QAA Podcast - Bugonia Movie Night (Premium E326) Sample

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

After many requests, Jake, Julian, Liv, and Travis finally sit down to discuss Bugonia, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos. In the film, an alien-pilled beekeeper and his cousin kidnap a high profile CEO named Michelle, convinced she is secretly an alien, and interrogate her for the truth. Pay no mind to what Liv and Julian say at the end; absolutely no jokes were cut from this episode. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast Premium Episode 326 Bougonia Movie Night. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakatansky, Liv Eker, Julian Fields, and Travis View. We don't usually discuss films nominated for Academy Awards for Movie Night episodes. Bologna has actually earned four nominations for the 98th Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adaptive. screenplay and best original score. But we're making an exception for Bagonia because it touches

on a lot of the themes that we explore in this podcast and frankly, we have received a lot of requests for it. Oh man, I didn't know it got four. I was coming in here trying to be real nice by everything. You're already bitter. Four fucking Oscar nominations.

Uh-oh, I sense like a disagreement potentially between me and Julia. No, I mostly enjoyed it. I'm not trying to take away. is good for you. You are a harsh critic. Plymouth is just so delightful. Very much. I thought, to me, the fact that he's not nominated for an award is crazy. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah.

It's by far. Like, Emma Stone, no offense. His whole face changes. He wasn't the standout. He is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, anyway. Stavros was it, that was a pleasant surprise. I love that. Yeah, umphee. That was really, it's like the pedophile cop. I love you so much, Stavros. You are, that was, the acting was bad, man. I support him.

I know. I support him too. I do enjoy. I do enjoy our... I mean, it's like fellow, you know what it is. It's Greek. It's Greek excellence. Like, insider, it's an insider Greek track.

Falcon excellence. Let's, we take those. But sorry for interrupting with my immediate negativity. Travis was going to say something about Naomi Klein, which I actually would like him to put back into the script. Thank you very much. Oh, okay. All right.

Finally, that's the end. So, I mean, we'll get into it a lot. But, like, my takeaway from Bogodia is, that I thought of it as like the highest production exploration of an idea expressed by Naomi Klein in her book, Doppelganger, A Trip to the Mirror World, which we interviewed her for. She wrote, conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right, the feeling of living in the world with shadowlands, the feeling that every human misery is someone else's profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths

are being hidden. This film expresses the particular frustration and tragedy of being at once totally right, and and completely wrong. But was it wrong? I mean, in this case, that's what was so funny, is it was kind of sublimated by, it almost was like a redirection that kind of took away from the movie for me

because it's like, if you're going to say that these people are totally right, then go ahead and say it with your full chest, but then why redirect it to like alien stuff, right? Because otherwise, I think we recognize this kind of frustration. And I have to say, even though I was very tough on it, like, I think that the movie that captures the moment

and probably deserves a few more Oscar nominations was Eddington, you know? It was like the strategy of tension, you know, as Para Power Mapping said on Twitter, like I think Eddington does represent the Amerisraeli years of lead better than this movie. This movie to me is what Fanon would call like a kind of redirection of essential energy that we are going to need in the near future, you know, into. Starseed stuff, which is fun, but then, like, damn, the tone of the movie's so dark. And then the end is like, I don't know, like a perfume ad. Like, I don't, you know what I mean?

Like, it just, it absolutely evaporates. It's kind of like eating meringue. I definitely do think that the twist at the end kind of sours the message. But I do think that there is, like, maybe we can get into this more when we talk about the details of the film. Like the conspiracy theorists who, in my mind, I'm like, worst case scenario, Travis, view, Jesse Plemons. Right.

Like, yes, yes, true. He doesn't get everything right. There does seem to be a nuance of like, he's just blaming the aliens in a certain way that isn't, isn't quite accurate. So there is some nuance to like hold him to account while allowing, because I assume that that's like, I was probably a concern. The screenplay writer director of like, well, this is kind of undermining our message despite being interesting as a twist.

That's the thing with messages, you know, it's like, it's hard to. have a message. And, you know, and I, I don't really expect movies to have messages right now. I don't think necessarily it's a message. It's just attempting to capture something extremely ambiguous and volatile and, and horrible and dark, you know, both Eddington and this. And yeah, like, I'm a bit tired of the whole, hey, it turned out to be real the whole time, which, you know, is quite common across like this, this new, this new kind of crop of, of directors. It almost felt like it was a twist that was so obvious that I didn't consider it. And so when it happened, it was like slightly less obvious.

It was obvious, but I think it was well executed. It was like totally. They threw themselves into, you know, the, I guess the twist, which is fun. Yeah, I took it to mean kind of that like, even when you're right, like, there's a wrong way to go about doing things. I agree with Liv that had the movie ended with her going three, two, one. and the fucking bomb, you know, the bomb goes off, which was surprising to me. I was like, that's really shocking.

That was like really shocking. And then, like, you could have cut the whole alien thing at the end and you would have been left being like, wow, like this dumbass conspiracy theory is like, blew himself up for nothing, outsmarted by like the pharma tech lib. And like, you're right. Like, that message is boring. It's lame. It's, I think, to me, I took it as like, even like, you can be right about like, you know,

the world is in control of. like shadowy forces, but like you can't do a damn thing about it and look at all the like chaos and violence that you've like caused along the way. Not at all actually. It's a nice Instagram ending. All human beings die in the most beautiful and evocative ways. A Wes Andersonish twist on like you said, Liv, it's like there was no actually surprising possibility, right?

Either he was right or he was wrong, both of which were kind of boring. And I think that what this movie does great is like the vibe. the way, the acting and some of these moments of, like, tension between the characters is way more interesting. I'd say than, like, for example, the relationship with the guru in Eddington, which was, like, a little more kind of triton cartoonish. So I will, like, say that this movie, like, overall was, was really well made. And, I mean, Plymouth, as always, just, just, just, delivering. And in this case, they give him a lot to, to deliver. And he, he really, like, goes out of his way to make Plymins look like ugly and kind of like out of control and unhinged and it, it works.

I was kind of, you know, I mean, yeah, we'll get into the electric chair stuff. But I mean, you know, I mean, I guess if there is a message, it's that he should have fucking kept cranking that knob until she was gone. Yeah, which is, you know, is Lantamos like just fantasizing about, you know, killing Emma Stone? I mean, isn't there rumors, like on Instagram? You might know, Liv. You like a good gossip. No, I do love your gossip, though. Please tell me.

The rumors that they're fucking, you know. Which I think would, I actually haven't looked into it enough, but I think would constitute some form of affair. I'm not sure which one of them is married. I don't fucking really know. But I'll just throw that out there. Frustrating Travis to no end and interrupting a script once again. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.

For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes, and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Pervers with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20. wanty episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in

podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe? That's not true. The part about be crying, not me being grateful. I'm very grateful.