron. um We should actually do something about that. Say thank you. Or... That seems traditional. Or condemn them to an everlasting eternity of pain and suffering.
00:04:41
Speaker
I mean, it's one or the other. How about we condemn them to a hastily improvised live searching for conspiracy theories that that may or may not be out there?
00:04:52
Speaker
It's true. It's what they would have wanted, i say, as if they've already unsubscribed. Precisely. Well, let's play a chime and then let's get to it.
00:05:09
Speaker
So shall we divide and conquer? you were you were You were talking about seeing if you can find stuff on Blue Sky. Should I see what's going on in Reddit?
Blue Sky Search: Political Conspiracies
00:05:18
Speaker
Reddit? That cesspool of humanity? i mean, why not? Why not?
00:05:25
Speaker
So start your clocks because we have started. Although I recommend starting clocks at all. Starting? Okay, okay.
00:05:36
Speaker
ah All I have done is typed in conspiracy theories into the main search bar of reddit So the first result is from the rconspiracy subreddit, which is what's the craziest conspiracy theory you actually believe So maybe let's let's have a look at that one. What do people say?
00:05:54
Speaker
I just want to point out as you're looking at this There's a thing which I've talked about in social media quite a bit and that I cannot reliably spell the word conspiracy. So actually what I've searched for on Blue Sky is con, P-S-I-R-A-C-Y. So conspiracy. And I'm getting search results, but I probably should search for conspiracy. Yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker
That would be the ideal. So ah we we have a lot of just sort of one one sentence responses to your craziest conspiracy theory you actually believe. And look, I don't want to i don't want to besmirch the reputation of the R conspiracy subreddit, but I think some of these people may not be entirely genuine. I think some people are possibly possibly poking a little fun at the question. We have um US presidents and congressmen are routinely blackmailed by foreign intelligence. Fine.
Surveillance Concerns and Data Privacy
00:06:49
Speaker
ah Flock mass surveillance camera network. Again, again not really a conspiracy theory, just the stuff that people talked about. But um ah the pyramids and what's underneath. Some people say the pyramids are just the tips of huge obelisks buried in the sand.
00:07:05
Speaker
Well, actually, there has been a major story about that. I say major. There has been a story that's been going around due to some scientists in the EU claiming they have evidence of an underground city beneath the Giza Plateau, of which the pyramids on the Giza Plateau and the Sphinx are are the caps of or entryways to the spiral staircases that go down to that very ancient city.
00:07:36
Speaker
Maybe that is a topic that we should go into. Was that the paper that had been like refuted before it had been officially released? That's the one, yes. Maybe we should. Maybe we should.
00:07:47
Speaker
What else have we got? There's more to Antarctica than they're telling us. No further... no further details. Okay, here's here's a nice low stakes one. Roomba vacuum cleaners sell your floor plan data using your Wi-Fi.
00:08:02
Speaker
I mean, I would be willing to buy that for a dollar. I've always liked the um the posts where people find there's been some sort of glitch and with those the sorts of rumors that map out your floor plan and see what they can find. And you get the ones where due to some sort of glitch, it suddenly invents a ah space that doesn't exist in your house. It sort of puts it in your house. a Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner and you'll get the occasional situation where because it gets trapped on a piece of furniture, it gets turned round and then you see the mirror of your house.
00:08:40
Speaker
So you see it vacuuming spaces that aren't actually... that So you can you can see the object, but it's vacuuming a space that it thinks is elsewhere. And it it can get rather weird when the map's getting kind of twisted and changed.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yes. ah like I mean, here's here's another. I'm sure we've talked about this. The phone listens. Happened multiple times where I have had a conversation, did not Google or ask Siri, etc., just face-to-face conversation, and the topic of conversation shows up as an ad. I mean, I have had...
00:09:12
Speaker
I have had the experience of when I had an old, old car that failed its warrant and was no use repairing, just just just sell it for scrap, and having had a couple of conversations about that but not done any Googling to find we who who who buys old cars for scrap around Auckland, have suddenly found websites sending me adverts for...
00:09:37
Speaker
scrap car dealers.
Whimsical Conspiracy Theories
00:09:40
Speaker
i've i've I've been speaking about wanting to see a movie, a movie or a TV show that I've been thinking about watching in the presence of my smart TV and then opened up Netflix and had the thing that I was just talking about pop up as one of its recommendations. Could be coincidence. I mean, if it's a movie that I was wanting to see and Netflix kind of knows my browsing habits, maybe. Maybe. Maybe it's just coincidence that it popped a thing in front of me just when i was talking about it. But, um yeah, another one. I i actually might would be willing to believe some of that. I mean, certainly we know you are um your your Alexas and your Siris and what have you are listening to you all the time because they have to be in order to know that you've said, hey, Google lord or Siri or whatever. And there have been various scandals where it turns out...
00:10:28
Speaker
rather than being constantly listening but forgetting everything it hears straight away. They have been storing that sort of information. So, yeah, who the hell knows? Yes, yes, there's a lot to be said for either algorithms knowing you so well they're actually predicting what you want next, which is itself alarming, or the idea that even though they're making the claim it's algorithm algorithmic prediction, maybe there's more listening or snooping going on, say, in the last five minutes than they're willing to admit to
00:11:02
Speaker
Yes, uh...
00:11:06
Speaker
Mattress store conspiracy for money laundering. lot of detail on that one. You see, I'm not getting much in the way of interesting stuff on Blue Skies. So I've done simply a search for conspiracy, and it said earlier, conspiracy.
00:11:24
Speaker
And I'm getting largely the kind of things that you would expect from So we've got discussions of anti-Semitism. We have discussion of climate change denialism. We have discussions about what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to the CDC and the NIH in the United States.
00:11:51
Speaker
We're getting discussions about how ICE is covering up the fact that it doesn't quite have the judicial warrants required for the arrest that it makes.
CB Woodhouse Controversy
00:12:02
Speaker
There's a little bit of discussion about drug use in Appalachia, which is all to do with the the big Now, I have i can't look at what i was i'm going to say How to phrase this. The big wealth disparity and class dispary disparity. Disparacy?
00:12:23
Speaker
I can't even say... just the How do I say this word, Josh? Disparity? Disparity, thank you. the The wealth disparity and the class disparity in certain parts of the rural heartland of the US, where you, and I'm going to use this term very advisedly, where you have anti-white racism being expressed by richer white people.
00:12:52
Speaker
Sorry, I've lost the thread completely. That's stuff that's being talked about on Blue Sky at the moment. Yeah, yeah. Well, interestingly, on this ah still on the same one Reddit thread, Project Bluebeams had a mention. Do you remember Project Bluebeam?
00:13:07
Speaker
we talked about being Very vaguely. It's so been a long time since we've talked about that one. I just looked up while you were talking. We we talked about Project Bluebeam in 2015.
00:13:18
Speaker
And I can barely remember what it was about either. it was Maybe maybe maybe we need to revisit it. maybe that's Maybe that's our next episode, going back to Project Bluebeam. mean, it was something to do with holograms, but, um but but yeah. But that was that was a blast from the past. and Amongst all this other crap, suddenly somebody mentioning Project Bluebeam.
00:13:38
Speaker
Actually, that does make me wonder. If I look up Harp, has Harp been mentioned recently? yeah.
00:13:46
Speaker
Let's have look. Ladies and mentioned 12 hours. this and Although that particular mention here is in Spanish.
00:13:59
Speaker
DARPA, HAARP, one day ago. Actually, most of the mentions of HAARP are not in English.
00:14:09
Speaker
Well, a mention of HAARP and advances in Tesla technology. So people are still talking about HAARP. I mean, you could say they're harping on about it.
00:14:21
Speaker
You could, but I'd have to murder you if you did. Well, it's good thing I didn't say it then. yeah ah Free energy is being hidden to ensure powers have a monopoly and maintain power slash economic control. That's an oldie but goodie as well.
00:14:39
Speaker
This person says, more I'm coming to believe that Britney Spears is dead. mean, it's not much of a, the Lord of the Rings is based on a true story. Again, I think some people are not taking this thread entirely seriously.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, that being said, Tolkien did try to intimate that the whole point about Middle-earth was it was our distant, distant prehistory, and that the world as we know it actually descends from the fourth age of Middle-earth. So maybe they're talking about Tolkien knowing slightly more than he thought. I think I found something.
00:15:19
Speaker
This comes from the Dining and Cooking series. account on blue blue sky. okay They have an article called popular Italian food brand accused of, in quotes, tomato fraud in new lawsuit. And the tagline is, it's a canned conspiracy.
00:15:38
Speaker
okay So two Californians are suing Cento Fine Foods for allegedly committing tomato fraud, claiming that the tomatoes in the can are not the coveted, and I put in quotes, Ferrari of tomato varieties, but actually just bog-standard, boring tomatoes instead.
00:16:01
Speaker
So this is the claim that... They are putting on the can that these are better tomatoes that are actually being found inside the can, in the can, when you are preparing your meal.
00:16:15
Speaker
And that this has been covered up by this, the the company has been been deceiving us all into buying... Yeah, the article says, the lawsuit alleged that the tomatoes don't live up to the luxurious taste of genuine San Manzano tomatoes, which are favoured in Italian cooking for their thicker wool, fewer seeds and lower acidity, court records said.
00:16:39
Speaker
San Manzano tomatoes are considered the Ferrari or Prada of canned tomato varieties. Loyalists say they are well worth the higher price tag compared to other Italian or domestically produced options, the lawsuit stated.
00:16:53
Speaker
have you Have you been hearing about, this is related but not super conspiratorial, the American dairy products showing up in New Zealand lately?
00:17:04
Speaker
Oh, like the American butter, which people are going, oh we thought American cheese was bad, but American butter's even worse. Yes, because it's New Zealand...
00:17:15
Speaker
New Zealand is is in a weird situation economically. out one Possibly, is is dairy our biggest import? Is it lamb? I'm not sure. Export rather. Yeah, no, i believe I believe dairy is the biggest export at the moment. So like, yeah, New Zealand used to be used to be all about sheep, then it changed, and now we're all about cows, and specifically specifically dairy cows.
00:17:40
Speaker
And um we export tons of stuff and not just not just milk products, but also a bunch of other stuff gets grown in New Zealand and then all gets sent overseas because the people who are growing it can make better money exporting it than they can just selling it locally. And so we end up with expensive substandard stuff in our supermarkets because all the good stuff we make here goes overseas.
00:18:02
Speaker
In particular, for the last wee while, there's been the same sort of cost of living stuff that goes on around the world. And one of the things that while do was sort of a a poster child for all this was the cost of butter. Block butter has been getting more and more and more expensive. And now people noticed this strangely sort of white, very, very, very pale yellow butter compared to the the butter we normally get here. And then upon reading the wrapper,
00:18:26
Speaker
which is the wrapper of a New Zealand company, you notice it says it's wrapped in New Zealand, but it's actually butter that's been imported from America. So despite being a country whose number one export is dairy, we're still importing cheap butter to sell to the New Zealand people because all of our good stuff's going overseas. And yeah, apparently it's to do with um the fact that our cows here are grass-fed, I think, and American cows are grain-fed or something. But the butter and the cheese is very, very pale and i'm not that great. So that no offense, Americans, but your dairy products are a bit crap.
00:19:01
Speaker
That's why our dairy industry does so well overseas Quality product Even though as a vegan I don't consume any of it But sticking on the Aotoroa New Zealand aspect I do see something which we probably should have brought up this week anyway The CB Woodhouse controversy Do you know of the CB Woodhouse controversy?
00:19:25
Speaker
I don't, what is this? So CB Woodhouse was the former CEO of Voyager Internet. Oh, Voyager. I've heard the Voyager story. Now, there is a media award back home, the Voyager Awards, which are or have been up until recently sponsored by Voyager Internet. Yeah.
00:19:48
Speaker
But the people behind the Voyager Awards, because it's just the name given as a kind of a branding exercise or funding the exercise to the awards. Yeah, the chief sponsor, so they get to stick the name on it. Yeah. no longer want to be associated with Voyager because of the actions of former CEO and still, I think, majority shareholder of the company or, at least in some respect, president of a board, still connected to Voyager Internet, CB Woodhouse, a 34-year-old who, for the last 13 months or so,
00:20:20
Speaker
has been spreading a lot of unusual conspiracy theory content on Twitter. Now, he claims a retweet is not an endorsement, but he seems to be retweeting a lot of very suspicious, some actually quite anti-Semitic material,
00:20:43
Speaker
And this has had the fallout of people going, and we don't really want to be associated with this guy. and this guy is heavily associated with that company. And your company sponsors our media awards and we're not comfortable with it.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yes, local journalist and friend of the podcast, David Farrier, has been investigating this guy for a while. And so when this news came out, he was like, OK, yes, yeah this this is not actually new. Here's my article on it from a year ago or something. And yes, I think he he sent messages to the guy. And the guy was like, yeah, um it's not necessarily an endorsement. So when I put up this image saying that the Holocaust never happened...
00:21:21
Speaker
That's not reinforcing it. I'm just saying, look at this weird thing I found. Isn't that strange? Isn't that very interesting? place And, you know, I've only done this four, five, six dozen times. it doesn't really indicate anything about what I believe. i just keep finding it interesting every single time I come across it.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yes, so, yeah, yeah, that's, i'm I'm glad something's come of it at
Evangeline Lilly and Disney AI Theory
00:21:43
Speaker
least. if It's probably not a massive hit to them. In fact, if they've taken their name off, it presumably presumably that means they no longer want to be sponsored by Voyager, so it's probably actually saving Voyager some money, but it's a very bad look PR-wise.
00:21:59
Speaker
Now I have found another conspiracy theory here, which I haven't heard, although I can see how it works. This comes from an account called Brendan Payne. Disappointing how many people believe Evangeline Lilly's conspiracy theory that Disney is replacing all the Marvel animators with AI.
00:22:19
Speaker
No, we're getting far less content yearly. That's why the layoffs are happening. You'd think people would second-guess claims from an anti-vaxxer COVID denier. There's a lot going on there.
00:22:31
Speaker
There's an awful lot going on there. I mean, certainly, ah yeah, it's no secret that many companies are looking to see how much they can farm out to AI and therefore not have to pay people to do it. But, yeah, there's been layoffs all around and and entertainment and... and movies and and computer game, video game companies and all sorts of stuff like that. And I don't think you can lay the whole thing at the feet of AI.
00:22:56
Speaker
And then I also say know nothing about and Evangeline Lilly's views. Is she an anti-vaxxer COVID denier person? Yes, this came out during the filming of The Hobbit and then came out again in the second Ant-Man
EA3167 Water Supply Theory
00:23:14
Speaker
film. That, yes, she has some interesting woo-adjacent, if not outright woo, health beliefs.
00:23:23
Speaker
Alright. Does she believe, as this person does, still on the same Reddit thread, that all Greek gods were real, but were aliens? All Norse Roman etc gods are real, but are the same aliens, just with different names?
00:23:37
Speaker
I mean, that's what e that's what e Eric von Däniken claims. Frankly, it must be true. Okay, now i'm going to have to do some research, damn you. This one simply says EA3167 in the water.
00:23:51
Speaker
What is EA3167? I was thinking electronic arts, but I don't think it's going to be that. EA3167 is a potent and long-lasting anti-cholinergic deliriant drug.
00:24:08
Speaker
I don't know what either
Diverse Conspiracy Theories Explored
00:24:10
Speaker
those means. They related to chemical warfare and to triotropium bromide developed under contract to Edgewood Arsenal during the 1960s as part of the U.S. military chemical weapons program in an attempt to develop non-lethal incapacitating agents.
00:24:30
Speaker
a So incapacitating effects can last anywhere from five to ten days, sometimes manifesting as a full three-day peak of vivid hallucinations along with prolonged confusion, amnesia, and inhibition of speech and cognition.
00:24:43
Speaker
Hmm.
00:24:46
Speaker
so this ispe So this is a drug that is real. was developed as part of chemical warfare. um As apparently weaponization of further studies were eventually abandoned, possibly due to the extreme nature of its effects and the strain on available study resources caused by conducting human studies for extended periods.
00:25:03
Speaker
Okay, so there is a it says this is a real drug and some person thinks it's being put in the water supply. But don't say any on that. But then I suppose that's the same as the...
00:25:14
Speaker
fluoride and what have you. I guess the government's doing it to keep us docile, I assume. Well, I've got a pair of kind of election conspiracy theories that are worth noting. So...
00:25:28
Speaker
There are elections going on in the UK and also in India. So I think the election in India has just passed. The local elections in the UK as a whole are were going on yesterday, maybe today at time of recording. With respect to the Indian case... There's an article on The Guardian. Millions in India stripped of vote before critical state election as government seeks to purify electoral roll.
00:26:00
Speaker
Experts say Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately deleted from the electoral roll ahead of the West Bengal elections this week. And that's from the 22nd of April, so last week.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I mean, that's not that's not something new in general. there There have been, I've heard various claims during various elections of people suddenly discovering that they're not on the electoral roll, and it turns out it's mostly people of a particular political persuasion who are being dropped off it. So, yeah, it certainly doesn't surprise me. Well, A, that that that that that that might be happening, and B, that there would be conspiracy theories around it, whether it is happening or not.
00:26:44
Speaker
Precisely. And the other story, which is respect to what's going on in the UK, top Holyrood reform candidates spread chemtrail conspiracy theory. oh So David McLennan, a Reform UK councillor standing for Nigel Farad's party in Bathgate, wrote a post on Twitter slash X. I still find it fascinating that people are not giving up on referring to X as Twitter, even though it's been years now.
00:27:13
Speaker
I think because if you if you say wrote a post on X, people are going to go, that, sorry, did you forget the name of something? And that's standing in for... So, yes, wrote a post on Twitter slash X two years ago in which he appeared to be agreeing with the chemtrails conspiracy theory according to the Daily Record. Hmm.
00:27:33
Speaker
McLennan said, I'm in Scotland and you can see the vapour trails across the blue canvas slowly, surely, definitely turn into clouds to hide the sun. Gates and Davos are trying to cull the global population.
00:27:47
Speaker
Ah, global population control. Does it, doesn like, is it working? Is there a spate of, are there spates of deaths wherever there are chemtrails or what have you? That's not something that ever actually... Well, I mean, globally, populations do seem to be in decline.
00:28:06
Speaker
So you connect the dots. That's due to dropping birth rates more than higher deaths, I assume. Ah, but what is causing the dropping birth rates, Josh? Could it be planes? I mean, there is a correlation between populations diminishing over time and the advent of avionic technology.
00:28:28
Speaker
i mean, you can connect the dots. I will, just not right now. Now, I've gone a ways down this thing, and now we've I've got a religious conspiracy theory, which is one that I've not heard before. so This one actually has some detail to it, so that's good. This is by by a user called Mendicant, with a one instead of an eye ah Christianity was an invention of the Romans to prevent uprisings of the sizable Greek Jewish community.
00:28:55
Speaker
They co-opted the ecclesia of the Judean province and reformist Jewish ideology with the intent to contain the rebellions of the Jews. Everything in the New Testament is written in the context of Jewish uprisings from 60 to 120 AD. It's why Jesus was around just far back far enough back from where they were written that no one outside of a few people would ever be able to verify accounts. It's why Paul's letters were obviously written by multiple people as part of a published set, and why every character in them happened to have been martyred just before anyone could meet them.
00:29:26
Speaker
We base so much of our society off of religion that stems from a few Sumerian tribes that came to exclusively worship their god of war, all a means of applying control to the people from a centralized religious caste. That's why it and the follow-up of Islam are built in and to spread rapidly.
00:29:42
Speaker
Hmm. That's a lot of words. Yeah. it's it's its I have no idea whatsoever if there's anything historically credible there or not, but... um I mean, there have been historically a whole bunch of conspiracy theories about the origin of Christianity, of the type where it's a misunderstood version of cult X. Actually, it's it's the cult of Mithridates, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah So there has been...
00:30:09
Speaker
a quite long history of trying to explain away Christianity's are origin with non-supernatural means, i.e. going, well, the cult does exist, but there was no historical Jesus, so how do we explain that? Well, actually, it turns out it's X or Y. So it seems like it fits into that kind of rubric of, we're going to explain away Christianity in this particular way, this particular time.
00:30:35
Speaker
Hmm. Okay, one more, one more from this thread, quick one. Obama secretly holds stock in body camera companies and purposely stoked the Ferguson riots in order to drive up the market for body cams.
00:30:48
Speaker
Good, good old, good old anti-Obama capitalist conspiracy theory. Hmm. I wonder what the proof for that is.
00:30:59
Speaker
Or is it just... Is it just... Oh, body cams. Hmm. Obama. Hmm. Right. Yes. I mean, i've i've got I've got another one from Blue Sky. This is from an account called Catherine Brightbell.
00:31:14
Speaker
Bubba the Love Sponge, being the noxious human being that he is, has decided to recycle the Linus Ormark conspiracy theory that Unhidge Ottawa fans invented into evict a Hedman conspiracy theory because I guess all Swedish hockey players with mental health issues are interchangeable or something.
00:31:33
Speaker
i I could not follow that even. you lost me in the first, like, three words. So Linus Allmark appears to be a goalie for a Canadian ice hockey team who, for some reason, didn't play a number of games, leading to speculation as to whether he was deliberately not playing in order to make his team...
00:32:01
Speaker
less good on the field and I'm assuming the same thing is happening with this Victor Hedman who must be someone similar on a Swedish ice hockey team and it's all down to apparently hockey fans being somewhat incapacitated in a intellectual sense Right. Good old sports conspiracy theory. Haven't done one of those. Yeah. I used to pick you up in the conspiracy ones.
00:32:36
Speaker
I should look back at that again. um Okay, I've switched threads. I'm now looking in the in the creepy bonfire subreddit where they have a thread called what's the most convincing conspiracy theory you've heard? It starts with the conspiracy theory, which they say is absurd and utterly hilarious, but it's the theory that Finland doesn't exist. have we don't I think i think we've done that i know ive know people have done the Australia doesn't exist. I Have we talked about Finland doesn't exist as well? I think i may have mentioned something along those lines on BFM back in the day because there are there are wholes so there there are kind of two varieties. There's the variety which it doesn't exist because it's a kind of
00:33:19
Speaker
intellectual exercise, a lot like the birds don't exist TikTok. So you go, well, obviously birds do exist, but can I produce an argument which people find hard to refute? So say, well, you think birds exist, but actually they all replaced by robots in the 1960s. So when you show me a bird, actually what you're showing me is a robot. So what additional proof can you provide that birds do exist?
00:33:44
Speaker
And sometimes people do the same thing with countries as well, but there is a subset of people who are deeply suspicious about maps and actually take it these countries don't really exist at all.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the history of cartography is um it contains various frauds and mistakes and what have you, but um i think I think by now, in the age of satellite photography and and and photographs actually from outer space that that can show the whole world, i think, I hope, I would hope we can trust the maps that we have these days. But then maybe they too have been edited by whatever powers that be.
00:34:28
Speaker
want to conceal the true nature of the world, who knows? Now on this, it's weird that the the the thread, what's the most convincing conspiracy theory you've heard, starts with one, the one about Fulon, which they say is obviously nonsense. I don't know. But the first um the first comment here is, when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on, it skewed us into a slightly altered reality, which explains both the Mandela Effect and the fact that we seem to be living in a bizarre parody of the world.
00:34:57
Speaker
Okay. oh ho Oh, okay. Here's my one. Over the years, I've come around to realizing that the Montreal Screwjob probably isn't a work, but it's taken me a long time and I'm not really certain.
00:35:10
Speaker
Did read my article on the Montreal Screwjob? It does ring bells. It was a filler I put together last year, early this year, I can't remember, about the WWE wwe incident where Bret Hart was screwed out of his title.
00:35:27
Speaker
And the question of was the whole thing a work, was the entire thing planned between Vince McMahon and Bret Hart and everything, or... did Bret Hart have no idea it was going to happen and he was genuinely screwed over? oh yes, of course. Yes. yeah Yes, this is the whole how kayfabe is the kayfabe.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah. But also we've got the death of Willie McRae. You heard of Willie McRae? He was apparently... He was a campaigner, according to this this this comment anyway, who links to the Wikipedia article. He was a campaign a campaigner for Scottish independence was found in his car that was crashed. It was later found that he had been shot in the head. The official ruling was suicide, but there's a lot of evidence that it was murder. It's been revealed that he was being modded and honoured by the British state in the form of Special Branch
Philosophical Questions on Language and Reality
00:36:17
Speaker
and MI5. Oh.
00:36:18
Speaker
oh There have been several attempts to get a formal inquest into his death. All have been refused.
00:36:27
Speaker
again here's Here's the tree one. Here's the fact that there are no real trees left and that the the whole thing about real trees were actually ancient and gigantic and the maces that we see in certain parts of the world are actually giant petrified tree stumps and the things that we think are trees are actually just just grass or something.
00:36:46
Speaker
which is more of an interesting question and issue for like philosophy of language or something really. If if the name, if the things that we all call trees aren't trees, like surely the fact that we everybody calls them all trees means that they are trees. And if something else used to be trees, well, that's not relevant anymore. It's the old... um The old phlogiston debate about how there was, at one point, there was the observation that things can wood can get heavier after you burn it to charcoal.
00:37:17
Speaker
And that they invented this substance called phlogiston, which has negative mass. the idea being that when wood burns, because obviously when you see something burning, you can see stuff rising off from it. And so then the idea is, okay, well, then there's also this substance which has negative mass, which gets burnt away, which is why it gets heavier. And so you had this thing called phlogiston.
00:37:37
Speaker
Then eventually we we learn out what oxygen is and discover that the stuff is getting heavier because oxygen yeah the words the burning is an oxidisation reaction and oxygen is bonding to it, which accounts for the increase in mass. And so then the question becomes, well, does that mean...
00:37:52
Speaker
that phlogiston doesn't exist and oxygen is this new thing, or does it mean that what we thought was phlogiston was actually oxygen, that oxygen and phlogiston were both the explanation for this phenomenon, so really they're the they're the one and the same thing.
00:38:06
Speaker
I think they're doing the same thing with what trees are, which is, again, interesting exercise in philosophy of language, not particularly conspiratorial.
Infowars Update and The Onion
00:38:14
Speaker
No, no i was I was just checking in on the Infowars situation. So there is no Alex Jones being broadcast at this time.
New Coke and Simulated Reality
00:38:26
Speaker
No, I understand it had been shut down, but the Onion's takeover of it hasn't hasn't actually gone through yet. Yes, because there's been a last-minute appeal which has stopped the transfer. but Because I did think, you know, Alex Jones has always said, oh he's ready to go at a moment's notice with his other network. So I thought, well, as soon as they shut down on Thursday, there's going to be another show on his new network. But no he has not re-emerged yet. So it's all very interesting.
00:38:56
Speaker
Because yes our other option was to go, what is Alex Jones saying about things? and At the moment, Alex Jones is delightfully silent. Well, that's good. Yes, I also thought yeah if if this didn't be a fruit, we could go back to the old standard of looking at Alex Jones and David Icke.
00:39:11
Speaker
Although the last couple of times we've looked at what David Icke's been up to, it's just been depressing. And he's he's just sort of been the root of the the right-wing brifters and all of the stuff that he's talking about it just the same the same anti-COVID, anti-government sort of stuff that everyone else seems to be doing. So we've we've managed to fill a decent amount of time. I think there's more i think there's an interest more interesting material to mine here. So I hope we don't have to go look at it.
00:39:36
Speaker
david um I just want to point out, i this i have just popped over to the David Icke website to find out he's got a new book out, Josh. It's called The Roadmap, Escaping the Maze of Madness. And the blurb is this groundbreaking new book described by David Icke as one of the best things I've done in my life has the potential to launch a global transformation of human freedom, sense of reality and self identity.
00:40:03
Speaker
Big questions lead to big answers. And David Icke has been asking them incessantly decade after decade. The roadmap is a unique book only David could have written in such dot connected detail across so many different but interconnected subjects. The well factor page or so the well factor page after page is off the charts.
00:40:28
Speaker
Goodness. i was a little ah you You had me worried just for a second there when you talked about, what is it, the maze of madness? Escaping the May. I heard escaping the May and immediately thought he was going to say Matrix, isn't he? He's talking about getting out of the Matrix because he's just like every one of them. But no, okay, that's that's good.
00:40:46
Speaker
I'm glad to see a little bit of originality there. I don't wish to look any any further because there's probably ah a fair bit of a fair bit of anti-Semitism and um and COVID denial just under the surface. So um I'm happy to leave it at that superficial description.
00:41:01
Speaker
and Indeed. Otherwise, it is just the usual stuff on his his website. There's nothing particularly new or exciting there, although it has been redesigned so it looks a lot less cluttered than it used to. But it's also it's been redesigned in such a way that it looks like someone just took a very standard WordPress template and went, ah, this will do.
00:41:26
Speaker
now Okay, back to my Reddit thread, convincing conspiracy theories. This one says, Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter, and the reason for the cover-up is that it was an accident. He was a Manchurian candidate that went wrong. Basically, he was intended to be a political assassin, but not within our own country.
00:41:46
Speaker
So he'd been programmed to assassinate world leaders, but unfortunately went rogue and assassinated the wrong one. Oh, interesting. no That's very much a cock-up and conspiracy.
00:41:59
Speaker
And then a little bit further down, Soviet mad scientists tried to crossbreed humans and chimpanzees. yeah good good for me it's good for me Denver International Airport, that's a good one.
00:42:14
Speaker
But we've we've we've talked about that in the past.
00:42:20
Speaker
Taylor as Swift is a clone of someone else. Hollow Moon, Pizzagate. ah Birds don't exist. There we go.
00:42:32
Speaker
Oh, ah that' but's not that's my favourite. The headshot and the JFK assassination didn't come from Oswald, but it came from a secret service agent. ah That was always my favourite conspiracy theory, the idea that... Oh, yes, the v accidentally kills the president whilst trying to protect them hypothesis.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yes, yeah, i liked I particularly liked that one because it said that we all obsessed over the magic so but so-called magic bullet, which in fact wasn't magic at all. And when you see how things lined up, it did exactly what the sort of bullet fired that Lee Harvey Oswald was firing did and that it punched straight through in ah in a straight line, whereas the one that that that hit Kennedy second and basically made his head explode behaved more like the sort of ammunition you'd see in a Secret Service weapon.
00:43:19
Speaker
agent's gun than the sort of sort of sort of ammunition being fired by Oswald. But I don't actually know how true that And I think it was all started from the fact that um after his autopsy, Kennedy's brain went missing.
00:43:32
Speaker
and And the idea was that they didn't want to, they wanted to hide the fact that it contained bullet fragments from this other kind of ammunition or something. And it also fits in with the death of the original ah RFK, where people go, well, it's quite possible that Suhan Suhan was trying to assassinate ah RFK, but the actual fatal shot, given its location, came from one of the security detail who was firing at Suhan Suhan, but ah RFK got in the way. Hmm.
00:44:07
Speaker
But yeah, i just I just liked the idea that that that all this time we've been obsessing over the wrong bullet.
00:44:16
Speaker
Otherwise, nine eleven Lee Hop. Conspiracy theories. Actually, did someone ask, what does Lee Hop stand for? Oh, no, it doesn't. Everybody knows what it means, I guess. ah The Queen had Diana killed.
00:44:31
Speaker
a So I think what we can say about this is whilst there were a few novel conspiracy theories, most of the stuff we're finding is pretty much what you'd expect.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yes, I mean, I've heard a couple of things there's a couple of things have showed up that I hadn't heard before, but they tend to be variations of other things that have heard before. Oh, Avril Lavigne. Avril Lavigne is actually dead and is now being played by an imposter.
00:45:00
Speaker
That's an old conspiracy theory. Which is has two photographs of her from, okay, they're actually taking the piss in this one. Okay, they've got they've got photos from her from 2003 and 2013 and highlighting all sorts of irrelevant stuff like the fact that in one photo she's wearing a shirt and in the other one she is not.
00:45:21
Speaker
so Pretty compelling evidence. Yeah, I remember when the original conspiracy theory came out, because, oh, but she looks different. when the You know, 2002 versus 2003 Avril Ravine, and people are going, but she's a teenage girl.
00:45:36
Speaker
She's still growing. Faces change. i think I think I've dug down far enough I'm not going to get anything interesting out of this one.
00:45:49
Speaker
So maybe it's to oh wait Soap holders in the shower are always placed right in line with the water sprays Store soap is wasted every year. Everyone's in on it companies contractors even designers The rabbit hole is deeper than you think plus soap is what is used to be I think that soap isn't what it used to be anyway, so this goes right to the top Well, actually, the thing about this is it actually goes right to the bottom because it actually goes through the plug hole towards the centre of the hollow earth.
00:46:18
Speaker
That's that. that ah So, okay, this is on the on the actual raskreddit subreddit. Here's a thread from three years ago. What's the scariest conspiracy you believe is 100% true?
00:46:32
Speaker
So the top one is the cynical, the theory that no one is secretly in charge from the shadows. The politicians we have are actually the leaders of the world and genuinely what people voted for. There are a few things scarier than that.
Living in a Simulation Theory
00:46:43
Speaker
That's not fun. So then we go on to Coca-Cola and and New Coke.
00:46:48
Speaker
So we all know the story of New Coke, I assume. Did did New Coke ever reach New Zealand? I don't remember. Yeah, I don't think it did. Or if it did, it was very short-lived. I mean, it was very short-lived in the US.
00:47:03
Speaker
So, I mean, the story is as far as I'm aware. That being said, actually, I believe New Coke had a fairly long afterlife in South America. they were actually selling both types. for So it was mostly...
00:47:15
Speaker
Western nation, to which I take the US, the UK and Australasia, it wasn't successful there, but somehow it did have some success in South America and maybe parts of the EU as well.
00:47:29
Speaker
So the the story that I've heard is that back in the 80s when the Coke versus Pepsi wars were at their peak, Coca-Cola decided to come up with a new formula, which and but because indeed Pepsi was actually proving more popular at the time. And so they came up with with it with a slightly different taste of Coca-Cola, which in all their taste tests, period these blind taste tests, they gave people, you know, here's his's one which was actually the original one, and here's this new formulation. And in the taste test, people uniformly said that they preferred the new taste, and so they had this big thing, this brand new new Coke.
00:48:04
Speaker
And people hated it and part of that seemed to be just a we didn't want a new coke Don't don't change it. We like things the way they were and then part of it also seemed to be the fact that it was a sweeter formulation and then the taste tests They were just having little you know little s sips of a little cups just to get the taste which was better But when you drink a whole can of the stuff, it was actually too sweet So there are a few few suggestions people had and basically it was a gigantic flop and then they went back they they then um Returned the original formulation is coke classic, but here we have the conspiracy that In the early 1980s, Coca-Cola deliberately removed coke classic made with cane sugar from production and introduced new coke aka coke 2 as a ruse knowing full well that people would complain that it wasn't the same as before So they staged an apology commercial from coke CEO saying we're sorry we hear you when has a CEO ever said that lol
00:49:00
Speaker
and reintroduced Coke Classic with corn syrup instead of cane sugar, knowing that by the time it was re-released, the market's inventory of the original Coke Classic had largely been distributed and consumed, so very few people, if any, could actually compare them side by side to see if they tasted the same. By the way, the tariffs on cane sugar were increased ginormously just before they did this, which is a way to encourage domestic corn production. TLDR, Coke pulled a switcheroo by changing sweeteners and lied, saying that it was at the exact same as before. So that's... some That's an interesting idea. that that that they they They must have spent a lot of money developing and marketing new Coke, and yet they're saying it was all just ah all just a scam. it was set up to fail simply so that they could change sweeteners without people without people realizing, which surely there's easier ways of doing that.
00:49:49
Speaker
as species I believe there were consequences to the board for the introduction and then retraction of New Coke. Although I should point out, New Coke appears on the market replacing Old Coke.
00:50:03
Speaker
Old Coke reappears on the market within about six months. And New Coke continues to be sold for five years, initially just under the name Coke and then under the name Coke 2.
00:50:16
Speaker
So it wasn't the complete failure we make it out to be. The two Cokes coexisted for half a decade. And it turns out I might be completely wrong about it being successful in South America because I can't find any mention of South American Coke being a long-term thing.
00:50:38
Speaker
well I have another one. This is a variation of something that I have heard before. um Throwback Thursday, the old hashtag TBT, just appeared one day out of the blue with the distinct goal of being a silly internet craze to post pictures from the past to compare it to modern day photos. I believe it was a project created by three-letter United States federal government organizations to encourage large portions of the population to post weekly photos of their past and present to enhance their aging and genetic algorithms. It would be hard to get access to everyone's old photos unless they had physical access to everyone's houses and snuck into each house to make copies of said photos.
00:51:14
Speaker
Why do all that when you can make it a fun new trend and let the people voluntarily give you the photos en masse? And yeah, i've I've heard stuff this before when when people, not necessarily with Throwback Thursday, but when there's been various memes going around of post a picture of you from 10 years ago or something and people said, well, you know, if you were... If you were trying to train facial recognition stuff to to be able to account for the effects of of age, to be able to identify someone 10 years after you last did a photograph of them, it would be very useful to have a whole lot of people posting photographs of them, two photographs of themselves 10 years apart, that you could um analyze and compare and train some sort of image recognition thing on.
00:51:52
Speaker
I mean, the downside is most of the photos we have from 10 years ago are pretty rubbish. Well, yes, they could build that incident. It's certainly better than having data.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yes, that is true. a ah Hans Niemann did use a vibrator to cheat on chess. Good for the old the old dear vibrating anal beads thing.
00:52:16
Speaker
My theory is that he did cheat, but didn't do it using a butt vibrator. He used something more sophisticated, and him and all people close to him started that rumor to make it sound outlandish or silly. Anyway.
00:52:33
Speaker
All the genetic ancestry companies are government France, the point of which is to gather enormous database of human genomes, similar similar to the other one. More sort of typical sort of like medical one, scientists have found a way to protect our teeth from plaque slash cavities years ago, but because of the lobbying, they've been stopped from commercializing it. The old, it's more profitable to treat the disease than to cure it thing, which comes a lot up a lot in medical conspiracy theories.
00:53:06
Speaker
Okay, not there's not not a lot more interesting here. um In the 1980s, US Attorney Rudy Giuliani was paid by the Soviets to go after the Italian mafia in New York to make way for Russian organised crime.
00:53:19
Speaker
Why not? Oh, I mean, replace one with the other. mm.
00:53:26
Speaker
Area 51 pharmaceutical companies Flat earthers, okay The double slit experiment shows that light particles do not behave according to the laws of physics when not being observed. When it is observed, it does behave as expected. Some have compared this to a video game world where a part of the world will only develop when a person is actually interacting with it. The theory being that we are actually in a simulation and this is a telling glitch in the simulation. That's just some people's view. However, I'm sure a quantum physics specialist could explain it better.
Post-WWII Nazi Influence Theory
00:53:59
Speaker
So, I mean, yes, I have heard the the the whole the whole the world is a simulation thing. I've heard you sort of have the a priori arguments for that, saying that if if it is possible to make a simulation that's indistinguishable from reality and it is then possible for a simulation for for for people inside that simulation to make a further simulation that's and identical to reality, then it's entirely then at that point,
00:54:24
Speaker
you could have a potentially and indefinite chain of simulations nested within one another and if that's the case then the chances that we are in the real world and not one of these millions of of simulations is very very small. very ah Vanishingly small.
00:54:39
Speaker
But then there are also the the empirical arguments for a the world being a simulation where you get these sort of weird weird observations when the laws of physics appear to break down when things get very small or very big or very fast or something, as people say, oh, that's that's because it's it's beyond the abilities of the simulation to simulate or something.
00:55:01
Speaker
So that's an interesting. thing Now they're saying simply the double slit experiment is evidence of a simulated reality. I mean, it has been put forward in the past because it's going, well, it's one of those, we you kind of just need to fudge the results. And then it looks suspicious and that's the suspiciousness or the fuzziness of the results is taken to be evidence that the simulation is in fact real.
00:55:27
Speaker
Oh, there it is again. that JFK was accidentally killed by friendly fire when his Secret Service agents reacted to the non-fatal shot from Lee Harvey Oswald, pointing out there's a book called Mortal Era or something similar that goes through that conspiracy theory. But we've talked about before.
00:55:44
Speaker
We have in this very episode. Hmm. Oh, light bulbs. We talked about light bulbs before as well. The idea that the light bulb was developed that never needs replacing and the patent was subsequently bought and thrown into a deep dark vault somewhere.
00:55:59
Speaker
If you recall when we talked about that, that they pointed out that there may be something to it, but it's also the fact that that There is a correlation between how long a light bulb can last and how much light it gives out. And light bulbs that give out the amount of light do actually wear out faster. And you can, yes, there is that light bulb that's been on for 100 years or something, but it's a very dull orange glow. If you want a light bulb that lasts forever, it's not going to actually be a very give you very good illumination.
00:56:27
Speaker
Not at all. Actually, so on on well on a topic that we talked about a while back, which is Jeffrey Epstein.
00:56:39
Speaker
Was he a pedophile or not? Because we've talked about how there are some people who've started defending Jeffrey Epstein. They go, oh, you know, he wasn't having sex with children. he was having sex with young women. So that's not really pedophilia. It's something else. And apparently Alan Dersowicz on a... News program recently claimed there was no sex trafficking ring. They said he's a pedophile because he had sex with a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old. That would mean he was a pedophile in Florida, but not in England.
00:57:13
Speaker
And then he says Epstein's a three or four on a scale of 10 for sex offending. i told that I saw that claim. Yes, we now we now have ah we now have a sex offender scale and he's going be three or four. And anyway it's what it's a sex offender scale. We're not saying these people aren't sex offenders, so they're already bad people. We're simply saying they're not the worst of the bad people.
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah, this kind of argument, oh, but if they were 16 or 17, it's not a real issue. case of yeah But it it it still is, especially when it's an adult having sex with a 16 or a 17-year-old. And especially when there's consent. Even, you know, the consent does not appear to have been that much of a concern in a lot of this. Precisely.
00:58:03
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think I've, I think I've, I guess some person, where's the Adrenochrome people at? Man, and I was hoping to see that one on here. Uh, so was i So was Oktober Satori.
00:58:19
Speaker
ooh, ooh, okay, okay. it Sounds like you've got something. NYC underscore flat style says, here's one. the Nazis didn't really lose World War two They only lost in Europe, but succeeded in gaining a foothold in American politics while flying under the radar. They lost in the short run against FDR. They weren't able to topple his government with their failed coup, but once Germany lost in 1945, it was easier to slowly rebuild the Nazi party in the US and influence American politics and domestic slash international policy
00:58:52
Speaker
without drawing a lot of attention to themselves because people thought that Nazism has been beaten once and for all. Nazi sympathisers were everywhere in American businesses and among the elite before and during the war. They didn't just stop believing crazy shit just because Germany lost, and many Nazi party leaders evaded justice by fleeing to the Americas.
Reflection on Conspiracy Theory Variations
00:59:10
Speaker
The past 70 years in the US has just been desensitizing Americans to Nazi ideals by corporate and political elites and consolidating power, to the point that now the entire political party caters to and openly courts white supremacist and neo-Nazi voters. Give it another five years and we'll be where Nazi Germany was in the late 30s.
00:59:27
Speaker
We are where Weimar Germany was in the 1920s and November 6 was our bear hall putsch. If and when slash if we go full Nazi, we'll put the whole world into another world war and into a major economic depression that will be nearly impossible to pull out of. Instead this time will truly be the bad guys and anybody that doesn't have an exit plan is truly fucked But it may not matter like an end of the world Neville shoot slash on the beach situation We're being in a place like Australia or New Zealand simply buys you slightly more time before the fallout gets to you And that scenario right there is actually why the tech pros have been buying our property like mad in New Zealand england
01:00:01
Speaker
Well, I mean, certainly, yes, lots of tech lots lots of lots of very wealthy Americans have been buying property in New Zealand because some of them, like James Cameron, I think, just having having gone come down here for the movie industry, just likes the place. But yes certainly some of them, your Peter Teels or what have you, have decided that New Zealand would make the best boat hole, bolt hole, rather. And then and also boat hull. They probably do keep boats in those bunkers. There as well, yeah yeah. In fact, frankly, given the size of some of those super yachts, I wouldn't be surprised if there are bunkers in some super yachts. That's why they be so big, so they can float.
01:00:36
Speaker
Exactly. Yes, that was something that was an interesting... ah More just sort of a read, I guess, on on how things have been going, suggesting that it's actually... I mean, it is one of those things... william I can see a certain degree of plausibility in that it's a well-known fact that the Nazis were copying the Jim Crow laws. So they looked to America when they were enacting their policies for controlling and eventually eliminating the Jewish population in the post-Weimar Republic, Germany. So you can kind of see that if you were a clever Nazi politician,
01:01:17
Speaker
who realizes that the war in Europe for Germany is lost, you might start moving yourself to the Americas. Although, as we know, they mostly move themselves to South America rather than North America. i think the biggest similarity isn't the causal claim that the Nazis infiltrated the US to make the US a Nazi stronghold, It's the kind of economic situation that gave rise to the Nazis is something that people on the right have been persuading people in the US is true now.
01:01:56
Speaker
So the reparations that the Germans are forced to pay after World War i were in part responsible for the kind of austerity budgets that then led to the Nazi Party becoming popular in the Weimar Republic and then leading to the rise of the Nazi Party as the power of Germany.
01:02:16
Speaker
And I think people have been using the rhetoric of imp of impovered impoverishment and the threat of the reason why you're impoverished is because of those people over there to then drive similar factors feelings in the US electorate, leading to the current situation we have now, where it does appear the US is in fact ruled by a fascist dictator.
01:02:40
Speaker
Well, I think this has gone on long enough, quite frankly. i have one last thing that I've just found. Do you have a do you have one last thing? I don't. I do not. Okay, well, I'll do this. this i think this this is I quickly switched to a different thread also on the Ask Reddit subreddit. This is now a thread called Which Conspiracy Theory is So Believable That It Might Be True? This is a theory I've never heard before.
01:03:04
Speaker
I don't see how it's a conspiracy theory in any way, but nevertheless, this is credited to user The Next Village. which says,
01:03:15
Speaker
the arms on tyrannosaurus rex skeletons are backwards they ought to be rotated one hundred and eighty degrees what good are these stubby little armsms for we have found out relatively recently that t rex have feathers it is now an established fact trex not covered in scales but in feathers like a bird take the arms on a tirex and flip them around one hundred and eighty degrees now you have wings like an ostrich He compares an ostrich skeleton and a Tyrannosaurus skeleton and says, we used to think of almost all dinosaurs as lizard-like. In fact, the name means terrible lizard. Now that we know that many different animals we think of as dinosaurs are more bird-like than lizard-like.
01:03:51
Speaker
Tyrannosaurus rex had wings. Not big wings to fly with, but wings that were perhaps something like that of an ostrich, cassowari, or emu, although much likely much smaller in proportion to their body. Ostriches use their wings in mating rituals to make themselves appear larger and to signal and communicate Perhaps the T-Rex used theirs for some similar purpose. They did not have useless stubby little arms.
01:04:12
Speaker
How about that? no I mean, it's it's possible. I did read something recently which was going, well, look, most dinosaur assemblages are incomplete. And in many cases, they're incomplete in such a way that in some cases, 80% of the bones you see in a reconstruction of a dinosaur are made up educated bits of speculation. So a few real bones here, a few real bones there, some knowledge about how bone density and musculature would work to kind of infer what would go in between, but a lot of guesswork.
01:04:53
Speaker
So, yes, maybe, maybe those tiny little arms that don't seem to be of much use, although there is actually a theory now that that the Tyrannosaurus Rex did not walk around on two hind legs, but actually was much more of a fourly a four-legged creature. Maybe, maybe they were wings.
01:05:14
Speaker
Oh, hang on, one more. All rocks are soft until you go to touch them. Mm-hmm. Think about that one. Think about that one. So, at the and end of all of that.
01:05:28
Speaker
What have we learned? New under the sun. Yeah. I mean. Was this a waste of an hour? I mean, don't know if I'd call it a waste. It was it it was it was interesting enough. i know they're but Let me put it another way, Josh.
01:05:42
Speaker
Is this worth listening to for an hour? I kid could not answer that, quite frankly. um I mean, i've i've i've encountered at least least like one or two conspiracy theories I hadn't heard before. That one about Willie McRae, the Scottish guy who sir who who died or or was was murdered, is an interesting one. That seems to be an actual thing that there's a whole lot of information about. Shall we add that to list?
01:06:10
Speaker
Maybe we should. Willie McRae. And, yeah, Project Bluebeam was a blast from the past. I think that's something we have to go back and have a look at. But, I mean, yeah, in terms of what's new in the world of conspiracy theories, not a whole hell of a lot. There's a lot of variations on a theme, really. Yeah.
01:06:29
Speaker
Things that we've seen before possibly being restated in different ways, but still largely the same stuff. And maybe that's the way it's always been. this supports the contention that even though people say we are awash in conspiracy theories...
01:06:46
Speaker
it doesn't really look like we are. Yes, there are some persistent conspiracy theories, like the various political conspiracy theories we're seeing.
Episode Conclusion and Bonus Teaser
01:06:59
Speaker
But the thing about some of those persistent conspiracy theories is that a lot of them are at least plausible on first glance when it comes to people being disenfranchised by a recent Supreme Court decision. and things like that, those particular conspiracy theories are persisting because it seems that we have very good evidence that there is something suspicious going on in the background. And yes, there are a whole bunch of other weirder political conspiracy theories also in that mix.
01:07:32
Speaker
But the cost of real conspiracies is it's going to make people treat the slightly less plausible claims of political conspiracy with at least a, we should probably check this out.
01:07:46
Speaker
e So there you go. did did did we learn anything? Maybe a little bit? Kind of. ah And what more can you ask?
01:07:58
Speaker
I mean, you say tomato, I say tomato. Tomato, tomato. i mean, I guess what you could ask for is ah is a bonus episode, and if you're one of our patrons, you're going to get one. So that's nice. And it's a much more structured episode than this main episode has turned out to be. We've got we've got topics.
01:08:15
Speaker
We have genuine topics, too, that we want to discuss for the benefit of our patrons. So if you want to be one of them, have you, that supposedly Patreon has this new quips feature where we can quip at our patrons, make little quips for them to entertain. i at an as This sounds like a terrible idea. patron quip?
01:08:37
Speaker
ah ah It sounds like just sort of making your patron feed also being like a Twitter slash Blue Sky add-on. I don't know. We'll see. But if you're a patron, you may see some quips heading your way. Quips from M&Me.
01:08:50
Speaker
Or not. I don't know. it's probably but Josh, I have a quip to person and I don't plan to start. Well, who can say? But anyway, well we do know definitely that if you're a patron, you will be getting a bonus episode related to this main episode because we're going to go and record it just now.
01:09:05
Speaker
And if you'd like to be a patron and you're not currently, just go to Patreon. I think you have best luck searching for Denteth and Addison, but searching for the podcast is Guide to the Conspiracy. We'll get you there eventually as well. And then you can just sign yourself up.
01:09:19
Speaker
So... I think we're done. We managed to fill a respectable amount of time with that, and and and that that, frankly, I think is the benchmark of a good podcast. it It fills... I mean, it is the benchmark of a podcast. I will grant you as the benchmark of a podcast. We filled some time.
01:09:36
Speaker
Yep. Whether it was a good use of anyone's time to record or listen to this podcast is something that only the listener can decide. No, but in the I think that's going to be on my tombstone, filled some time. So I think i think then that we're all done for the week.
01:09:56
Speaker
So all there really is left to do is for me to say goodbye. Some kind of quip.
01:10:08
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who was so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:10:22
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
01:10:49
Speaker
And remember, it's not the fall that kills you. this time...