Behind the Bastards - The Worst Grifters of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Robert is joined by Jamie Loftus to discuss pandemic grifters.FOOTNOTES: Gwyneth Paltrow blasted for hawking fancy outfit amid coronavirus pandemic Makeup Mogul Michelle Phan’s Coronavirus Strategy Is Educate and HODL Bitcoin Dr. Pimple Popper shut down beauty guru Michelle Phan's claim that burning 'antiviral' essential oils can kill off viruses before they enter your system As Coronavirus Spreads, Hastily Produced Books Capitalize on Fear Alex Jones’ Infowars is attempting to profit from the coronavirus outbreak Televangelist ordered by New York attorney general to stop promoting ‘cure’ for coronavirus “Eat More Onions!” Spanish flu: The deadliest pandemic in history Coronavirus Scam Alert: Beware Fake Fox News Articles Promising A CBD Oil Cure Giant Silver Solution Bundle Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Syphilis! I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that is introduced as badly as this podcast is, and also talks about terrible people. I didn't know what else to say. Did you just say syphilis? I shouted syphilis loud enough to unsettle my neighbors. There used to be a law that that's the only way you could get that diagnosed. You can't have it diagnosed because it's speaking volume.

You gotta shout syphilis. Look, this is a time of illness and disease, so how better to express solidarity with everyone than shouting the word syphilis as loud as I can? I think that is the only way we can really show that we care right now. We're all in this together. We're all in this together. High school musical style. A hero. Jamie! Robert, have you seen High School Musical?

I saw the parody of it that was done by, oh wait, no, there was a parody of Glee that they did on Community. No, I have no idea what High School Musical is other than what the title tells me. Well, honestly, that's more than I expected. I mean, I feel like it says a lot. Do you want to introduce our guest, Robert? Just a thought. Do you want to just introduce our guest? Yes, our guest today. Or I'll do it for you. Is Jamie, Elizabeth, Thompson, Jefferson, Loftus.

Yes. Thank you. The one and only bitches. Co-host of the Bechtel cast. It's true. Destroyer of Mensa. Yeah, I had to be introduced completely. What was the dragon lady's name?

What's her name? Who the fuck is the dragon lady? I had, wait, Jamie of the house Loftus. First of all. Yeah, that's the one. Breaker of Mensa, yeah. Breaker of Mensa. Frequent podcast guest, feminist icon.

And my really good friend, I love you so much. So, we're all stuck in our individual homes right now. As is everyone listening to this pretty much. Robert ate his survival cheese. I did. I had a breakfast of a spoonful of dried and powdered survival cheese this morning. And it actually kind of ruled. I don't, I don't, I don't know.

I don't like that. Normally when you eat a spoonful of a powder, it's like tough to choke down. But the survival cheese instantly turns into like a mushy cheese was like substance in your mouth. So it's not, it's pretty good actually. I don't, I don't, mushy. I don't, I don't. Well, I, you know, you know, we're all doing, I, I, some have survival cheese.

Some have three boxes of France. Yeah, just. Yeah, you are drinking at 2pm as we record this podcast. Okay. Like we all haven't been drinking at 2pm. Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. As someone on Twitter put it, everyone, everyone's drinking is now on airport rules.

So. Yeah. Anything goes. I, there, there, there's no more mics hard at the 7-Eleven, but we did find a case of white claw. And so, you know, we're making it work. We're making it work here. So everyone is, everyone right now is making sacrifices and changes to deal with this situation.

Whether it's differences in drinking, eating powdered cheeses, recording podcasts remotely, we all, we've all had to change our lives, but there's a special select elite group of people in this country who didn't just see this looming disaster and change their own lives. They saw it as an opportunity to make a shitload of money by lying to the entire country. And today we're going to do a timely episode about the grifters of the great coronavirus pandemic. Wow.

Oh, what a privilege. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. As many as I had time to collect. Sophie has whipped out her machete. It's out. I mean, as one does.

Uh-huh. Everybody hold their weapon of choice right now. I want to get a pick. Oh. Robert, the knife you gave me is in the other room. I don't, but I have it. That's good. I opened a box with it.

Good. See, you're all ready. I opened a violin box with it. Well, that box isn't going to be hurting you anymore. This is wonderful. Thank you, everyone. So, Jamie, it wouldn't be a hellishly destructive and nigh apocalyptic pandemic if there weren't a fuckload of grifters sailing into profit from the mass destruction of human lives and

livelihoods. Oh, for sure. And in 1918, as the Spanish flu burned its way through tens of millions of souls, smooth talking conmen offered up salvation to the dying and the frightened. On June 28, 1918, a public notice appeared in British newspapers purporting to lay out the symptoms of this deadly flu. But this public notice was in reality an ad for formaments, a vitamin tablet and mint sold as a remedy for influenza.

These mints were claimed to be the best means of preventing infectious processes. Everyone, especially vulnerable children, was advised to suck a tablet whenever you enter a crowded germ-laden place. That's way better than fucking social distancing. Suck a tablet, you'll be good. I wonder what are equivalent of like, if we do have descendants, what they'll be like, can you fucking believe in 2020 they were just telling you to like, live stream, red, dead redemption, and then you'd live, you know, shit like that?

Or can you believe in 2020 they had electricity? Oh, my sweet hazmat descendants. In the US, snake oil salesmen build the Spanish flu as an exaggerated form of the grip, which is a funny thing that people used to call kind of any like, colder flu type sickness. It's like a grandpa Simpson way of referring to an illness. They've got the grip. The grip. Yeah.

You love to hear it. Yeah. So, one of the treatments for the grip that killed tens of thousands of Americans during the 1918 epidemic was the laxative bromo quinine, taken in enormous quantities as a preventative measure. Now, quinine was known to protect against malaria, so people figured why wouldn't it help against the flu? And interestingly enough, this is one of the remedies to the Spanish flu that also popped

right back up again for the coronavirus in the mouth of the president of the United States. So, we'll be talking about that in a little bit. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. That's good and cool, right? Oh, yeah. Another popular Spanish flu remedy was beaver oil, which I don't know what it was, but I also don't really want to learn.

Do you just like wring out a beaver? Yeah, I have to imagine it. You wring out a beaver and whatever drips out. Maybe you get like a beaver press and you really just sort of like, oh, like, oh, that's so gross. Yeah. You just wring out a beaver. Like, oh, like the toothpaste tube thing.

You just do that to a beaver and whatever comes out of their mouth. That's beaver oil. Or maybe up in, you know, you know how the French, when they make their wine, they all, they put all their grips in a bucket and then they stomp on the grapes. Maybe up in Canada, they do that with beavers and Canadian feet. Canadians sound off in the comments. Yeah. No, don't.

I assume that is headcanon. That is this podcast, Canon for Canada. So if you are a Canadian and a fan of the show, you just have to accept that. All right. Yep. Now, perhaps the most successful influenza grift, though, was a product that we all know and, I don't know, love's probably too strong a word, but we all know it. It was an invention of the Vicks Family Remedy Company.

Vicks VapoRub. Oh. Yeah. Vicks VapoRub. Yeah. That tingly shit. Yeah. It was a bullshit treatment for the fucking, the Spanish flu.

Now, it had no curative or preventative effect, but the Vicks Company was smart enough to focus on drumming up fears that their medication was about to sell out instead of spending a bunch of time lying about its medicinal properties. So they just sort of eluded the fact that it was a treatment for the flu and then would try to scare people that they were going to run out of it so that folks would buy up as much Vicks VapoRub as they could possibly get. Okay. Well, I mean, Vicks VapoRub, that's like the tingly stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like your grandma has it, but it can also make you horny. What? Wait, what? Huh? No, you know what?

Let's move on. Yeah. It's more like icy hot for your lungs. You know, it's like your grandma has it, but also it can make you horny. That is not at all my experience with Vicks VapoRub. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope, no. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. No. Nope. Nope.

No. Yeah. Not a dumb call. Yeah. So, obviously, formaments didn't treat the influenza, and Vicks vaporub didn't either. But it is still a popular product, so go figure. And as a new pandemic has settled down upon our world, the descendants of these snake oil treatments and the salesmen behind them have started to spread through the fertile

soil of the Internet. On March 19th, Forbes published an article about a series of mass text messages pushing a link to a fake Fox News article that purported to prove CBD oil treated the novel coronavirus. And there's a little clip of the Fox News article with the wonderful title, while the world is waiting for a vaccine, one mom has found a solution to fight back against the coronavirus outbreak. Aw, man, Fox News bringing moms into this. They always do.

That's like the, I don't know, for whatever reason, years ago, scammers found out that claiming like a mom had come up with something was a solution to hacking 20% of the country's brain. They're right. Yeah. Yeah. I will never understand it, because my mom doesn't know how to cure anything. No.

My mom, I don't know. I'm just trying to get my mom to watch less MSNBC, but whatever. We're all trying to get our parents to stop watching television. My parents are being good kids now. They listened to me this week. Really? They were like, uh-huh, kid. This week they're like, yes, wise one, yes, we shall wash our hands, yes, we shall not

go outside. Yes. Oh, wise one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I sent my dad, I sent my dad a link to this podcast.

I'll update you if he starts listening. My mom thinks that the panic is overblown by the media to try to make the economy look bad. And this is a liberal conspiracy. I don't know, whatever's going to happen to her is going to happen to her. Yikes. Yeah, there's nothing else to do at this point. Dope.

I love it. I love it. I love a world on fire. And that is why I adopted you and made you my full-time son. Thank you. Now, whoever is behind this particular grift trying to sell CBD oil as a treatment for the coronavirus is ambitious, I'll give him some points for that. But they have fuck all on our first real grifter of this episode, a fellow named Jim Baker,

host of the Jim Baker show. Now Jim is like a Christian preacher grifter kind of guy and he is a convicted felon as a result of illegal fundraising activities on his previous show, The Praise the Lord Club, which put him in prison for like five years. He's also star of some of the best Vic Berger videos of all time. The best what? Oh my God. That's some of the best.

Oh my God. Are you familiar with Vic Berger, Robert? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's got some great Baker content. And he sells survival foods, Baker buckets, which are just like really overpriced dried food. He's a cool dude.

Now hundreds of thousands and probably millions if I'm like really honest, but I'm trying to be optimistic for the sake of my soul right now. Hundreds of thousands of Christians still trust Jim Baker for reasons I can only describe as very dumb. And as a reward for their faith and forgiveness, Jim is selling them a magical silver spray that he claims will protect them from the virus. The specific product he was hawking on his show is Silver Solution, a hundred and twenty-five dollar tube of nonsense infused with nano silver.

Yeah, baby. You guys like nano silver? What can you unpack that? What is nano silver? Well, it's tiny, tiny trace amounts of silver that you just shove in whatever else you're already selling. The idea is that silver does have antimicrobial properties like back before antibiotics. It was used a lot in wound dressings.

There's some burn dressings like I have some burn dressings in my emergency kit that have some silver. Absolutely. You do. It has some uses, but people have taken, okay, there are there are actual medical applications of silver in certain contexts and use that as a justification for what if we put an amount of silver too small to do anything in every product and then lie to people and say that it will cure their illnesses.

That's the that's the biz. Yeah. Oh, okay. I love the biz. I love the biz. The biz is cool. Okay. Got it.

The Silver Solution Jim Baker was selling was about a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a tube, roughly the size of a tube of toothpaste. And yeah, the Silver Solution he was selling was a product hawked by a woman named Cheryl Selman. And on the February 12th episode of Baker's Show, he had Miss Selman on as a guest. She didn't quite say her product would cure the coronavirus, but she edged right up to making that claim saying, quote, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able

to eliminate it within 12 hours. You know, I love a girl boss and this is just scratching that itch. I hope that there was like an article about her that was like this female entrepreneur is is changing the narrative on what cures Corona. Not with her, but we do have I will be reading extended segments from an article about another lady grifter a little later on. So don't you worry. Thank you, God.

Okay. Good. This is a really gender non discriminatory episode of full of grifters, although I do think they're all white. So well, I think that just says a lot about who becomes a grifter in America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So a few days after this episode of the Jim Baker Show aired Lisa Landau, the chief of New York State Attorney General's Health Care Bureau, sent a cease and desist letter to Baker demanding that he pull the ads or face enormous fines. It was like $5,000 per violation. And there's a lot of violations when you're advertising to hundreds of thousands of people. So Baker pulled the product and that's great, but I didn't, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that Cheryl Selman has been hawking her nonsense silver on shows like Bakers for years now.

And the only reason she's so close to Cheryl Samberg, it's almost the same name, right? It's wild. I know. It's freaking me. Yeah. Same bitch, same vibe. Same vibe. And the only reason that her silver nonsense tube drew like federal anger now is that the

coronavirus forced elements of our governments to briefly care about the sale of snake oil. And I want to play for you a video of Cheryl on the Faith Shopping Network in 2018, singing the praises of her various silver filled gels and oils alongside a fake doctor who bears a striking resemblance to the unit character from Game of Thrones. If this little, if my little booger gets a little bumper or bruise, he's like Paw Paw. Aw. He's like, put the gel on me. That's right.

Like he tells me. He knows exactly what he needs. And he'll come to me because he sees us doing it. And to me, you know, that's changing a generation. Absolutely. It's changing a generation. Well, it's raising a healthy generation. Absolutely.

And so this silver gel is so versatile. Again, same thing as you're like in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, side of the beds, doesn't matter. I mean, you don't want to get up out of bed, feeling a little tickle in your throat. Just pop the tube open, squirt some on your tongue, swallow it down, and it actually goes down slower than the liquid, so it'll actually coat over that soreness, helps to kill those viruses, those bacteria by the time you wake up in the morning, you're feeling better. It's amazing.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, this is for everyone. Yikes. Just pop the tube open. Squirt some on your tongue. Just pop the tube open. Ay.

It's all, it's viscous, so it'll just drip down the back of your throat and cure that, you know. I'm making a come reference because our audio engineer, Daniel, is wearing a shirt that says come in large letters, and also they're talking about squirting viscous liquids down the back of their throat, so that's just where we are. They're so calm. It is, it is like dystopian QVC is how I like to view Jim Baker, yeah. It feels like, that's the faith shopping network, and it feels like the end of the world watching

that video. It feels like, it feels like this would be the video that opens up Paul Verhoeven movie. Yeah. Yeah. Like this little clip from, it would be like part of a run of ads. It's just so, it's just so apocalyptic, yeah. That's like the emotion behind this video, and it's from 2018, so it's good that Jim Baker is getting some pushback from the state now, but it takes him a while to deal with this

sort of shit. Right. Cheryl and Jim are not the only people to try and sell nonsense silver bullshit products as a way to cure the coronavirus, and in fact, my research into the different nonsense cures spreading around the internet suggests that silver based cures are probably tied for the most common nonsense cure alongside huge doses of vitamin C, so yeah, that's interesting. But probably the most. What a good heroes dose of VC.

Oh yeah, nothing, nothing like eating a fuckload of oranges to keep you safe from the plague. So it's not just Jim and Cheryl, our old pal Alex Jones also received a cease and desist from the state of New York for a silver based product he's been shilling as a surefire way to kill the coronavirus. And here's the ad for his super blue silver infused toothpaste, which I have to warn you given his history is very likely infused with lead. Now, before we play this, there's a couple things that are interesting to me. So he repeatedly cites this army study about how this product of his can prevent the coronavirus

and the actual study is talking about like a silver infused wound gel that can stop like viral infect or that has shown a preventative effect on viral infections. He's claiming that means that if you just shoot some of his toothpaste down your throat, it'll protect you from the coronavirus. There's no evidence to suggest this. It's pure nonsense. It's pure, very stupid nonsense. But here is an ad for Alex Jones toothpaste that will kill the coronavirus.

Side note, if you haven't looked up his latest arrest photo, look it up. Have a laugh. Oh, his DUI photo. Yeah. Yaw. Come right back with your calls, I promise. 877-789-2539 on this Tuesday, global transmission. I'm not going to belabor this.

I'm just going to tell you that for just your daily life and your gums and your teeth and for regular viruses and bacteria, the patented nano silver we have, the Pentagon has come out and documented and Homeland Security and said, this stuff kills the whole SARS corona family at point blank range. Well, of course it does. It kills every virus. But it's the day down. And then this is 13 years ago and the Pentagon uses the product we have and the product we

have and private label is about to be in Walmart coming up. They've just ordered a massive crap ton of that, not the one they have, but that's even better one that we have. So I'm just saying, we're always cutting edge thing to God. I just, I just go with the research, go with the spirit and we always have it. The nano silver toothpaste in the super blue with the tea tree and the eye and eye. And that's a super blue is amazing. And then we have the whitening toothpaste that has the nano silver and a lot more as

well. And both excellent 34 short on commerce will discounted despite all the hell breaking loose. Side note, has he gotten more like bloaty? Like, yeah, no, cause he's been, he became, he's been back on drinking heavily during CPAC. He held his own event and he had like a bunch of speakers doing a night of free speech. And by the end of the event, he was so drunk that he like passed out and someone else had

to end it for him. Jesus. I know he actually has a serious problem. Yeah. I do think that, um, if you put Billy Wayne Davis and Chris Crofton in a blender, they could sound exactly like Alex Jones does in that video. Holy shit. I keep trying to do that and they keep saying, no, you can't put us in a blender.

Why can't we put our friends in a blender? It's already the end. I don't know. Solid question. Why can't we put our friends in a blender? Also, why is Alex Jones saying, of course it, no, it doesn't dude. No, it does not. Don't buy it from Walmart.

Don't buy it anywhere. Jesus Christ. You fucking. Well, actually you can buy it from Amazon.com right now. The Info Wars Life Super Blue Toothpaste is available on Amazon.com for $11.95, even though the state of New York attorney general's office has sent a cease and desist to Jones for selling it. So that's cool.

Amazon, good work for you guys. But also don't, but also don't. And also maybe buy something from our advertisers. No, no, no, no. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. Sir. It kills all viruses. You know, it also kills all viruses, Robert.

Our t-shirts because they're impregnated with silver. That's right. That's right. Robert, you're not getting the hint that it's time for ads and it's really hurting my heart. I thought I raised you better. Well, by these products, assuming there are still advertisements. Yay.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. This season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters

in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way, he's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get to the heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message

that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI.

How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, assuming there were advertisements. There's advertisements. Now more than ever, I love to get a podcast advertisement being like, hey, will you advertise

a dangerous pharmaceutical in this, the end of the world? Absolutely. And then I say no. And then they say, well, if Robert says yes, and then I say no, and then they say, why? I will advertise. One of the things I love is we had an opportunity to do some ads for Carnival Cruise right as the coronavirus outbreak was starting and very wisely looked around each other and said, no, no, no, you know what, Caitlin and I got that same email and we were like begging

for it. We were we were like, oh yeah, you guys wanted that free cruise. We wanted the free cruise so bad and they and still they ghosted us if I wonder why I wonder why in February of 2020, Carnival would suddenly stop advertising. We couldn't get a we couldn't even get a free Corona cruise. That's a bummer. It's too bad. It's too bad.

It really is. So yeah, info wars, great stuff, info wars. So I know what you're thinking, which is that surely selling silver impregnated toothpaste that kills the coronavirus by slathering it all over your face or whatever the fuck Alex is suggesting there. Yeah. I know that toothpaste is pregnant. Yeah.

Yeah. Surely that's his only coronavirus grift. But of course it's not. Of course it's not. No. Yeah. Selling toothpaste as a COVID-19 cure is not even his main coronavirus grift. This pandemic has actually been something of a lifesaver for info wars in the weeks leading

up to the virus has spread throughout Wuhan, China, Jones and info wars racked up a series of fines as a result of legal malpractice between Masty platforming and the legal bills for info wars as many, many lawsuits. Things were looking very, very grim. But then came the coronavirus Jones and his cronies lost no time in drumming up terror over the virus as soon as they could primarily so that they could scare people into buying their emergency survival food. Now much of this fear mongering was done by info wars chief health correspondent and

former bastard pod subject Mike Adams, Steve, the health ranger. No, no, no. This is the health ranger, baby. And I guess I should just play this one. Go for it. So this is from January 24th and it's from info wars health correspondent Mike Adams, the health ranger. And this gives you an idea of back in January, how Alex Jones and his crew were sort of setting

up the coronavirus outbreak. Okay. Because the truth is so nightmarish, it's so excuse me again, it's so horrific. It's such a nightmare. What can we do as a human race? I'm here to tell you, it's over for humanity. There will only be lone survivors strategy must now shift. You can be a survivor.

We can help you survive the information here at info wars and and what I do can help you survive. There will be practical things in the next segment, but maybe maybe it's an astonishing statement to hear from me, the health ranger, but it's over for humanity as a whole. The masses will be slaughtered dope. So that's the health ranger. That's the health ranger. He's giving you good health advice.

Now, obviously, you know, he says that he's going to come back and give people some some practical advice for survival. And that practical advice turned out to mostly be buying info wars bulk food packages. Oh, go finger. Yeah. And the price of these increase, every company selling these doubled and tripled their prices. But even like by kind of the standards of the industry, Jones started jacking his prices up early and to outrageous levels while repeatedly claiming that other sellers were sold out

and that his storeable foods were the only affordable option for families looking to stock up because his whole thing is lying to his audience. Infowars jacked up their prices at the same time as they sought to convince their audience that society was on the verge of collapse because that's just good business. And I'm going to quote from a media matters right up now. Since December, the infowars store has more than doubled the price of its largest package infowars life select one year. On December 21st, the package was being sold for $1443.50.

The price increased to $1594 by January 23rd. By January 30th, the price had increased to almost $3,000. And the page was displaying emergency survival foods, coronavirus clearance sale. So that's ethical and good, right? Yeah. I think that that is, I think that that shows a lot of concern and kindness towards your fellow man is well, it's over for humanity. I mean, the health, so say it from the health ranger's mouth, I couldn't come up with a

better name for a fake health professional than the health ranger. Like they really, I can't outdo that. That's brilliant. Yeah. I mean, there's no one more trustworthy than a ranger when it comes to health. A ranger. A ranger. A ranger.

Maybe the health sheriff would be the only, like the only more fucking sinister way of saying that. Yeah. It's awesome. Rules. Rules. It rules. It does rule, Jamie.

Thank you for agreeing with me. You're welcome. So, coronavirus has been a near constant topic of discussion on Infowars' various broadcasts. According to a search of Infowars' online streaming platform, Band.Video, at least 145 videos have been posted since January 22nd that referenced the outbreak and their titles. Of these, 127 were published after Infowars released its emergency survival foods, coronavirus clearance sale, ad for bulk food on January 27th. Now, in one February 12th video, Alex was bold enough to actually merge his two key coronavirus

grifts, claiming that the natural components in certain quality foodstuffs and other Infowars products can, quote, easily be used to combat viral infection. Then he attempted to sell his audience more dried food, saying, I am very sad about this virus and very sad about the bioweapons and things that are going on, but it is an opportunity for people to take advantage of the products we have. We got food. We got guts. We got red blood.

We'll kick your ass if you attack us. With me, it's religious not to screw you over. Hell yeah. Wow. Wow. Fuckin' Alex. Wow. This is a grifting masterclass.

He's not bad at grifting. No, he's really good at it. Yeah, he's really good at it. He's done the Malcolm Gladwell approach to being an evil grifter. He's put in the 10,000 hours. What's impressive about that is that Malcolm Gladwell has also done the Malcolm Gladwell approach to being an evil grifter. Yes.

I mean, how do you think he figured it out? How do you think he figured it out? I got to get a grift going. I'm just telling people to buy dried beans and go foraging, and there's no profit in that. We need to find some grifting products. Yeah, there's not a lot of money in exposing grifts. You really have to establish your own.

We need to get a branding deal going on with, I don't know. I have faith that Lacey Mosley is going to find a good grift in all of this. She'll figure it out. Yeah, that's a good option. I was considering just starting a militia and charging dues. Sophie, can we start a militia? Is that allowed? Do you think corporate is going to be cool with a militia?

No comment. Okay. Well, send me $5 and you will be a member of my militia, and that will improve your survival odds. Sorry, can corporate make $5 off of starting a militia? If so, they'll happily start a militia. If every listener of this podcast just sent me $5, I could fund a militia. Oh, for sure.

You could go fund me a militia at any point. I could buy two tanks for Alex Jones as one, and we could really bear down on this. Let's go for it, people. Do you know, is Jim Beaker still- Is he still selling those buckets of slop? Yeah, he sure is. Baker buckets? Well, I'm sure they're sold out now.

They're so freaky. Yeah. No, and they're bad, both, again, this is something I am a nerd about, both Alex Jones's and Jim Baker's survival foods are renowned within survival nut jobs as being some of the worst quality products. They cost as much as Mountain House, and Mountain House actually tastes good. It's terrible. It's terrible products.

Don't buy them. Don't buy any of them right now. No, don't buy this. Make your own slop bucket. Have some confidence in yourself. Make your own slop bucket. Just- Everyone listening right now is more than capable of making their own slop bucket.

They don't need his help. The only real survival food you need is to chew up all of the food currently in your fridge, spit it into a bucket, and freeze it, and then you're good to go. You can just baby bird it back into your mouth as it's thawed. As I was saying, you can- That's survival. That's the empowerment that I need. I can be my own mommy bird, chew up my food, then eat it back later.

That's just self-care. As it thaws. Yeah, your own freezer bird slop food. That is the- Oh, Goop is about to come into this, Jamie. Goop, really? Oh, good. Oh, hell yeah.

Okay, good, good. Thank you so much. So, yeah, we can talk more about Alex Jones, but there's way too much grifter ground to cover here. Mosey on over to Amazon.com, which has itself become a hub of coronavirus grifting so expansive it puts even info wars to shame. See, the Kindle Direct Publishing Service gives sellers the ability to publish any e-book they want and even paperback books for free in less than five minutes.

This system services so many authors that there's simply no time for any human monitoring. Books are printed on demand, and the whole process is as automated as can be. Now, that's not an issue for all of the people who want to self-publish the erotic novellas and fan fiction epics that they're writing, you know, during their quarantine, and in fact, it's great for them. Looking at you, Saddam Hussein's Ghost. Hey, Saddam Hussein's Ghost and I have a really cool Google Doc open. We're working on it with Bernie Sanders, and it is horny as fuck.

Hey. Hey. So, this is not, yeah, so it's fine for a lot of people, but the fact that this is completely automated does create an issue when paired with an unspeakably contagious viral epidemic that threatens to shatter the economy forever. I'm going to quote now from a write-up on the website, Undark.org, who kind of revealed this underground industry that just sprung up around coronavirus. Quote, since late January, hundreds of titles related to COVID-19, as the disease caused

by the virus is known, have come up for sale online, many of which appear to be written under false or misleading names. One series of books, which includes Coronavirus 101, Everything You Should Know to Avoid Illness and Protect Yourself from the Wuhan 2020 outbreak, and Coronavirus and Face Masks, The Truth, claimed to be co-authored by Dr. Zoe Gottlieb. Another two books, which were available Wednesday but have since been removed, listed their author as Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is said to hold a medical degree along with multiple master's degrees.

The biographical details did not match those of CNN's chief medical correspondent by the same name. Yet another publication titled, Coronavirus Disease, a fake Sanjay Gupta, leave him alone. He's my coronavirus man-court Monday. This is bullshit. That's kind of brilliant, though, to get a decoy Sanjay Gupta in the mix. Fake Gupta. Yeah.

That's pretty great. It's not dumb. Yet another publication titled, Coronavirus Disease, a Practical Guide for Preparation and Protection, listed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, as its lead author, and a non-existent agency, the U.S. Department of Health, as a co-author. It has also been removed by Amazon, but remains available to order from Barnes & Noble. Representatives of HHS did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment regarding the book.

So that's cool. This is a cool industry, right? That's a neat little thing. This is very cool. I like that. Cool and good. Yeah. This is a very dark, write-up notes that similar self-publishing services exist with Barnes

& Noble, Walmart, and a number of other companies. In fact, Barnes & Noble promises to have your self-published work available for sale in less than 20 minutes. So that's good, too. One particularly egregious example on their site is the totally credible book, Coronavirus Colon, Wuhan Coronavirus Colon, All Secrets Revelliad. They misspelled revealed. Revelliad.

Oh, my God. Wait. That's good. I think that this is good. Yeah. This is good. I think that, you know, fast-forward a little bit in the future. This will all be very fun once everything is Revelliad in the future.

Yeah. It will be Revelliad soon and we'll realize how credible this book was. For just $8.95, this title will provide you with, quote, the history and ways to combat its spread and prevent another epidemic. So that's good. And these viral pandemic tie-in works get a lot weirder, too, outside of these big hitters we've named. There's also equine coronavirus, everything a horse lover needs to know, and canine coronavirus,

everything a dog lover needs to know. Okay. Honestly, I am not disinterested in canine coronavirus. Yeah. Well, you should be because these books are written by a nonsense person. The authors claim to be Malek Hill PhD, who no one can find any real evidence or information about. Right.

But he also has books on how to protect your fish and rabbits from coronavirus. In addition to this, he's the author of the critical work, How to Buy a House for Literally Zero Dollars, which given the rent crisis we're hitting, maybe people should look into. Oh my God. Yeah. Holy shit. Literally Zero Dollars. That's a deal.

That is a good deal. I mean, there's been some people reclaiming empty houses, but I have a feeling it's not the same thing. No, no, because they got to spend money to drive their gasoline, you know, bolt cutters. All these things cost money. Literally Zero Dollars. They're not free. First, I mean, why don't they should send us $2,000 in bolt cutters?

The government just mails expensive bolt cutters to people. What if they... Here's your stimulus package. Burn them all. Good fucking luck. Here's a check in some bolt cutters. See you in hell. I would respect that more than what's going on.

We can't pass a meaningful stimulus, so we're sending bolt cutters and a nine millimeter to everyone. Figure it out. Fantastic. Oh, feels good to laugh. It does. It does. So this is all great.

Also great is the recent work of beauty influencer, Michelle Fahn, our next grifter. Now, Michelle is a 32-year-old entrepreneur with a net worth of around $50 million. She has 8.9 million YouTube subscribers and 2 million Instagram followers. So that's great. Yeah. I feel like I've heard of this person. I've never watched their videos. Now the beauty industry entered a significant contraction at the start of this year, cosmetics

and all that stuff, like the industry started to kind of peel back a bit, as even before the outbreak really reached its peak. And Fahn recognized that early and decided to pivot to a new business. Earlier this year, she announced her plan to create a podcast called Baby Steps, quote from Michelle. It's essentially to help people take steps into adulthood, buying Bitcoin, how to store it, what to do with it, you know, the key things about adulthood. She became a bunker survivor, she pivoted from YouTube beauty to being a bunker survivalist.

No, just Bitcoin. Oh, so she's just a Winklevoss. Now my viewers are hungry for more than makeup and skincare. They want to know how to protect their purchasing power. Today I made an Instagram post telling my followers to buy the Bitcoin dip and then hold. In mid-March, as the panic over coronavirus began to crest here in the United States, Fahn posted a picture of her essential oil diffuser with the caption, if you are burning antiviral essential oils around you, this will kill all of the virus before it enters

your system. There's no such thing as antiviral essential oils. This will not work. Don't do this. Which a lot of people told Fahn, there was an enormous backlash. And to her credit, Michelle Fahn eventually responded by sheepishly claiming she had not intended to mislead anyone. And this is not a great response, but it makes her by far the most honest and decent person

we're going to cover in today's episode by a wide margin. And this brings me, oh yeah, Jamie? I just, beauty YouTube is exclusively grifters, I think of like, there's a butube, they're exclusively grifters. I feel like Maggie May Fish has done a lot of good work on documenting what the extent of those grifts are, but this is the first corona grift I've heard. This is a treat. Yeah.

And she was clearly just dipping her toes into the corona grift and I think her followers are kind of mainstream enough that it backfired on her and she hopefully has peeled back from this. But you know, who else did the same thing even more sketchily? Whom? Well you brought her up a little earlier, our old friend, Gwyneth Paltrow, or as I call her, the fifth hound of the apocalypse. Now, on March 13th, Gwyn Paltrow, is that what people call her?

Gwyn Paltrow? No one calls her and we try not to call her anything if we can avoid it. We dare not speak her name. We'll call her 666 the beast. On March 13th, she posted a now deleted picture to the Goop Instagram page and it was pretty innocuous on the surface, Gwyneth herself in a white shirt, a khaki skirt and sneakers with the caption. This day you'll find GP wearing G label with a pair of sneakers, which is one reason we

make it an annual tradition to put together a fresh sneaker guide each year. Get ready to cover some serious ground, run, don't walk. First off, just editing note, you don't have to say that it's an annual tradition you do each year. Not necessary. Yeah, it's a bit redundant, yeah. Second note, no one is going to call her GP and if they do, that is who as a society we should blame for the coronavirus epidemic is people who refer to Gwyneth Paltrow as

GP. I'm okay with that scapegoat. You're on the right track, we're calling her 666 the hound or the beast, that's way better. The fifth hound of the apocalypse, sure, the beast. All of these are fair terms for Gwyneth Paltrow. But other than the errors in grammar, that's a pretty unproblematic Instagram post, especially considering the kind of products Goop has sold.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to sell people a khaki shirt and sneakers. But it turns out that skirt cost $450 and those sneakers were $425 and since this was posted as cities around the US began to contemplate radical quarantine procedures and millions found themselves instantly out of work, people got kind of pissed at Gwyneth Paltrow for selling $900 worth of skirt and shoes, even though this is what she always does. It was suddenly grosser, right? So even Goop fans got angry at her. One response on her Instagram read, I think it's irresponsible to post this as a worldwide

pandemic is going on. You have a great platform around health, now would be the time to expand on that. Which is an incredible post and an incredible snapshot of where we are in America, because he's simultaneously right, he should be angry at the soulless, ghoul-hawking $900 skirt shoes combos while a quarter of the country finds itself edging towards bread lines. But it's also baffling that his anger is that she's not doing more to promote health products because it's just amazing. That's never really, I mean, it's kind of, it's a bit of a bummer too, because you're

just like, oh, that is like what her followers feel is like the health and wellness, like she will have their best interests at heart. Like it's a bummer, I was honestly shocked and appalled that Gwyneth was not in the imagined video. Sgt. Jamie, check your Instagram DMs for Goop's latest posting from the last two hours. I'd love for you to subscribe that to Robert Evans before we go to an ad break. Oh, God.

Imaginal possessions, I wonder if you can, okay, here's the post, oh, God, I don't like the visual. People is a really like oversaturated picture of someone putting pressure on another person's hand with their hand and it says the following, anyone can benefit from acupressure and anyone can do it says acupuncturist Mary Jane Newman, who gave us the best breakdown and acupressure points and how to best activate them at home. So it's just, it's something that has nothing to do with anything. Meanwhile, millions of people are locked in their home and there's an acupuncturist who's

like, hey, ever heard of me? Is that basically it, Sophie? She's basically, her advice is basically like, hey, you want to be really good advice right now? How about you touch another person's hands? Yeah, literally apply pressure. I mean, I don't know. I'm going, I'm looking a lot of doorknobs these days.

Is that, am I not supposed to be doing that? Robert, we talked about this. No, I think you're probably fine. No. If you're eating survival cheese, you can lick a doorknob. I think that that's the going exchange. But that's my hobby. Listen, we all have to make sacrifices right now.

Do you want to know what you should make your hobby doing this ad break? Just a thought. Remember, are there more products? There are always more products and maybe even a new service. Wow. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way, he's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Join Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself

stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman.

Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back and we are talking about Goop. So I read one post from the Goop Instagram.

Here's another. Come on, Goop. When you said GP, I thought at first you were referring to doctor. Please use your platform in a more sensitive way. I don't think it's the time to think about buying trainers when people are struggling to buy day to day supplies. We don't want doom and gloom, but maybe a post on boosting your immune system, staying healthy, etc.

It's amazing what they get angry at and also what they want from Gwyneth. And unfortunately... Come on, Goop. Yeah. Gwyneth Paltrow was only too happy to do this and I'm going to quote now from New York magazine. Oh no. Yeah.

Goop is known for yoni eggs and the promotion of potentially dangerous treatments like colonic irrigation. Also addresses COVID-19 on its website. Some of its advice is perfectly legitimate. Wash your hands. Disinfect your filthy phone. Be vaccinated, which prevents other potential illnesses if not COVID-19. But this being Goop, the page also highlights entries on the flu prevention properties of

elderberry chew. Scientifically, there are none. And an interview with a holistic practitioner about what to do to prevent colds and flus. Among her recommendations, the Goop wellness balls in the air vitamin regimen, which it best offers no... No, not the wellness balls. You don't want to drop some wellness balls down your throat? I unfortunately know what the wellness balls are.

What are the wellness balls? Because I imagine the wellness balls shoot out that silver Goop that coats the back of your throat in a sticky viscous and drips real slow down it. So I have a dark past history where I used to be on a series that tried out Goop stuff to see if it actually worked. So I've tried a fair amount of this stuff. I've done the yoni egg a number of times. I've done the, I've done the colonic irrigation.

That hurts. I've done, I mean, I've done a ton of Goop stuff. None of it has like, I don't know, like it's, it, it all is very uncomfortable and none of it has resulted in anything positive. And if I had actually had to pay for it, I would be very angry. And the wellness ball, it falls right into that, that category. So I mean, at this point, it's like hack to have to be like, don't do Goop shit. But there is still such a big audience for it.

It's like, it sucks. And it's like nice people that are getting grifted into a ball full of like, I mean, literal Goop that costs, you know, whatever, seven bucks to manufacture. And then how much are they charging for it? I'm going to guess what some people spend on a car payment. Right. Right. Like it's, it's, it's, yeah.

It's infuriating and terrible and in a sane society would be criminal. But it's not. And so Gwyneth Paltrow is going to, going to be fine throughout all this. She's going to handle this great. And speaking of Gwyneth, she has a lot to do with the story of our next grifter. And Jamie, I'm going to need you to batten down your hatches and strap in to hear this person's name. Because I, I, I get a visceral reaction from just reading this name.

Okay. Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of Moonjuice. No. I hate Moonjuice. Can we start again? Can we start again? And then you just like pause after every name just to give people a real chance to take it in.

Amanda. Okay. Chantal. Okay. Okay. Bacon. Oh, there it is. The founder of Moonjuice.

Yeah. It's disgusting. I lived two blocks away from the original Moonjuice and I'm thrilled to announce that I did burn it to the ground right before this recording. Comrade Loftus making the revolution happen. So just a few days ago, Amanda Chantal Bacon posted this to her, list to her Instagram, clearly inspired by the coronavirus panic and it's, it's Moonjuice branded. Their logo is right up on the top of this list.

The 10 things I'm doing for immunity right now. In the morning, dry brushing to stimulate lymph flow and then getting a cold shower. Two, taking super you TM daily to keep calm, elevated cortisol directly affects the immune system. What is super you? Is that Moonjuice? Yeah. It's one of the products that she sells.

Okay. One of the juices or powders or whatever. Three, frequently washing my hands and my children's hands for keeping the air in my home clean with a HEPA air filter. This has been a game changer for my respiratory system. Five, taking vitamin C three times a day. Six, adding power dust and spirit dust to my morning tonics. These adaptogenic blends are particularly supportive of the immune system.

Seven, leaving clothes at the front door after school work, travel and hopping right in the shower. So just strip naked right at the end of your house, go right into the shipper. Then get some of that dust in you. Eight. Oh, yes? If you're not, if you don't think that the girl bosses are riding in on the apocalypse, you have to wake the fuck up.

No, that is what they've been waiting to do their whole girl boss lives. Yes. Eight, drinking green juice, our elderberry defense tonic and lots of water. Nine, prioritizing sleep and taking magnesium, which is another one of her products. I think we can all see how that's spelled. Yeah. So it's it's it's great. Love Amanda Chantal Bacon, who I do not love, not at all.

I don't know. I mean, as someone who literally burned her building to the ground this morning, good for you. It's it's safe to say I also don't love her. That's so I mean, morning tonics, not enough said. Yeah. Tonics that you're selling like that would have not felt people taking spirit dust. Tonics to to ward off the flu would have sounded normal if I had brought it up as part

of the 1918 pandemic grift. But this is happening right now. I mean, honestly, bringing like the word tonics into the mix at all feels kind of short sighted. I mean, I feel even for the the the person newest to the snake oil realm, the word tonic just seems to be one to avoid across the board. The only acceptable use of the word tonic is if you are from New England and you enjoy a moxie tonic. That is true.

And even then it's not acceptable to be from New England. So. Oh, well, I mean, I was canceled years ago. So it's fine. I was specifically talking about you, Jamie. Yeah. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to find out this way spirit dust and power dust are two of Bacon's most

popular products in her plant based alchemy line. Both include a variety of ingredients like Chaga and Rishi and Maka that have absolutely no proven or even vaguely suggested benefits against COVID-19. But there is no law against claiming your products help immunity. And a lot of very dumb rich people will spend $39 and a small cylinder of spirit dust in order to feel like they're doing something, anything to protect themselves. These people will be glad to know that Moon Juice is still open for pickups and deliveries during the California lockdown.

Very happy to let everyone know that. Well, not me more to say, you know, they are still open to be burnt to the ground. That's right. There is. I there, I unfortunately, there was an employee that I had to get out when I was burning it down and she's still out in the front and I'm, you know, I'm in solidarity with with workers. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to, you know, burn the building down.

You can continue to work. Yeah. That's thank you for supporting workers while you burn down their workplaces in order to stop the spread of disinformation, Jamie. You think, you think that Moon Juice is going to stop just because they're building burn down? You got another thing coming. Okay.

So now, if you know me, my dear listeners, you know, there's no way I could hear a name like Amanda Chantel Bacon and learn this person is selling power dust and not want to know more about her. And this is going to get a little bit off the coronavirus topic, but this is just going to make you so angry, Jamie, that I have to read you some selections of this article. Jamie, I found a New York Times article written by Molly Young that's a profile on Amanda Chantel Bacon published back in 2017. And it's absolutely fascinating.

Molly's recollection of her first visit to a Moon Juice store in Brooklyn is really worth reading. Quote, I spotted a glass jar labeled brain dust. It had this kind of packaging that signals discrete luxury, minimalist, matte label, custom type, the word organic, a 2.2 ounce jar cost $55. This adaptogenic potion lights up your brain and increases mental flow, the label said. Neuron velocity and vision are fine-tuned by toning the brain waves, and particularly the alpha waves that connect to creativity.

No. Oh, my God. No. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Yeah. So she finds out that this is sold by Moon Juice, and so she winds up looking into Moon Juice and the company gets on their newsletter.

And so she receives an ad for the Moon Juice cookbook, which included a biography of Amanda Chantel Bacon, who had described as a powerful influencer in the wellness space. Now, this ad mentioned that Moon Juice has come to prominence when it had been featured on Goop, and Bacon had made something called Sex Bark in a video with Gwyneth Paltrow herself. I also appreciate the way that you said it. Sex Bark. Sex Bark. You can't say it any other way.

Sex Bark is the legal. You know, Sex Bark is new to me. I don't know what Sex Bark is, and I'm intrigued. You're intrigued? Is it Tree Bark that makes you horny? Yeah, I think so, Jamie. That's the only thing it could possibly be. That's true.

Which we know, we can narrow down that it's not birch, which is by far the least sexy kind of tree. Hey, Sex Bark is the new Vicks vapor of in that your grandma might have it, and it'll make you horny. Thank you for that baffling lion, Jamie. All of this was enough to convince Molly Young that an article needed to be written about Amanda Chantel Bacon, so she went to meet her, quote, growing up in New York City, she was a sickly child, bronchial stuff, whose parents took her to doctors.

I got pumped through the Western medicine chain without satisfactory results. Of course, nothing helped. One day she went shopping with her family at a downtown health food store, where, the story goes, an Ayurvedic doctor visiting from India overheard bacon coughing. The doctor came over and posed some questions, very typical Ayurvedic ones like, how often do you poop? And took the child's pulse. After examining Bacon's tongue, the man provided her mother with a list of forbidden

foods, cow's milk, wheat and white sugar, among others. Bacon stopped eating gluten at age four and became a vegetarian at around seven. She's aware that these biographical details invite ridicule, but Bacon doesn't care if people make fun of her. She's used to it. And anyway, hers was a challenging childhood. I was told growing up that I had learning disabilities and mental illness. That was all the rage in the nineties.

She reflected on her past calmly. I came from a family that was like, yes, what after the doctor says is right, just take the pills. Bacon's in parentheses. Bacon's mother was the CEO of the fashion company Betsy Johnson and her father was a musician. Oh, God. I love.

This is like, this is like a level of nepotism that it's a very gentle level because you have all this one to one nepotism. You have all these dynasties in certain industries, but the CEO of Betsy Johnson to the founder of Moon Juice is a very gentle form of adjacent nepotism that I really just appreciate. Yeah. You can't not respect is the wrong word, but it's cool and good. Of course, your Betsy Johnson mom is going to support your endeavor to start the worst business ever.

Of course. That's what her job is. Is your Betsy Johnson mom. I just love the irony of her vegetarianism being named Bacon. Just like a great dad joke in there. Yeah. There is a great dad joke in there. Take it away.

Take it away, dads. So Amanda Chantal Bacon is great. And I am so happy that I found out about her. And all of these grifters are very entertaining, Jamie. But I would be remiss if I did not point out at the end of this, that the greatest grifters are not the people selling silver toothpaste that'll cure your coronavirus or silver goop that'll cure your coronavirus or buckets of food or antiviral essential oils or moon dust or whatever the hell Paltrow was trying to push.

You know, the greatest grifters in the coronavirus epidemic are our own Congress people. Oh, I was wondering. Okay. So this is not going to be a comprehensive overview of what's going on because this story is like breaking as we're talking about it. Like more stuff came out today. So and more stuff will have come out by the time you hear this episode. But the information started to come out the night that I wrote this actually, which was

the Friday or Thursday, the 19th of March, that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican senator from North Carolina, had unloaded his holdings and dozens of stock of stocks that lost a huge amount of their value. And he did it right before the start of the coronavirus panic. He and his wife sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks on February 13th and bought no new positions, so they just straight up cashed out. Most of the companies he cashed out on were major corporations that were hit hard by the collapse of the stock market.

And reporting from OpenSecrets.org and ProPublica and a number of other organizations has revealed that at the same time as he was selling off all this stock, he was publicly expressing confidence to the American people of the U.S. government's ability to fight the coronavirus and stop it from turning into a pandemic state side. It's literally like a scene from Veep, just like getting off stage from reassuring people and then like calling and be like, dump the stocks. Like, yeah. Yeah, it's unbelievably gross.

And while he was telling the American people in public that things were going to be fine, he was privately warning in closed door meetings with other lawmakers and major funders of senatorial and congressional campaigns that this virus was, quote, much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history. And this is in late February when he's still very publicly being like, we got this. So that's super cool and good. Yeah, for like an example, the kind of stuff Burr was putting out while he was selling off all of his assets.

On February 7th, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox News with Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, that the U.S. is better prepared than ever before to deal with a health crisis. So that's great. Okay. Well, as long as our public officials are still fucking up, how bad could things possibly be? Yeah.

So on February 27th, when the U.S. had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and President Trump said it's going to disappear like a miracle very soon, Burr attended a luncheon at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club, and he delivered this message, quote, there's one thing I can tell you about this. It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we've seen in recent history. It's probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic. So that's great. 13 days before the State Department began to warning its travel to Europe, and 15 days

before the Trump administration banned European visitors, Burr warned people in the room at this meeting that they should be cognizant that they were going to have to alter their lives very soon. Again, he was not making these kind of warnings publicly. He was very much trying to calm people down publicly. And it's also worth noting that these were like, like these sales were the largest that he has ever made in his history as a stockholder, and he did not reinvest any of them. This is pure cashing out.

Now, pro-public or NPR asked for a comment on the senator's stock sales and Burr spokesperson or in a spokesperson for the campaign responded simply, LOL. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wait, was it was it was it an in real life LOL or was it like a text? It was, I think, a text over email or something. Yeah.

It does make a difference. I mean, not shocking at all, but that is just some end days shit. It reminds me of, to put it in another stupid Jamie analog, it's like the scene in Titanic where Kate Winslet asked the owner of the architect of the ship, like, hey, what's going on? And he was like, oh, we're all going to fucking die, but don't don't tell anybody. Just try to save yourself and yeah, we're fucked, we're McFucked, you know? Speaking of people who are morally identical to that Titanic engineer, Senator Kerry Lefler,

a Republican from Georgia and the newest member of the Senate, sold off seven figures worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private all senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that helped to collapse the economy a couple of weeks later. So yeah, it's awesome. At the time, she tweeted, appreciate today's briefing from the president's top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak. And then she started selling off stock like fucking gangbusters while not, you know, well, for example, on February 28, after she had had this meeting and after she had started

selling off her socks, which she did on February 16, she tweeted this 12 days after selling off her stocks, Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on coronavirus readiness. Here's the truth. Donald Trump and his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy and safe. On March 10, she tweeted, concerned about coronavirus. Remember this, the consumer is strong, the economy is strong and jobs are growing, which

puts us in the best economic position to tackle COVID-19 and keep America safe. Now, another data point that's worth talking about is that Lefler had not made a single stock transition during the three weeks she served in office prior to this one. This was her first. The day that she got the coronavirus briefing is the first stock transaction she made during her time in the Senate. Now both she and Burr claim that like all of their stocks are basically in a blind trust, they don't have any control over where they get invested.

And I'm sure that's completely true and something that will hold up in the subsequent investigations into their behavior. And there's no chance that they informed anyone about what they were hearing in these meetings. No chance. I don't think that any of this is going to be tampered with before it has to be examined or you know, anything like that. I think it's totally fine. We're fine.

It's fine. Now, as of right now, and again, the story is still breaking. So the list may be larger by the time you get it. Senators who are confirmed to have made significant sell-offs of stock in the wake of that meeting are Richard Burr, who we talked about, Jim Imhoff from Oklahoma, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and of course, Kelly Lefler. Now there were also some sales by Diane Feinstein. And I have no desire to defend Diane Feinstein because I hate her, but it's not, it's not

quite the same. I'm going to quote Keith Boykin from CNN here. The Diane Feinstein sale doesn't quite fit the pattern. Her husband sold the biotech stock on January 31st when it reached a low price of $21.72. After the sale, the stock actually rose to $28.25 on March 4th. It's currently trading at $20.29. So like there was no real, this isn't something that was really affected. I don't know.

Maybe there was something shady there. It's hard to say, but like this isn't, in the other cases, you're looking at people who sold off stock in like, in Burr's case, he was selling off stock in like hotels and cruise lines and whatnot. There's never a bad time to say fuck Diane Feinstein. Never a bad time. I support digging into what her stock sales have been to see if it does, if she did do something shady, but this biotech company just doesn't kind of fit the pattern because

it really wasn't, yeah, affected in the same way. We'll see though. We should look into every Republican and Democratic member of Congress and see what they've been doing with their stocks and when they were briefed on how bad things were actually going to be and what they said in public about how bad things were actually going to be. Look into every one of them, hang the people who committed treason. Because it, I think. No stone unturned.

Yeah. Yeah. We could call this treason, right? Like, if this is an act of war, we're on a war footing. These people are lying to the American public when they know how bad it's going to be and profiting off it, that feels treason-y. I mean, we're already calling himself a wartime president. Yeah.

As I say, we're already asked deep in old-timey language because this is an old-timey situation. Yeah. It's so dumb to call himself. When has he not been a wartime president? Right. When has any president in our lifetimes since fucking Clinton not been a wartime president? Yeah. There has not been not a wartime president.

I don't think in my entire lifetime. Yeah. They're all wartime presidents. Yeah. It's like bragging about, I don't know. I don't know what it's like bragging about. It's a nothing. I don't know.

Fuck all this shit. Fuck all of these people. Yeah. Jamie, how are you feeling today? You know, I'm feeling, I don't usually get franzia at the record. So this has actually been, this has been a nice medicinal one. Yeah. No, I feel okay.

I like, you know, it's just the weird shit going on. How are you feeling? You're hunting pigeons. What are you doing? I'm definitely going to, I'm actually looking, I'm going to go out this weekend or maybe a little bit next week and do some squirrel and rabbit hunting. Maybe try to bag some nutria, get a stew going, do some brazing and frying and see how the different game foods work, a friend of mine is going to take us out and do some foraging.

So getting, getting ready to do all the kind of like depressions, great depression stews that I'll need to cook using vermin. My main plan is I'm going to become a professional ballerina and I'm going to, I don't know. I think that that's, that's my only plan. I'm going to become a professional ballerina and I'm going to die before I'm 30. Those are my two plans. Yeah. Wait, you're not 30 yet?

Oh, Jamie. Oh, that. Yeah. That's true. Oh, and I'm going to read comments about me on the internet. That's the other thing I've been doing today. Well, I'm going to hope we hang in for your 30th birthday. Jamie, you know what I realized?

Jamie, you know what I realized? You know what I realized? You know what I realized? What? It is, it is, it is our 27th year. It is our 27th year. Here we are. Oh, shit.

Doesn't feel great. Just like Cobain. If Corona gets us, we were geniuses after all, that's, that's the relief. If, if it gets me, I was a genius. Jamie and Robert have been, and Daniel have all been extremely helpful in this first week of being home alone. So you know, say thank you to your friends, talk to each other, communicate, you know, wave machetes from afar.

Yeah. Everyone has been great. I mean, yeah, we've all been checking in on each other all week. It's nice. It feels good. It is nice. Hunt squirrels and pigeons, learn how to make mulligan stew, pick up an air rifle or a 22. Mulligan stew is what hobos would eat during the Great Depression, and it's basically

just whatever you have. If you boil anything, even rancid meat for four or five hours, it will be, it will not kill you because nothing deadly can survive four or five hours of, of, of boiling. That's the whole basis of Cajun food. It's like old timey stuff, old timey like language really is fun, except when it's used to be very racist, in which case it's not fun. Anderson, that's fun. Anderson's sworn enemy is this squirrel that I named Edward, and I'm sending you guys a

picture of Edward currently this week. This lady is still giving him so much unbelievable dry food that I'm like, pissed. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's still thriving. I mean, I know I have a machete and I can do something with it, but also, I don't know, but I'm pissed that he has all these fucking seeds, like, come on. That is, that's not okay. Mostly because he's my dog's sworn enemy, but that's not that, yeah.

Oh, here it is. Look at all those seeds, guys. Sunny's just been gloating about Biden's recent wins. It fucking sucks. Oh, Sunny. Imagine being locked in the house with a Biden supporter right now. Just everyone send your thoughts and prayers. I did see my first Biden, my first Biden, whatchamacallit, you know, the things that,

no, no, ghost, the things you put on lawns, signs, yes. So if you listen to Worcester Ever, you'll remember like a month or two ago, I said that I saw my first Amy for America sign, well, I drove by that exact same house and now they have an Amy for America sign and a Joe Biden sign. Hey, it's the logical conclusion. It's the logical conclusion. They also said they want to adopt Sunny, just so you know. Oh, good.

Well, I mean, I'm honestly trying to offload Sunny and it's hard right now. So. Oh, man. I mean. Worst case, I'll use, you know, I'll turn him into a rug. Oh, I was going to say a stew, Jamie. I've just been talking about how even Sunny. Well, use every part.

Yeah. Oh, well, for sure. Yeah. For five or six hours. And then we'll turn the rest into a rug. Got to use every part of your beloved pet. Got to use every part of your very regressive politically dog, your politically regressive dog.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. Anyway, this has been a very long ending to this episode. Jamie, do you have anything you want to plug? Do you want to tell people where they can find you and what they can listen to? Sure.

Yeah. You can find me on Twitter at Jamie Loftus Help on Instagram at JamieCurrySuperstar. Yeah. I'm doing some. Also, yeah. Like remote comedy shows. You can listen to the Bechtelcast and you should find what your local mutual aid fund is and give some money and supplies to it.

And that's all I have to say. And also remember that that mutual aid is fundamentally about building resiliency outside of the state and not just a stopgap way to deal with the loss of state services, but a new way of looking at the relationship of human beings to one another in society without trust in a soulless government that doesn't care about you. Anyway. Fucking yeah. Heads up.

Yep. Is it my turn to plug your plugables, Robert? Yeah. Please, please do. You can follow Robert at I write okay on Twitter. You can follow this podcast at at Bastard's Pod. You can also hear Robert on Worcester Ever and our newest show, The Women's War, which has episode one on March 25th.

Look out for that. You can follow Dan on Dan. What is your Twitch thing? Dan? Dan? Dan, what is your Twitch thing? Say it one more time. Oh yeah.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, I want to say it. So you can watch Dan play cool video games at, I'm going to fuck this up. I know it. Can you type it to me? No, just type it to me. God damn it. I'm a hack and a fraud.

I want it. I don't want to fuck this up. No, no. No. Sorry, Chris. Okay. You can watch Dan play video games at twitch.tv slash, okay. Twitch.tv slash, I fucked, I can't do it.

I can't. I'm hiding under my table at this point. I can't. I can't do it. I'm going to go look at his Twitter and see, it's probably listed on there. I'm so sorry, Chris. I just wanted to plug Dan's good life. Oh yeah.

Okay. Fuck yeah. Okay. You can, you can watch, okay. And if you want to watch somebody who's really awesome play video games, you can follow Dan on twitch.tv at dj underscore Dan, that's dj underscore d-a-n-l on twitch.tv. Fucking did that shit. Anyways, Robert, you want to end your own podcast?

No. Oh, okay. So this is the end of the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Wash your hands. Or not. Wash your damn hands and burn down a moon juice. Burn down a moon juice.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. He didn't inside his hearse with like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass, and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed

the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts.