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Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. Dan Rather, joined by me and Miles, Emmy nominated like, gosh, I was going backwards again.

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I get you this is an expert on expert edition of the show. And we have been long time interested in conspiracy theories. Yes. And boy, did we find the perfect person. David Farrior is a New Zealand journalist and he directed this amazing documentary We Love called Tickled. And he also has a show on Netflix called Dark Tourism. But today he is here to talk to us about conspiracy theories. And you can go read all of his great work on this topic at Web Worm Dot C0.

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That's where he breaks down conspiracy theories, I have to say, of the many episodes we've done. Yeah. This was the most just like titillated I ever was.

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Yes. This is such a wormhole. Conspiracy theories like they just go and go and go and you can get really sucked in.

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And I also feel like there's a big degree of Batur Minoff since we talked to him. I feel like it's popping up everywhere and everyone's curious about all these different conspiracy theories.

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So good timing. Please enjoy. David Farrior, we are supported by better help. If you think you may be depressed or you're feeling anxious, stressed or overwhelmed, better help offers licensed professional counselors who are trained to listen and to help.

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Now, I have been all of those things recently. Yes.

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Yeah. And boy, oh, boy, did I need to talk to somebody who knew what they were doing. Better help. You can talk with your counselor in a private online environment at your own convenience from wherever you're comfortable. Better help. Counselors have expertise in a broad range of areas such as anxiety, grief, depression, relationships, difficulty sleeping, LGBT matters, trauma and more. But our help can give you access to help that may not be available in your area.

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Kodak's get started today at better help dotcom dacs. That's better help H-E. Help dotcom tax, talk to a therapist online and get help. We are supported by Neum now. Getting in shape doesn't have to be about losing a specific amount of weight or a magic number on the scale. It's about building healthier habits and feeling better about yourself because everyone is different. Pneuma just to your lifestyle. They teach you the psychology behind the decisions you make and then help you keep track of everything from workouts and steps to analyzing your diet and recommending healthy recipes.

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What do you have to lose? Visit newmaker stacks to start your trial today. That's A.M. Dotcom slash attacks. He's an outrageous.

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And so are you so good, David, or really excited to talk to you? I think this will be one of the juicier interviews we do.

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You talk to a lot of interesting people. So if you're saying that, I will take that compliment and run with it.

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I mean, I don't think we ever talk to somebody where we have a deep curiosity in the topic personally. I mean, obviously sometimes.

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But we really want to know about a couple of things, you know, a ton about, and we're just really excited about that.

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Oh, good. And hello. Hello. Hi, Monica. Hi. I know I popped in. Sorry. Hi. You did a surprise.

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And I'm DACs. I knew you were an expert on conspiracy theories, but I did not know until I started researching you that you directed Tickled, which we've talked about a bazillion times. I love to hear you.

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And which was a real blast, by the way, because that was this tiny thing that we made in New Zealand. And so it was very surreal to hear it being talked about just an out of our city and out of our country. So that was cool. It was so good.

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I got to say, it's one of these it was on HBO here originally. I think now it lives on maybe Hulu, so people should check it out. It's called Tickled. I'll watch any doc. And I got to say, I passed your doc like seven times. I'm like, I'm tickled. I don't want to watch Dekel. That's not my jam. And then finally, like, fuck it, I'm going to give it a shot.

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I'm going to watch dudes tickle each other. And then what unraveled was one of the most exciting real time unraveling in a doc. You know, so rarely does the events happen real time.

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You know, I was so lucky to come across that because it did unravel in real time. And I think we captured the spirit of that in the film, you know, as an author. So I think you felt that all this weird shit was just suddenly happening in front of you. And, yeah, I feel really proud how we captured that, because it was it was a very strange thing. And it's funny you bring up the name, because I think if I had my time again, I think to code is a bit of a misleading name because people do just think it's about a tickle fetish and which is fine.

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But I think some people don't want to watch 90 minutes about a tickle fetish. Yeah, five minutes maybe, but 90 is a bit much. So I think I kind of wish we'd called it something. So when people like you came across it, you didn't flick past it, because I hate to think how many people are just like, oh God, I'm not watching that.

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Well, and even when it starts, you think for sure that's the road you're on? I mean, not for long, like for maybe the first seven minutes, but you're just kind of seeing the videos and you're like, wow, a these videos exist. This is new info to me. And then not only is your real time discoveries so wonderful, I put it on par with, like, jinxed.

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And a couple of these others were just the worst, most heartbreaking documentary ever. Dear Zachery, the notion that it sets out to be one thing and then all this real time stuff happens, any who the post doc is as interesting as the doc, which is then these follow ups are so fascinating.

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Yeah, well, we had this situation where we could never get to the main big bad during the entire most of the feature, you know, is trying to get to this guy. We see him briefly. But, you know, we took the film to Sundance and in the audience was like one of the minions, like one of the bad guys sort of turned up. And that created I mean, that was great publicity for our premiere because, you know, it sort of creates a certain buzz in the air when this guy, Kevin, shows up who's you know, and I spoke to an audience member who is who was sitting next to Kevin in the cinema and his scene comes on where I'm secretly recording him and he's kind of threatening me.

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And then apparently, Kevin, like, started making, like, angry kind of noises under his breath and the audience member turns and, like, clocks. The guy sitting next to her is the same as the guy on screen and was just sitting there feeling like, oh, my God, like what is going on is a real life pop out, like a horror movie.

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The bad guys in the theater we released and by a small number of house cinemas in the States.

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And at one of those screenings, David Damodar shows up who is like the focus of the film. And suddenly Dylan, who I made the film with Dylan, Hans D'Amato, Amik, and he just has this Q&A session with him and the audience. Like, you see everyone's phones come out because they sort of can't believe what's happening. And it was just the whole thing was wild from like discovering the tickling videos and discovering there was a thing called competitive endurance tickling.

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Yeah. Let me just repeat that.

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Competitive endurance tickling.

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It's a real thing. Well, but it's not. It's not.

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Yeah, it's not. I mean, you know, there's these videos of these young athletic guys and Adidas sportswear on top of each other tickling.

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And it kind of when I first saw the videos, I sort of thought, oh, I mean, maybe this is a sport like Ultimate Frisbee, the sport. And that's kind of weird. So maybe someone has just made tickling into like an odd sort of thing. But it came apparent that it was a pretty homo erotic and it was pretty fetish. And so the second I reached out to the men was like, I'm a journalist in New Zealand.

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I'd love to sort of. To view about the sport you've created and their media reply was like, we don't want to deal with a gay journalist like, oh, that was just so aggressive straight away. And that's the instant I think that I knew there was something more happening. Guy And I don't want to give away the documentary because I really want people to check it out.

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It's so fantastic article, but I don't think it's too much to say that obviously there's a person behind funding these videos. To your point, a lot of sports are homoerotic.

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I mean, and I'm from New Zealand. Rugby is our main thing. And I don't think I've ever seen a more homoerotic sport, you know, with guys, like, running into each other as kind of mad Gorham's.

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I mean, Scrumming has got to be code for a group fucking somewhere in some country come together might night.

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So it wasn't that outrageous to think that maybe, you know, cycling was in someone's world sort of a competitive thing, like. Sure. Like winners and losers, you know, like how much you laugh and don't laugh and what position you're in. But you're looking at those videos, this, you know, like you can sort of tell what fetishise when you watch it, like, you know, if it's a bit off and if it's just something kind of innocent or someone's taking some kind of sexual pleasure from you just kind of know and watching these tickling videos, you're just like, OK, this isn't just a tickling contest.

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This is more than that. But no, it's not. Thanks for watching. It's so nice. It's always nice when you make something and people watch it.

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One of the interesting things and again, it's not interesting in that it's so prevalent, there's so many of these senators who have been the vanguard of getting some anti-gay legislation passed that then get discovered in an airport bathroom. I mean, it's happened a dozen times in my lifetime. So I guess in that way it's not shocking. But it's so interesting. Yes. That the response was immediately homophobic. And then clearly the person who's deriving pleasure from this and funding is not in a position probably to be outwardly homophobic.

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I mean, you could speculate, you know, about so much of David Tomato's life, but he was clearly someone who was incredibly closeted about whoever he was. And I wish there was a world where he could just be happy in his own skin. But his whole way of sort of viewing the world was from his computer. And he would find these elaborate ways to get young men to take each other on camera. But then if he was ever accused of being involved with that videoing or setting it up, he would just lash out with the most homophobic stuff.

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You know, anyone who is extremely homophobic, I think there's always something in them that they're not happy about themselves in some way or they're sort of covering for something as that classic thing. Like it's almost like so stereotypical in a way. You know, we're so used to seeing this. You're totally right.

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You can go to crazy, unimaginable depths. Have you watched the Roy Cohn documentary that's out on HBO right now?

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No, it's on my list. I need to see it when we finish this. I don't care what you have scheduled. Fucking cancel it because you want to talk about someone who, like, got so twisted in, you know, the separation between their lives and their presenting image.

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At the bottom of all that craziness is the victim of a society that made his inclination a proclivity and a secret. So it's like I ultimately could find redemption in this guy at any point because I recognize he's a victim of circumstance.

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Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, sort of I don't want to sort of do spoilers, but with the film sort of ends up we talk to a family member and kind of get an idea of where he's coming from and why he's like this. And yeah, he absolutely was a victim of society and he was in a position where he didn't feel happy being himself and whether that came from his father or colleagues or just society in general, there's a time line where none of this would have happened.

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He would have been happy with himself. He would have been open and saying that, you know, he did have a certain sort of part of him that really loved abusing people for the fun of it. I mean, I think part of his whole thing, like part of what made him get off on it, was that he had power over these boys and he could kind of ruin their lives whenever he wanted to.

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As someone who lives in a world where they will have no control over a huge chunk of their life, who then desires mass control? Again, I'm pretty sympathetic to I don't I'm not it's not an excuse, but it's a compelling explanation to me. No. One hundred percent.

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And, you know, after the film came out of sort of kept in touch with some of his old colleagues and people he talked with at various schools, and they had a very similar position to you. They were like, it's just incredibly unfortunate. And we can't condone what he did, but we understand it on some level. So I totally agree.

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Yeah, OK. Now I also just want a plug for a second dark tourist, which I've yet to start. But now that I know you're behind it, that is going to be what I'm going to clear my schedule for. So you also have dark two hours on Netflix. I think you go.

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Yeah, and what is. Yeah, you spent a year travelling around the world kind of looking at tourism and I guess that's like the anti holiday, like most people would sort of want to go somewhere to a nice beach or something. But there's a number of people out there that just love going somewhere with some huge atrocity has happened.

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And so that's tourists now, meaning people who are like sex tourists or people who are actually fascinated with like John. Besides, what are we talking here, kind of more the more the genocide side of things, I mean, I suppose it's the kind of people that would want to go to Chernobyl because they are either fascinated by the history or they get a kick out of it. You know, we did an episode in Columbia looking at narcoterrorism and spent some time with Papy, who was Pablo Escobar as man who's turned into this kind of a celebrity over there, like people love him.

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And because of narcos, which is a Netflix show, what people love, Pablo, I mean, a half of that country absolutely loved him to this day. Yeah.

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And people around the rest of the world who don't really fully understand the circumstances or have just seen a TV show, love him. We spent a day looking around Pablo's prison. He was kept in, which is basically just a big mansion. Well, he built it himself, we should add.

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Yeah, build it himself was you know, he could do whatever he wanted. He had a pretty good deal. But, you know, we're walking around there with Papy, who had you know, this is a man who's murdered over three hundred people and he killed his girlfriend and their unborn child. And he is just objectively a bad person. There's no arguing and circumstance. Again, he came into a certain sort of world. He's an atrocious human being, just objectively.

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Yeah. And yet, you know, you're walking around with them and he's so jovial and you're like, oh, it's that character from that show. And and, you know, you've got some American tourists that come up and they were like in awe of him.

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They were getting like selfies that was so excited to see him. It's like they had met Beyonce or or someone that was just this huge name. And, you know, this is like an awful human being.

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And so I guess part of the show was trying to explore just those weird places we end up in society where we put an emphasis on things we perhaps shouldn't.

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Yeah, yeah. I got to say, I might have been one of those disgusting Americans like wanting to shake his hand. I have, like, such an interest in that whole world.

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I mean, we did a whole show about it. So we're kind of that, you know, I mean, we gave him a platform. So that kind of comes into the whole discussion as well.

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I think I'm just OK. The only personal bit of information I want to get out there about you is that you were born on Christmas Day in Bethlehem.

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I was. That sounds like a joke, but it's true. I should clarify that that is a town in New Zealand. It's kind of wild.

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You could be your own conspiracy theory. Yeah, I could.

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I think when people come up to me for rallying against sort of conspiracy theory culture, I think that's something they can kind of point to, that I'm probably a crisis actor or making things up because like was born on Christmas Day, who lives in Bethlehem. Right?

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You're the first person I know. So that is suspicious. But yeah, I can confirm that one. OK, now you're an investigative journalist, so I understand that you'd have an interest in anything. But why in particular did conspiracies start to interest you?

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Yeah, I think the sort of things I've always been drawn to, whether it's sort of the word of God or my journalism or tourist, is kind of these subcultures of life. And I think the whole conspiracy movement over the years has always been fascinating to me. I mean, I was obsessed with the X Files growing up. Mel Gibson's conspiracy theory at the time was a really big film in my life. I've always been fascinated by, I guess, belief and why people believe things.

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And, you know, I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian home and so.

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Well, you would be being Jesus being the Christ child is probably your fault, is that I don't want to point fingers. I should I should explain that as well. I was born on Christmas Day and I was your mother's impression for quite a long period of time.

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Now, I think conspiracy theory, culture kind of ticks every box that I find engaging. And you know why people believe what they believe. And I guess I particularly started digging into it over lock down in New Zealand because, you know, we were in lockdown for a couple of months and we suddenly had a lot of the conspiracy theories that have been propagated in America, like five being a weapon of mass destruction and covid being no worse than the flu and fake.

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We had that stuff propagate over here pretty quickly. And so we had this incident where a number of five G cell phone towers were set alight. And this was exactly what we were seeing over in the States and over in the UK.

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They were damaged. Are you saying? Yeah. Oh, OK. People lighting them on fire, like people were like torching towers and Burning Man down because they thought that five G was being installed by the government, lost covid had us so distracted they were secretly rolling out these five G networks, which were either to a distribute coverage to the population or B infect us with some sort of disease that wasn't covid cancer, a number of other options. And so people started burning them down.

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And so, like I just saw this weird fusion of covid conspiracy beliefs merging with anti 5G rhetoric. And I started writing this little newsletter called Whipworm, and I just started writing about conspiracy theories a lot this year and especially sort of based around Kuhnen, which is this big motherlode of conspiracy theory that's come out and. That's the one we most want you to explain to us at length, we always earmark that one because I realized that I had been participating in it in this bizarre way.

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Oh, my God, how? And I started getting this rash of comments on my post about why aren't you talking about child trafficking? Why are you staying silent on child trafficking? I was like, well, first of all, I'm not. I had the fucking lawyer for the Eppstein victims on four days ago. So A, I am talking about this. And then I just thought it was it was enough that I was like, this is an abnormal an inordinate amount of comment saying, why aren't you talking about sex trafficking and ideas?

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And they were all very accusatory, like I was an unethical person. And then I was purposely ignoring this issue that there was some intention behind me. Right. And I was getting defensive. I'm like, well, first of all, I can't talk about every fucking issue. There are a billion issues. And because I talk about one, does it mean I don't think another one is valuable because the guy studies cancer? Doesn't mean we don't need a doctor treat nail fungus like I reject this thought process.

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But anyways, I then came to realize what the fuck it was all about. But anyways, I want you to walk us entirely through CUNA, but I just have a couple more set up questions, if you'll bear with me.

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I happily accept your questions. And I love the someone like you who has a decent number of followers. Suddenly seeing a similar thread come through would be fascinating because it's not just a couple of people giving a shit about something. It's like walls of people being like, why are you keeping the traffic children secret?

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And you like what what is happening? And in today's climate where you can be, you know, I don't want to overreact, but there's some counseling that exists. And occasionally you're like, oh, my God, if I tripped the wire of cancelling, like, am I is there a movement building to get rid of me?

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Because I'm not talking about sex trafficking. So, like, on some level, you've got to take it somewhat serious. And it wasn't till we had Bill Gates and then it fucking blew up. Man We had on a great episode with the biggest star in the world, we'll get a thousand comments. And all of sudden we had twenty eight hundred comments in a day and Mike did that. Many people listen and love it. I started glancing all about that.

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He is a pedophile. I'm like, what the fuck are they talking like? That was my real hard, up close realization that there is some movement, some percentage of this country that thinks Bill Gates and me are pedophiles and we're swapping people at our Illuminati meeting. And I was just like, this is the most crazy one I've ever heard in my life.

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Yeah, it's wild and it's wild how Bill Gates has been bought into this whole discussion. I mean, and it's amazing that you have someone with his brain on the show and a million interesting things to talk about solving our biggest problem.

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If there was any guy that should be hoisted up on a sedan chair and paraded around the country, it's this man who's donated 30 billion dollars to fixing sanitation and energy. It's just bonkers. But yes.

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And, you know, I'm sure there I'm sure there are real criticisms you could come out with about him, but that is not one of them.

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You know, in fact, these children I mean, what's been wild to watch with Kuhnen is that it's something that started, you know, on sort of the darkest recesses of the Internet and forums that are just a bunch of idiots, you know, shit posting and winding each other up. And we're in the situation today where it spreads so wide that influences people on tech. Talk your audience suddenly believing that the world is run by a group of elites who are trafficking in children and sort of doing every extreme evil act you could possibly think of that Donald Trump knows this and is one day going to sort of walk up to a podium and announce who these evil people are and they're all going to be magically sent to prison, you know?

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Yeah. FBI task force. Yeah. You know, this is something that started in the darkest corners of the Web three or four years ago. And we're at this point now where people are just casually talking about it on Instagram is being a real thing. And I think Save the Children is a really fascinating development because, you know, if you see a Save the Children rally, it's very difficult to sort of go, that's a bad thing. You know, we all have kids.

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It's brilliant. And I should clarify.

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Yeah, I should clarify that, you know, of course, there are children that are being trafficked and it's awful. And yes, Jeffrey Epstein did trafficking children and it's awful. But what sort of this whole conspiratorial online brand has come up with is that because of the shadowy cabal of evil that is running the world, they've taken that whole idea of child sex trafficking into them to cure unfollow is the reason kids are being trafficked is because they're being trafficked en masse.

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They're being trapped in underground bunkers. They're being tortured and terrified so that they create a drain of crime, which is then drained out of that blood, and that is injected into the bloodstream of politicians and Hollywood actors and the Hollywood elite in order to prolong their life. So when you go to Save the Children protest, that is what you're. Engaging with not the other thing for one second, yeah, even if you believe that you can extract some youth serum from children, let's say you believe that.

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I accept that. Why on earth would Bill Gates need to fucking kidnap kids? He could pay kids for their fucking username. If there was really a username, you could you could approach the family and go, listen, man, I'll give you fucking five million dollars for an ounce of that username and everyone would be happy.

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Yeah, I mean, part of why this stuff is spreading is that it's born on the Internet and it's people picking apart evidence that they find. And so it's this interactive kind of game almost that people are playing. So you look at something like, you know, Wafik Gate, we were across that.

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No way Fairgate. So we think there's an online store called Wayfair and it basically sells like home.

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I have heard a bit of this. I'm so excited for you to tell us about this. Yes. And so what happened? Someone came across waifish site and they saw that some of the cabinets that they were selling were like super expensive. They also noticed that some of the cabinets have human names like, I don't know, Eric, Sarah, Sandra, I don't know. It's a bit weird, whatever. And so from this, they put together the facts.

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And when I say they, I mean Internet researchers and people that believe in Kuhnen and conspiracies in general saying that Wayfair was basically an open portal for child sex trafficking again. And, you know, and of course, if you're going to be involved in the stuff, of course, you're going to do it through a public facing store and you're going to name the cabinets after the actual children that you're selling like at school.

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So this turns into this huge thing propagated over social media and as part of the Save Our Children movement.

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OK, so really quick. So I was told this and now I'm remembering I bought it, but I don't know that I bought it in terms of children. I think maybe it was pitched to me. It was like any kind of illegal things. And I thought, oh, well, that's brilliant. Yeah, just like on eBay, you really want cocaine. And so the people on the inside know if you order this air purifier and it's twelve thousand dollars, you're getting a kilo of coke in the mail.

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That to me seemed brilliant. And so I don't even think the person who told me who's not a crazy conspiracy, I believe that until now.

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No, I don't know that. I believe the sex trafficking. So why were things ten thousand dollars on that site? They just were.

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No, no, no. I know it's one of those things. It's one of those trade sites where anyone can have a store on there. So, you know, sometimes you go to Amazon, you look for a book, it's super expensive or an item super expensive because someone selling it, someone who is selling some stuff and they did just have an outrageous price on it. It wasn't the price of a child. It was just someone being greedy, wanting a lot of money for that cabinet.

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Real quick, real quick, real quick, are they saying if you buy this Susan cabinet, you're buying Susan the kid like it's a way to buy the tire, but how do you even know what the kid looks like?

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How do you they look like the cab you want. I mean, I don't I don't understand how you can make a good purchase. You go with the kids Elizabethan.

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Why are people doing this?

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Why if it's a blonde piece of furniture, you know, it's a white child you're buying. I need to know why I don't understand. Well, we're going to get we're going to get into that because let's let's talk let's keep it juicy because I have some sobering, not very fun opinions on what the appeal is. And I have to imagine you do, too. But my real quick question is, is Kuhnen an outgrowth of pizza?

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Because pizza was this similar story, right, where liberals were trading in kids and they were they were doing all the deals at a pizza parlor. People probably remember this. Right. And then a real human being. And by the way, kind of back to your documentary guy, it's like if I really believe there was a room full of children being abused, I'd show up with a tank. So I don't not understand the reaction. I don't understand how that was plausible to the person.

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But what I thought was really clear is that in the wake of that event, when the man was arrested, I thought it was like the consensus was that was preposterous. This was a really bad conspiracy theory. And I thought it was a lesson to be learned by people. And now that, no, it kept its momentum right up and just changed names. Is that what happened? Pretty much.

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I mean, I think for a period, a number of people saw that pizza guy was clearly, you know, the idea that Hillary Clinton had children locked in the basement of a comet. Ping pong saw that. That was outrageous.

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It's hard not to laugh out loud when you say it is really. Now, there wasn't there wasn't even a basement there. You know, it was all clearly incorrect.

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But what happened up to that is that this character called Q popped up on the Internet, on 4chan. This terrible board has morphed and changed into a new thing now. And to say that they were basically like deep state operative, like very aware of what was going on in the world. And they started making Q drops, which were essentially coded, really bizarre messages that would be like this. So weird to even talk about because it's like coded language and now little clues.

[00:28:52]

So like.

[00:28:53]

Talking today, look to the left, what do you think, seven, seven, eight, nine, questionmark, you know, like just incoherent sentences, but for whatever reason, a certain type of person on the Internet decided that who was actually someone with hidden knowledge about what was going on in the world and was starting to create these cue drops really quick, was the assumption that this insider was within the cabinet of our current administration or just in some level of privilege, a level of privilege and opinion shift on exactly what that privileges.

[00:29:26]

But they are basically a heroic figure who is telling the truth and is, you know, a whistle blower is a whistle blower.

[00:29:33]

You know, he or she or they are whistle blower and they are slowly in coded language revealing this information. So what that does, because it's like kind of engaging and interesting, you get a whole lot of Internet researchers surging on board, poring about these things, trying to take clues into what it means and taking meaning out of things to you know, when this happened with pizza guy, you had these leaked Hillary Clinton emails and there were little clues in there about pizza and serviettes and certain things.

[00:30:02]

And that was all put together eventually to mean that Hillary Clinton had children locked up in a pizza basement.

[00:30:09]

I'm going to pause you again for one second. I'm so sad that you live in New Zealand.

[00:30:13]

I want to hang out so fucking I this everything OK? Sorry, sorry I keep interrupting you, but it's like I'm getting so I'm on the next plane to fucking North Island.

[00:30:23]

OK, stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

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[00:32:41]

Go slash tax.

[00:32:49]

Yes, so like what Pizza Gate proved is that online researchers that are a little bit, you know, they're unhappy in their own lives. They want to kind of take some control. They want to figure out what's going on in the world.

[00:33:01]

They're very partial to taking some clues and just haphazardly aligning them with other facts and other things they've seen and coming up with these elaborate theories. And that's how it happened. And them with Q and on and the Q drops, it's like every day or every week there's a new kujira drop. It's a new thing to analyze and decode. And suddenly you've got all these wild theories floating around to the point now where, you know, covid is fake, five G's going to kill you.

[00:33:28]

Adreno Chrome needs to be drained from the blood of children to keep the Hollywood elites alive. You know, I liken it to an alternate reality game. And there was this thing like in marketing and movies for a while. I think when I came out, Steven Spielberg did this for that film where there's a movie poster and hidden in the movie poster was a name of a person who wasn't an actor or a director, was just a weird name. If you Google them, you got taken to a website.

[00:33:51]

There was some secret numbers. Those were coordinates for a place. If you go to the coordinates of that place, there's like a USB stick and, you know, it's like an interactive real world game with clues.

[00:34:01]

And I want to add, I see the appeal of being a sleuth. It's really fun. Absolutely. It's really fun to figure something out. There's like a puzzle involved. And in doing so, again, we'll get into this at the end. But I do think that these conspiracy theories that the people that are most vulnerable to them seem to be just anecdotally from my life experience, people who feel very excluded from the system that seems to be rewarding other people.

[00:34:26]

I think that's like a big component of it. So if you can add in this notion that you're smarter than these assholes who have created the system that's excluding you, I could imagine great comfort.

[00:34:35]

And absolutely it's a way to sort of take control of the narrative. And if you're living a life, you're not particularly happy. We see that you don't have a lot of money and that society is kind of giving you a pretty bad rap then. Sure, you want to solve why that is. And what Kuhnen provides is this perfect story where you've got a group of global elites who are out to take over the world.

[00:34:58]

And if you take that to the extreme, I mean, what they're talking about is that Satan is behind it all. So it's like this big spiritual battle, which is why there's this weird alignment between evangelicals and Pentecostal Christians and Kuhnen, because they're this group that have been raised on the idea that, yeah, of course, here on Earth is this giant battle playing out between good and evil.

[00:35:18]

And that's exactly the narrative the Kuhnen is serving them. So that's why there's so much alignment between Trump, the Evangelicals and Kuhnen. It's like this perfect kind of very weird fusion.

[00:35:30]

I was telling my wife I was about to interview you and she got excited and she mentioned and I agree, which is like we're uniquely primed for this in a sense, because it really starts with Santa Claus. I hate to be critical of it, but it's like I tell you that there's a guy in the North Pole who somehow goes to every single house and one night and you go, not possible. And I go, no, it is possible in your better part of your brain is going, no, no, no, it's not possible.

[00:35:52]

And then I have this huge fucking reward. If you buy in, I'm going to give you all these presents and you're like, fuck it. It's worth silencing that critical part of my brain because I want those presents. And then you go, Easter bunnies come in two weeks, you know. Like what? There's a bunny that travels around and hands. OK, don't worry about that. You're going to get a big ass Easter basket full of chocolate and Halloween and it's on and on.

[00:36:11]

And so we prime people to ignore the critical part of their brain for some reward, be it eternity in heaven, absorbtion of your sins, whatever the thing is, it's like we've got a nice pattern in it, you know, from the. Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:24]

And we're very good at leaning in to certain things that we believe in and ignoring anything that will counter that. So I think you find it really strongly with young Earth creationists who believe that the Earth is 10000 years old. And, you know, it's usually that raised in a family that will tell them this from day dot. So they grow up with this belief system. They believe in it. They believe in eternal life. And what they're faced with then just in their day to day life is a lot of counter evidence to that, saying that, hey, the Earth isn't ten thousand years old.

[00:36:51]

It turns out, you know, dinosaurs are real and all these facts that they've been told aren't necessarily true.

[00:36:58]

And I feel bad for them. I've had these arguments with people. It's like the archeologist faked the bones. Oh, no, no, no.

[00:37:04]

The bones are there, but God put them there to trick you. And I'm like, OK, so your God is actively trying to trick you and that's cool with you.

[00:37:10]

That's just interesting to me. But no, it's very similar logic to Kuhnen where you were given this figure. Q Who's giving you this information? It's almost like a scripture that you get that you then have to decode and figure out and make it true to yourself. It's all the same things. It's a prophecy. Yeah. And, you know, Trump plays into that and he loves it and he talks all that stuff up. You know, he's actively retweeting Kuhnen accounts.

[00:37:35]

You know, he he's sort of giving the big thumbs up to all this stuff.

[00:37:38]

But and here's where we get into. And by the way, I am never critical of the president on this podcast because I have more important thoughts than my politics. So just in. General, I don't do it, but I will. I'm going to break tradition right now to just say one of the very fascinating things about him is I am so often wondering, is he in on it or does he believe it? Because how could he be the head of the state of the most powerful country in the world in history?

[00:38:04]

With all the info, nobody has more info in the world than Donald Trump. How could the guy with the most amount of information on planet Earth retweeted Kuhnen thing? I'm so curious whether he believes it.

[00:38:17]

But no, no, it's to rally people around him. And his base loves this stuff. I mean, that's he knows what he's doing.

[00:38:25]

Well, part of their narrative, which confused me. But when I was reading through those Bill Gates attacks, he's perpetuating the fake covid disease. Also, he wants population control. This is a big attack on him. He wants population control. And they think he has said that in so many words. Right.

[00:38:41]

I mean, that's a perfect case of how conspiracy thinking works. You know, one thing Bill Gates said got taken out of context, spread super fast, and suddenly he's someone who wants to actively depopulate the planet, which is why you go to those people flooding your comments when Bill Gates appeared on the show. It's like selective things being pulled out in exactly the same way that an evangelical Christian will selectively pull out information that supports their point of view. It's survival and it's a worldview that makes them feel safe and in control of reality.

[00:39:11]

And it's exactly the same as someone who has this belief in Kuhnen and that one day Trump will step up, he will announce the truth. All those bad, terrible people will go to prison. All the abstains and the child sex trafficking will stop. Everything will be glorious. It's like a rapture. It's the same. It's all the same stuff that you get. It's all the same beats.

[00:39:32]

I'm going to make a joke now, but I believe it's like you're going to throw all the entertainers in prison and then the fucking smartest people in tech. What a boring ass world you're going to be. End up with. Say goodbye to the TV show you like, you know, if you thought that part through.

[00:39:45]

It is so selective, though, like you said, because we're talking about real child trafficking.

[00:39:51]

So we know and there's evidence and, you know, one hundred victims, maybe more.

[00:39:56]

And Trump is in every other picture with Eppstein with his arm around him. But he's fine and he's fine. Like the irony that it's child trafficking and Trump is going to, like, uncover this. Yet he's buddy buddy with the only like. Right. Carelli Yeah.

[00:40:13]

But that logic doesn't sit with your typical because of conspiracy theorists. So get that little list of passengers on the plane and they'll see that name and they'll see it as confirmation that they're complicit in everything. Epstein was doing that. So the logical jumps that they will make and it reminds me of like a really obvious thing.

[00:40:30]

And I think it was the guy that pointed this out to me was West, and he's the guy that created the video game, Tony Hawk, pro skater. And he made like a shit ton of money off that game. He retired and now he debunks conspiracy theories full time. And he's a really wonderful human being. But he sort of made the point to me that no one kuhnen follower or researcher has actively saved or helped anyone. If you look at who took Eppstein out, it was an incredibly hard working journalist at a Miami newspaper who slaved away for years.

[00:41:05]

That is the reason that Epstein was locked up.

[00:41:08]

You know, you look at the team that outed the Catholic Church and all the child abuse that went on there, that wasn't an Internet research. That was like a team of journalists who work that story for years.

[00:41:20]

There's not one time that a conspiracy theorist, Akunin follower has actively created any positive change in the world or proven that anyone is a pedophile.

[00:41:31]

I just never had a great point. And then the only people that have a track record of doing it are enemy number one fake news, right? Yeah, exactly.

[00:41:40]

So it's this very weird dichotomy, again, that Trump has helped sort of push out that, you know, journalists, bad media, bad, fake news, bad, you know, and it's it's unfortunate in a way, the sort of the trickle down effect of Epstein being arrested is that that just propagated this whole conspiracy that everyone is in on it. You know, and that's really unfortunate because what we should take from that is that, God, maybe we should respect journalists more because they're the ones that found out what they've seen was doing.

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And it's the reason we're talking about it and it's the reason you watch that Netflix documentary about it, you know? Yeah.

[00:42:14]

Well, I'm going to add another thing about it, which is what it exposed is not sex trafficking. It exposed income inequality. Epstein cannot exist in a world where one hundred dollars isn't life changing to a young person.

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What the take away of that is, is that story can't happen in Sweden. It can't happen in Austria because nobody is so desperate that one hundred dollars can change their life.

[00:42:37]

Yeah, and you're coming back to the idea that it's a systemic problem. It's not this one office. What are you talking about? David D'Amato, like the reason he felt terrible about being a gay man. It's like society telling him that and it's society that's setting us up for someone like Ipsen to operate, you're completely right. We're taking all the wrong takeaways from this stuff.

[00:42:56]

If our strategy is to wait for people to pop up and then bust them, that's just a really dumb strategy. The strategy is what is causing it. How are these people empowered? How do we dismantle the thing that empowers these people to prey on people? Let's look for the preventative cure and not the Band-Aid to it.

[00:43:13]

One hundred percent is the problem with the criminal system. Right? It's like locking people up is that's not what we should be focusing on. We should be focusing on how to keep people out of there in the first place. It's like we've got it the wrong way around always. Absolutely.

[00:43:25]

Now, is there any way to extrapolate how many people believe in this Kuhnen thing? And then part two to the question is, is there an ultimate plan for them? No, it's really difficult to get the numbers. There's different people doing polling on cue and unbelief and you get wildly different results from my Web newsletter. I talked to a professor at a Miami University and he basically said belief in Kuhnen is not changing at all. All that is happening is that people are talking about it more in the media.

[00:43:57]

And I think to a degree, there's a certain element of that that is right. We are talking about it in the media a lot more. And people are more aware of Kuhnen than they were three years ago. But then another poll came out a couple of weeks ago that said the opposite Hughan and believe is absolutely rising. And more and more people are believing it and most of them are Republicans. And this poll said the opposite to the other poll.

[00:44:19]

And I tend to lean into the second poll because what we're seeing around is like people weren't flooding. Your comments about Bill Gates on Instagram, you know, two years ago. This is spreading. This is everywhere now. And I think, you know, exact numbers. We're not going to get them because it's just too difficult online. Looking at what accounts of real people. What about what or not.

[00:44:40]

I'm so glad you brought that up, because I actually took the time to often go to the pages of the people who are saying these things. And what I notice is, oh, my God, in general, there's there's almost no posts. If they're posts, it seems like they've been pulled from someone else's photos and all of the handles that the names involve poll numbers. Right. And so what I started wondering is having read this New York Times article that Russia actively planted the seeds for the anti vaccine movement in the US, I had to wonder, are these being computer generated and is there's a state involvement in it all?

[00:45:19]

Absolutely. There's no I mean, there's no doubt that it is bigger than just Americans jumping on and believing this stuff to the extent that we're seeing the number of posts online. So there is absolutely more going on to this, I think, yet to be revealed because it's just so hard to track. But this whole I mean, look at what we're seeing from this stuff. We're seeing active movements now to like remove masks to get Trump back in because he's fighting against all this.

[00:45:48]

Essentially, he's being held up as the savior and all of this and a lot of that plays into what these accounts are saying in the narratives they're putting out there. So bad actors absolutely factor into this.

[00:46:01]

There's no doubt this is so tricky, though, right? Because it feels like a little bit of an impossible middle ground or a solution, because to them, I think what they'd say is, oh, Russia is meddling.

[00:46:16]

And that sounds like our own conspiracy theory to them all. Reality sounds like a conspiracy theory. And so how do we reconcile fact and truth when we're literally living in two different ones?

[00:46:30]

Yeah, I mean, that is a big thing to factor into. This is that objective reality and truth that does not matter anymore. And I think that is something and I know everything I say just comes out as sort of raving liberal. But one of Trump's really something he's very good at doing is saying whatever he wants and just actively going with it. And if people disagree or it's proven what he said is incorrect, he is just so good at just boldly going on to the next thing and it's all forgotten about.

[00:47:01]

And so this idea of truth, thanks to him, has really like has gone out the window like truth doesn't matter anymore who's got the loudest voice and who's got the best story. And at the moment, I fear the best story is this giant good versus evil battle where a group of global elites are keeping kids locked in in cell. Is it underground? You know, like that's the more exciting story and it's what people are latching onto. And it's got no semblance in reality at all, but it's what people are choosing to believe in.

[00:47:31]

Well, I'm going to give you another self-centered story, but it'll make it really quick, which is I got in a kind of public motorcycle accident, the racetrack, a few weeks ago, and I was injured and it kind of made news. And I just my wife happened to show it to me. It was at the bottom. And there was like maybe eight news stories lined up and the. Was like, you know, from CNN, amazing, and all of them, I thought, a pretty fair extrapolation from the only info that existed on it, which is what we had said on this show.

[00:47:55]

And in that I said, you know, I was at fault because I was passing a bunch of dudes and a guy turned in earlier than I was expecting. Whatever I recognize, I'm the one passing this guy.

[00:48:05]

I got to assume the worst. Yes. The Fox News headline said, DAX Shepard, I'm completely wrong and I owe that to them. I think I'm proud of the fact that I can own my responsibility in this mishap. And yet I could see that I had done the cardinal sin, which is I admitted weakness. I was fallible and I fucked up. But that was the best way to take me out at the knees as I had owned a mistake.

[00:48:30]

I was just like, oh, that's an interesting aspect to this year.

[00:48:33]

All the all the subtlety out of that discussion that had taken place was just completely dry.

[00:48:39]

And it was just like, I'm wrong, Dex's wrong. This man's wrong headline.

[00:48:45]

Yeah, because what would a lot of people admire about Trump is that he just he never says, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. So I understand that, like, that's the part of the appeal. So it's like, yes, by painting me as some weak person who would admit I'm wrong was like it was the worst sin. Yeah.

[00:48:59]

And I think that is a big part of what we're facing is that society has completely and nuance has completely gone out the window. This email is this. So this is clearly what there's no pulling apart the information in any kind of intelligent way. It's just blunt and black and white. I mean, you watch the discourse in the states at the moment and you can see how polarizing it's getting on both sides. Oh, yeah. And it's both sides just leaning into it, you know, both sides leaning into their own bullshit.

[00:49:26]

But I would argue that the bullshit on going on side is definitely, definitely maxing out at the moment.

[00:49:33]

Yeah, OK, I want to go just through a couple more of these popular conspiracy theories. I mean, there are so many.

[00:49:40]

There are so many. I mean, the interesting I mean, America kind of lives and breathes this stuff. I mean, I think, you know, back around, you know, debating whether the moon landing happened or not, JFK kind of rooted in some kind of reality and some kind of intelligent discussion. But then I think things started shifting around 9/11 because people were connecting on Internet message boards and they were doing their own research. And that's kind of where that idea came out from.

[00:50:08]

And very quickly, things spiraled and you started seeing things emerge and 9/11 and certainly more recently, ideas that are much more mean spirited and conspiracy theory culture. You know, this idea of crisis actors, for example. So, you know, someone's been in this horrible incident. They've had a child killed in a school shooting. And suddenly you've got a parent who is being painted on online conspiracy forums as being, you know, acting the whole thing, or that kid's an actor or, you know, the Boston Marathon bombing.

[00:50:39]

You know, that guy that lost the leg? He's an actor. All these really and things shifted somewhere along the way where I think now it's just much more mean spirited and much less trying to get to the truth and more just focusing on, again, what makes a compelling, crazy story. And at the moment, the crazier it is, the more likely it is to rise up the ranks in a forum and on Reddit and on terrible boards. And suddenly that idea is propagated out, you know, makes the jump from 4chan to read it to YouTube a year later and influences talking about it, you know, so it's just the way the stuff spreads is insane.

[00:51:16]

I read through some of your articles on your website, which I want people to go do, which is Web worm, dot, substract dotcom. Is that the best place to go? That's me. Yeah, that's me. Where brownnose substract dot com. So I also I got a domain for I got whipworm seo because dot com was way too expensive and SEO was like a thousand times cheaper.

[00:51:37]

So you can read ads with that SEO and I fucking hate it. It sounds like I'm leaving off the AM and I'm like people must assume I meant dotcom and I've messed it up.

[00:51:48]

So you're OK.

[00:51:49]

But yes, one of the things that was in there which you just touched on is Reddit, because for whatever reason I cannot comprehend what Reddit is. First and foremost, I don't really understand what it is. I've gone I got I got confused. I don't know how to find anything. So just tell me what Reddit is and tell me how it works its way up the chain and then what role and influencer can play in all this.

[00:52:10]

I mean, Ridha has great stuff on there and terrible stuff on there. It just depends what part of the site you're on. So that whole board, that politics board is particularly intense and they've got certain areas of Trump interest that are intense as well. But the idea is that the survival of the fittest. So you'll post something on Reddit and people will either upvote or downvote it. So the popular stuff rises to the top really quickly. And that's the stuff that will get picked up by other people like you or I sort of casually went there.

[00:52:39]

We would just see the stuff that is right at the top, the stuff being voted up by the community.

[00:52:44]

The like trending stuff. The trending stuff. Yeah. And it operates in a similar way to the likes of the fortunes of the world, which are a much darker place on the Internet that morph and change and other things all the time. But it's the same idea of and there's a documentary out at the moment actually called Feels Good Man about the paper, the Frog meme. And that is a thing that started on 4chan.

[00:53:05]

Say the name again of the documentary is called Feels Good Man Feels Good Man. It was at Sundance this year. It's one of the best stocks I've seen in a long time. And it's we're getting sidetracked, you know, now I just got boners.

[00:53:18]

We both have a raging boner because you just said there's a new doc and we're junkies.

[00:53:22]

This really beautiful, quiet, mellow man who created this cartoon called Pippi the Frog. And so we had this frog. He had a whole lot of comic books he created around it his home. Suddenly that frog got taken over by 4chan and by the Internet. And eventually it morphed into a place where it ended up being classified as a hate symbol by the Anti Defamation League. And Pepé now is just, you know, so this beautiful creation, this man had suddenly got taken over by the Internet and suddenly got fully out of his control.

[00:53:54]

And this documentary tracks how that happened. Oh, well, if you want to find out about 4chan and about how these communities work, it's a really compelling place to start because it goes to some crazy places. Oh, OK.

[00:54:07]

Must see right now that you say it, I've seen every time there's a standoff in this country on state land, I always see that frog being flown. There's also I'm really into off roading and off roading community is largely very right wing. And so the flags I see on people's off road vehicles, I notice there's like a snake everyone has. And I think there's like a tread lightly on me.

[00:54:28]

There's like a something around me. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see a lot of pepé. I mean, the whole documentary is about this cartoonist trying to win his symbol of love and innocence back again after it's being co-opted by the right.

[00:54:40]

It's like the Hindu swastika kind of, you know, totally. It's just you do not associate it with the original thing that it was meant to be. You know, it's gone. Really unfortunate that the person that created that thing.

[00:54:53]

How does it how does it build from read it up to like an influencer to finding itself in a news cycle? It's a really good question.

[00:55:00]

And I mean, I just observed we've got the celebrity chef over here and Australasia called Pete Evans, and he's gone over the last probably six months, gone from posting on his Instagram, beautiful photos of food and what he's making to purely just Q and on like fucking madness all the time. Like, it's absolutely bonkers. And, you know, I saw an example here in New Zealand is we've got like the New Zealand version of The Bachelor, which is very funny because it's like it's a very like and just imagine like a Kiwi guy's version of your American show.

[00:55:32]

It's like it is very funny. Well, let's start with there's only three million of you right there. Six million and there's three million.

[00:55:38]

But it does become problematic because some of these people should not be on TV, but we don't have to choose from.

[00:55:44]

Yeah. Can we do small anyway? The winner of season one of The Bachelor Grainne. He's like a celebrity over here in New Zealand. He's got like, really good abs. He's really good looking. He's got like a paleo food company.

[00:55:57]

So he starts to run a health podcast, a wellness podcast with his wife, and they'll have like dietitians on I'll have, like, people teaching you how to, like, look as good as these people look. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, he booked Pete Evans. And so, boy, from Art's perspective, you know, Pete Evans was the chef and he was kind of into health as well. And so we had Pete Evans on the show.

[00:56:19]

And pretty quickly in his podcast, it pivoted from being about fitness and food to the fact that covid is definitely fake and that it just went into complete madness. And you've got this influencer who runs this podcast with not really any idea what was happening and any way to kind of know what this conversation was even about. Because if you haven't had these conversations, it's hard to have them. Right, because you're talking about stuff that is just so unusual so quickly and you're not armed with any rebuttal because your whole topic is new to you.

[00:56:50]

So it's not like you have something in the chamber to fire back with. No. And so I think it's just an example of where in this world now where Kuhnen exists, primarily online, where it's being spread, influences nothing but online. And so occasionally an influencer is going to, like, stumble on something like Save Our Children. And I think a really interesting thing has happened as well over on Tick-Tock, where, you know, Black Lives Matter happened.

[00:57:17]

And that was an incredibly worthy movement that was so important. But I think a lot of people got on board with that in a certain way just to look like they were on board with the right thing. You know, you see all the black squares on Instagram, right? I would argue a lot of that is just people.

[00:57:34]

And I'm not the it's a tricky discussion to get into because I'm sure it was coming from a good place. But what's happened since then is that people are very quick just to jump on movements, especially if they're an influence, because it makes you look. Good to gets you clicks, it gets you follows. And so part of Why Save Our Children, which was very keen on adjacent, part of the reason that spread so quickly is because influenzas jumped on and spread it to their fans and other influences and suddenly it's everywhere.

[00:58:02]

And so I think there's this really weird situation we're in at the moment. We have got people online who are popular that don't really have any idea about why this stuff is happening and they see Save Our Children. And it seems like a very worthy thing to get involved with. They don't know that pretty soon they're going to be up against people that believe that, you know, kids are having their blood drained in basements.

[00:58:23]

So Save Our Children and Kuhnen and Pizza, they're all very similar, all under the same umbrella.

[00:58:30]

And I mean, that's one thing that Kuhnen has done, is given a big mass to conspiracy theory for anything. So any crazy conspiracy theory now, it'll fit pretty neatly. And the Kuhnen. Right, right.

[00:58:41]

And what about I know this isn't one that you've written about or maybe you haven't. I missed it. But Flat Earth, this is one of these things where it's like I heard about it maybe on an episode of a show about football. Right. These guys are training. It's like a pre training docu series. And and two dudes are arguing about whether the earth is flat or not. And I'm thinking this can't really be a conversation that's happening. I just how could you operate a car and also think the earth is flat?

[00:59:05]

There's such a disconnect. Yeah, yeah.

[00:59:07]

We had a flat Earth conference here in New Zealand last year and a number of American speakers turned up. One of them had been in a Netflix documentary about Flat Earth is. And, you know, it's funny because that is that's a really good example of a conspiracy theory that is disprovable very quickly like it's not a difficult thing to do a fly and you've got to get on an airplane and see the curve.

[00:59:29]

OK, yeah. That's what you got to do. Yeah.

[00:59:31]

And you've got to ignore a lot of science to if you want to keep believing that. And yet there are people out there that do actively believe in it.

[00:59:38]

And I hate to say it because I feel like I'm knocking on a very specific group of people, but a lot of flat earth is they do have that evangelical kind of background.

[00:59:48]

Yeah, it's tied in with the anti science. Yeah.

[00:59:51]

You see this again and again and again. And there are definitely evangelicals and Christians who are not into any of the stuff. I want to make it very clear.

[00:59:58]

Yep. We know many of them.

[01:00:00]

Yeah. Yeah. As do I.

[01:00:01]

And it's it's unfortunate, I think that it plays into that it's brains that are very used to believing in something that they're being told and that gives them structure. And I think to a level as well, it gives them access to something that feels like secret unique information and it makes them feel special.

[01:00:21]

Well, there's also a community involved that's come up and we all deserve community. Yeah, yeah.

[01:00:26]

It is absolutely a community. And obviously we're living in a world where community is less and less and we're living online more and more. And if you want direct contact with people, it's really good to meet people who have a shared interest and you and that shared interests as the earth is flat and those are your people and there you are and they're very passionate. And you know what I found that was kind of depressing because I went along to the Flat Earth Conference here in New Zealand because I was curious about what they were about and very quickly find out that are adjacent to all the other conspiracy theories you don't want them to be.

[01:00:58]

And you sort of hope that they won't be into everything. But they are. You know, I was talking to one of them and they were convinced that the mosque shooting here in Christchurch was fake. You know, we had a terror attack here and that very obviously happened. But this flat earth, it was like, no, they were crisis actors. And at that point, I sort of backed away from the conversation because there's this unfortunate thing as well, where I think ten years ago, I think you could probably believe in a theory and not necessarily believe in another theory.

[01:01:23]

You could think that maybe 9/11 was an inside job, that you maybe thought we probably did land on the moon. But unfortunately, now you believe in one. There's a tendency to just believe in the mole. And I think that it's super scary.

[01:01:35]

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[01:04:09]

Well, and here's one more I was like for about nine hours, I was considering being true, a friend of mine who believes in science was like, well, you know, the covid thing, Wuhan is where their chemical weapons plant is in that they believe that escaped. And I'm like totally plausible. I mean, you're fucking around with engineering viruses to kill enemies. Very possible. It could get out. Right. So it was a good eight hours where I was like, oh, shit.

[01:04:34]

Well, and not even angry at the Chinese, just like I know we have a chemical weapons facility. I hope ours don't get out. You know, I was just like, yeah, that could happen with a chemical weapons facility.

[01:04:45]

And I think it's you know, you've got to be open to different things. And I think it's not a case of just instantly shutting things down. You're allowed to think about things and analyze things. But as new information comes to hand, you've also got to be aware that maybe you were wrong about this theory or that you can change. And I think there's this really fascinating thing with Trump supporters where it's like everything is true and nothing can be false.

[01:05:09]

They build unfalsifiable propositions. That's like what they're masters at.

[01:05:14]

Like, I feel the most rabid Bernie supporter could occasionally still be capable of going on a Bernie kind of sort of did a misstep on that. Well, an Obama supporter this year, we love Obama. He's our man. But like, that whole drone thing wasn't so great, was it?

[01:05:29]

Or being anti gay marriage, it's like he was a fucking bummer man, that it was hard to stand with him during that.

[01:05:35]

But I think I feel like with a lot of Trump supporters, it's all or nothing. And I think that kind of bleeds through into a lot of this conspiracy stuff where it's all or nothing. So there's a group of people out there that would sort of hear, oh, chemical weapons plant and move on. Oh. And just dive all into that and never back out. And I think that's what's super alarming as well.

[01:05:54]

By the way, they're tasty. That's like a tasty secret. If nothing else, it's like, oh, that could be a plot of a movie, you know. Yeah.

[01:06:01]

And there is this appeal to having secret knowledge and a conspiracy theory gives you this inside knowledge and understanding. It does make you feel good.

[01:06:10]

Yeah. OK, so I want to talk about now I'm going to attempt you don't have to join me, but I'm going to attempt to have some compassion for those people and I'm going to attempt to try to understand them. And one thing I heard that I thought was really a compelling thought was on Karlan's hardcore history podcast, he said that the reason people are susceptible to conspiracy theories and particularly the JFK one, is that the notion that one crazy bastard could alter the course of history is so scary that one guy, Lee Harvey Oswald, if he had a conviction and determination, could fuck up world history.

[01:06:45]

That's such a scary idea, knowing there's seven billion of us that what is much more comforting is, no, that doesn't happen. There was like this was an arm of the CIA. There was high level people. This was, you know, that is just a lot more comforting. And so that's one aspect of it that I'm really sympathetic to, that some person can alter so many lives is very scary.

[01:07:08]

I 100 percent agree with you on that. It's much easier to think that there's some evil power out there that is responsible for all this, then the multitude of more subtle, more alarming things that can take place.

[01:07:20]

Yeah, and then the other thing which I already brought up a little bit is I have a very close friend who has had drastic ebbs and flows with success. And I have noticed it's unmistakable, the correlation that when AB is out and he feels very disempowered and rejected from our system and not thriving, that I notice there's he he's a lot more conspiracy theories. I just hear them over and over again. And then I'll notice, like it goes well for him for a while.

[01:07:47]

And then I don't really hear them anymore. And I just can't help but think that as people feel very excluded from systems and they look around and it looks like all their neighbors are thriving under the system and they go on Instagram and everyone's thriving, it's very hard to accept that I'm doing something wrong. I'm a good person and why wouldn't I be invited along with all these other people? It's more comforting to think there is a conspiracy that is out to fucking exclude me.

[01:08:14]

I feel that's a lot easier to stomach than I have failed, and that's why I'm not included. Or I even look at your high school. High school is the saddest fucking place in the world for 15 percent of the people there. It is just a beating on the chin from the second you arrive to you leave. And if I'm those people. Yeah, man, this is unfair. And why is it unfair? There has to be an explanation.

[01:08:38]

Well, it has to be these rich people who profit from us losers. And again, so I, I see that certain things are more fertile for this than others. And I want to know if you have thoughts on that or if you've even observed that. Yeah.

[01:08:52]

Yeah, absolutely. I think it is people who are isolated and worried about the way their own life is unfolding or unraveling around them. And I think there's no better example than covid happening. You know, suddenly this thing. Hits people are suddenly financially stretched, they're scared, life is incredibly difficult for them, they are locked in their home. They are online all the time that connecting with people who are also feeling like this. And I think it's no small coincidence that we're seeing a lot more talk about Kuhnen and we're seeing so much talk on our Facebook feeds and our Twitter feeds from people.

[01:09:33]

And we've all got friends that have fallen down this conspiracy tunnel because people are really scared. We're more scared than we've ever been. Everything is incredibly uncertain. The economy's uncertain. We don't know when life is going to go back to normal. I think it's dawning on a lot of people that things aren't magically going to go back to the way they were before for quite some time. We're living in a different world now and just watching people jump on these conspiracy bandwagons.

[01:09:59]

You know, since April, certainly here in New Zealand, it's because people are terrified. You're completely correct.

[01:10:05]

Now, we have this stereotype about New Zealand and I'm the biggest offender of it. I did a movie in New Zealand for four months, and I don't think I've ever fallen in love with another country more. What was the film? What was the film called Without a Paddle?

[01:10:18]

I know you own it and watch it monthly, but we shot all over the North Island and we were kind of based in Wellington and I just loved it.

[01:10:26]

I think it's a little shocking. And we have a similar stereotype about Canadians. When you meet a super conservative Canadian, you're like, wait, I didn't know you guys existed.

[01:10:35]

You have natural hair. Yeah. So that is it shocking to you that that element exists even in New Zealand or not?

[01:10:42]

You know, we have an election coming up pretty soon as well. And I've been super alarmed to see politics here echoing politics in the United States. We've got a party that arrived called the public party. And it's fascinating to me because it's run by this New Zealand musician. And, you know, Billy Teekay Junior is his name, really good guitar player watching his Facebook over lockdown. We were on lockdown in New Zealand because I've covered for two months.

[01:11:09]

And so we were in our homes. We were very limited in where we could go. And you watch this guy over those two months go from talking about zero politics or zero conspiracy, thinking to nothing but to the point where now he's registered a political party. He's getting big turnouts all over New Zealand. And it's all based around the idea that covid is a conspiracy. It's fake. 5G is just all the Q And on talking points, we now have a political party here in New Zealand and people actively following them.

[01:11:42]

And that's something I never would have imagined happening here, because we're pretty we cool things pretty straight. I think in New Zealand we're less likely to fall for something that's clearly incorrect. But we're seeing that here now. So I don't know how far that's going to spread. But I guess what I'm saying is, I mean, maybe take solace in the fact that it's not just America that is embracing this kind of lack of truth. We're doing it here in New Zealand as well.

[01:12:05]

There's a global populist movement and you're seeing more and more kind of tyrannical dictator ish leaders popping up in different countries. Oh, yeah.

[01:12:16]

You just talk to someone like Brazil. You know, there's so many places where leaders are popping up who Anji Truth and and just do not care about their fellow man. Yeah.

[01:12:27]

And do you have a theory, an armchair theory on why that is? I'm inclined to think it's just ever expanding income inequality. Do you have a take on why populism is on such a rise? I think you're completely right.

[01:12:43]

The divide between rich and poor is at a level we've never seen it before. I mean, and I think we're becoming aware of that in ways that we weren't before. I mean, I was saying something the other day, a graphical representation of Jeff Bezos as well. And it was basically a little timeline. We had speed along and you just kept scrolling for like I think I was scrolling for like ten minutes just getting through his wealth. And, like, my wealth stopped at, like, point two of a second.

[01:13:09]

And ten minutes later I'm still scrolling, you know, and so we're very aware of that.

[01:13:13]

And I think when the scale of it suddenly hits you in the face, it's just really alarming. And I think people are aware of that. And I think there's just there's much more uncertainty than that has ever been before. I think, you know, we've got this big thing looming over us of global warming and realizing that we've probably missed the boat on sorting things out for future generations, like we have completely messed with the planet, income inequality, just society in general.

[01:13:41]

And how we're living is just it's incredibly warped. And I think humans there's more and more of us. We're more and more connected. We're more and more aware of how strange it is to be alive and experiencing life and the way that we are.

[01:13:58]

And I think extreme views are just going to become more and more alluring, easy answers, people claiming that they have the full take on the truth and.

[01:14:07]

Moving away from any sort of subtlety or discussion that has more layers to it beyond good, bad, you know, another thing is I think you see an entire generation of people who were raised on a promise, particularly in this country, which is you bust your fuckin ass, you own a home within that home, you grow wealth, then you retire, you're happy.

[01:14:27]

And now you get to the point where you've peaked out. You fucking killed yourself. And now you're telling me I can't drive an SUV. Now you're telling me I can't air condition my home. Now you're telling me like there's this all these things. I was like, no, no, no, no.

[01:14:40]

I bought into this shitty program where I fucking gave I donated my life to a cubicle, but I'm supposed to get X, Y and Z. And now you're telling me I can't have X, Y and Z again emotionally. Not to excuse it, but I understand the emotions of it.

[01:14:55]

Absolutely. And there are people doing it very hard. And I you know, you look to the sorts of people that buy into conspiracy thinking, and that would tend to be people, you know, lower on the socioeconomic scale, that people that have less money, they're really terrified. They've been badly done by and they're looking for answers. And this stuff is, you know, a conspiracy will offer them that answer because it shows them who to be angry at.

[01:15:19]

Yeah, that when they profiled this sovereign citizen group, I don't know.

[01:15:23]

Are you aware of that group that here in the States? No. No, I'm not. No, they reject the federal government. They won't carry licenses. They get in all these disputes with law enforcement people and they issue all these lawsuits. That's kind of their weapon, is that there are certain politicians that have like over a billion dollars in lawsuits stacked against them right now. And it gets so cumbersome. You have to respond like it's a great terrorist technique to fuck with people.

[01:15:47]

So in the 60 Minutes profile, they broke down that in the high 80 percent of all members, they were all white males who within the last 18 months had had a job that was middle class that went away. And that's the part where I had to go. I mean, these people are fucking crazy and I don't want anything to do with them. And I can find some compassion in that. I can see that someone's really desperate.

[01:16:13]

And I think it's important to view things that way, because in a very simple level, you know, if you've got a friend that is suddenly being ready to polls and then suddenly spouting out a lot of untruths and sort of dangerous health misinformation, for example, it does no good to just barge in there calling them stupid, calling them names, shutting them down. That does no good for anyone. You need to try and understand them. And again, speaking with West, this conspiracy Dipankar, he told me that, like, the main thing you've got to do is like find your common ground as a human, even about conspiracy theories.

[01:16:49]

So don't just come in there and tell them that they're an idiot. Tell them, yeah, I have distrust for institutions as well. And and I think that, you know, Watergate was a real thing. You know, I have some misgivings about 9/11 and perhaps that was used as an excuse to go to war.

[01:17:06]

Just put your things out the ground and then have that discussion. You know, don't just shut it off, try to stand up.

[01:17:12]

Big business does have big levers in our government. There's no question about it. Big Pharma makes decisions.

[01:17:19]

The FDA is regularly misled willingly by corporations.

[01:17:24]

So, yeah, there's plenty of real shit for us to agree on that needs addressing.

[01:17:29]

Yeah. And there are you know, there are conspiracy theories that turn out to be very real.

[01:17:33]

And I think we need to keep having those discussions as well.

[01:17:36]

Yeah, because that was going to be one of my questions, because one of your newsletter topics was how do we talk to people we love who are in deep? Yeah, part of it is coming to the table with the idea of being open minded and finding common ground.

[01:17:50]

And another thing I got told in sort of a good way to talk to conspiracy theorists is called Steel Manning, sensitive like a straw man argument. It's a steel man argument.

[01:17:59]

So, again, don't go there and say, you know, that theory about Adreno crime is so stupid. You should stop thinking that you go and learn that conspiracy theory a thousand times better than they know it. So like spend a week online learning it better than they do. And then when you're talking to them about the adriene of crime and the fact that children are being drained of their blood and underground tunnels, explain it back to them in such great detail.

[01:18:27]

A, it shows them that you are not just shutting them down and you actually know what you're talking about.

[01:18:32]

You hear them, you hear them. You too. And hopefully in hearing that batch theory, explain back to them. They'll kind of go, oh man, like that when it's out of my own head like that does sound kind of crazy.

[01:18:45]

Like I wonder if that is a real thing.

[01:18:47]

And so still, Manning is something that I think is a really good technique to keep thinking about.

[01:18:52]

I couldn't agree more with that because when one of my big complaints about my side of the political spectrum is I think life on planet Earth operates on these two very specific levels. There's one that is science and facts and empirical. And then there is an equal chunk of your life that is as important, which is your emotional experience on this planet. And so I so often think we on the left will try to defeat climate deniers, argument with, you know, the data.

[01:19:24]

And we don't ever stop to question what is the fear underneath of all this? How could I help this person not be afraid of this thing?

[01:19:33]

Like, how can I not get hung up on that? And really, as a human who would like to help another human really here, what the fear is underneath of it and make a sincere effort to try to help the person out of that fear. Because if you're a xenophobic who hates Muslims because you're afraid of terrorism, telling them you're more likely to get struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist, it doesn't do anything that's operating up on this level.

[01:19:57]

That's not what's driving them personally. And so I just think we don't want to address the emotional level that's driving so much of our life and it really needs addressing. Oh, yeah.

[01:20:08]

And completely. And we've just been talking, you know, so much of our conversation just now has being about the fear that gets people and the point of view that gets people to this place and to think you can suddenly defeat that by thwarting them like a bunch of articles that you've read that are really good articles, but that's not going to do a thing like we're humans, like we thrive on emotion and we're emotive creatures and we want to connect with people.

[01:20:32]

And if you can't do that with someone that has different beliefs to you this year, there's no chance. So it's hideous. You can get about things. And as much as you can have the facts on your side, you're not going to you know, you're not going to convince a young earth creationist that maybe the Earth isn't ten thousand years old by, like, screaming science at them now.

[01:20:50]

Now you could take them to an archaeological dig is going to do nothing. But I think if you start with someone who's like, let's say they're Islamophobic and you say I'm terrified of bears, which is something I'm really terrified of, OK, I think about them way more than I need to think about bears. I've never actually interacted with one. I've seen a couple in the wild. And if I could just bond with them and say, Yeah, man, I'm so fucking afraid of bears.

[01:21:13]

It kept me from going to Yellowstone on this vacation. We were in a float boat once and I was like, everyone's enjoying it. And I was panicked and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I read this thing that I'm more likely to get killed by getting hit in the head with a coconut. And I've lied under a million palm trees on vacation. And I just try to use that as like either you got to be afraid of coconuts or you can't be afraid of bears.

[01:21:32]

You got to bear. Like, to me, that's that's the conversation to have when when you're dealing with someone who's afraid of a terrorist attack.

[01:21:38]

I think humor is a really good way to have these conversations as well, that you don't have to be this way to have the person having this discussion. You can use humor because that's something I mean, that's something I've found in documentary that connects so well with such a good way to get information across is through humor. And that can help when you're having these kind of conversations as well. If you're laughing, you're suddenly labeled on the same playing field and you might be able to connect over some of these bigger, more important ideas.

[01:22:04]

But you should try and have that one on one human connection. Don't fold them links, don't take some abuse like it's kind of got to be in person if you've got any chance, I think.

[01:22:15]

Yeah. David Wow.

[01:22:17]

How fun can we exchange email like I want to hang with you the next time you're in the States. I want you to like, stay at our house. I'm really vibing you.

[01:22:26]

I really enjoy you. I love that you Kiwi's put a fucking egg on everything. I challenge someone to go to New Zealand and order anything that won't have a soft boiled egg on it.

[01:22:36]

And I love you like. Yeah. You puppini going to an egg messing with. Yeah, I'll have a bowl of rice. Rice Krispie. Sure. We'll pop back on it for you. Didn't ask for it. Here it comes. Yeah.

[01:22:47]

I love the idea of coming to shoot a production in New Zealand and having this very sure extreme experience of a country like this. I would just love to be inside your brain with the image we have of our country that I got into the All Blacks, they were doing amazing.

[01:23:02]

This was two thousand and three and the twenty three. The All Blacks were on fire. I got the Haukaas.

[01:23:10]

There was a bunch of Maori crew members on the movie. I tell. What does this mean again.

[01:23:14]

It's like, really? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean there's it's an amazing thing to watch before a match and yeah it's pretty terrifying to the other team and we're, we're very good at it. Yeah.

[01:23:26]

And at first I was like, this is the silliest pageantry. And then I watched them do it to the Australians and by the end of it you could see them going like, oh, we're kind of fucked.

[01:23:34]

What kind of voodoo is about to get unleashed?

[01:23:37]

Its spine chilling. I mean, we're very it's very cool to see that on the world stage before games because it's such an important part of New Zealand. I mean, unique in so many ways. But you watch a hacker in person and it's just like spine chilling. You know, it's pretty special. I've always wanted to see an American football team go up against a rugby team and vice versa. I would love to see that it would be such a site.

[01:24:00]

Yes, yes, yes.

[01:24:02]

OK, well, David, everyone, I urge to please go to your website, which is. Web worm dutko and watch Tickled, and we're going to watch Dark Tour, can't wait. And this has been so fun. No, thanks for having me on.

[01:24:16]

It's a pleasure. Stay safe over there in beautiful Los Angeles.

[01:24:20]

We will we will do our best. The entire place is on fire, but we will we will march forward.

[01:24:25]

I know a friend sent me some photos of the window. It looks fucking chaotic. It was orange outside.

[01:24:30]

It's just bright orange. And we're already we already have a plague and now we have fires.

[01:24:35]

So, you know, that's the whole apocalypse there.

[01:24:39]

Do please stay safe because it is. Yeah, it's awful shit. So just be careful, etc..

[01:24:44]

Yes, I appreciate it.

[01:24:46]

It's such a weird situation to be in and I really appreciate you thinking of me and being into my stuff.

[01:24:50]

And thanks for in particular and protecting conspiracy stuff, because I honestly think this is one of the biggest issues are going to be facing is just this complete lack of truth. And if we can't get that back, I think we just don't stand a chance. So thanks for playing into this stuff. All right.

[01:25:04]

Well, yeah. Lovely to meet you both. Yeah. And in the door's always open to you. So the next thing you make, please come here and talk about it. Thanks so much. I'd love to thank all of you.

[01:25:12]

Bye bye. Bye. Now see. And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soul mate, Monica Batmen. Christian Bale, Christian Bale was so good in the Cheney movie. It is disgusting. We just had really delicious rice dishes from Squirrel.

[01:25:36]

Squirrel in Los Angeles is spelled without any vowels or one vowel. Q Earl.

[01:25:43]

Every time I try to search it, I don't know how to spell it.

[01:25:46]

I'm like, I know it's missing some vowels, but which you don't like it when things are spelled funky or not spelled phonetically. I don't have a great grasp of how they're spelled. Just normal. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:58]

So we loved David. Oh my God. We loved him.

[01:26:03]

This is not the right word or adjective, but it was almost tabloidy like it felt a scintillating. Scintillating. Yeah. In titillating.

[01:26:12]

That is an interesting parallel because I do think what people get out of tabloids, I mean a lot of things, but one is just like a peek inside. Yeah.

[01:26:23]

A world they don't know. And that is what we experience.

[01:26:28]

And they're kind of conspiracy driven because. Right. Like it's been on the cover of like magazines. I've seen it seven or eight times that multination are getting divorced.

[01:26:37]

Right. And that's just proven to be like a conspiracy theory. That's there's nothing behind that. Yeah, we'll just lie. Well, in one of them was driven by her being on the podcast.

[01:26:46]

You remember, that was somehow something she said ended up making headlines. And two weeks later I saw the cover. So they were getting to and I was like, hmm, well, this time I'm just going to check in and make sure everything's hunky dory. Yeah. And I you like. Oh, my God. Now it's ridiculous.

[01:27:00]

Oh, my God, it's so crazy.

[01:27:04]

But yeah, there are some similar trait. And at the apex, the National Enquirer, you've got reportings of aliens.

[01:27:11]

You've got the ape child. Yeah. Those are. Yeah.

[01:27:16]

First of all, the conspiracy theories, which one do you think are you most likely to believe?

[01:27:22]

Probably aliens, just because mathematically there's billions and billions of stars and billions calling a conspiracy theory?

[01:27:30]

Well, in that I've not seen evidence of it ever. That's like definitive.

[01:27:34]

But there is some isn't there some evidence that there's life on other planets? No, no, not that I'm aware of, I know that, like settees been listening for years for some kind of radio transmission emanating out of one of these planets, but I do know that in our own galaxy that they've looked at all the stars and they've tried to see if any one of the stars had a planet, that it was within the right range, that it could support life where it would be too hot or too cold, and that in our own galaxy there are none.

[01:28:06]

But there's billions of galaxies and there are super galaxies and galaxy clusters.

[01:28:11]

And so, you know, as Eric was saying yesterday when we were at the beach there, they say there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on planet Earth, which seems not possible.

[01:28:23]

My brain kind of starts off. Yeah, it stops working as soon as you leave the planetary system or whatever, our solar system.

[01:28:33]

Oh, maybe even before that, when we were all on vacation together and we were looking up at the stars and Eric is very into it. Yeah. And he was teaching us stuff. He has the app and he's explaining things. And I cannot understand. I think I'm a fairly intelligent person.

[01:28:51]

I'd say super intelligent. It stops. It stops. Yeah. We all have blindspots minds. Those stupid fucking music notes. The hieroglyphics hate them. I mean, I cannot comprehend that to save my family's life.

[01:29:03]

Oh yeah. I took trombone in sixth grade.

[01:29:06]

Oh what a dumb instrument I picked. I told you I picked it. Maybe I forget. I was in fifth grade and we had an assembly where the junior high kids came that were in band to kind of show off to get us interested in joining a band when we got to junior high the next year. Yeah.

[01:29:20]

And the guy took the trombone, he went, oh, oh yeah. And it was that one move. I was like, fuck, I got to be able to do this. Forget the fact that I love drums and I wanted to play drums. I just I saw him do a lot and I took it and I regretted it from the second I did it.

[01:29:35]

And then I could not understand music writing and notes and read. Could you do that move then.

[01:29:41]

Yeah. Oh, OK. Anyone can do it. I didn't need to take a semester of it. I could have just fucking bought one at the Goodwill.

[01:29:49]

So you fulfilled a fantasy though. You should just count that as a chalk it up to a bucket item list.

[01:29:55]

I scratched off at eleven. Yeah, OK. I want to look something up because I think our friend Laura was just telling me that they just found life on Venus or something.

[01:30:05]

I guess they found some chemistry on Venus that is the precursor to life. OK, I think that's what it is, but I'm not entirely sure.

[01:30:15]

Very many reputable. Also, Eric was saying that apparently some like Navy pilots and some some military people have recently come out saying, no, no, we have seen many spaceships like many people in the military.

[01:30:30]

Yes. So, yeah, we really broke it down yesterday, Eric and I. So I was like, here's my problem with this area. Fifty one. And they've got these alien bodies and they've got a couple ships that are in various levels of degradation. So first we were going like, well, a, I find it a little convenient that they landed in America, right.

[01:30:51]

Because if they landed in Guam, I think Guam, we like check out the shit, we got to be exciting and, you know, it'd be good for their country.

[01:30:57]

So the odds that it landed here is a little suspicious. But then we thought, you know, maybe they have it. And it's a technology they don't yet understand, but they're very committed to learning the technology. And then it would be a great advantage for us as a country to have this technology once we figured it out. So be better for them to keep it quiet and not have the international committee of scientists looking into this, because then it would be some shared technology, which again, is bad, which if we have a cool technology, everyone should have it anyway.

[01:31:26]

Right? Right. It is very in our nation's interest, selfish interest to maybe learn what this technology is and how to use it so that we would have a leg up on it.

[01:31:34]

What technology are you talking about? Well, the power source of their spaceships, that can't be internal combustion engine and it can't be nuclear.

[01:31:43]

They have some power source. So something landed here.

[01:31:48]

That's what that's the theory of area fifty one. And in fact, Joe Rogan have the scientists on who is documented, having worked at Area 51. And this guy sounded so sane and rational that I was actually. Is this possible what he's saying and he was saying they have this Orben there that's in a glass thing and they don't know how it works, but they've got it sealed up. And then they have these other components of the spaceship that are kind of like sealed up and they're trying to understand how it works.

[01:32:10]

Would he be able to just openly talk about it if it was real? Well, this guy has had lots of crazy things happen to him. And he's been people tried to silence him. So I don't know. I could.

[01:32:20]

But also, he could be a paranoid schizophrenic. Yes, totally mad. I would go bad saying that. But I have to think logically.

[01:32:29]

Yeah, there are a lot of people with delusions. I'm one of them. Delusions of grandeur. Yeah. Yeah. I thought we were going to win a Peabody for like three seconds. That was a delusion of grandeur.

[01:32:39]

Well, yeah. OK, but not as extreme. No, they never last more than like I generally can tell, I'm being grandiose. Within five minutes, I can give you another one that is so embarrassing. Oh, my God, this is so embarrassing. There was a moment, my news, only the second movie I'd ever been in, but the second movie I was ever in was Idiocracy. And that character, whether it's good or bad, it was arch, you know, I was really swinging for the fences.

[01:33:05]

Regardless, it's great. I was in my trailer and I just all of a sudden I was like, oh, my God, how could I be the first person to get nominated for a comedy?

[01:33:16]

Wow. Yeah.

[01:33:18]

And for about an hour, I let myself think that that was a possibility. Yeah. Oh, my God.

[01:33:23]

What's tricky is there's a fine line between delusion and fantasy and chasing your dream.

[01:33:32]

Yes. Yes. Because it's actually the odds of me going from Milford, Michigan, to being in a Mike Judge movie are actually much lower than me after I'm already in a movie to get nominated. So in some way, things start seeming really possible that are ridiculous.

[01:33:49]

Yeah, but are they like that's that's really the big question. Maybe I should just kept thinking that.

[01:33:56]

Well, I believe in that and like willing things. And it's not that you're willing them and then they just they come to you. It's that you're thinking about it so much that you're inadvertently taking steps to get there. Right. So I believe in that.

[01:34:10]

But I really and this is not faux humility. I don't think I have the skill set to warrant an Academy Award nomination, like when I even the.

[01:34:19]

Oh, my God, Peter Minoff. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[01:34:21]

Like when you look at what Christian Bale does. Oh, you mean. And then what I have done, those are like two dramatically different pursuits in a lot of ways it is.

[01:34:32]

But you're not trying to do what he does. And not everyone who's won an Academy Award is of Christian Bale's transformative level. They've just had an incredibly honest performance.

[01:34:44]

That's the only thing I've ever thought I could maybe get. I could be one hundred percent true to who I am. And the story was compelling and moving enough.

[01:34:52]

Maybe it would land me there, but I but in no way, you know, like I would say, my only touch of that would be maybe parenthood would like somehow it was this perfect part that I could do very naturally. And I wouldn't have felt like a fraud if I had been nominated for an Emmy and won an Emmy for that.

[01:35:09]

You should and I think everyone on that show should have won it. Oh, I know. Oh, God.

[01:35:14]

As someone who has been nominated. Yes.

[01:35:17]

Please tell me, how do I get up? Just getting there. I don't even know how to finish that sentence.

[01:35:22]

But when you were little and you would practice being on Letterman and then you got on Letterman.

[01:35:29]

Yes, that's what that was a delusion of grandeur. And it happened. I know, right? Yeah.

[01:35:34]

But the beauty of being ignorant to what's possible is so helpful. Yeah. And then can cross over really quickly. Exactly.

[01:35:41]

Do you really have to police yourself to stay in that middle ground of fantasy without blowing your ego out too?

[01:35:50]

Because I think where it jumps into something pathological is when you start getting resentful at other people because you start thinking you did something better now or something.

[01:36:00]

Yeah, yeah. The disserving element is where things get bad.

[01:36:04]

Yeah. And even the evaluating the other people who got nominated, like once you're evaluating whether someone should or shouldn't have been nominated, it's probably not a great path to be on. Yeah.

[01:36:14]

OK, so the conspiracy theory that I fall for them. Oh please. I'm sorry. I was rude. I got distracted. I would have followed up with what one view. What one do you like.

[01:36:21]

I think I would be most likely to believe like a governmental one. Mm.

[01:36:29]

That the government was involved in something like not 9/11 because I just definitely don't think that but like maybe assassinations sinking of the Lusitania.

[01:36:42]

I think there was conspiracy theories around that. Yeah, yeah, I feel like more of an assassination with one hundred percent assassinated people. That's not even a conspiracy theory, although there's been a lot of declassified.

[01:36:54]

If I was going to believe him, I don't believe in any, but I don't think the CIA would kill a president. I really don't believe that.

[01:37:01]

I mean, I think they'd kill other people's presidents and probably have, but I don't think they'd kill our president to go fucking rogue. The CIA had gone at that point. The boss of the CIA pitching that idea. Guys, hear me out.

[01:37:15]

Someone would blow a whistle about the president, maybe. Yes. I mean, yes. That's why I don't think it's real. But I definitely don't think the government is so pure that something like that couldn't happen.

[01:37:28]

Here's my other thing. And this this isn't or Minoff. This is attribution error. So maybe I'm wrong because I'm this way and I assume everyone else is this way. But I know many times I was not supposed to tell my wife or you about things I do. Right, and I have to imagine other people are like me, they're going to tell their wives and then their wives are going to tell their best friend and then that best friends can tell their husband and then the husband's going to his best friend.

[01:37:52]

I don't think you can keep a lid on these things, secrets like that.

[01:37:56]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I sometimes wonder about that with my therapists, like therapists and stuff like how are they not telling their husbands and wives they have to.

[01:38:05]

They are. They are. But then yeah. Then that person is definitely telling. So but I don't I can't really believe that because I need to be able to talk to that person.

[01:38:14]

You will. What you have to do is you have to go like that could happen, but it's worth the risk because I need this. Yeah, that's scary. So far, I don't believe in any.

[01:38:23]

Well, I think we have corrupted tons of elections. I think we've assassinated leaders. I think we've probably shot down planes at points. I think we've done some horrendous things.

[01:38:32]

But what about like the skulls? Have you seen that movie? This casts based on the skull and skull and bones. Things go and key maybe. Oh, yes. Secret societies. I'm so into secret society.

[01:38:45]

But when I was in high school, I read this book, Behold the Pale Horse. It's all of the early conspiracy theories and it's all about the Illuminati and the Knights Templar.

[01:38:54]

Are you going to tell us you were invited into the Illuminati? I'm going to tell you that I'm the current president.

[01:38:58]

Oh, wow.

[01:39:00]

But there is all these weird things, right? Like, there are a very significant percentage of the presidents were Freemasons. I know that. And Skogland key Harvard grads, the Knights Templar had these famous people associated with it. So, you know, of all the coincidences are there for you to really start kidding? Oh, the secret societies in those colleges, that is real. They they really exist, obviously, and they do produce really elite members of society.

[01:39:31]

But but then what's their mission?

[01:39:33]

That's the part where I think that the truth is it's just like in Hollywood, like all these people know each other. So they say, how about this person? How about it's more like that, like they all just know each other. Agreed.

[01:39:43]

And also, it really just sums up your view of the world. Right, because I can even if I can see that there might be a group of elite people that are trying to steer the course of history, I don't assume they're trying to destroy history. I think they're trying to do something great.

[01:39:58]

Yeah, yeah. But my assumption is, like I remember reading that the Hold the Pale Horse, and at the end of it I was like, I'm kind of grateful that the twenty smartest people in the world are guiding it.

[01:40:08]

If that's true, I don't want me and my neighbors guiding it. Well, the line can get crossed so quickly. Like social dilemma. Yeah. That it had the best intentions. There was no bad intentions when all that social media stuff started and now. Oops, these big moves.

[01:40:25]

Yeah. Whoopsies ah. Farted. You know, that's what they need to come out. Tech needs to come out with a headline that says oops we farted.

[01:40:37]

Open the windows and usher that air out of air. Oh, I get. OK, Dave. Dave So his documentary Tickled.

[01:40:47]

We love that you talked about it at length, but I haven't watched it.

[01:40:52]

Please watch it. It's so good. It is on Hulu. Hulu.

[01:40:58]

Oh, you you told him to watch the Roy Cohn documentary, but you didn't mention the name. The name is Bully. Coward Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn.

[01:41:07]

It's awesome. You said Cohen or Cohen. I say Cohen and likely I say it wrong, you know, because it's c o n no, it's h n Cohen probably.

[01:41:19]

Cohen wrote Roy Cohen. I think it's Roy. Oh, ding, ding, ding. Words you don't like.

[01:41:29]

Oh, the letters ding, ding, ding.

[01:41:32]

Or using words with letters.

[01:41:35]

OK, OK, so you said you're afraid of bears and the technical term for fear of bears is OK, can I guess it.

[01:41:44]

Yes. Ursula phobia. No. Fuck.

[01:41:47]

Do you really think that was the thing. Yeah, because I think Ursula is like the kingdom film class or family genius maybe. Genus of Bears is Ursula.

[01:41:56]

Ursula Major. That's a star. Right, right.

[01:41:59]

But isn't it a part of that bear constellation maybe. Yeah. I don't know.

[01:42:04]

We're way of thinking, OK, it's our code of phobia, our code of phobia aka to phobia aka to phobia or our code of phobia.

[01:42:16]

That sounds like a fear of architects to me, which I have.

[01:42:21]

It sounds to me like a fear of maps because cartography. I love cartography eschatology. Oh, and you don't have fears of it.

[01:42:29]

No, I love cartography and cartography and I love topographic maps a lot. When you go to the library and they'd have a nice topographic map.

[01:42:37]

You were interested. I loved it. What do you like about it? Because they build up the mountain and then there's lower portions where the water is.

[01:42:45]

It's well, you know, I love miniature stuff. Oh yeah. And so my ultimate fantasy.

[01:42:51]

Oh, I wish I would have said this when we were talking about winning the Powerball if I had a billion dollars, here's what I would do. OK, I'd move to Austin, Texas. I'd buy a piece of property on Lake Austin, and then I would build a lazy river around the property.

[01:43:04]

And then I would build miniature mountains, but perfectly to scale of the Rocky Mountains.

[01:43:11]

So you so the Lazy River would be the Colorado River.

[01:43:14]

Oh, and then after you left the Rocky Mountains, you'd go down into the desert of Arizona. My goodness. Yeah.

[01:43:19]

It would take the real route of the Colorado River one. Oh, that'd be so fun to be in a tube floating.

[01:43:25]

It's like, oh, here we go. Now we're going through Colorado.

[01:43:28]

There's a oh, man, it's pretty cool. Well, let me cool. Let me be something to do if you a billion. Yeah. You need a few Bill. No. Yeah. That's like a ride at Disney. Yeah.

[01:43:40]

You wouldn't have enough money to do other stuff. You do spend it all.

[01:43:44]

You could get that built for probably ten million dollars. No.

[01:43:47]

Yeah. The miniature mountains and the water park. Yeah, these guys who build these train station sets and hire like 20 of them. My God, I give them each three hundred grand to work for the year. And between the 20 of them, they would probably build it. Oh, it'd be the weirdest group of guys out in the backyard. What now?

[01:44:08]

OK, so since we recorded we watched the doc, he told us to watch not his which we do need to really watch but feels good man.

[01:44:18]

Feels good man.

[01:44:19]

And it was really a good documentary that was so good. I really recommend it.

[01:44:25]

We watched it the same day we watched Social Dilemma, which was a lot to take in.

[01:44:30]

We were pretty pessimistic by the end of the night. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

[01:44:33]

Man with the Internet can do it and it allows this exactly utopian dystopia all at the same time.

[01:44:44]

Please watch it.

[01:44:45]

It's really, really interesting. It is. It is.

[01:44:48]

And also just humans are so persuadable, fallible and yet vulnerable. Yeah.

[01:44:56]

Vulnerable to us. You and I too. Of course. Yeah.

[01:45:00]

No, consider getting off social media for a minute.

[01:45:03]

Then I persuaded you not to for business reasons and then I listened. But I do feel unethical.

[01:45:11]

I feel unethical about being a part of. But you just circle. Yeah but can't you just isolate what the utopia is and use the utopia and then avoid the dystopian aspect. Of course.

[01:45:23]

But I think that it still adds to when if someone has a notification on their phone and they're looking like, I don't like that.

[01:45:34]

Mm. And I want to promote my show. That's right. What do you do? All right. Well, that's all for Dave. Oh, boy, I love Dave.

[01:45:45]

New Zealander got a sweet ass. That's what they say a lot in New Zealand. But they were teaching us how to canoe like we had two Olympic rowers, Augie.

[01:45:56]

Oh, we love we are obsessed with Augie. He was such a man. He was unsure, screaming at me as I was trying to do the Jastrow and ferry across and all the shit in the fucking boat was sinking. He's screaming, you know, this is all I could hear.

[01:46:12]

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet is like he was always like, do you hear what I'm saying?

[01:46:18]

And I was like, all I heard, man, was sweet and sweet is like I was in, say, sweet ass.

[01:46:23]

But every time I would lose track of that accent, I would just hear sweet, as sweet, as sweet as the other thing I love that they do in New Zealand is they do baby talk so well, like they'll like the wardrobe department would say, do you have your Trekkies, your track pants called Trekkies?

[01:46:41]

And then they'd say, you want some engie brekky? And that was English breakfast tea. So there's all these, like baby words, engie brekky, Trekkies. And then the best was Seth was at a gas station and just happened to look at an Australian tabloid, OK? And they kept referring to women's breasts as blabbers glam blabbers and some other hysterical word clambers and something.

[01:47:06]

So Seth and I all we talked about for three months for BLABBERS all the time, look at a lamppost on that wall.

[01:47:11]

I even put that very well. She had a gorgeous set of lampposts.

[01:47:19]

Well, on that note on that note, Goodey, we love you.

[01:47:23]

I oh, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.