Conspiracy Clearinghouse

EPISODE 155 | Mummy Mia: King Tut's Tomb

Guest: Neil Laird, Emmy-nominated TV producer (Discovery, BBC, PBS, History, National Geographic), author of the Prime Time novel series

Since its discovery in 1922, the tomb of King Tut has captivated people, with research simply leading to more questions? How did he die? Was he murdered? Was he really born in Arizona and later moved to Babylonia? And is there a curse?

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EPISODE 154 | Forgotten Languages (FL): The Most Interesting Site on the Web?

While researching a previous episode about internet rabbit holes, I came across one that was some big, so complicated, that the entry soon grew into its very own episode. It's called Forgotten Languages, and at first it seems like it's all about ancient languages. But these turn out to be ciphers which, when decoded, reveal a series of interlocking narrat...

EPISODE 153 | Broken Arrows and Other Nuclear Boo-Boos (World Is Weird 16)

One reason conspiracy theories flourish is that sometimes there really are secrets kept back from the public, only revealed later. Take Broken Arrows - accidents involving nuclear weapons, near-misses that could have become incredibly serious but, fortunately, didn’t. 

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EPISODE 152 | Internet Rabbit Holes (1)

Once in a while, someone comes across a website that creeps them out, or confuses them so much they start to ask others about it and, before you know it, an internet rabbit hole has formed.  Today, we’ll take a look at a few of these internet mysteries that sure got tongues wagging and finger flying over keyboards. Though almost always, the answer that’s found, if there is one, is disappointi...

EPISODE 151 | Global Warming Is Real

Guest: Thomas Schueneman, environmental journalist, founder of the PlanetWatch Group, TDS Environmental Media and GlobalWarmingisReal.com

A chat about some of the more pervasive and commonplace climate change skepticism claims and just some general kvetching about where we are in this conversation these days. 

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EPISODE 150 | Operation Gemstone & the Gemstone File

Very often sheer naked greed is hidden behind a glossy finish of virtue, something we can plainly see in the stories of two Gemstones from the conspiracy world – G. Gordon Liddy’s whacked out Operation Gemstone plans to help Richard Nixon get reelected, and the outlandish and complicated Gemstone File, which might be the very first mega-conspiracy.

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EPISODE 149 | Russian Dolls: Rasputin and Blavatsky

Russians are practical, artistic and deeply mystical. And they tend to fall under the sway of strong personalities. Like two people from the past - Rasputin, the so-called Mad Monk, and Helena Blavatsky, founded of Theosophy, which itself is the very root of the modern New Age movement.

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EPISODE 148 | The Visitors: 3I/ATLAS & Friends

Something is happening right now that maybe we should all pay at least a little bit of attention to. It’s time to break out the nice dishes and give the place a good dusting, because we have company folks. We have a visitor. 

Probably a comet. But maybe not, according to some. Maybe it's an alien spaceship with bad intent. And it’s coming to get us.

UPDATE: Nothing happened. What a...

EPISODE 147 | Man Out of Time: The Comte St. Germain

He composed and played music, spoke several languages, was versed in alchemy and the early sciences, and hung around with the likes of Mozart and Casanova, yet no one even knew his real name. Voltaire called him the “Wonderman”, though that may have been sarcasm, but most came to know him as the Comte, or Count, St. Germain. One of his many wild boasts and claims was that he was ...

EPISODE 146 | The Bicameral World of the Zizians

One striking thing about the many stories that have appeared about the Zizians and the crimes they are accused of committing, is that each one starts at a different place. Some start with the attack on a Vallejo landlord that resulted in his being run through with a samurai sword and then work backwards and then forwards. Others begin their tale with the shooting of an older couple i...

EPISODE 145 | Trumpspiracies: What a Tangled Web

Ever since Donald Trump first decided to run for the highest office in the United States, he has promoted an astonishing number of conspiracy theories. It’s almost as if a New York real estate baron famous for lying to clients, not paying his bills and exploiting loopholes for his own benefit had learned, somewhere along the way, that “truth” is a slippery subject. And because he’s n...

EPISODE 144 | Unwell and Unregulated: The Militia Movement

The United States has always had a certain comfort level with violence, or at least the idea of it. Throughout its history, groups of armed citizens will threaten to use, or actually use, force to get their point across, either to effect change or to prevent that from happening.

But in the 1990s, something changed, and groups formed around new ideologies that sometimes had ...

EPISODE 143 | Paranoia Is Forever: Disney Conspiracies

Walt Disney’s goal was to make the “Happiest Place on Earth”, and to delight and inspire both children and adults through the ages. Many would say he succeeded beyond even his own wildest expectations. Others might say that Disney is, and always has been, a place of evil. And when you get as big as Disney has, you are naturally going to attract some rather wild narratives. 

Lik...

EPISODE 142 | Project 2025: The First 180 Days (World Is Weird 15)

Donald Trump said he didn’t really know much about Project 2025 except that they sure liked him. And yet, of 313 specific Project 2025 initiatives, he’s already enacted 108 of them, and another 63 are actively in the works as of this recording. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

Project 2025 put a lot of importance of a sort of blitzkrieg if their boy won the 20...

EPISODE 141 | Spirits in the Material World: Mediums and Spiritualism

The late 19th and early 20th were rife with claims of contact with spirits of the departed, and plenty of people made a pretty penny convincing the grieving or the curious that they had the right stuff, the special connection to the Other Side. But it has continued past then, and even today there are those who would prey upon people to make a fast buck, superchar...

EPISODE 140 | Rock On: Freemasons (Big 'Uns 7)

Who are the Freemasons? People sure freak out about the them, even though many don’t even know what they get up to. What the heck do they do at their meetings? Why all the secrets and secret handshakes and code words and the like? Are they weird, scary, evil or just harmless?

Let’s take a look and see.

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EPISODE 139 | A Numbers Game: Mathspiracies

Guest: Gary Arndt, writer and host of the Everything Everywhere Daily podcast

We aren't really very good with numbers, so naturally we've come up with a lot of wacky ideas about them. Gary Arndt talks about numbers of all sorts, like why Pi is stupid, why prime numbers are cool, why the Fibonacci sequence isn't all that, when math leads to murder and much more.

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EPISODE 138 | Midnight Sun: Arctic Tales

The Far North is a region of extremes and stark beauty, and it is also trying to kill you if you’re a human. And yet we still live there, around 4 million of us call the Arctic our home, and we still weave stories about it, often quite fanciful ones. 

It’s a land of adventure, danger, murder, mishap, giants, ancient aliens, the origin of white people, secret tropical paradises, political tal...

EPISODE 137 | Tell Me a Story: 3 UFO Tall Tales

When a narrative takes off, some folks want to get in on the action, and this is especially true in the world of woo or conspiracy, and really especially true when it comes to UFOs. Here are three tall tales from the UFO space - Whitely Streiber’s abduction writings, Budd Hopkins's Manhattan Alien Abduction and Linda Moulton Howe's incredible, fanciful, tale of a secret black pyramid ...