Episodes

We said last episode was our final Satanic Panic episode, and we meant it! At least, mostly--we still have to wrap up the surprising and awful story of how our interviewee, Justin Sledge, found himself caught up in a late-bre...

The Paranoid Strain? They still do episodes of that show? Will wonders never cease. Sorry we're late. I promise, we weren't being neglectful. We just got caught up in a combination of holiday obligations, ongoing research, an...

Our de facto holiday episode is here, not that there's anything notably Christmassy about it. Or even Hannukah-y. We continue to lift up the rocks of the Satanic Panic and watch the horrible worms and bugs squirm in the disin...

We're waist-deep in Satanic Panic, with no end in sight. Our story continues with details of the McMartin preschool trial, the highest-profile, most emblematic event of the whole sad, deluded era. Our expert interviewees walk...

You asked for it, you got it. The 80s Satanic Panic--especially related to supposedly abusive daycares, was a direct antecedent to the Qanon child abuse/sacrifice mania. So we dive into the whole icky story. Joining us is int...

Last stop before our full, multi-part discussion of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and early 90s. This stop is back in the depths of antisemitism, the miasma from which so many conspiracies arise. Learn how the unsolved murder ...

Out with the old, in with the new. In this case, no more Birchers of fluoride--we've moved on to other Q-related topics. This time, we're taking a long windup to get to the Satanic Panic period of the 80s and early 90s in the...

A Stupid Surprise

We're finishing up our Bircher talk here, with our discussion of the group's great crusades to keep people from having more rights, because apparently expanding civil, women's, or gay rights played right into the commies' han...

We find ourselves falling deeper into the history of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch's baby, and the anti-communist organization that seemed so fringey in the mid-20th century, yet seems so clearly a prologue to Qanon to...

As the title suggests, this is the moment where we hand off the story from contemporary Russia to the USA's number one Cold Warrior, a former candy magnate who founded the most successful and influential anti-Communist moveme...

Our second full part on the topic of Putin's Russia, we cover more of that fun-loving gaggle of nationalist extremist conspiracy theorists who run that place these days, and with the help of our intrepid guide, Professor Yabl...

Having finished our dissection of Fed conspiracies, we now move on to consider how the other great world power of the 20th Century ended up becoming a dysfunctional autocracy overwhelmed by conspiracies. We learn what makes R...

(Plus, satanic giants found the Federal Reserve)

Episode 3! We hope you like hearing Federal reserve conspiracy theories debunked, because boy, that's what you're getting this time. Thrill to the history of monetary policy. Experience the chills of arguing with bitcoin enth...

Second episode! Which means the introduction to this series literally took up an entire episode. Does that mean we're getting better or worse? Hard to say. This time, we're taking on the conspiracist view of what actually tra...

We're back, bay-bee! For the next umpty-bajillion episodes, we're going to take a new angle to look at Qanon. Why, when we've already done Qanon several times? Because we believe the Qanon conspiracy is...in a sense "eating" ...

We did it! We reached the end of the marathon. In this one, we chat through the Zapruder film, and its cultural impact. But the most important thing about this episode is it marks the end of the new-content dry spell. We're p...

PENULTIMATE! It does not, as a young Jesuit believed, mean "better than ultimate". It means "the one before the last one." Which is what we have here. Some more discussions of the impact of JFK conspiracizing prior to the fin...

This time, we focus not on Oliver Stone, but rather the real guy whom his movie portrayed as a fearless, untouchable campaigner for the truth--former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Our analysis of the man's caree...

Part 4, which includes the end of our Stone/Costner courtroom takedown, as well as a discussion of a bunch of other conspiracies that somehow Stone managed not to regurgitate in that scene. Year 5 coming in a matter of weeks....

Third part of JFK inbound. This one features one of the highlights of our cross-country conspiracy trek of 2017, an interview with Stephen Fagin of the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas, which we insist you visit if you find yoursel...

Part 2, better late than never. This episode covers Lee Harvey Oswald's desperate attempt to make his life matter in some way by murdering a President in broad daylight. We cover Oswald's crime, attempted escape, capture, int...

Lo, we have entered the time prophesied--the time between episode arcs...the time...of the ARCHIVE! Seriously, though, we're once again breaking down one of our old, big, long shows into bite-sized chunks, to give you somethi...