Panic World - Your conspiracy families

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

When Grant talked to his friend whose dad had become a Holocaust denier, we got a huge response from folks who had family members with other… interesting ideas. Today, we’re answering some of your questions. Like: what do you do when you have your own kids and had counted on your (now conspiracy-pilled) parents to help care for them? What about when you question your own reality due to those close to you losing touch with theirs? And how much of all this is untreated medical disorders versus mental disorder caused by media? Ryan & Grant discuss. Listeners, thank you for telling us your stories — we hope this helps you feel a bit less alone, because clearly, we’re all going through it. If you have specific questions or want to share concerns about something your friends or family members are talking about, we’d still love to hear from you. Email us at [e-mail]. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paradoxical question for you, Ryan Broderick. Do you think our listeners are disproportionately suffering from conspiracy family members? Or do you think that because they listen to Panic World, that has led them to be better adjusted and made them more comfortable talking about their conspiracy family members because they're now in a healthier place because of us? I just think at this point everyone has at least one. I think everyone in the world might actually just have one. I'm Grand Irving. This is Panic Road, a show about how the internet warps our minds or culture and eventually reality. And maybe we should add to the tagline and how it fucks up everyone's families.

Joining me, a guy with a relatively normal and healthy relationship with his dad, Ryan Broderick. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me on my show. How does it feel to be the one who like, like comparatively has like the good dad? Well, you know, it's funny. I'm actually working on a project about my dad's radicalization for this event that I'm doing in Tbilisi, Georgia in June. And it was fascinating to, like, sit down and kind of write it all out.

And my takeaway, and I'm still kind of working on this, but my takeaway so far is that basically constant arguing and communication and sort of refusing to let, you know, the radicalized person self-isolate. it doesn't on it doesn't like de-radicalize them but it may like stop the more profoundly uncomfortable effects from happening like that's not an option for everybody but like for me and my dad we have sort of we've reached a point where like it's functioning you know we can we can communicate and then often i'll just have to tap out and be like okay like we can't i can't listen to you say the tariffs are good like that's just not possible like that's not that's not anything but yeah I do think that there's like the death drive in all of this where it's like, yeah, but what is, what's it like when it's all torn down? It's actually like a big part of all this.

That was my favorite post of the terrorist fiasco, which was someone who just wrote like, aren't you curious anon? And it's like, yeah, a little, I guess. I think that's there. I think that's in a lot of these. And so this is a basically a sequel to my friend's dad is a Holocaust denier episode because we got tons of voices. emails from you guys sharing your relationship with conspiratorial loved ones. It is like, I have trouble modulating my voice to sounding sincere, but I mean this. It is very touching that you guys shared this with us.

I learned a lot. It's really tough to do an earnest podcast episode with a guy from Pennsylvania and a guy from Massachusetts. Like our voices don't really work with. I kept trying to be really earnest to a friend the other day, and she was like, every time you say that, it sounds like you being a giant asshole. Stop doing that. Because I have resting sarcasm. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

100. We're going to try to power through that. I couldn't include everyone. So I try to condense things for overlapping themes, but we really, really do appreciate all of you. We will see whether or not Ryan thinks that his method with his dad in all of

these is sustainable for any of you. And just one last note before we dive in. Some people wanted to be anonymous. Some people are fine with using their names, I thought that was just going to be too complicated. So I've made everyone anonymous just for ease. So you can just assume that everyone has a fake name here. And now we can get into it. Wait, is it fake names or no names?

Because that's a pet peeve of mine. Fake names. If it's a fake name, it's pseudonymous, Grant. That's your, aim those at me. I know you'll need to get the sarcasm and the being pedantic out. So just direct that towards or my sueton. My hosting. as long as I don't say animize again, we won't get a flurry of comments.

You know, we're starting to make it when people start to make fun of and berate you for mis-saying things. I understand why every podcast I listen to has like a five-minute bit where they just rant and rave about their own listeners for a while. So to start, conspiracy thinking has no bounds. It's ideological and maybe psychological. but it is not knowledge-based. Sarah describes her mom as an anesthesiologist

who was extremely high up in the FDA before she retired, but was always a Russian-Limbab kind of conservative and always needed to be going with the party line. Uh-huh. And even though she was literally in the FDA, she believes that they are holding back some secrets. So now I'm going to play you this first bit of tape.

It's not that she thinks that the FDA has changed and is now captured by the deep state or whatever. The impression that I got was that people at the FDA somehow knew all along about this and haven't released that information for some reason. I think her mom's right, right? Like, she has the inside knowledge here. That's fascinating. Imagine arguing with your dad if he actually had held a position of power. Hold on, wait. There's again another thing here, which is kind of more interesting to me, which is that everyone who works at large institutions kind of feels like that large institution has like shady shit going on. So it's like kind of endearing to think that like that's also happening at like the highest levels of government that like they're also like yeah, our bosses like knew the, you know, they knew the layoffs are coming like six months ago and they were doing they were pulling the snacks out of the canteen because they knew.

Like, it's the same sort of thought process, I think, in a way. You are giving this way too much credit. Yeah, I do that. I'm not allowed to bring things up that are controversial to her. And the list is ever expanding, because as you know, like, the right-wing worldview is, like, constant culture war. Everything suddenly will become, like, a problem that wasn't before. So now, you know, she needs to interrogate whether or not the story hour at the library near my house is run by drag queens. Why is that even something that is on her mind?

But that's like the kind of thing that she's suddenly worried about. So now I can't talk to her about like the activities I take my son to. Yeah. It's fascinating how quickly this stuff starts to eat the rest of their worldview. Yeah. And it doesn't really make sense. I mean, at the top you said it's not knowledge based, but I actually don't totally think that's true. It's more like they're receiving information, but they don't.

have the context for it. So, you know, like if you, if you're an older person and you're watching some scare segment on Fox News about drag queens, you don't like have the context for what that would mean. So like, I don't know where this person lives or whatever, but like, let's assume it's like, you know, kind of a smaller town or not a major city. You would just immediately think like, oh, yeah, there's drag queens outside, like running the local bar or whatever.

So it can't really work if you're still maintaining an active. social life. And this is, I think, particularly bad for boomers because so much of boomer life was based around your work. And they kind of lose like a purpose in their life and they fill that void which is like insane garbage that they're seeing on TV or on the internet. And I think that is a massive thing here. And the fact that like her mom, let's say, started feeling more conspiratorial, even if she was a Rush Limba fan, which honestly, it's kind of been memory hole. But like, Rush Limba was a giant sack of shit who's now burning in hell with John Lennon and everyone else that's in hell. I just want to make it clear that John Lennon is in hell.

Those aren't your two? It's Margaret Thatcher and John Lennon. They're both in hell. And Rush. But he was like adhering to FCC standards. Like it was a terrestrial radio show. It was not like Alex Jones. It was bad.

It was really bad. But it was not in the same level as something like Alex Jones. So the fact that this woman's mom starts to feel conspiratorial after she retires from the FDA and I'm just pulling from what we've heard. And then that conspiratorial worldview sort of like starts to encompass the community around her that I would have to assume that she's removing herself from to some degree because like I said, if she wasn't, she would know that some of these things aren't true. And I think that is linked. So she said that her mom just always had to go along with a party line. Sure. This was the club that she was a part of. But what, what I think what we, another thing

we didn't get into in the last episode that I saw a big trend on and I want to focus the first act on this. These relationships having fissures once kids are involved, once the boomers are grandkids. Yeah. It's and it like, so that, so that this was a big trend we saw where people were like, I was kind of able to navigate this before I had my kids. and now they're bringing up, you know, drag queen story hour when I'm just trying to like, you know,

like we all have this like idealized version of what it's going to be like with our parents once we are our parents. Right. One listener wrote about how his dad is a gun nut during the Yuvaldi shooting. His grandson was next to him on the bed

and his while his grandfather was just watching more like gun YouTube videos. Sure. Try to maintain a relationship. Still try to maintain a relationship. relationship but he's like that is unforgivable like there's these like points that you just aren't in otherwise with your parents another listener devon i'm going to read a bit from this email but she said both of her parents were in medfields they're now anti-vax and she relies on them for babysitting medical

they're in medical fields yeah yeah uh so she writes i've do you want to read this let's have you yeah sure so the chat is just on the side if you uh if you uh if you just go over here you can navigate to it and you're going to click on studio chat i have two young kids one and three years old and my mom provides a lot of child care help for us one of the biggest moments that cemented for me that they are not the same people they once were was a few days after my second son was born something seemed off with him he wasn't eating was lethargic etc and we had my parents come over to watch our older son so we could take the baby to the er my parents questioned what vaccines he had had in the hospital suggesting that he was having some sort of vaccine reaction two

days later he was admitted to the nICU with a serious infection that had absolutely nothing to do with a vaccine sure i mean this is actually becoming a thing with my dad and i've i've traced a lot of it back like i mean obviously anti-vac stuff is all over the internet now it's totally leaked out and there's no sort of way to um contain it anymore but i've noticed that facebook reels is a massive massive vector. Like, there's a bunch of banned influencers that previously banned influencers that are now back. It's gotten much worse, I think, since RFK sort of entered the public spotlight, because for a lot of baby boomers, he is, he is similar to Trump in, like, Trump is like an avatar of their worst capitalistic impulses. And in a lot of ways, RFK is like an avatar of their worst post-sexual revolution,

and woo-woo, you know, like late-stage hippie impulses. And I think they're feeling extremely bold now. I do wonder how they felt about this stuff 10, 20 years ago. Totally. Like if this was always kind of in the back of their heads and now they feel like they can vocalize it or if it's like genuinely older people are becoming anti-vax, it might just be a split of the two. But this is becoming much worse, like now.

I mean, just imagine being in her position where like, you're like yeah it's a safety thing you can't like be around your you can't be around your you can't be around your parents uh you can't do it just to close to live for those who care Ryan the baby was fine uh I totally forgot we were talking about baby I got so sucked into talking about misinformation the internet that I abstracted all of it into some sort of larger question crazy I'm happy the baby I'm happy I'm happy the baby the the uh shockingly it had nothing to do with a vaccine reaction um and yeah because that's not like that's not like a real thing

for us who don't have kids where like you can opt in and out like it like it's one thing and for parents where like she's like I'm dependent on my parents for childhood I oh or for child care I always imagined raising my kids with the help of my parents like it was like when my father in law was diagnosed with cancer like the first conversation we had was like do we want to have a kid now so that like he gets time with her like it's a thing that everyone imagines now these things are unavoidable. And she like, she, she answered email, you know, one little bit for the correspondence I want to share is like, sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my normal mom. And then I'll say like an anti-vaccine book on her bedside table. You can't avoid sex and politics and, you know,

like impolite conversation when it like seeps in from every angle. If anyone listening to this wants to follow like a reporter who covers this stuff really, really well, I highly recommend brandy Zedronsky at NBC News. She's been caught. covering this beat for years and years and years and years. The other thing with anti-Vax right now that I have to wonder is how tight it is to sort of institutional distrust that older people aren't realizing is stemming from Trumpism. Like if you are, let's say, pro-Trump or even like mildly conservative or just older and you're not really following what's going on, you might feel in the back of your head that institutions

are crumbling because they are. And you might feel that things are weirdly worse. And for baby boomers, that's really strange. Because, like, my dad talks about this all the time where it's like, in his life, everything got better all the time always. We landed on the moon. The cities are chaos. They're so unsafe everywhere. The subways, they're dangerous.

I live next to Brooklyn, Chinatown, and I'm pretty sure I heard a Fourth of July, um, firework cash go off by accident yesterday. and then it's just been fire trucks all over this place all week. Okay, wait. So, like, maybe in the back of your head you're feeling like, okay, institutions are worse. Things are worse. I'm scared. And my entire life, things have been getting better and better and better. If you lived in a world without McDonald's and then suddenly McDonald's existed, like for them,

that's like new technology, right? So to bring it back to the anti-back stuff, if you are distrustful of institutions and you are used to a world where everything should be getting better and you voted for Trump, you don't totally understand why things feel worse. And you, you, they also have like no media literacy. So it's, it's kind of like the perfect storm for these people in a lot of ways.

Just some sort of explanation. And people have been freaked out about the concept of a vaccine since they existed because, like, it is kind of scary. It's kind of scary. Like you inject the disease into your body. And they, are we anti-back now? Are we doing it?

Are we going to, are we going to go phoned down? We'd make so much fucking money. No more shots unless it's testosterone. If we just did this show, as normal, but then we were just like, oh, by the way, we're also anti-fax. Like every episode, we make so much goddamn money on Patreon. A little behind the scenes, I just want you to know that every podcast you listen to,

the thing everyone talks about, like off-mic is how much money they could make if they did the worst version of their show. Yeah, yeah. That's like the only thing all of us talk about. I had a personal takeaway from this. I'd like to share to bring things back down. Keep it short, though. But yeah.

I will. So I mentioned I don't talk to some family. And what I learned from this is it's never a thing you stop turning over in your mind. You know, I go back and forth on like, is this the right decision? Is this not the right decision? There's the grief that comes along with it. And from doing this little exercise with our listeners, what I've seen is that it is that it is never settled matter in anyone's head, like where they're falling on the line at any time.

And that is actually very alleviating for me because you're just mad at your brain for constantly returning to this thing. But what I see now is that there's never like, you're never going to be like, well, this is my answer. And I'm proceeding this way. And now it doesn't need to take up brain space. So what I've learned here, I thought that that was like a personal failing. And now I see that that is just a thing we're all afflicted with, with how to deal with these things. You're valid, Grant. Do you something else you want to say?

We're all like, why can't I just come to a conclusion? About your parents or about your family members that you've come out. We're the ones that are difficult that you're like, should I keep doing this? And I think just accepting that like none of us can figure out a conclusion is helpful for everyone to know. Yeah, I mean, there was like a massive wave, I feel like in the early 2010s of, like especially young millennials sort of add like it you saw that's a lot in progressive spaces of like cutting off your family members and it was talked about particularly on twitter as like a very simple

process and then it became kind of like a morality thing around the trump election the first time where it was like it's simple if you have a trump supporter in your family you got to cut them off and that's just not reality that's just not how like that's just not how like that's just not how people feel that's not how that's not how like human beings understand a family structure that's just that's not that's that's that's an internet meme that doesn't make any sense spread by misanthropes like it's not yeah of course it's painful of course it's complicated it's painful and complicated in the same way continuing to speak to your family is painful and complicated as they get older it is a process and and not talking to them is ironically a very similar process it is a choice that you have to

continue to make as long as they're around the only solution is murder and on that note with like to go to a break from our new sponsor. Gold? Tell your parents to buy gold. That was the like, what do you do when you have kids segment? Uh-huh. Which is like a dimension that. Both of us being experts in child care and all that, we are perfect to sort of give advice

there. Absolutely. Yeah, I think the advice is, boy, that's hard. Two childless men living in Brooklyn with a podcast. I think we're absolutely perfect for this. Now I want to get into the next thematic segment is like, the people who have started to question their own reality or are dealing with people who are questioning their own reality

in a way that then makes a relationship trickier. Okay. So Jane's husband was raised in an Alex Jones house. old. And it seems like most of their extended family, um, by some sort of conspiracy, something or other. I bet their parties are lit, though. Her husband has grown up being like, I don't know what's real. I don't believe this shit. But like, now who's to say what's going on? So when Jane is upset about the dystopia we live in, he does not react to the way that she thinks is appropriate. This was an email. I put some of it in the chat.

All right. Here we go. To this day, it's difficult for my husband to have serious conversations with me. I feel like I'm tiptoeing around landmines and certain current events that make me angry or concerned that trigger me to have a heated reaction in his mind. I resemble his dad, which means he thinks I'm the one who's off. Oh, he thinks I'm the one who's off my rocker. Trump's efforts to steal the election, the coup attempt, and the riots at the Capitol exaggerated

in his mind. So if I understand this correctly, the husband grew up in an Alex Jones household. Yeah. And because of that, he doesn't believe things, but not in the way where he does believe things. It's like it broke his barometer for reality. And so when his wife is upset at genuine political developments in America, he believes that she's just as hysterical as his family is when they talk about. politics. Yeah, because they're yelling about turning the frogs gay. Right. She's yelling about they're arresting judges. I see. And he's like, what you sound like my dad right now is like

how she feels he's responding. Okay. I understand now. This is so fascinating. It's so understandable, but it's like what the fuck do you do with that? Well, it's like a total breakdown. I mean, in many ways, you know, we don't, I don't talk about like Russian disinformation a lot on this show because I think it's sort of overstated in a way. But what this is describing is fasting because it is kind of what the end goal of something like the Internet research agency in Russia was trying to accomplish in democracies, which was if you flood the zone with so much shit, as Steve Bannon would say, that you can. God, you love Steve Bannon. I do. I do.

I just think he's a really cool guy. We should have him on the show. That I would do a live taping for, honestly. me versus Steve Bannon on a stage. It would be a nightmare for everyone involved. I would also have to have someone in my ear giving me up to the minute fact checking just so I don't get lost in his eyes.

He's like weird fucking Doberman eyes. So this is though the end goal of projects like that. If you're talking about like state sponsored disinfo campaigns, this husband is who they're trying to create in electorates. They want to create someone who doesn't necessarily believe anything anymore.

And this was, I mean, this goes back to even like sort of like Soviet style, like disinfo stuff where you wanted to create someone who just like couldn't really engage that way to sort of, what do you call it? Like you wanted to create someone who couldn't engage to sort of neutralize the population. So this husband is like completely been neutralized in this really fascinating way. If we're talking about like how you deal with this, I mean first. If I'm going to put on my sort of like, like relationship hat here, relationship counselor hat, I do think if you find yourself tiptoeing around your partner or walking on eggshells, as they would say, that's no way to live. I'm not advocating for this couple to break up, but I'm just saying you should question how much of your life is spent walking on eggshells around your partner and then think about if that's the life you want to live.

My next thing I would say, hold on. I want to stop you there because I do think it's like, You think it's okay to be in some sort of cycle of abuse? I mean, I have to want to chat Chb-T, if I think that's okay. There's been this sort of like, like back when we were civil, breaking up over political differences, that's just, that's just so petty. The worst things get, like, you can't help but be upset about, like, they factor into all aspects of your life. They are your life.

Like, the political reality of America now can't be separated from your kitchen table. Wait, hold on. I want to remove the politics here for a second, because I actually think it clarifies things. If you are a kind of person who has reactions to things, whatever they may be, like if you were a sports fan and you loved sports, the Knicks are, can't think of a single sport. The Knicks are, the Knicks are doing well. The Mets, okay, like you love the Mets. Keep going. and your partner is so aggressively anti sports or your reaction to sports that you have to walk on eggshells and diminish yourself, that is worth reflecting on. And I do think in a lot of these conversations, if you take politics out of it and you replace it with anything else, it can help you clarify the dynamics at play here. That was a very good point.

I do think that that's just something to think about. And this is something you can kind of do. anyone listening here, if you are finding yourself in a situation with the politics or the disinfo or the conspiracy theories, whatever, with family members or loved ones, just like replace it with something else and just be like, is this how I want to spend my time on earth, right? You should see how condescendingly babied my partner's, uh, texts are to me when the Eagles lose. Hey, bud, you okay?

Can I come home yet? and honestly that's why we're going to be together forever I love them deeply replace that with alcohol grant replace that with hey bud is your bender over yet can I come home now

you know you're making them walk on eggshells you should think about that you should think about that next time they're being they're giving they are they're supporting me my passion next time you punch a wall in the next time you punch a hole in the drywall when the birds lose

I only I only yell when we're doing doing well. Like I yell, I yell victoriously. I only get loud. That's a healthy relationship. And I, like, stomp when we do well, I just get sullen and quiet when we're doing bad. I don't, I don't exercise that. I think that that's bad. And my dad would watch the Phillies lose. That house was like a tomb. Silence is a crypt. Yeah, that's how it should be. Okay. So if we're going to talk about, like, what we do with someone like this, who has completely been neutralized by

disinformation to the point where they can't, they can't really engage in society anymore. I think one of the easiest ways you can deal with this. Let's assume like you don't want to live this way anymore. Let's assume like this is a partner. They're in your life. You love them. You want to be able to express how you feel. Now, part of me says like, I do truly believe this.

And I will believe this until we are literally in a gulag somewhere. But like it is healthy to maybe not have the news dictate your emotional state constantly. So I will say that for the wife. it is worth thinking about. But if you are like, okay, this shit matters to me. I want my husband to be able to like take me seriously when I want to be taken seriously. And you want to figure out how to do that. One thing that I think would be really easy is just take him to like some kind of protest.

Make it real. If he lived in an Alex Jones household where like all politics has been like flattened into WWE style entertainment that doesn't make any sense and doesn't fit into reality, find small ways to make it fit into reality. Like I don't know if there, you know, the community they're in has mutual aid groups or volunteering or just anything that can make politics feel slightly realer for him and then just do a boiling frog situation, a boiling gay frog situation where you just sort of turn the heat up, but you make sure to find moments

where you can be like, hey, this is real. It's happening. Don't get super extreme. Like, don't pull on the bala clava and, like, throw piss of cops unless you want to. But, like, take the moments to make it real. Because I think that it sounds like to me, from my very limited exposure to this story, that this guy just has a really tough time understanding that politics can be real after spending so much time inside like the fucking the fucking Alex Jones HyperCube so like figure you know fine fine little ways I think that is very very sound advice

let's see if you have a solution for this next one just had grown up expecting her mom to be an extremist Christian but one day her mom caught her off guard so a couple years ago she took me out to brunch for my birthday and she mentioned aliens and was like what the fuck like um Christians aren't supposed to believe in aliens my entire life we grew up believing that or being taught that uh wait pause it hold on Christians are allowed to believe in aliens the Catholic Church has an entire department to study how to turn aliens Catholic when they finally get here I just want that known for the record continue they're evangelical Ryan they're not part of your well then they should fuck okay

People. We're cutting that. You can't call. I mean, they are, obviously. But you can't. Okay. Continue. Continue.

Continue. God put us here on Earth specially and that we were his special creation. And so that aliens technically went against the doctrine. I did some research. So she sort of following this guy on YouTube called Kevin Zaday, who was a preacher. She actually went to his like school in Texas and Florida and like or did an online schooling program and then went to Texas and Florida. to get like degrees from him spent like $2,500 of her husband's money. So you had a look of recognition upon the name Kevin's a day.

Yeah. This is a cult situation. This is, this is beyond what we've talked about so far. This guy is genuinely very dangerous. His tagline is training Christians to operate in two realms, the natural and the supernatural. The last line there where this mom has traveled to meet him, that's a really, dangerous moment here. We're getting into like wild wall country territory at this point. We're raising the temperature on the gay frogs in extremity this episode.

That's right. Basically from what I can ascertain, aliens are demons from a different realm and that demons are constantly around us trying to essentially infect us with the blood of the Nephilim essentially to prevent us from being taken back with Jesus when he comes back. like in less than 30 years, you know, like he's always about to come back. They're here to infect us with that Nephilim DNA through essentially like the vaccines and they're working with the governments. So, Ryan, what would you do? You know, you got a volunteer, got to do mutual hate.

So first, I should say, like, I am not an expert in cult deprogramming, right? that is a field that exists obviously my work has taken me into those worlds before but i i need to say like i am not an expert there so barring any kind of FBI raid on this guy's fucking warehouse or whatever this is one where you have to i think tread really really lightly because obviously you don't want to get sucked into any sort of cult's activity and i assume the woman the nice lady who sent us this tape doesn't want to build some kind of improvised weapon and then go and kill him like the guy in Japan did when his mom got sucked into a religious cult. But that is the kind of seriousness that you have to kind of take this stuff because this is much more serious, I think. And the last thing I'll say here is the reason you have to tread lightly, if you want your mom to stay in your life, is if you go about this wrong, you can lose that kind of person much faster.

I think. I think when you're talking about cultish activity, the, the gravitational pull is much stronger. And the risk of isolation and the risk of sort of further indoctrination because of that isolation is much higher. So you really have to be careful. And this is like, I think I'm going to just keep saying across this episode with all this stuff, which is like, is helping this person, is staying connected to this person worth the time in your life that you want to spend doing it, right? So the amount of empathy and care she expressed towards her mom, she talks regularly about that her mom had a very difficult life and that this is like was her path to recovery and that she like tries to keep that in mind. But like they live 45 minutes away. They hardly see each other.

It's very difficult. She doesn't engage with anything that is not evangelical this cult related. She says the last movie that she's seen was Sound of Freedom. And that, like, she brought up that, like, it really resonated with her during, like, the episode of Matt where, like, you can't even talk about, like, anodyne things like food because you can see it, trigger it. And so, I want to play you this clip. I'll try to assert myself and try to be an adult and be like, you know, Mom, I actually really like Beyonce. You know, she's probably my favorite artist, like the most inconsequential thing you could possibly say. the era of our Lord 2025 is I like Beyonce and I can hear her on the other end of the phone

like straining not to be like well you know you know the relationship has changed because she is so inculcated and so isolated it's sad and it yeah and it's a it's a it's a no win and it and it just feels so so little I'm going to say this in as sincere of a tone as possible because I mean it you're not alone in this like this is this is all of us now it's more severe for you than most, but like, I think that that's a hard thing to keep in mind that we're all coming to terms with. Tell me if this is overblown or stretching, and we can delete it from the episode, but like, to me, it almost feels like dealing with someone with dementia or Alzheimer's.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. Like early, when there's like moments of lucidity and they're like, they're back. And then it's like the conspiratorial thinking sort of snaps back in a place and they go into like their hyper fixation and it in it like you're dealing with someone who is is deteriorating because you there are moments when it's great and it's like okay they're back and you know sometimes in my experience I've never met anyone who's completely de-radicalized a loved one and I wanted to wait till we got deeper into this episode to say that like I actually don't know very many success stories there are some but at a but at a certain point you you you kind of have to accept

that this is part of them and accept the moments of lucidity you get. There was this listener, Audrey, who I want to end this act on this, because I think she kind of really summed up a lot of, like, a lot of what you're saying really well. She wrote, so she's like a maha mom. Make America healthy again, by the way. She wrote, she, my mom, doesn't like that I take antidepressants, doesn't like that I have an IUD, is convinced that I'm essentially poisoning myself because I'm

overweight, etc. I've been treated for OCD for OCD for several years, and the process has revealed a lot of internal dysfunction. I know I get from her. In short, the sickness in her is the sickness of me, the moral equivalency of wellness to goodness. It feels very connected to the desire to controls one's body as the ultimate thing you can control in a chaotic environment. She goes on to say, I don't know how to have an open conversation with her about most of it because she is correct that institutions fail us, that there have been bad actors in the world, that if it weren't for food safety regulation, companies would start putting sawdust and Rice Krispies tomorrow. I think we're witnessing this kind of hyper self-control on a mass scale. And I can't help but feel sorry for my mom and everyone who's deep in it, as they don't recognize they're holding on a barbed wire because they're too scared, because they're too scared what will happen if they let go. that's a really beautiful beautiful piece it's so personal like this stuff is so it it's such a bizarre mix of macro and micro it's such a bizarre mix of like systemic and systematic and personal where you are trying to essentially like work through your own complex dynamic with your parents let's say amid this like institutional chaos and i wonder if it was always like

this? I have to assume it was. We just like didn't know. Did I do it? Did I do the thing where we're going into the next act? And I just said that what's next on the, I did the thing our guests do. Okay. You want to know if this has always been the case. Okay. When we come back from break, God damn it. We're going to talk, we're going to talk to a guy whose dad moved them to a compound before Y2K. And before that, a word from our sponsors, my pillow. So what you're just getting at is that it gets us to like the unanswerable question that I think gnawls at all of this. How much is untreated mental disorders and how much is mental disorder through media? And obviously, and like you can never extract the two in reality, but it's always, it's always present in this.

and now it's on a mass scale but like this has been here with us for all of time and um irony it's probably irony is probably the wrong word

but that um Y2K was supposed to end civilization but it was like kind of the the coronation of a thing that did of like us all coming online and that would eventually and devastate the world? I think it's funny.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this ever since we tried to do a now scrapped Y2K episode. I was thinking about it because, you know, you had those, you had, what was it, like, centennial cults or whatever, like, you know, at the turn of the 1900s that believed that the world was going to end.

Like, it has been a thing forever, you know. I mean, you could argue, there's like a whole section of the Bible dedicated to the world ending very soon. It's a thing that we've always kind of dreamed of. Y2K is fascinating though because not only is it arriving

sort of at the buildup of a massive amount of post-war World War II Cold War bombs are dropping kind of mentality. You know, you're dealing with a bunch of generations of people that lived under the third of nuclear war. Now they're hitting the 2000s and

it's like the world's going to end. I kind of understand the hysteria there. But then also you have, you basically have like a doomsday cult happening at peak mass media. That has to make people go real goofy. Because like it's just, there's a lot of moving parts there for sure. Yeah. And now this next generation is dealing with the consequences. Let's get back to Zach and what it was like for him as a kid, though.

Do you remember when your dad told you his Y2K plan? I do. It was. So I'm 38. I think I was in eighth grade. It was early. It was in the spring of 99. So his dad was going to make some big moves ahead of Y2K.

So he just sat me and my brother down. My brother's like a year and a half younger than me. And just a matter of fact, was like, the world's going to end. We're going to move. I found a community of like, like, like, like, like, good Christian people. We're going to go visit next week. We're taking all our money out of the banks.

We're taking all your money out of your college. fun. We're buying gold, food, and guns. Have you talked to any of these guys before, Ryan? Why did you guys specifically? Yeah. No, but I've talked to people who have done similar things. I mean, the pattern is always the same, which is gold and guns and a compound and like-minded Christians.

It's always that. So, Zach did not know that at the time, and he was young enough where you go, you just believe what your parents are telling you. And so out to the compound, they went. he brought facts and and information to the conversation. You know, none of it, not of it true or relevant, but as, you know, somebody, you know, that young, it all seemed really, really credible. And I don't know, it just kind of seemed like an adventure.

We were moving out to the country. We lived in the suburbs in Texas. So we were moving out to East Texas down a bunch of dirt roads and, like, we're going to learn how to shoot guns and hunts and all this stuff that hadn't really done. At the root of all of these things, is sort of this like boy childhood adventure story. I think is like part of like the core appeal. For the son or for the dad?

Like it was definitely present for Zach, but I think it's like present for all these people who are like, tomorrow's society will stop and suddenly like life is going to be exciting and meaningful in this in this like profound way. Well, yes, it's trying to make you feel like the hero. It's trying to make you feel like the main character. and it's promising you a world in which that's possible. We see it in like finance bro circles now.

Like every kind of type of person you can imagine has their own version of these sorts of pipelines and rabbit holes. And at the heart of almost all of them is this promise that the world will reset and when it resets, you're on top. and that you have hidden knowledge of how the world's going to reset, and it is the heart of Trumpism. It is, I think, in many ways, the fundamental sickness of the 21st century. And I think Y2K is the flashpoint for a lot of this stuff. Because I think for a lot of people, it is the first time they maybe understood how abstracted and delocalized the global sort of order had become.

And now it's sort of the promise that it's going to end. like perfect. It's so interesting being 25 years beyond that. But 25 years ago, we had this moment where we saw, it was a uniting of all these people who all felt the impulse of like, yeah, I can't wait for like day zero. One of the things that was from the, from the Y2K episode that was never to be that we discovered was someone was having, like I think it was a teenager, was having a baby. and they believe the world was going to end during Y2K,

and they put their baby up for adoption in like Y2K chat rooms. Yes. And of course, we don't need paperwork to make this adoption legal because the world's about to end. At the heart of it is not only like, I am the main character and the world's going to reset, but the world's going to reset because it's so complicated and confusing right now that I'm alienated by it.

Like it's a social alienation. and that can't really be fixed. An intrinsic part that's going to factor into our story here that keeps that working in this perpetual loop is that you have the people who are exhausted and looking for a way out, and you will immediately have grifters who are there to perpetuate that you don't make an...

progress or see any perspective, which is exactly what happened to Zach's family. First meeting, the guy, I think his name was Jim, who had bought all the land. And, you know, I'm 13 or whatever. And he walks up and he shakes my hand. And I shake his hand back. And he's like, oh, good firm handshake. You can tell a lot about a man by how his handshake is. And you've got a good handshake.

And I was just like, oh, wow, a real man. Like, like this is, and I mean, looking back, not like, obviously that's one of those things that like people who are full of shit say like you know these canned like platitudes and and cliches to to make people trust them but I loved it up there at first you know it sank in pretty quick that you know I wasn't going to be able to play basketball or play baseball or it took 45 minutes to drive to the nearest like the nearest city with more than one stoplight. So this guy got bought all this cheap land in like middle of nowhere, Texas, and got these

families to like help build roads and like a real reinforced fence. Right, of course. Ryan, what question are you asking yourself that I... What happened when the world didn't end? Okay, I had one question before then. Which was how racist... Oh, I wasn't even going to ask that. I just assumed like this was an insanely racist.

racist, like, you know, hyper-conservative. So I did ask how racist was this? If I gone through and now is, you know, somebody in their late 30s, and I could probably listen in on those conversations. There's about a million red flags that I would pick up. But, you know, I was an isolated homeschool kid and raised a very fundamentalist Christian. So everything tracked. I think the one thing that I remember that strikes me as weird is one of our neighbors had

some kids who I think they were in their like late teens so I looked up to them and they were you know outdoorsy and I remember they talked about Hitler a lot. Uh-oh. You don't say. Yeah. Like it a not like Hitler was a great guy but in like a yeah, my dad has a lot of World War II memorabilia. Yep. You know, it wasn't ever like, you know, hey, this is how we feel about the Jews.

but it was very much like, hey, we're historically interested in this part of history that is, you know, such a major red flag now that back then I was like, oh, cool, I like history too. Sure. I'm more interested in like, you know, other parts of history that aren't Nazi Germany, but you do you. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's the baseline.

Let's jump to the wake of Y2K. Yeah, yeah. It was less prepping than you would think it would be because every, Everybody spent so much time prepping. But, like, we were totally self-sufficient. We had a generator that ran off a natural gas line and diesel. Natural gas was, like, tied to a well right off our property. We could have lived out there without outside interference for, like, literally, years.

So it was less prepping, but a lot of spending time on the Internet and kind of convincing themselves that this is going to happen. I remember my dad being on the computer with, like, our dial-up Internet all the time. It strikes me that, like, they brought the internet, they brought their message board to a physical location, but still the impulse was to be online. I find, I find kind of fascinating. You know, like, you could just talk to your, like, all your neighbors are now that message board. Yeah, I mean, you would think that, but you'd have to know my dad. He has, like, a really strong anti-authoritarian streak.

And I think that that comes from, you know, being raised in a part of Texas where him and his family were the only Asian family. Watching my dad interact with all these white, blue-collar survivalists, it was almost like he resented them a little bit, even though he was part of the community because, you know, he was still having to play a part. He was still having to assimilate. You know, these guys have been shooting guns their whole lives. My dad had fired a gun once before he bought a bunch of assault rifles in 99. That, you buried the lead there, Grant. I do think that is important. That is fascinating.

That is, so they are now on a compound surrounded by effectively white nationalists to some degree. This soup of conspiracy is made up of different people and it needs all of the factors of the conspiracy. It needs the online worker who's drawn in and it needs the people who like moving to this compound probably just wasn't actually that. different from their normal life. They just got more land because it was cheaper. And in most of the stories we've heard today, there's like a fundamental insecurity at the center of the person who gets brainwashed that you kind of can't do anything about.

Like that is their thing. And I think it's important to say that. You know, like the person who falls for like a Y2K power fantasy, the mom who travels to meet a pastor who believes in aliens. like there's something that's missing there in that person and you can't really ever help them get it. And that's what makes it so hard, I think, to deprogram or de-radicalize in these situations. I mean, this one's impossible.

Like, there's nothing he could have done. You say there's nothing you can do except for when the apocalypse doesn't happen. So let's get to the day out. You get to the moment of failed cataclysm. Yep, exactly. The time change starts very, very, very early in the morning. So everybody got up really early and we went to a neighbor's house with this really, really big house. I mean, looking back, this guy definitely didn't think that the apocalypse was happening.

He just saw a place to buy cheap land. So they all get to his house. They're having a potluck. Everyone's bringing their favorite meals. He's got a big screen 90s TV that they're all like ready to watch the apocalypse on. Zach being a kid, the guy had made a pond out in the middle of Texas. So he was like fishing in the guy's pond. and they're all ready to bring in the doomsday.

But then as the time change started happening and the world didn't end, it started at like 10 a.m., I think. And as it got later and later, you could see people get more and more upset. The conversations got quieter. And then there was a lot of like, well, you know, it hasn't hit the East Coast yet. That's where all the data centers are. That's where all the computers are. A lot of kind of justifying why things weren't going wrong.

why planes weren't falling out of the sky. And I don't even think we stayed till midnight. Needless to say, this changed the family forever and their dad's reality collapse. Zach was a kid, but looking back now, he sees this as like the position that every one who has a family member who has a conspiracy member in it really wants. The desire for a conspiracy theorist as somebody who, like, is a member of their family, to, like, show them the truth, like, force them to look at, like, a fact that is impossible to refute that disproves their entire narrative. And that's really hard to do because you really can't prove a negative.

But, like, Y2K was this thing that was going to happen and it didn't happen. He sat in a chair in the living room and I don't remember how long, but it felt like for, like, three months and didn't speak. And we tried to avoid him at all costs because he was just in the darkest mood that I've ever seen. I can relate to like you have the question in your head that you know as dangerous as a kid and you're like mostly worried about your parents' well-being. But did it- In my family, in my family, you worried about your own well-being. You didn't ask my dad questions.

He had a real serious anger problem throughout my entire life. One thing I will say, which I think this is a useful example of, is that a lot of people, I'm sure, listening to this, going through these sort of, of things, dream of the moment where it all comes crashing down and you're like, QAnon's not real, or Donald Trump gets arrested or whatever, right? There is like no proof I've ever seen that that kind of moment is going to change someone or even feel gratifying for you, what actually ends up happening is like much more devastating and weird and strange,

which is that they don't really ever want to talk about it again. And it's, it doesn't feel good, is what I would say. That was certainly Zach's experience. Let's listen. But like internally, I would imagine this was probably one, if not the first time you're like,

he's wrong. And like, what do I do with that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it was, it changed my entire worldview. or changed my entire way that I view my parents. I didn't, you know, you can trust what he was saying anymore. Clearly, he doesn't understand.

And I think it actually probably changed the course of my entire life because I got to think that if I hadn't had that direct point of watching somebody who was telling you, these conspiracy theories are true, this is the way the world works. I might not, I might be a conspiracy theorist myself today. His dad had to go and get a job, you know, to return. of the world. Eventually, they moved to, like, more of a suburbs. And his dad was in a deep, deep depression until... Uh-oh. I can tell you exactly for how long my dad didn't talk about conspiracy theories.

Because he didn't talk about conspiracy theories for one year and nine months. Yep. Until the universe gave him a great gift, and that's 9-11. You know, the Twin Towers fall. And overnight, Alex Jones is getting super popular. Message boards are spring. bringing up all over the place talking about why and explaining how this happened. And all of a sudden, he's in the know again. You know, he's already had the enroads of these communities. He already knew who he was listening to. So all of a sudden, bam, he's right back into the conspiracy theories.

Now it's this thing that is no solid date. It's not going to, it's not one day everybody's going to see that you're wrong. It's constantly changing and evolving. So once, you know, they leave, they leave the compound and they move to the suburbs and 9-11 happens, then his dad starts puffing out his chest and talking about the stuff with people again and, you know, like, snap to a different reality. You know, my dad's thing is like, who got outside and be like, clouds look funny today. Chemtrails.

I didn't see as many contrails when I was a kid. What do you guys think about that? And instead, you know, the mask is off with me. He's like, there's angels and demons breeding with kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Zach went to college.

His dad got worse, bought more guns in silver, moved back to the compound. And probably because of some of those decisions, Zach had trouble Ford in college. And so he joined the military. And he ended up in Afghanistan, which was a real breaking point with him and his dad. He was telling me things about the war in Afghanistan. And I would say, dad, I'm literally in Afghanistan right now. Like, I'm, I did three deployments. What you're telling me is not true.

They don't have animal, human hybrids fighting for the military. They don't have, you know, robot soldiers out here. They're not genetically modifying us or any number of things. And I would just tell them that. It just never broke through. And that has defined the relationship for Zach's adult life. His dad didn't call and check in on him on January 6th. and he lives in D.C.

But his dad did call to talk about 5G stuff when Biden was about to take office. That is the heart of it, which is that if it's not one thing, it'll be the other because it's a personality type. Yeah. A lot of the stories that I've kind of covered over the years or people have talked to, there's usually some sort of trauma in there maybe or something really bad happens to you and you sort of start to, you start to isolate, you start to go online or whatever. but to try not to be a massive bummer at the end of this, the question for anyone listening who's going through something similar, I think would just be like, what do you need in this situation and what do you want out of it?

And how do you get that as imperfect as it may be? It's not your job at the end of the day, right, to like figure out someone else's shit, I think. Zach goes to Herkulean lengths to keep up any kind of relationship. Twice a year I'll call my dad. I'll call him on Father's Day and I'll call him on his birthday and I let him talk about whatever he wants to me. And the rest of the year, I put a boundary around it. I just, I feel sorry for him. I'm as old as he was when he had me, when he started having kids. And at this point in my life, you know, I've lived all over the world. I travel all the time and he doesn't leave Texas. and he just sits there and experiences the world and experiences everything through Alex Jones

and through much further right-wing conspiracy theorist than Alex Jones. It's such a scary and horrible world that they paint. So he won't visit because he won't fly because he doesn't trust the body scanners, doesn't trust the airplanes. How often do you go home? It's been a long time. He like keeps tabs on everything that's going on in Alex Jones. related worlds so that he can have conversations where he can see his dad's like tactics.

He puts in hours of work to be able to have short phone calls to maintain some kind of contact. Which I find both beautiful and sad. I wish I had something more fun to end this episode on. I can end this episode on a fun note, which is that so we've talked a bit about my dad over the last couple episodes. I don't want to talk about him anymore. I'm bored of it now. I interviewed him recently for a project I'm working on, as I said, at the top of the episode.

And at the end of our interview, I asked him, what has he learned from me? Enjoy the Boston accent. You have softened me so that I'm not one of the proud boys or whatever. I didn't go down to Washington because of you. But we are definitely different because, I don't feel the sky is going to fall. And I think we're in for an incredible ride, positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ryan, you're a hero.

You know, I don't want to give you the last word. I have one more fun one. So I'm just going to, we're going to go on cold, and I'm going to play the first clip. My father was obsessed with the show, ancient aliens, but it totally radicalized him. He would watch it for hours. Okay, so I did not bring this up before. I was also radicalized by ancient aliens. I spent like a summer in college watching nothing but the History Channel.

I became totally convinced that ancient aliens were real. I am not at all surprised. You needed a friend like this guy. So I found this great feature on DirecTV. I was clicking around one day and it says parental controls. And I thought that seems like an appropriate name for this. So I went in and I blocked the History Channel. And a few hours later, you know, he's trying to watch ancient aliens and, and it says, like, channel is blocked and he's confused.

He doesn't know what happened. I just tell him, yeah, sorry, this show is broadening your brain. I'm doing this pretty good of you. You're no more ancient aliens. It was a pretty good plan until he needed to use his dad's car to pick up his girlfriend at the time. So I basically point out your keys are right there. I could just take them and go pick her up. What are you going to do?

and he says, if you do that, if you take my car, I'm going to call the police on you and say, someone has stolen my car. I really can't think of anything more boomer-coded than threatening to call the cops because somebody blocked your access to the History Channel. Like, I really, that's just like, that's the whole thing right there. That's the whole generation in a nutshell. That's incredible. He caves.

He unblocks the ancient aliens channel, but there's a catch. I see there's this feature like temporarily unblock for like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh, that's even best. So he picks his girlfriend up, all this common good, but then the channel's blocked again. I think at the time I was kind of like showing this girlfriend my childhood backyard and he basically locked me out of the house. I kind of thought that he wouldn't possibly do this embarrassing behavior in front of a stranger basically, but I underestimated my dad's willingness to be embarrassed or maybe lack of understanding embarrassment. understanding embarrassment, what that even is?

Yeah. No, that sounds totally right. Ryan, thank you. Listeners. Thank you so much. These were really great. I hope this all made you feel a little less alone with problems that are largely unsolvable. But we're all in it together.

If you were listening to this and you wanted us to address specific things or answer certain questions, let us know. If you come across stuff that your loved ones or friends or whatever are seeing and that you don't understand, like we can definitely help there too. I mean, the other day I was digging through like a health misinfo thing about putting onions on your feet. And I think I figured out where it came from. Like if you want that kind of stuff, we can do that as well. Panicworldpod at gmail.com.

Send those our way. Panicworld pod at gmail.com. Panic world is a garbage day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbageday. Email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Buehman.

It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our derange logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com slash panic world. Please give us products to sell by contacting Multitude at multitude. dot production slash ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bagman, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at PanicworldPod at gmail.com.

and one piece of advice for me to you. Chill out. Touch grass while you still can. I don't listen to Alex Jones, but I listen to podcasts about Alex Jones. I listen to Panic World. Which one's your favorite podcast? I'm sorry. Recently, Panic World, because knowledge fight has just gotten way too dark for me lately.

Jesus. That's the first time everyone's been like, you're the fun one. That's not good to hear a guest. Yeah.