‘Spiracy Theories Class of 2024 05.21.24

In episode 1679, Jack and Miles are joined by journalist, Jared Holt, to discuss… The Relative Danger Of Conspiracy From Taylor Swift To Stop The Steal, The Resurgence Of Q-Anon and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's tough, being tough being lead guitar up there up front.
We need bass players though, Thank you for your service.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah yeah, look I love it, Like you get to
be the least sober person in the band and people
don't realize it, I think is what the fun part
is playing bass sometimes.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Did you have a bass face? Did I have a
bass face?

Speaker 4 (00:24):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, you when you get like nasty, I would have
to be.

Speaker 5 (00:27):
Like, how premeditated is the face? Is the question that
I always have for musicians, like when they're coming in,
do you practice the face or does it just like
come out of you if.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
You're a hack. I mean it's not like I had
a face or like time for bass face. It's just
more like when you're if something, if you're improvising or
something something happens, you're nat You're like like you're just.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
If you yourself are funky, it just comes out of
your soul, your your face contorts with it.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, mine's a little bit more like I'm hard of hearing.
I'm like, it's not like st Heim like st Him
and high. She's like like she's got a full on
base face.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah. Yeah, to the point that she.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
Opened for titay when I went and saw Taylor Swift
and I was googling in the middle of the thing, like.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Is everything okay? Like is that she was just serving base,
serving base face, giving you base facease face base for
that ass.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three thirty seven,
Episode two of Daly's Like I Say.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
This is the podcast where we take a deep dot
into America share consciousness.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
If you listen to us while you're sleeping, wake up,
because I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
That wasn't very nice. I listened to so many podcasts
like going to sleep. That's really the only time I
have to listen to podcasts, so just put them on.
And if someone did that to me, I would not
appreciate it. So I apologize.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
I just woke you up. You can go back to sleep.

Speaker 5 (02:01):
It's Tuesday, May twenty first, twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Mm hmm, you know what that is? May twenty first.
Not a lot a lot, Actually, not a lot, a
lot a lot of that.

Speaker 5 (02:12):
Not a lot a lot.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's National Strawberries and Cream Day.

Speaker 5 (02:16):
That's one of my favorite songs. I love that you
references what she do.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, she was at uack Barns same college as me.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
She's in college with you.

Speaker 5 (02:27):
Yeah, I guess I learned this after the fact, but
my wife was like, yeah, I know she went there
and was just like left early because that song was
blowing up as we were in school.

Speaker 6 (02:39):
Wait, and she was at she was your classmate. I
don't know what year she was, but she was there
were eighty nineteen eighty, so she what the fuck? Okay
out here with black Korean icon amory okay b deal.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Ummm, that just completely threw my momentum. Oh but not
a lot a loto is National Strawberries and Cream Day.
It's also a National weight staff Day, shout out to
people out there having.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
To fucking deal with the fucking impatient customers pretending that
you give a fuck.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Also National Memo Day. I don't know what that means,
but I'm guessing just the idea of a memorandum as
they used to call memo.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, oh a memo.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yes, my name is Jack O'Brien akaa so so so
so mel Lee Balls, please be mean extra mean because
because I'm gonna pay it. So so so so mel
Lee Balls, please be me an extra me because I'm
gonna pay Yeah. That is courtesy of Charlie Xavier to

(03:42):
round ball rock Tim Robinson lyrics where he goes bo
bo bo bo basketball, give me, gimme, give me the
ball because I'm gonna don't get on SNL.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I believe it was. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:55):
Anyways, great ref Shout out to Charlie, Sorry are you?
I fucked up the phrasing a little bit, but you know,
caught a whiff of my smellyballs and it just fucked
me up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Anyways.

Speaker 5 (04:07):
Thrilled to be joined as Elias by my co host,
mister Miles Grad.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, it's Miles Great, the Lord of Lancasham, North, Hollywood's
finest and also.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Just uh, what was I gonna say?

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I forgot?

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Oh, the latest fan of the Challengers Score.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
I've just been listening at Score A lot an't go wrong.
Just who would have thought some like industrial electronic music
goes soa pairs so well with tennis scenes. Anyway, Shout
out to everybody that's been saying to check it out,
especially super Producer and who now seeing it. I've seen it.
I've seen it, and I know and I know.

Speaker 5 (04:42):
Yeah and I know, and of course I do know.
Now we both saw weekend. You've seen, you've heard. Of
course we know, and of course we have seen it
and heard it. Miles, We are thrilled to be joined
by today's special expert guest. He's a senior researcher of
US hate and Extremist Movement at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

(05:03):
To quote Samuel L. Jackson, hold onto your butts. Oh,
it's the return of whole to Mania. The Holtster is
in the house, So Holtster your weapons.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
It's Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

Speaker 5 (05:22):
Hold hold, hold, hold, it's good to be here.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Hold on, We're not done. Jared, hold on. I feel
like I was off there. Give me one second.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Hold.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
That's good man, oh man, God help.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Things are good. It's hard to complain too much. It's
it's warm in Chicago again, so it's it's nice to
go outside and see things start to grow and walk
my dog along the lake front, which he is crazy about.
But yeah, it's been good. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
What do you mean like the like the like he's rabid,
so when he sees his body's of water. Yeah, just
are just loving and generally just excited by the year.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Bas he loving it.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Oh, he he goes crazy. He loves to smell all
the weird stuff that washes up on the shore of
Lake Michigan, which a lot of stuff washes up there,
like kinds of fish you wouldn't expect, Like that's probably
a good sign, Like there's a lot of like crab
looking things that wash up And maybe I'm just showing
my own ignorance over bodies of water, which I will

(06:27):
fully right right too. But uh but but yeah, he
just goes crazy. He runs in circles, goes nuts for
like ten minutes, and then my wife and I usually
carry him the rest of the way.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
But he loves it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Wow, like that like that metaphor or that story about christ.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
On the beach carrying him? Yeah, do you make him
look back at his footsteps and tell.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Him me and me and mom, Oh man, I'm glad
you're here. Because the Donald Trump and Race beach drifted
into Q town and I was like, oh, we're still
playing that music again, so I'm glad you're here to be.

Speaker 5 (07:07):
It was definitely on a bit of a Q tip
on that.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
One, Yes, Yeah, when he could have been on a
comal the abstract sort of wave that's a deep that's
a deep Q tip cut for all my drive call
qust fans out there. Yeah, but I'm sure that was
that like getting people excited on the old Q internets.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, some of the Q and on influencers, which is
such a weird thing to say. Yeah, like the same
way we think of like, oh, I'm like a spirituality influencer,
just like Buddy, I've read a lot of posts and yeah,
you're in safe hands, don't work?

Speaker 3 (07:41):
Are those are my spiritual influencers? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right right right, yeah, yeah, some of them that I
still like kind of keep an eye on from the
Q and on heyday we're like, oh, it's this music again.
And it's interesting to see this make the rounds because
during the twenty twenty campaign, you know, at Trump rallies,
this music would play and all the QUE people would
get like really pumped up about it because it's this

(08:06):
song by you know, it's uploaded on I think it's
SoundCloud or a YouTube channel or something by somebody who
is just like straight up Q pilled and or appears
to be I guess I should say. And so they've
always been like, look, this is this is for us,
this is our music, this is our anthem. And the

(08:29):
Trump where us by Can campaign has just been adamant
about like, no, it's just a song. And then reporters
are like, well, how'd you find the song? And they're
like and the next question, you know, and for all
the flak they got for using that song four years ago,
it's definitely I mean, this was like somebody's conscious choice

(08:52):
was like we're going to play this song again.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Right, yeah, oh, and he's gonna pause for thirty seconds,
so to just like let that shit cook.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
That let everyone based yea, Mari.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
And Natean, Well, yeah, I'm glad you're here because I'm
I have many questions about that and generally what we're
looking at this fall.

Speaker 5 (09:12):
You like wears coast off of the vibes of people
who are in Chicago during summer because they have to
like trudge through like Andy Duframe crawling through ship to freedom.
Chicagoans need to trudge through eight months of pure ship
to get to really like one of the best places
to be during summer months, spring and summer months and

(09:33):
like in the world.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, yeah, Chicago in the summer is like my favorite
place on earth.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah, it's really great. Yeah, wow, now I must go.
Have you been Jack Sureley, you've gone said, I've never been.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
I just uh, you know, I've seen Ferris Bueller and
I feel like summer. All right, Well, we're gonna talk
more about conspiracy theories u Resa paper about not all
conspiracy theory is created equal, some more alarming, some deserve

(10:04):
more attention than others. But before we do that, we
do like to get to know you a little bit
better by asking you what is something from your search
history that's revealing about who you are or what you're
up to.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Do you have a warrant for this question?

Speaker 2 (10:21):
We got a warrant for this one. What are some
of you recently screencapped on your phone?

Speaker 5 (10:25):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, we have a war case.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, I'll go with the Google search all right. I've
been getting sort of back into watching stand up lately,
so I've just been trying to remember, like all my
favorite comedians and see what they've put out in the
last couple of years. The most recent one I watched
was Connor O'Malley's Stand Up Solutions.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
How I saw him promoting that and I was really curious,
how was that? It's so good?

Speaker 1 (10:54):
It takes a very weird, almost kind of dark twist
at the end.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
But that O'Malley, the stand up comedian, the guy who
used to just scream at people on his bike on
fine the people on the walls.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, it's weird at the end. Can you believe huh
huh so unlike him? Yeah no, but but it's it's
very good. So that the Google searching has been fruitful
so fun?

Speaker 5 (11:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, have you have you come across any bummer ones?
They're like, I used to love this person. Then you're look,
You're like, oh fuck, man, no, Hey, what's.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
Louis c k up to?

Speaker 3 (11:29):
I used to watch all his stand up specials, but
I haven't been catching the latest worst. Yeah, that dude
just been in the lab for like the last seven man.
I can't like to see what he comes up with. Well,
I looked up.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I guess a lot of people like that. Uh Shane
Gillis guy.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Sure, I really do.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
And I I mean, he's like good, but I don't
get the hype. Well, I think it's like a disappointment
for me. It's like the way you see people talk
about him online. You think he's just like the funniest
dude alive. But yeah, but I don't really get it.
I don't know, yeah, I know, like people were like, dude,
he came in like Andrew Schultz and like fucking poned him.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
And then people like and you also got canceled off
s and like there's like this like lore behind him
too that I.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
Know was a big, big, big boost, big boost.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
That's and they think it's like the best thing that
can happen to you as a comedian for you lose
a job.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right exactly, and then you can go to Austin, Texas
and then you're the new king controversial.

Speaker 5 (12:26):
Lose a job controversially, some people just like quietly get
fired after once.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
That's no fun for them.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
They fired me. They canceled me from SNL because they
said I was not funny.

Speaker 5 (12:39):
They're like, oh man, we got to support this character then.
But yeah, I am in my Gilly suit, which is
my Shane Gillis T shirt and match shorts all over
France Shane Gillis shirt. What is uh?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
What's something you think is underrated?

Speaker 1 (12:55):
It's warm again? So I'm playing golf again. I think
golf is underrated. It rightfully so has a reputation as
this like very stuffy boys club. But in the last
like five years, especially the game has grown to be
like a lot more inclusive. There's all this like I
maybe I'm you know, too cynical but hilarious, like conflict

(13:19):
between the PGA and live golf and like the pinnacle
of capitalism like coming down to take it to its
ultimate end and stuff and like, but the golf is
has changed quite a bit, like as a game and
like culturally, I think it is very hard, impossible to
master and a good excuse to spend like four to

(13:43):
five hours outside seventeen hours.

Speaker 5 (13:46):
In my case, I'm not very good at it. But
how are they changing? Are they hitting it with the
stick end? Now? Which what's changed about how we're playing golf?

Speaker 1 (13:56):
You get you get two balls and you stick them
together and I.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
A string and then just whip him around your head.

Speaker 5 (14:04):
Real fast and yeah, let it fly.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
It's just wild even to see like like one of
my favorite rappers, Schoolboy Q, like he started getting into
golf heavy and he's just like, yeah, I started going
on the tours, like I made more money golfing than
I did rapping, and he's like, yeah, it was racist,
but you know, you kind of find your community, you
get through it.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
And I was like wow, like when I saw people
like that, like la gangster rappers.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Be like, oh man, I'm really fucking with golf.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Now.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
I think that she's saying he made more money. What
he said he made more golf. This is a quote
he said. He said he didn't wrap for five years
because of golf, because he was like lucrative. I didn't
make that much money off rap. I made a lot
of money off rap, but I would say golfing helped
me a lot in times where I probably needed. I
made a lot of money off golf, like a lot
from connections on the golf course and offers.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
I don't think he's necessarily.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Oh okay, he's saying like being in that world just
like somehow became very beneficial to him.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
He's like, I'm going to this is making me hate
golf more. It's just people like because that's the thing
you always hear that are like, Yeah, it's just you're
out there, you're making business deals. You're I don't know,
getting drunk the park.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Those are those are not the people I played golf with.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Jack.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
We go out there, we're ready for some deals, ready
for these deals.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Hello, my good man. I'm here to golf and make
some money, is that you?

Speaker 5 (15:29):
Yeah, man, I was like, I was very hopeful. You know,
we've long talked on this show about the fact that
in some ways, especially in the city of Los Angeles,
golf courses are just the best parks the city has
to offer, but ones where we're not allowed to go
to them. And it would be cool if we just

(15:50):
said fuck golf and like took them over. And I
was hopeful that it was going to be a generational
thing and that people would, you know, well, once all
the people who play golf now aged out, like they
wouldn't be replaced. But I know so many people who
just right on Q, like they hit forty and they're like, yeah, no,
I golf now all the time.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
What are you talking about? Why don't you?

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Of course they do getting out there.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Well, then top golf too.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I just need to go to I haven't swung a
club since I was pretending to be Tiger Woods when
I was thirteen, So I think I would have fun
just smacking the shit out of the ball. But the
other parts that require patients and skill, no, no.

Speaker 5 (16:27):
No, no, yeah, I'm gonna start going to try and
start a revolution against golf, just because every time I
hit it, it like curves off to the right, like the.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Fuck it's goods. The fucking golf's fault. What classes? But
it is classes as fuck. But a crazy schoolboy Q.

Speaker 5 (16:45):
Was like, yeah, man, like I only like fifteen card dealerships.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Now, yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
There's like on this I think interview on Lil Yachti's
podcast or something, but yeah, he is, he is out there.
But yeah, even the way he talks about like just
his experience, it's it's very it's very eye.

Speaker 5 (17:02):
Opening for me, school boy Q fans, I must listen amazing.
And then he came back and just effortlessly dropped a classic.
So it's like, I guess it's not bad for the
soul like I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
No, No, dude, good for your bank account too.

Speaker 5 (17:16):
Bronna really sound you really sound like the people I
know who have started golfing.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
I'm going to fuck it.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
I'm going to I'm gonna see because I can't go
in a country club. I'm have to go to like
the public, like like Griffith Park or some ship. And
they're like, bro, I can't help you with anything unless
you need uh like air conditioning repair. My cousin hook
you up.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Maybe that might be so.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
You're gonna start golfing and then the sponsorships for the
show or they're gonna go from like whatever they are
to like Wells Fargo is.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah right, yeah yeah, rather than like the errant Michael
Rappaport podcast ad showing up on the ads that it'll
be like, you know, when.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
I'm out on the links, I like to use my links.
It's still a Michael Rappaport when I'm out on the links.
My good friends, that's what we do. But yeah, I
who knows.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
I mean, look, there's already a very iconic blazon in golf.
They're like, remember remember this, what about this guy? Except
he sucks and that could be me.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
That's my link.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
I'm like Tiger Woods, except I suck at golf. I
fucking suck, bad, dude. That's how I shock. They're like, oh,
up to the tee is Miles Gray. I'm just panicking.
I'm just fucking stupid ass fucking club. I'm probably gonna
fuck this up anyway.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
You guys can talk.

Speaker 7 (18:38):
I don't care.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
You could talk, I don't care, but fuck it up anyway.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
Tiger Woods, except bad at golf, is just like a
really low level of swag. Oh yeah, that's that's tough.
What is uh, Jared, what is something you think is overrated?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Being good at stuff?

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
I think, especially with social media and stuff, a lot
of our brains have kind of been rewired by different
like cultural, technological, whatever forces in society to seek a
lot of our validation outward. So I think when it
comes to hobbies like art or sports or whatever it is,

(19:25):
I think a lot of us, you know, at least
speaking for myself here, can feel pressure to be like
good enough, or like past a certain baseline at something
to feel like it's worth my time or worth doing.
But I think that, you know, collectively, we have to
lean into kind of sucking and stuff, which you know,

(19:47):
going back to golf, I kind of suck at golf,
but I have to to you know, out there. Yeah
I heard that I'm not good. I mean me either,
but but yeah, I mean I think just just doing
stuff for the joy of doing it. I think right
is important and can be easy to lose sight of,
especially if you're like me internally online and.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right you know, well, yeah, I know, like so many times,
like people like when you start something they're like, oh,
are you good at it? You know, like oh I
started like playing this, or starting like oh, like what
are you gonna put in an album? You know, Like
there's always like this thing of like the sort of
assumption is like you're doing it for some kind of success.
A lot of especially in LA, when you tell people
you're trying some new shit, versus being like, no, I'm

(20:30):
merely just experimenting with something, an activity that might like
may bring me pleasure. I'm hoping that it does for
sustained periods. I'm divorcing myself from like what the results
are of it.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I thought it would be fun, Yeah right, Yeah, it
turns out I suck shit at golf, and I kind
of like that.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
I pissed off all these people that I'm holding up
behind me.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, when it takes me seventeen strokes on, it gives.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Them more time to do deals.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, exactly. They should be thanking facilit facilitator.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
Yeah, I'm just taking pretty good at golf, which you're
allowed to pick it up and throw it right where
you wanted to go, is that?

Speaker 7 (21:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, you're are you guys? Have you ever played what's
what was the last time you played golf.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
I was not terrible when I was in my like
early twenties, but I was always playing on like Part
three's and ship just like close to my house. And
I got a hole in one on one of those
and then stopped swear together on Part three. Yeah, I
did swear down, swear to swear to God up and down,
my God, and then well you have to just quit
after that. It was so it was so lucky that

(21:35):
I spent like three minutes looking for the ball before
I looked in the hole.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
I was like, whoa, you were really like, no way,
there's no way. Yeah, I had no idea. How are
you a mini golf sucking.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Kid place, fucking castle park Man, that place fucking bullshit, man,
fucking bullshit, man, fucking I hate that one.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
That shaped like the old Civil War fucking fort ship. Stupid.

Speaker 5 (22:08):
I've never been on that on that mini golf course,
oh Jack, been there, but not done the I've never
played around.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Oh man, you should join me. Man, I got a
good group of dudes. Man, we go out there swinging
the rubber golf utters and.

Speaker 5 (22:22):
We do a lot of a lot of six pack
each orange genising golf. Man, You're not supposed to do that.
That's why not Orange genis, man, Orange genis. We're not
breaking the rules. We do things above board. You know,
we're business people. We're business people, man. Yeah, all right,
closing so many deals on the back nine of the uh.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Right there and go right off the four or five freeway.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I was.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Like trading uh Pokemon cards, killing.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yo, legit kids for trading Pokemon cards over there, like
in the where the lunch tables are.

Speaker 5 (22:57):
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll
come back and talk about conspiracy theories.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
And we're back. We're back, and Jared, you have this
piece about to report. I guess we would call it
a report. It's official, and.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
It's about the fact something that I feel like we've
that's been coming up more and more recently, that not
all conspiracy theories are created equal. There are some that
are very dangerous, but they're not always the ones that
get the most attention. So just wanted to like kind
of get you to talk broadly about where the kind

(23:49):
of impetus for this report was coming from.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Like many things I write nowadays, it's equal parts trying
to be helpful and also just my passive aggression at
the National news right in the way they cover the
stuff I research so generally conspiracy theories and sort of
how prevalent they feel like they've become in discourse, especially

(24:16):
political discourse, is important on the whole. But the premise
of this piece is basically to say that even though
that bigger picture is important, and all the conspiracy theories
like make up that bigger picture, it doesn't mean that
like people saying that the Illuminati is using Taylor Swift

(24:38):
to flush the super Bowl is equally as important as
you know, the same conspiracy theorists accusing some random no
no name election worker of being a pedophile in that
person's life being turned upside down by freaks on the internet.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
Yeah, So it's like there's a power imbalance that you
kind of comes up throughout the report that, like a
lot of the theories, the one that jumped out to
me because it's one that we've talked about on this
show is but the Boeing whistleblower thing, where whistleblowers keep

(25:16):
dying and everyone's like having fun half jokingly, like with
a little you know, while waggling our eyebrows aggressively mentioning
the two whistleblowers have died while while they were like
about to testify, and then like just unrelatedly linking off

(25:36):
to the Michael Clayton meme or the mic not meme,
the Michael Clayton scene where a corporation like murders.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Where they tase that dude and then they shoot the toes. Yeah,
shoot him up between the toes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (25:50):
Like, on the one hand, like it seems like, I
don't know, pretty pretty huge accusation to make. On the
other hand, I'm not as worried about boeing, Like I
don't think our problem as a society is boeing, not
like getting too much scrutiny personally, Like that doesn't seem
to be the main problem. But I guess I'm curious,
Like where does that fall for you on the list

(26:13):
of like conspiracy theories to be monitoring and concerned about.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, so it's kind of conspiracy theories where yeah, we
all wiggle our eyebrows and wait for the other person
to be like, right, actually gave this though, yeah too, right,
like you know, yeah, just keep going. But yeah, but
like wouldn't it be crazy if then somebody pulled up
the banking documents for this and right, right, so.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
I told you we don't have a twelve in that, Sue.
I was just back there.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah all right, So so I always think about like
like power balances and then also like who is the
victim of a conspiracy theory?

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:53):
And maybe that's victims the wrong word, but like this is,
I mean, what happens we all or a negative opinion
about Boeing their corporation. My heart does not break for
the stock price of Boeing, or you know, how people
feel about their airplanes or whatever. I think if you know,

(27:13):
those kind of theories started singling out, you know, like
a specific lawyer and then all of a sudden, like
two hundred thousand people are hyper fixated on this lawyer
and sharing their addresses and stuff like that can get
a little bit you know, then that would kind of
get into the territory of like, oh, maybe we should
keep an eye on this because this could actually like
cause some trouble to this person, who, as far as

(27:34):
we know, could just be like, you know, totally innocent
or whatever. It's just like people are coming up with
things online to say about it. Yeah, so this piece
is really more about like those power balances, like you
pointed out in considering the impact of conspiracy theories. I
think there's a lot of conspiracy theories that exist in

(27:55):
sort of a gray area like truth wise, of like,
this certainly doesn't look good. It looks a little weird,
and it might be fun to talk about or explore
or like get you know, but that's not something I like, Really,
it's not like a place I really try to go
in this piece because it gets like a little you know,
complicated to talk about is maybe more of like a

(28:16):
sociology question of like why do we enjoy this? But sure,
but yeah, that's that's kind of how I think about it.
I tend to think stuff like that is you know,
generally benign. We're harmless in the grand scheme of things.

Speaker 5 (28:31):
Right, yesterday we talked about how Trump is needle dropping
these C songs at his rallies, and for me, even
I feel like the slow creep of this has sort
of like flown under the radar, this latest needle drop,
because like at first it was this thing that like, yeah,
it might be tied to Q, and then he's started

(28:53):
just like playing it during his speeches like on purpose,
like in a like music would start swelling out in
a movie in a weird way, and like at first
that was like Jesus, well, like what is happening? This
is so strange. And now when he does it and
like stops for a minute to just like let the
music ride, We're just like, uh huh, like you so
like this feels like we have a presidential candidate who,

(29:18):
if the election was out tomorrow, would win or would
be very close to winning, who is embracing what is
ostensibly a cult with him as the figurehead. Is that
one of the ones that you feel like we need
to be worried about? And if so, why or why not?

Speaker 1 (29:35):
I would say yes because of you know, again going
back to this question of power, there's few people in
the US that hold more you know, sway and are
very close if not, you know, I mean, like you
pointed out, Trump very well could win this fall. It's
it's like very much in the cards. I tend to

(29:56):
think he probably will. I hope I'm wrong. But to
have that kind of level of power, indulging conspiracy theory
like QAnon, which has driven you know, several individuals to
violence throughout the years, I think is worth caring about
because it's getting the blessing of somebody from a position

(30:18):
of high power, which means that you know, if we
think of conspiracy theories like that, particularly some of the
more deranged ones like QAnon, that have potentially more grave
implications for the people that get caught up and targeted
by them, you know, if we think of that as
like a numbers game, then getting on stage with the

(30:40):
you know, potentially the next president. You know, it's hard
to think of a bigger, more consequential platform than that, right.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
And what like you know, just kind of watching the
ebb and flow of q Andon, like obviously they it's
things subsided. As you know, the drops became less and
less frequent and then like stopped completely.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Then you see sort of like it popping up.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
I just saw an article that you shared about how
like QAnon references have been like just resurgent on like
on Twitter recently and looking at even like what Trump
is doing. Like in twenty twenty, I remember we were
all like, oh shit, you're really doing this to try
and like get as many people behind you for this
reelection push as possible, and like winking at the QAnon
people have been like yeah, come on, y'all right, like

(31:26):
here's my like, come on down under this big tent
and we can do it all together. Is it, like,
you know, from what you've seen, is QAnon still like
at this level where like this is sort of why
Trump's doing this again to be like all right, guys,
like is it or is it kind of like an
Avengers assemble kind of like bat signal to be like, hey,
we need to I need as many of the fucking

(31:47):
freaks as possible to sort of go all in on
my reelection campaign because maybe I can then turn that
into a you know, potential January sixth type sequel, or
is the only way given because he can't remember the phrasing,
so like where we go once, we go, we go always?
Many are saying.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
We go one.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
He's winking at him because he thinks they're kind of cute,
you know.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love your shoes, you shoes.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
I mean, I think it it generally kind of lines
up with both of the previous Trump campaigns and what
is shaping up to beat this one as well, which is,
you know, put on a show for the freaks and
let them kind of do the work of drumming up
a larger page base of support.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
You know, Trump has done this from the very start
on immigration rhetoric, taking like much harder lines and sort
of restrictionist positions than other GOP candidates in the field
were at the time, and still has some of the
most extreme immigration policies that you know are floating around
the GOP. So, you know, between just like dumbing back

(32:56):
through the Trump campaign prior iterations, but the reviews with
Alex Jones, the praisine of like nutjobs like Ted Nugent,
the getting dinner with the lips of TikTok Lady. You know,
it's like very much this effort to cater to and
sort of bring along anybody who is going to be

(33:20):
ride or die for him. So I think his affinity
for the qan On people, I don't think he's like
deep in the weeds.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
I don't think he knows about like que drops or
you know, really like truly knows who any of these
people are.

Speaker 5 (33:35):
But he don't know about q drops because he is
que and doing the drops, right, So like he doesn't
even think about them as drops, right, is that what.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
He to say to say that he knows about him
would be under your selling it, you know, you.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
Know what I mean, he has Jared is waggling his
eyebrows at me, just like.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
But yeah, I mean I think generally, you know, he
he doesn't meet supporters that he doesn't like, and that's right,
you know, tries to give him a little pat on
the head and scratched to keep him going. In terms
of QAnon more broadly, it's certainly not what it used
to be. When the drops stopped, you know, a lot

(34:16):
of that energy went elsewhere. In twenty twenty, it was
like starting to spill into anti vax stuff. It continued
to spill there. A lot of it spilled into election
denihilism more broadly. So a lot of like diehard q
people you know, kind of looked up and went, okay,
well maybe the president wasn't posting on eight chan for

(34:39):
me to read, but you know, it's about the friends
we made along the way, and you know, sort of
the line in those spaces for a while was like, Okay,
it's not literally true, but you know it opened our
eyes and got us ready to see the truth or whatever. Yeah,
So a lot of these people have spilled over into

(34:59):
like your local GOP office or school board. You know
some of them like went through the broken windows at
the US Capitol Building and you know, went to jail
for that, And so the movement evolved. I don't think
it ever really died. That study that I shared from

(35:19):
NewsGuard sort of redid this methodology that I didn't think
it was twenty twenty two or twenty twenty one, where
I was looking at some of the catchphrases that you
used to think about as like, you know, there's the
flag that says I'm a queue head, where we go on,
we go all right, trust the plan or whatever it

(35:39):
may be. Storm, Yeah, and those were kind of rolling
off when I did that study, and to see that
come back up, I thought was sort of interesting. I
think it's definitely an incomplete picture of sort of what
has happened in that movement more broadly, but it'll be
interesting to see, if, you know, with this campaign kicking
back up, if we do see sort of a return

(36:01):
to form for some people, if they're like okay, well,
you know they're looking around and they're like, okay, we
played the you know, LGBTQ people are demons thing, what
what other greatest hits do we have?

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Right?

Speaker 4 (36:14):
Right?

Speaker 3 (36:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I mean they might they might pull this back out
the songbook. We don't know yet, but yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
The core belief of the Q stuff is that we're
all pedophiles, right, Like, isn't that like one of the
main ones, is any you jack, it's just me particularly
They do have some pretty uh detailed stuff. No, but
I guess that's one. Like there's this a New Yorker
article that we talked about a couple of weeks back
that is about this idea of misinformation and kind of

(36:44):
puts forward this idea that like some of the misinformation,
like some of the C stuff, is people like not
literally believing it, Like you just said, it's not that
they literally believe it. It's more that they believe it
in the way that like a Catholic believes that the
bread of the Communion is like actually the body of Jesus,

(37:07):
But like they don't expect blood to start like running
down their mouth when they like put it, you know,
when they bite into it.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
They yeah, I think that's the perfect way to put it.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (37:16):
Yeah, they just believe it as a you know, the
way a religious person does. And in those cases, the
more outlandish the belief like that this is where like
speaking in tongues comes from right, like in certain Christian faiths.
It's like the more outlandish and wild you can go with,
like the thing that you're saying you believe even though

(37:38):
you don't technically like adopt it as part of your
reality and like physically interact with it. The more outlandish,
the like more people are like, Wow, that person's like
going hard, you know, like that like.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
You get they're going hard for Q.

Speaker 7 (37:51):
Yeah, yeah, they're going hard for Q.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
But then like it does I keep waiting, Like once
I found out, Okay, there's this cult that likes a
lot of their beliefs. When you like pull out the
like selected readings of like Q drops and then like
the things that people are writing about Q would suggest
that they think they're at war with like Satan and

(38:13):
like people who are like worshiping the devil and like
want to kill their kids and drink their like vi adrenochrome.
And so I'm always like whenever there's like a mass
shooting or like something of that nature, I'm always like, well, this.

Speaker 7 (38:27):
Has to be cute.

Speaker 5 (38:28):
Like it feels like the sort of thing that if
people actually believe that we'd be seeing a lot more
horrifying violence in response then we are actually seeing. So
I guess that makes me wonder like where Q actually
falls on that spectrum, Like is it something that people
are just like this is like a fun thing that
I talk to with my other weird friends. We hate

(38:51):
Joe Biden and this is a fun way to like
channel that hatred, and we like think Trump is funny
and that's this is a fun way for us to
channel or is it something that's like And I don't
expect anybody to have the answer on this, but I
do think it's an interesting conversation as to like whether
you know Q is going to rise to that level

(39:12):
of being a justification for really horrifying violence.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Like you're saying like juxtaposing that with like great replacement
theory or something right where people truly adopt that as
an ideology.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
And I mean, I guess I should point out that,
like we have politicians spreading stuff like great replacement, like
you just mentioned Miles, but as horrifying as they are,
like mass shootings are not happening because of it every day, right,
And the same thing with qan on there have been
instances of like really nightmarish violence. I remember a few

(39:47):
years ago this I think it was a surf instructor
in California like took his kids down to Mexico and
just slaughtered them because he thought they were like lizard
people or something. Right, So it definitely came and do that.
But that's something I also kind of get to in
the piece that I wrote with my colleague Lucy, which is,

(40:07):
you know, trying to encourage you know, writing kind of
directly to news audience here, trying to encourage like more
open thinking about the role that conspiracy theories have in
people's lives. You know, they, like any other form of media,
they offer all kinds of non material things to people,
you know, and it's not just like pure information that

(40:30):
must be deep onked. It's also like an expression for
the people that believe it of like identity and philosophy
and meaning and like these more abstract kind of like
front brain kind of stuff that that know, like, well,
actually the New York Times said that was false, and

(40:51):
then people are.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Like, what what Okay?

Speaker 5 (40:53):
Each of the things that you just cited in that
paragraph got more than three pinocchios from the fact checkers
of the world. What shit you're averaging for Pinocchio's my
good man.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
So yeah, So it's you know, I think trying to
think a little bit more openly about like what theories
like that can mean to people. To some people, they
can be very literal to people, especially people who are having,
you know, some sort of mental crisis or have inclinations

(41:26):
towards violence or you know, other dire sort of personal situations.
They can be justifications for really terrible things right to
a lot of people. They can be entertainment to some people.
It can be like a quasi religion. It can mean
a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
And the point that I was trying to make in

(41:46):
the article is it's worth thinking about those kind of
implications or like what that might mean beyond just like
what a lot of coverage of conspiracy theories and big
publications tends to look like, which is they're saying Taylor
Swift is gonna, you know, get a sniper rifle and
shoot the ball and deflate it and then the Super

(42:07):
Bowl is gonna be ruined or yeah, whatever, you know,
and then being like damn, that got a lot of clicks.
Is there a lot of Americans that think this is true,
and it's like, but that's not.

Speaker 5 (42:18):
Like you're linking off to it in your massive news
publication by the way, Like, yeah, we the stupidity of
other people, like in the abstract is like a myth
that I feel like we want to believe in as Americans,
Like we want to believe that if you can tell
people that, like a big group of people is believing

(42:41):
something that like seems incomprehensibly like almost unbelievably stupid, Like
they they're going to eat that up. They they love
to believe that. It's just generally when you talk to
those people, not true that they actually Yeah, I mean
I've talked to like especially when I was doing more
like on the ground reporting stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I would just go to like QAnon events and talk
to these people and these a lot of I mean
some of them. We're not the you know, sharpest tools
and the ship, but a lot of them, most of them,
I would even say, we're perfectly smart people but had
like their intelligence had taken them into like nonsense land.

(43:23):
So it was a perfectly rational belief in things that
were laughably untrue, if that makes sense.

Speaker 5 (43:28):
Yeah, I mean there's a study about people who are
being deprogrammed from cults. When you like give people IQ
tests who have been in cults, like, they score on
average higher than the rest of the population, because the
theory goes that they're able to bend their mind around

(43:49):
and like construct more complex counter argument for more comprehensive
and bizarre systems of belief. Like basically, they would make
good lawyers because they're intelligent, and being a good lawyer
means you can construct a good defense of like anything
in your mind. This kind of is That's kind of

(44:10):
how I've always thought about that factor, like made sense
of effect that people and cults tend to be smarter
on average than the average person.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
But yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons my
golf game suffered. Like I was telling you, I took
one little trip down to Havana, started hearing some weird stuff.

Speaker 5 (44:27):
Man.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Ever since keeps slicy.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
That's one that's one that like I don't think people
would technically think of it as a conspiracy theory because
it's coming from like openly coming from sixty minutes and
like you know, the Department of I guess it's less
and less coming from. But like I guess former Defense
Department officials, but of.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
The Havana syndrome, Savanna syndrome, or it's like you have
a tummy ache. Yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
My ears are ringing and my memory is bad. I'm
seventy three.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
When when I'm seventy three and I drink an entire
bottle of whiskey last night and I woke up, and
I feel.

Speaker 5 (45:03):
Terrible to make the voices stopped from all the people
that I've had a hand in helping the US Army.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Killer maybe or maybe not.

Speaker 7 (45:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
It's fine working at the CIA. I don't think that
had anything to do with my mental stretch man.

Speaker 5 (45:14):
But yeah, when it's going from the US military to Cuba,
I feel like that power and balance worries me a
little bit. Like right, that feels like a bad balance overall.
But let's take a quick break and we'll come back
and talk a little bit more about maybe some of
the ones that you're most worried about and others that

(45:35):
people can maybe not worry about as much.

Speaker 7 (45:38):
We'll be right back, and we're back.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
We're back.

Speaker 5 (45:51):
And so we've already talked about Taylor Swift conspiracy theories
maybe not being the most dangerous, damaging thing.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Well, that's just like Jared's right.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, yeah, we're still I'm sure Taylor has a very
different opinion about that.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah she does. She does these tea drops. They're wild.
The three albums he releases the year.

Speaker 5 (46:13):
No, I mean, I'm sure it's anytime it's a private
individual like that, that's scary. And you know, John Lennon
kind of test to you know, like that's fucking probably
pretty scary. But what what are some other ones that
you see? Like, we we've covered conspiracy theories of all sorts.
What are some others that you feel like got too

(46:35):
much media attention?

Speaker 1 (46:36):
I think conspiracy theories about the collapse of the bridge
in Baltimore after a like a shipping vessel hit it, right, Yeah,
that's just call it bad regulations.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
There was there was.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
One post I saw that had like ten thousand retweets
on it and it was just like evidence of a
detonation on the bridge and it was just the footage
of the collision in slow motion. And I've probably spent
like fifteen minutes watching this trying to figure out what
this person thought they saw, right, and I couldn't figure
it out.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
But it's like something shoots off the side. It's like, yeah,
that's a cable snapping or like part of the structure breaking.
It's like could have been it could have been something.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
It's like, why is the boat moving so slow? And
it's like because it weighs like a gazooo.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Gap right, right, it's not a fucking jet boat. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (47:28):
That's like, I guess sort of a small local news
version of nine to eleven conspiracy theories where it's like
the the bad guy in this case is like diffuse
or the president of the United States, and so like
going back with our old rule of thumb of like
who is being targeted slash suspected in the conspiracy theory

(47:54):
if it's like just the man or something like that, Well,
I feel like that's how conspiracy theories sort of used
to be. It was like shadowy figures behind the scenes
and smoky rooms were like pulling the strings and that. Yeah,
that feels a little less harmful than this woman I
took a picture of carrying ballots from the counting.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, you're the librarian. It feels like the satanic blonde.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Dude.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
There's three sixes in her license plate in a row. No,
but just well, technically there's four sixes I saw, but
I mean that's got to be something. But I think too,
there's also this thing with conspiracy theories that like there
because so many people like have these sort of like
fucked up, weird like racist ideologies or whatever, anti Semitic beliefs,
that some of these stories are just kind of like

(48:47):
gives them an opportunity to sort of start saying that
shit too, where it's not necessarily like how like the
Francis Scott key Bridge thing turned into like.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
The dei mayor of Baltimore, you know what I mean, like.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, other thing where it's almost like you know,
whether it's a conspiracy or just an outlet for someone
to be like aha, See this confirms my absolute fucked
up way of looking at the world, and this proves it.
It's like another weird way we see these things going.
And I'm just thinking too, like now, you know we've
seen obviously like with like Laura Lumer kind of being

(49:19):
near and not near the Trump orbit and things like that,
and like Trump being like I like her and another
peuple like get her the fucky.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Everybody else that's around him is.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Like this, yeah, which is like Laura Lumer is she
I know she's as who is she not?

Speaker 3 (49:36):
No?

Speaker 5 (49:36):
She was.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
I don't even remember off the top of my head
what she was doing before she got involved in politics.
But do you remember, God, this was probably like two
thousand and fifteen sixteen, there was like a Shakespeare play
in the park in New York and like every time
they do this play they make the Julius Caesar character

(50:00):
or like the sitting president. So Trump was the president
that time. And then when the scene came and like
Caesar gets stabbed in the back spoiler alert.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
But dude, what the fuck? So too Jared, So so.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Her and Jack Phisobic stand up and just start like
screaming and hollering and get pulled out of this stage
for it. I do remember this, Yeah, And that's how
she made headlines really for the first time. And then
something happened and she was in New York City and
she went on this like crazy Islamophobic tirade against her

(50:36):
lift driver, oh yeah, and got banned from Lyft and
she got in really close with like Pamela Geller and
likes where the old school Islamophobes and wound up getting
banned from like a gazillion billion things, right, So her
claim to fame for the longest time was like I'm
the most banned woman in America, And then generally like

(50:59):
her whole shtick is just finding a politically relevant figure
and getting her phone out and screaming gibberish at them,
and when the person is like, get this fucking weirdo
away from me, She's like, yeah, they're scared of the truth.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Huh right, right, got them They didn't like, they didn't
like that, But yeah, I mean like we see sort
of like how these figures get into orbit, like or
even I know in that report you talk about like
how even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also seeing
like sort of this like conspiratorial thinking, what are can
you just kind of outline for us, like what you

(51:35):
think going into this election, like what's this kind of
gaining more attraction because I feel like just from the
last seven years, I'm like, yeah, I'm up on replace
great replacement theory, I'm up on QAnon. You've come on
and talked about active clubs, not necessarily conspiracy theory, but
like a group of extremists who are like trying to
get organized. What do you see as becoming something that
is actually gaining serious traction, and like obviously you've been

(51:58):
like rolling your eyes at the mainstream media coverage of
just being like, oh my gosh, isn't this wacky, rather
than like no, no, no, no, no, no no no, like,
this is wacky and it's very serious, and it's it's
gaining more and more I guess, you know, popularity or support.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess that would I would say, like,
that doesn't mean that talking about Taylor Swift conspiracy theories
should be like out of bounds or like, oh that's terrible,
why would you talk about that? But like, of course
not how those are meaningful is different, and they might
not be meaningful in a like this is immediately dangerous
to somebody kind of way.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
The ones that I have kind of been concerned about
going into this year are a lot of the ones
surrounding immigration. It's an election year, so Republicans are talking
about immigration again. But the way that it's threading into
sort of election denihilism and sort of these like anti
democratic attitudes generally mm hmm. I think that is kind

(53:01):
of a red flag for me, because if the people
that are spreading this get what they want, or like
the people in power, you know, Congress people and whatnot,
citing this nonsense to justify the kind of policies they're
putting forward that has a real material impact on a
lot of people and like cuts them off from their

(53:23):
ability to vote and participate in democracy as imperfect and
fucked up as it is.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Right. Sure, So I.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Like that's something that I see having like sort of
a clear through line to a material impact that could
harm people. And then generally, you know, great replacement theory,
spreading of hostile rhetoric, some of the conspiracy theories going
around about you know, college campus protesters, right, you know,

(53:51):
doing the encampments to support Palestinians, Like those students don't
have a means to defend themselves, and if people on
the line are getting them all riled up with nonsense,
it's claiming they're like connected with terrorists and whatnot, like right.

Speaker 5 (54:06):
Yeah, the mayor and the chief of police, right right,
you know, like it's them versus fucking children, right.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah, So like that kind of thing can be particularly
risky too, right, Yeah, So that's just that's like a
couple that come to front of mine.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Yeah, and I think there's also this other thing that's
it's like not necessarily it's sort of like the re
emergence of like the Big lie sort of like it
feels like right wing media is definitely setting the table
again for whatever the outcome is in November, to at
least on the table have it be the possibility that
this election was also stolen, because you hear stuff like

(54:43):
on Fox or they're like, you know, warning Democrats to
be like they better not they better not cheat, they
better not do some you know, like we'll be watching
and not necessarily hurling accusations quite vividly or specifically yet,
but still saying things rhetorically that being like because we
know what they like to do, we know what they're
up to, you know how they like to do this

(55:04):
other stuff. And I see that definitely becoming, you know,
just like a very subtle way that they're keeping sort
of like the embers of election denihilism, like very just powerful.
So when the time comes in they need to like
get it to burst into flames, like it's able to
is that?

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah, they did that in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty
Comma also right right, you know, before Stop the Steel
emerged as a movement. Before Trump started claiming everything was rigged,
all of the campaign surrocates were going out on TV
and being like, oh, yeah, Trump's gonna win an a landslide. Yeah, right, elections.

(55:41):
If everything's fair, if everything if everything's up, up, on
the up and up, we expect to win.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
It is why we knew what the what was going
to have. Like ahead of the election, everyone was like, so,
here's what they're going to do. And then sure enough,
like right down to like and the like verifying of
the electors or you know, whatever was happening on January seventh,
like that was going to be a key date for them,
and they did not disappoint.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
Yeah, so it's the same thing, but like the volumes
turned up. Yeah right, you know, you have more people
kind of participating in this. And then what I thought
was interesting was Trump had a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey.
I had a bunch of people. They had the everything
old is new again.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
You know, they're.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
One hundred thousand people were on this, you know, in
this venue that holds what like twenty or something. I
think was what I saw was it was just the
feeling on it. Yeah, and uh, you know after that
Trump was doing these posts on truth social and some
of his like fan boys were doing it too, where
it's like it's too big to rig the support, just

(56:46):
too big to rig the election against uff. Oh, sort
of seeing this idea that like you know, Trump has
this massive, massive base of support and it kind of
creates this condition mentally where you're like, oh, well, even
if they try to rig it, we're still going to win.
Then if you lose, it's like something seems really really
up right, right, so it's like getting it.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, like there being.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Sown, I think you're picking up on the right thing.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Miles, Yeah, well, because that's what I mean, like aside,
because I feel like, yeah, like we've seen q Andon
go up and down, and with the lack of like corroboration,
like of anything happening in real life, like that fizzles
out pretty quickly. But now it feels like the more
insidious thing along with like because like you're talking about
with the immigration conspiracies, that's the kind of stuff where
it's like they're importing voters from across the border. Like

(57:35):
that's sort of like the sort of foundation of like
what the sort of like the xenophobic anti immigrant bend
to that conspiracy theory. But like with this, it's a
subtle way, but yeah, like it's it's working on people's
emotions again because you're creating this expectation of a given outcome.
So if that reality doesn't come true fruition or doesn't

(57:56):
come to pass, then you really have some Now you
can take people who have gone from their moment of
being like but.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
I thought it was supposed to and then be like,
you know what it really was they started, and.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Can just easily funnel people into like really extreme beliefs
because yeah, like it's just been this constant sort of
you know, rhetorical massaging of this shit just to get people, yeah,
really riled up for it. That's what is scary. And
I'm like, when you look at I know, in the past,
who is your colleague that we had on who was

(58:30):
talking what was her name, Sabine.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Yeah, Sabine.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
When Sabine was on, we were talking about like what
what's it look like out there on like kookie telegram channels,
And it seemed like for the moment, not sure anything's
quite becoming organized for anything that would resemble like a
January sixth kind of thing. Now, now that we're like
sort of five months I think or four months away
from that. Is that still the case or are is

(58:55):
there still is there starting to become like a rallying
again of people who are like, hey, we got to
be vigil at this time, we got to be vigil
at this time.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
I mean, I think a lot of those folks are
still pretty scared of federal law enforcement, right and the
people that were like really bad I'm like, really responsible
for a lot of the more like organized violence on
January sixth are in prison now, you know. So it's uh,
I think that that in combination with like the stories

(59:25):
that these folks tell themselves about January six it just
made them like way too paranoid to do that, right now.
That's said, things can change, right right, Yeah, And we've.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Loved what a conspiracy theory keeps people in line.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I mean, we've still got like five months and some
change until the election, and most of the craziest shit
that happened twenty twenty happened after the election, right right,
So you know, I mean we're we've got a pretty
like long timeline to look down where things could change
quite a bit. At the moment, I don't think there's
an appetite for it, although in a deeply like cynical

(01:00:03):
it would it would be terrible, But if they did
it again, they would be like something at least a
little bit funny about it.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
That didn't know they're doing right, sick like this time,
it's gonna work out for all of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
To stop the steel specifically, Like so if you like
had a Supreme Court justice flying a Q flag, like
I think there'd be you know that that seems more
unlikely to me. But the fact that like Alito had
the stop the Steel flag flying at his home or like,

(01:00:39):
it just you know that Ginny Thomas, like Clarence Thomas's
wife was like as involved in the stop the Steel
stuff as she was. Like that, it just feels like
there's more institutional support for around that one, and that
that one is actually like fairly focused and insidious and

(01:00:59):
like specifically able to undermine the very foundation of like democracy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
Yeah, I mean it's it's all like way more organized now,
and I don't think they need to storm the capitol,
like if they can just build sympathy of like all
of the people on one side of the aisle in
said capital or the sympathy of people who are doing
the vote counting and certifying, you know, like, yeah, I

(01:01:29):
don't think they need to storm a capital right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Well shit, so they've gotten better. Stay tuned, everybody. Hey,
Like I said, November, take your time, take your sweet
ass time.

Speaker 5 (01:01:39):
November as time November. God, Jared, such a pleasure having
you on the show as always. Where can people find you?

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Follow you? Read you all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
You can read me. I write periodically for these two
for Strategic Dialogue, which is at ISD Global dot org.
I'm on Twitter or no? Everything?

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Everything up? Okay, never mind, I'm in.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I can't wait to give my banking information to the
richest idiot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Yeah, and my blooded it's a Jared L.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Holt and uh yeah that's It's like the two kind
of public facing things I do because of the work
I do.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
So there you go, amazing. Is there a work of
media that you've been enjoying?

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
When it gets warmer outside, I start listening to more
like heavier music. I've been kind of revisiting some of
my like post hardcore favorites like Touche a More and
really getting into or I guess back into this band
called the world is a beautiful place and I'm no
longer afraid to die, which that's a mouthful. Is a mouthful,

(01:02:46):
but they pull it off somehow. But yeah, yeah, just
revisit the music you listen to when you were a teenager.
Most of it probably still goes really hard.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Yeah, it does, it does.

Speaker 5 (01:03:00):
Miles, where can people find you as their working media?

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
You've been enjoying Twitter we call it twitter on Instagram
and that and the like, don't know about meta whatever, threads,
TikTok at Miles of Gray. If you like basketball man,
just get ready for this week's Miles and Jack got
Matt boosties because our heads are basically you have spun
around and popped off our bodies because the fuck o man,

(01:03:25):
the West, those Western Conference sem they're We're blessed. We're
blessed to just see such a such a wild ending
to that. And then also catch me on four talking
about ninety day fiance. A tweet I like is from
past guest Roywood Junior at Roywood Junior. He's quote, there's

(01:03:48):
fucking Terrence Howard. It looks like he was on Rogan
recently and he's talking now. I don't know if this
is a recent thing. But it's it's a clip of
Terrence Howard on Rogan and he put every black barbershop
used to have one of these brothers walk in on
a satturday afternoon and fuck up the vibes and let
me just play this whole fuck.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Whatever the fuck Terrence Howard is talking about here.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
That that we call intellectual phase locking, where when they
get different measurements for the speed of light, all of
the scientists around the world will average it out to
one thing instead of showing the fluctuations in it. Oh wow,
it's called intellectual phase locking.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
It's not oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
It truly is a shit like bro I don't know, man,
where's the guy who's selling bootleg tapes? But anyway, yeah, Terrence,
he continues to wow the people with his inferior intellect,
I mean, superior.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
In the joy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore.

Speaker 5 (01:04:43):
Obrian tweet I've been enjoying Boob Dylan at b yu.
Super Soaker tweeted you let your cat sleep great names
by the way, tweeted quote you let your cats sleep
in your bed? Question mark brother, I would let my
cat shoot a gun if you wanted to. And then

(01:05:04):
Andy Ryan tweeted, so embarrassing in an antique shop when
I tried to buy a vase and it turned out
to be the negative space between the faces of two
other customers.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
We've all been there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Well.

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeigeist, where
a d Daily Zeichgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook
fan page kind of that we're constantly just updating. We
just thought we were just told that it hasn't been
updated in four years.

Speaker 7 (01:05:33):
But we're gonna keep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Telling you about way yo big things coming. Bit keep
your eye open.

Speaker 8 (01:05:37):
Facebook a website Daily Zeiguist dot comery post our episode
than our footnotes, where then go off to the information
that we talked about in today's episode, as well as
a song that we think you might enjoy.

Speaker 5 (01:05:47):
Miles, what song do we think people might enjoy?

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah, you know, as things get slightly warmer, although la
is still stuck in its like late winter ish spring thing,
we have not quite gotten the heat.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
That we're used to. Although look it's it's the June
gloom always hits around this time, but the vibes are
getting more warmer in summer.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
Ear.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
I want to play this track by Reina tropical and
it's called Cartagena and it's just like a I've the
first time hearing her work, but she's like a singer, songwriter,
guitar player and it's just guys like that Latin tropical
sort of energy to it. And yeah, it's just a good,
good track just to play as we, you know, enjoy

(01:06:29):
the warmer months.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
So yeah, this is Cartagena by Reina. We would like
off to that in.

Speaker 5 (01:06:34):
The footnotes today He's like, guys, is the production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever fine podcasts are given
away for free. That's going to do it for us
this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending,
and we will talk to hell then bye bye