QAA Podcast - The Secret Origin of the Medbed Conspiracy Theory feat. Molly Olmstead (E392)

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Some online communities believe that “Medbeds” can supposedly cure cancer, regrow limbs, and reverse aging. The catch? You have to wait for Donald Trump to defeat the deep state before an appointment opens up. Slate reporter Molly Olmstead joins us to discuss her yearlong investigation into the origins and consequences of this imaginary, sci-fi inspired medical technology. Her reporting took her through bogus appointment offers, families fractured by conspiracy beliefs, and a purported healing chamber in Sedona. It led all the way to a man who claims he fought aliens on Mars and had his destroyed arm regenerated afterward. Slate - “The Mystery of Medbeds” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/09/medbeds-conspiracy-theory-donald-trump-origins.html Molly Olmstead https://bsky.app/profile/mollyolmstead.bsky.social Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Click here to become a subscriber to Cursed Media today to get access to new episodes of Raising Hell releasing right now, plus our other exclusive Cursed Media series: https://cursedmedia.net 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.

You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 392, the secret origin of the medbed conspiracy theory. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. In exploring fringe beliefs on this podcast, sometimes we encounter claims that are transparently ludicrous, and sometimes we encounter strange claims that are actively harmful. Medbeds, I think, have the distinction of being both simultaneously.

Now, medbeds, if you're not familiar, are supposedly advanced medical machines that some say can repair almost anything wrong with the human body. It's pretty simple. You lie down and the machine scans you and you're all better. Cancer disappears. Missing limbs grow back. Decades of aging reversed. And in some version, the capabilities are extended to restoring your memories or activating previously untapped psychic bowers. Now, you might say, isn't this part?

of the 2013 sci-fi film Elysium starring Matt Damon and yes we can get to that but um that's egregious that you would cut prometheus out of this yes also yeah agreed maybe because he saw the scene where you know she's getting the alien removed and it wasn't just a scan it wasn't too good to be true it looked extremely painful and horrible much better to pit much more realistic depiction down to the creature inside of her because that's how i feel most days now never go around to seeing prometheus i've said that's why I know, I know. Oh, boy, I'm going to come over to your house. I'm going to sit down with you.

I'm going to make you watch it. We're going to watch it together. When Jake sits on the toilet, he pretends he's on a med bed bed. He talks to it and stuff. Well, now they've got those fancy ones that talk back. Screaming at it like in Prometheus, foreign body removal. Last year, the fantasy of med beds received more widespread awareness after President Trump posted an AI-generated video saying that Americans will have access to these medbeds soon. The post was deleted the next day.

Most moved on with her lives because Trump constantly posts insane shit. But her guest today, Slate staff writer Molly Olmstedt couldn't let it go. For her, it was the start of a year-long investigation. Molly wanted to know how this particular fantasy reached the president of the United States and who introduced it in the first place. Her search took her through fake appointment services, obscure UFO interviews, and a healing session in Sedona, where extraterrestrials were supposedly before Invisible Surgery. She also spoke with families who described loved ones refusing medical treatment while waiting for the promised machines. Molly ultimately traced the concept of medbans to an Arizona man who is remorseful about how it has spread online.

Molly, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. I am excited to be here. Yeah, I mean, great report in Slate. I felt, I don't know, a twinge of recognition because in the sort of like the real obsessive interest in figuring out why did this happen? Why do people believe this? And why is it not something that's sort of isolated into like fringe communities? Why is it spread so high and so far?

But yeah, boy, you took it to a whole new level because you made a lot of phone calls and, you know, travel to Sedona to figure out how this got started. Yeah, I did annoy every person in my life with this for a year. We can relate. Yeah, I was going to say, for her, it was the start of a year-long investigation. I was just like, I was just thinking like, oh, the mental health must have been very difficult. Yes. I think a spiral might be a better way to term this one. Yes, we can barely spend a week on a topic here at QAA before we have to force ourselves to move on for our own safety.

I want to start with talking about what sparked this investigation, you know, insane posting by President Trump. So this was back all the way in September of 2025, Trump shared this AI-generated video, announcing that Americans would sue and receive bed-bed cards granting access to. through these non-existent treatments. It's so crazy. It's not just like tuned to your DNA or at least your digits or something. It's such good technology

and you still need a fucking card. I don't get it. Breaking now, President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new health care system, the launch of America's first medbed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen. Every American will soon receive their own

medbed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctor. in the nation equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. That's my daughter.

That's my daughter. There she is. There she is. Time to post the video. It's almost as if they're wishing for some kind of universal health care. This is, I mean, you know, there's lots of outrageous things that Trump posts. Like, we've talked about Trump has been posting, like, QAnon on stuff. for years, but this, you know, was especially outrageous. I mean, how did you react when, like,

you know, first encountering this video? So I actually had the wrong reaction to this, it turned out, because I was like, oh my God, all the medbed people are going to see this and they're going to be like, he's confirming it. I was wrong about that because they thought they were like, no, no, no, that's not exactly how this would go down. They already had their lore in place, you know? So this didn't do anything for them. The thing that actually did turn out to be the secret coded message was, do you guys remember when he posted himself as Jesus, like healing a man? Yeah, I do. Oh, barely.

Yes. Yeah. So he was like Trump, AI generated Jesus, sort of hovering over a guy who looked like Jeffrey Epstein. And then everyone was like, oh, my God, Donald Trump is comparing himself to Jesus. And then Trump was like, no, no, I'm just a doctor. Don't worry about it, guys. I'm showing myself as a doctor who just happens to be wearing Jesus as ropes. And it turned out that was the one that all the meds.

bed people were like, he's saying the bed beds are coming. But this one, the actual medbed post, I think I came around eventually to realizing, like, that was sort of the entree for normies who were like curious to find out more. But the community itself, I just assumed, would be psyched about this and they were not. Yeah, they don't like conspiracies to come true because that's no fun. It's only good when it's like it's something yet to be seen and discovered and we're waiting for something good. Once the medbeds arrive, it's like, oh, that's, no, it's actually not that, even though it's the president tweeting it and he's the one who's going to do it.

He's going to do it in a different way than this. I know, yeah, getting access through a medbed card. Yeah, it doesn't quite match the way people usually talk about it. Look, we're going to be opening up Stargate facilities all across the world, and we're going to be working with the Egyptian gods. We're going to be bringing a lot of spaceships and weapons through the Stargates. And everybody, if you want to go live in ancient Egypt, you'll be giving a card and you can go through and live there. Will an alien live in my belly, Mr. Trump? Wrong movie.

This one stars James Spader and Kurt Russell. Yeah, Molly, after this video, you published a short piece about Trump sharing this video. But what made you keep pursuing it, like, after the story was published? He's like, there's more here, you know? Yeah, I mean, I was definitely more obsessed with med beds than other conspiracy theories because it was, one where I was like, well, for one, like, if you actually believe this, that really sucks because you might be like, I'm not going to do my chemo. So the direct implications of it are pretty extreme.

And two, it seems like one of those where it requires basically extraterrestrial technology. And so for all these normal, like, baby boomers to be in on it and yet have just like this wildly incorrect understanding of how medicine works, like just the absurd. of it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. But mostly it was just this idea that what I already considered to be one of the absolute weirdest conspiracy theories out there that, you know, well, at the time I didn't think it involved lizard people. I later came to realize it, of course, it involves lizard people. It always does. Yeah. But I was like, this is one of the weirdest ones out there and the president of the United States is posting about it. Like, what does this do to a community that,

you know, I had considered sort of fringe beforehand? And, you know, like, how on earth did something get this big. So I was chatting about it with my editor and talking about how I'd been obsessed with medbeds for so long. And he was like, just go for it. Just do it. And I took advantage of that more than he expected me to. Nice. Yeah, I mean, sometimes when I talk about what I do in the podcast, sometimes I get people asking, like, yeah, but does anyone like actually believe that, you know, or something to this effect? But in the case of medbeds, tragically, there are people who sincerely believe it. And like you mentioned, the consequences are harmful to both themselves and their loved ones. I mean, what did you learn when you spoke to, like, you know, family members of true believers?

Yeah, I mean, that was my starting question was, like, do people really believe in this? And it didn't take long to find a bunch of family members. I also, you know, corresponded with some actual believers on Facebook. They tended to be a bit more cryptic. But the family members were really honest with me. And they were like, you know, these people are really convinced, like, really convinced that the med beds are imminent and so imminent. Like the one that really blew my mind was when I talked to someone who was staying with her aunt and her aunt had just broken her arm and was not getting it fixed. And I was

like, oh, okay, so she thinks these are coming like tomorrow. Oh, no. Yeah. It's kind of wild. Hey, just don't, don't worry. Stay put. We're not going to the hospital. No, no, no, just sit right there. The med beds are coming. Yeah. Which is insane because to sit with the pain of a broken arm, like no meds. I mean, I'm hoping she took some like over the counter like medicine or something, but like to sit with that pain because you so strongly believe that this technology is coming is really a testament to the commitment, I think, to this belief. Yeah. I mean, I do think that in the best case scenarios you had people's family members who were able to intervene, but in so many of these, they were like, I mean, it's just like, you know,

the stories we've all heard about people going so deep into Q&on that their family members become their enemies. I mean, it was just, you know, people being like, I was trying to get my dad to, you know, pursue real medicine. And then another kind of tough part about this is that these people were often in these groups with each other, these like Facebook groups or telegram groups or whatever. And they would be like, okay, well, the med beds are coming, but maybe not this week. So in the meantime, you should be taking ivermectin or like, you know, so there would be like some other, like, Trump approved alternate medicine that they would talk about instead. So the, sort of general anti-medicine sentiment was still there, but they were finding ways to treat each other

while they waited for med meds. I like that the aliens would have to intervene for us to have good medical technology at this point. Like, they're such low, and this is probably approximately correct, like, such low trust in all these like private interests and then coming up with good medical devices or good medications for us. But it's like the aliens came down. They made our medical system work. Can you believe it? And free. Yeah, and it's free. Yeah, and it's free. They made her medical system work and affordable. No, not in that Bernie Sanders way. No, no, no. I'm not a fucking communist, okay? I just have alien DNA that's being like beamed into the core of my bones, all right? Yeah, that's how well the like anti-health care system propaganda has been is that people are like,

I would rather fucking have my DNA rearranged through a portal while I'm sleeping on a mattress than go into the doctor's office. Or it's easier to do that than get an appointment at the doctor. You know, I see it with my folks all the time talking about how long they have to wait to get appointments and stuff. And I want to be clear also, the aliens didn't share it with us communistically either, okay? We took it from the aliens by force. We paid.

We actually traded our planet. We traded all the libs. Their souls for this technology. So we made a good deal. Yeah, it would be either a good deal. say at the end of, you know, just like do the gunboat diplomacy thing, but to aliens so that you secure the technology for med beds. My question is always like, why specifically a medbed? Why something you lie down and why not, if you're, if you're just, if you're in fantasy land,

why not a magical medical patch or a gun? Travis, aren't you tired? Like, don't you ever just want to lay down and give up? I guess, yes. I think so much of it has to do with our movies, right? Like there was a, there was a piece in the article, Molly. I think it was, um, it was actually who we're going to end up talking about, but he was talking about an experience where he had his arm reprinted in a medbed. And I was thinking, I was like, I've seen this scene somewhere,

like where they do the projection and then the projection allows the tissue to grow back. I'm like, was it fifth element? Was it? Like, you know, I think the bed, we've seen it so many times. I mean, obviously, famously in aliens, but, you know, again,

you know, most, I think most properly is the conspiracy would do. dictate as Elysium, you know, as you said in the article. But yeah, that's my guess. I think that's absolutely correct. I also think that we can't downplay Stargate in this world. I know it's a sarcophagus and it's different, but the same general idea is there. I was going to say, it might be like a sublimated wish to die to just be put in a sarcophagus,

to just put me in the box. But pop culture, basically, as a, is just some of the blame for this vision of the, the idea of the magical healing machine being a bed you lay down in. Yeah, and Star Trek, I think, probably is one of the first. Yes. Yeah, see, that's where the gun that Travis was talking about comes in. Like, in Star Trek, it's always the little thing. And he pointed to whatever part of the body.

Phaser, yeah. Or, yeah, a little healing device that, you know. But we've actually covered, I believe, a similar healing device that you just point at stuff. I mean, they also have that. I don't think, you know, the medbed people are just, they dream of a calming lie down. maybe a longer term, whereas the gun people are a little more like, hey, I would like to be active in my recovery. I'd like to point something at it.

Well, okay, I will say I do think that the sort of visual connection to like MRI machines is part of it. They do feel like there's just enough of a connection to real life technology, which is, I think, you know, I talk to Elysium people and they were like, yeah, we model. Yeah, that was so cool, by the way, that you actually tracked him down, the guy who designed the, like, prop, right? Yeah, and he modeled it after. an MRI machine. And I think that, you know, that sort of is just enough of a bridge with

people's real life medical experiences that it allows them to be like, oh, this is a, this is a plausible thing. I'm curious what he thought of the idea of like the guy who designed this like for a movie, like to see thousands of people on the internet like not going to the doctor because they think this thing is real. Like what was his? Was he just like terrified about that or? I mean, he was being diplomatic, but I think he thought it was funny. He had gotten this email from this guy who was like within like a year of Elysium coming out was like, hey, do you want to like team up to scam people with this? Like come up with you.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was, he was like, yeah. I'm kind of not surprised. Awesome. Home of the scammers. Home of the brave.

Home of the scam. You actually spoke with a production designer for the film Elysium Phil Ivy as home in, he was as home in New Zealand. So, I mean, I mean, how did he feel about the fact that some people take some of his, I guess, his vision and his concepts way too seriously. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone involved in this does kind of want to separate themselves from the personal responsibility of this. I mean, it's obviously not his fault. But he was like, no, no.

I mean, people want to take an idea and run with it. But like, we didn't know that was going to happen. But I think there was this idea. I mean, yeah, because he's from New Zealand. His country has socialized health care. He was like, only in America. a baby. This is the kind of thing that makes sense in the United States and nowhere else. And he was like, I just, it just makes no sense to me because where I'm from, people would just go get health care.

Yeah, I mean, I have to imagine it strange. Like, you know, Star Wars has some of the most passionate fans on Earth. But like, you know, George Lucas doesn't have to like worry about like some people believing that lightsabers are real and the government's going to supply them with one very soon. Just because you haven't met the communities, Travis, don't ever discount their existence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They probably have moved into the old set. Like, they probably live on Hoth or something. Yeah, I've got a couple, and I've seen a couple YouTube videos in my day of people who are absolutely trying to build real lightsabers.

And I encourage them, I support them. Please, please make them available online for purchase. Travis is downplaying the, like, the main reason for males between 30 to 38 in the United States nine, which is trying to put together a lightsaber. I have two over here. I could reach over and grab him right now. Careful, careful, Jake. Two sabers, two packs.

Too dangerous. As you, you know, you investigated this. You went to, you know, these old, strange podcasts and forums. What made you realize that, you know, you need to shift maybe your investigation? to like these older new wage or secret space program communities. Yeah, I mean, I went into it thinking this was going to be a Q&N story, which was a little naive of me because I should realize that so many of these conspiracy theories go back further.

But, you know, every version of it I had seen when I started was like sort of Q-flavored. And then around 2018, you know, I'm in the, you know, chans and all the sort of Q&on forum spaces and it just sort of disappears. And then I'm like, oh, it had to come from somewhere. And so I widened my scope after that, looking for basically any mention of anything like this. And pretty much immediately like got into archived stuff that pulled from more of the new age space and was like, oh, that actually answers this question. And so I started I started spending time in sort of new age star seed spaces. Yeah, quantum healing, you know, light healing. Like, this is something they've been doing for a while.

The arrival of the bed as an object is a bit the novelty for them. Yeah. And then I just realized, as I kept going, that the Starseed new age people were pulling from a slightly less new age style and more sort of space fantasy style community, which is the secret space program world. And that is where I found my guy. I was so kind of like grimly unsurprised to see that turn in the article, just because I remember the testimony of so many of these people being wild.

And you describe in your article being enrolled, enlisted in the war, and fighting for 30 years, and then being dropped back into your body as a young person again. And like they even have a name for that in the community, like 30 and back or 20 in back. And yeah, it's kind of unsurprising to me that that's where the first vision of it is. It's in dreams, in our wonderful dreams that are informed, of course, by all the pop culture we consume. Yeah, exactly. This guy, when he was telling you about, you know, his time in the army, and he was like, yeah, it's mostly just like, you know, fighting bugs, exterminating bugs. I was like, oh, like, Starship Troopers. Like, I think that line exactly is in Starship Troopers. Like, as I'm going into the lore, it was so awesome to read because, like, it was cool being an outsider looking in and getting to kind of see, like, all of these connections and being like, oh, God, so much of it is just like our sci-fi culture and, like, all of this stuff as opposed to being the one like inside looking out, you know? Yeah, to be clear, I think being inside his brain rocks. Like, I think he is living in a very fun world. Oh, definitely, sure.

These people are all much happier than I am. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like you say that, but then when they describe their experiences, it's always like the CIA and the Draco briefly tortured and sexually assaulted me in a base on Mars. There's always like a part that's like the Dark Night of the Soul or that involves horrible torture and abuse. Yeah, I guess you're right.

about the as we all go silent for a couple of seconds. Unfortunately. I mean, I've been to a secret space conference. No, it is, it is fascinating that essentially what it sounds like to me is that something that he dreamed about became a international conspiracy theory retweeted by the president of the United States current sitting. But I guess like all it took was him being a literalist, right? So if you're a kind of biblical literalist, like you can bring one of those stories.

to life in your head. And for him, the movies just became real one night, you know? And yeah, so it's, it's not like it appeared for, you know, for the first time in his mind. It's just that the, that barrier that allowed, you know, the imaginary to be separate from like the tangible just broke down. I also don't think he had to do it on his own. I mean, it came from his brain, yes, but he lives in such a sort of creative world. Yes. Where I think it's very, it's very yes and, you know, and these guys, I don't know, it seems easy to me. If you were in a space where everything is like, you've just, everyone is really open to anything. And, you know, you're all thinking creatively and, you know, what is truth anymore? It seems easy that you could go from that to, like, feeling

like you've really broken something open. Sure, sure, sure. You know, I think, I feel like it's like, I don't know, the intellectual equivalent of one of those, well, those, like, McDojoes that have, like, a master who has, like, all their students, like, flop and flail wherever they touch them slightly. It's like, let's all just pretend you have magic, you know, martial arts powers. That's more fun that way. I feel like as a community kind of like encourages ludicrous kind of like speculation like this works in a similar way. Kind of like, you know, take a little bit of issue with Phil Ivy's implication like like all this. Like only in America. What if they have broken they are.

But because like a lot of people who believe in medbeds are introduced to the concept by someone who calls himself Skyprints. And we cover this all the way back in 2024. And Skyprints is the online name of Carrie Ann Thornton, an Australian psychic medium. So someone from, you know, Phil I, he's hemisphere. So, uh, and that she presents himself. Travis is so bitter. From, he's used to take your name of the whole hemisphere. From your fucking hemisphere, pal.

Uh? Your fucking backyard. So this sky prince. Yeah, she claims that she has like firsthand knowledge of this. And she is really popular. But I learned through your investigation that they're like impersonator, uh, sky princes. There are people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fake account. It's a million of them. Yeah, like, who can sort of like, yeah, it's like a franchise system. So how does this work exactly? Yeah, I mean, she has become, yeah, a name that people use to scam, which I find to be kind of delightful because sometimes they'll start with the name and then abandon it in in the middle of the scam. Or sometimes they'll just throw it in after they've started trying to scam you because

they're like, oh, maybe this will work. And it's oftentimes just these like sort of random scam accounts from non-English-speaking countries where they'll be like, I am the sky. Prince. Yeah, I can help you. It's become, yeah, it's become fucking mythical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a video game boss. Yeah. And

they'll try and tell you that they can set you up. And, you know, of course, it's free to use, but there are these administrative fees that we have to, you know, have to, in order to make it so that we can pay your medbed specialist or get you in line for your medbed

appointment or whatever it is. And these scams, as far as I can tell, are not nearly as expensive as the sort of actual bedbed style technology that you can buy, which some of those are like, you know, $80,000. But the scammers are asking for more like, you know, $500 a thousand. It's a little bit more like the kind of scam that anyone's boomer relative could fall for because they're like, what's $500 to secure my place for, you know, healing my arthritis? Or immortality.

It is quite incredible that you can just bring up sky prints now. And it's like this magical kind of mythical name that people want to be associated with when you consider that that is a woman who is living like between hotels and in Australia and, you know, is constantly being accused of scamming herself. Yeah. Yeah, the internet. It really allows you to reinvent yourself. Mm-hmm. Be whoever you want. It could be the sky prince.

Be a sky prince of the sky. Hell, Molly, you actually, you corresponded with a supposed medbed appointment service. So what did you learn by engaging with them directly? Well, I learned that they're not very good at it. You know, I was like, hey, send me up for an appointment. And they said, absolutely. It came with this fake logo that was like National Quantum Coordination Office. So it was apparently a branch of our government.

And then they told me to fill out some information. I told them where I lived and sort of basic information about myself. And they were like, great, we're setting here are your places you can go in Washington in D.C., which is where I live. And then when you have time, Venmo this guy. And I was like, who's this guy? Who's Christopher? They just, just, oh, Christopher. Just, just Venmo Christopher. Yeah, the government's often like that, dude. Yeah, exactly. And so I asked who Christopher was. They said he was my specialist. And then I was like, okay, so what's going to happen when I get there? And they said, well, we'll run some scans on you. And I was like, why do you need to scan me? Doesn't the

medbed just heal me? And they were like, well, we need to know which kind. of medbed to use. And I was like, oh, we're getting into like the various bedbed lore strains now, like, because there are people talk about different kinds of med beds, but that seems oddly specific for a scam. And they were like, well, no, never mind. We'll just, you know, don't worry about it. When you come, we'll just put you in a bed bed bed and heal you. And I was like, oh, okay, they're already taking it back. That's fine. And then I stopped corresponding because they refused to give me any more information, no matter how much I asked, because they said they wouldn't tell me anything else about how it worked until I paid them the money. And so I started talking to some other

scam accounts. And then they immediately sort of forgot about med beds because they wanted to scam me with like other financial collapse currency scams that are related, you know, sort of related scams. But they for some reason just forgot that I had reached out to them about med beds. Ah, I see. I see you've entered my shop. You're interested in Zim bonds, I'm assuming. and the Iraqi Dinar, correct? Exactly. Have a seat, have a seat. You're like, I'm here because I have cancer.

They've somehow managed to be worse than our own shitty healthcare system where like, can you imagine going into the doctor's office and they're like, all right, well, we gotta scan you first. You're like, well, what do you mean? Like, can I just tell you what's wrong with me? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. You got to pay us to $500, then we'll tell you

which room to go into. I love that, you know, somehow there's this thing. like absolutely bottom of the barrel kind of like scammer who just has something for everyone of every kind of anxiety. If you have financial anxiety or health anxiety, they've got the real just brain dead conspiracy for you to scam you out your money. And sometimes they would just periodically message me to be like, hey, how you doing? And I liked that. That's very good. That's really nice to check in on you.

Yeah. Yeah. Was there any like Nisara-Gisara kind of like financial? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's always involved somewhere around there. It's like a person that you went on a date with like, you know, like four months ago and then they ghost you.

And then like every now and again, they'll be like, hey, what's, what's up? Yeah. What's you doing? You up? What's you wearing? You up? You're up? You're sick?

You up? What's you wearing? Are you sick? Is your body broken? Are you poor? Come through. I wonder, like, exactly how organized these med bed salespeople are. Do they use like sales force so they keep track of points of contact, you know?

Do they have like stats about their closing rate? Yeah, they should be like putting notes on. Molly's account, but they just, like, aren't doing it. So the next person's picking up from scratch every time. All right, what scam are we doing again? I can't remember. Maybe Petticab? The funniest scam you wrote about were the people who were just charging money to move

you up in a wait list, like an imaginary waitlist in the clouds. Yeah, this is kind of funny, kind of bleak for sure. Yeah. That's an easy one. At the very least, like, that's a smart scammer. You don't have to, like, produce any equipment or make up any lore whatsoever. However, you're just like, yeah, I'm flipping, you know, I once got fleeced on eBay for a proton pack replica pre-order. You did?

I lost. Yeah, because the guy was selling, he was selling a pre-order slip. Jake, Jake, was it like a picture of a proton pack, a Polaroid that you received in the mail? Something like that. Oh, Jake. And you already have two proton packs. This was like really early on in my proton pack collecting journey. So it was like, yeah, it was a while ago.

It wasn't like you were trying to acquire your third. right? No, no, no. Okay, so you did go on to succeed. I'm glad you didn't just give up after that. That's admirable. See, people, there are other obsessions that don't involve conspiracy theories, you know? Have you considered using those proton packs to lie to people and say it's the healing gun? And then you could make a lot of money, maybe get that money back that they took from you. They would be like, that just looks like a proton pack from Ghostbusters. I'd be like, yes, but inside, I've changed out all of the equipment. The technology is plastic on the outside, on the inside. There's real. healing technology. Shut the fuck up and sit out. Bleak. Sorry, this is bleak humor. No, it's the darkest version of Dr. Seuss's the places you'll go. So, yeah, your investigation trying to figure out, like, who's really maybe ultimately responsible for, you know, this concept of med beds that spread online led you to a man named Randy Kramer. So how'd you get there and what was his deal? I think that I found Randy I mean, I just kept hearing his name over and over. It was one of those situations where eventually, when you're, you know, reporting and you keep hearing the same answer and over and over again, you start to be like, okay, I think this is probably leading somewhere. And so I found a phone number somewhere, gave him a call, didn't expect to hear back from him because I was calling him to be like, hey, I think you came up with a conspiracy theory that has led to something that's hurt a lot of people, like want to talk about that. And actually, he did want to talk about that, which was very cool of him, I thought, because he

kind of wanted to clear his name. Turns out that Randy is a secret space program guy who was happy to cop to the fact that he was the first to talk about this, although obviously he doesn't think he invented it. He thinks he just was the first whistleblower. And he was really mad about all the scammers and the people who have convinced people that the medbeds are imminent or already out there. He thinks that the medbeds will come, but that Donald Trump won't be the one to release him to the people because he hates Donald Trump. And he thinks that it's going to be a while. Has he always hated Donald Trump or is that like a turn?

He's always hated Donald Trump because he's a, he's sort of a great old fashioned, like, independent thinker hippie type. He owned a weed farm for a long time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a move. Like, hey, I'm about to meet that slate reporter. Time to spark up.

That's my man. Yeah, I actually, to be clear, I loved him and I thought it was really awesome that he was willing to talk about how much he loved marijuana. And we did not talk about whether or not the vast amounts that he has smoked has played any role in his journey here. But it does seem like he has always been sort of an out there creative guy. And I respect that. Weed is the real medbed man. Freaking plant come from the earth and it'll heal you up, dude. For real.

I found an old podcast episode in which Randy Kramer explains some of his bizarre claims about how he imagines med beds can regrow limbs. The hardware element is the holographic projecting lens, which has some special properties to it. So even though I explain this, I'm not giving away all the secrets by telling how this works this way. So the holographic projecting lens then projects that image, that cellular level genetic-identic, image of the person that you're treating over the damaged tissue. And one of two things sort of happen at the same time there, which is that the damaged cells through a physical phenomenon, again, a phenomenon of the laws of physics, something called dominant harmonic frequency resonance will then naturally begin to conform and change

their shapes back into ideal cells. The other thing that happens is that the nuclei of damaged cells become fooled by the presence of holographic cells and holographic nuclei that then the cells will continue to grow into. So not only can you restore any damaged tissue, interior or exterior, but you can also restore lost tissue. So a finger that's blown off, a hand that's blown off, an arm or a leg that's blown off, you can grow all the way down to fingertips or toes and regrow severed and destroyed limbs. I mean, that's an impressive string of, you know, pseudoscience. I mean, sure.

It sounds, you know, again, it sounds like very like complex and technical, talking about like holographic cells, fooling other cells. But yeah, it's a bizarre imaginative, frankly, kind of like sci-fi thing. It's like something you might see in like some sort of like sci-fi novel trying to explain how this hyper-advanced sort of medical technology works. Yeah, I mean, he'd love to talk to me about how this was not like the other woo-woo stuff. It's like, oh, I know that there's some people selling nonsense online, but no, this one's the real thing. I mean, honestly, this is, Randy sounds like, you know, the average resident of Sedona. So he's not, maybe doesn't sound too crazy compared to it. He's utterly normal for Sedona.

What was his, like, professional career? Did he, did he talk about that at all? Or like, because did he have any kind of background in science, like a dropout or anything? Something that would, because if I'm being honest, if I'm sitting in a room smoking a joint with this guy and he's telling me this, I'm like, it's either, he's cracked the coat. to the universe and I'm like privy to it now by some stroke of luck or like he's fucking insane but like this is interesting so you know it's like there's nothing no real middle ground well okay so yes his main job has been teaching meditation classes and being a weed farmer but he also talked about how so in his own personal background he became a secret space soldier super soldier because

the government implanted his mother with an enhanced embryo Right. Yes. Enhanced embryo, yes. And so because of that, he just naturally has an enhanced understanding of physics, science, things like that. Right. It comes from the sort of genetic modification. I wonder if his mom told him that, like, I was implanted with the alien DNA and you are special, you know? He knows. The problem with that happening is that the technology to build your imaginary on, like movies, like Elysium and all that just hadn't come out yet. So, you know, that's a tougher one, you know, like the technology has to be kind of retrofitted because we didn't really have the, you know, the imaginary models to base our thoughts on. And now we're in like a real tricky situation because, like, you have places like Angel Studios that are crowdfunding, like which conspiracy movie I want to see in the theater next. And so like we're just going to increasingly, that plus AI, we're going to increasingly get more visual confirmation that all of our favorite conspiracy theories encrypted are. real. Jim Caviesel in Medbed. One man finds the truth. Yeah. Like, you're joking now, dude,

but I don't know, in a year and a half. I can see it. It was a great investigation, but gosh, I was, I was, I was a little disappointed to discover it originated with a true believer, because I feel like it would almost be a little bit more satisfying if it was just real malicious scammer. I can point to who had like, you know, like a really awful sales pipeline. that they're using to scam people out of because like, you know, there's someone like, I don't know, maybe we could like, you know, get them for fraud or something. Or maybe there's like some sort of villain I could point to to explain why this, this medbed thing got spread so far and why.

Instead it's like, you know, like seems like frankly an aging hippie who like seems to genuinely believe this stuff. You know, that's, I guess I say, a little bit more frustrating that such a bizarre belief can, like that can spread so far because of someone like him. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. But I also think the flip side of that is. It's nice when you spend all this time assuming there's going to be some like truly corrupted soul at the bottom of this to find a guy who like really is quite sad that all this, you know, harm has come from it. Like you can't fix it, but the human element is a little bit more positive, I would say.

Yeah. Maybe somewhere out there, there's some guy who's like an alien whispered to him that like, you know, Hillary Clinton was going to get arrested and the deep state would be exposed and like he kind of posted about. it online and it turned into something he never really, gosh. You're positing that Q is also a sweet kind of pot farmer? It's like, yeah, it's like an interesting example of how conspiracy theories can like spin out innocently. Like this guy does it, like has he made any money off of this? Well, I mean, Jake, you're not too far off, right? Because you've got the pot farmer on one side. You got the pig farmer on the other in the Philippines that is making these posts, but not

with any innocence. You know where I'm going. I'm going to the pot farmer. every day of the week, every month of the year, every year of the century. That's good, yeah. That's, okay. Well, I guess you'll get to live then. But no, I was asking, like, you know, I'm guessing he hasn't, like, grifted off of his being

the originator of the medbed. I don't think that you've mentioned that in the article. Well, he, okay, so I'm going to be clear here. I don't think it's a grift. I genuinely believed he can do this. And this might be a little bit too Pollyanna of me. But I spent a lot of time with this man. And, like, I really believe him.

We're open. We're open. Yeah. And he did start a GoFundMe to try and create a medbed prototype, which, yes, I know. It does sound grifty. Okay. But, yeah, I really think he thought he could do it. I really think this man had convinced himself that he could make a medbed.

He made $8,000 from it. It went towards paying his rent. Like, it wasn't, like, you know, there's so many pannier grifters out there who know how to make real money off of things. And that is like, clearly... Not you defending it right now. It's like, hey, there's no worse. People have scammed away more, man.

The GoFundMe wasn't that big. Yeah, he paid his rent. Oh, my God. I've seen some ludicrous GoFundMe's also. So, you know, hey, geez, look, it's a finder's fee. It's a finder's fee for starting one of the most prolific conspiracy theories on the internet. Oh, dude. This guy must have been so charming, Molly.

Tell us. Are you planning to go meet him again? Listen, okay. He just is so earnest. How good was his weed? Let's be honest. What's his weed, Molly? Admit it.

How much weed did it take? Was it an ounce for you to say that the GoFundMe is okay, actually? He does. He also, he also teaches meditation classes to help unlock the hidden psionic potential in your brain, which is based off of his Secret of Space program experiences. So to be clear, I do know he's making money off of this. Travis, was he at the, he wasn't at our conference, was he? I don't think so. Not that I recall. No, no, no. He's not like

that kind of traveling circus. I think he does appear on shows, right? Like on on like these kind of YouTube shows, etc. It was in Sedona. So I thought, you know, maybe if he was just in the, you know, a friend of a friend could have, you know, been like, hey, there's some other secret space program people speaking at this. thing if you're interested. I was just, you know. He actually does, he refuse, sorry, he does refuse to go to those now. Oh, of course he does. I respect it. Yeah. He's like, I don't want to be surrounded by cooks who believe in crazy stuff. Yes, that's actually what he told me. Yeah,

of course. An upstanding gentleman. That was actually one thing that was really interesting in the article is like, because he was talking about med beds in like, what, it was like 2015, I think you said. It was like way, way earlier. And so when the QAnon people, when those two whirls, collided the New Age and the medbeds and the QAnon people and they sort of found him. It was really interesting to see his reaction to like all these fucking nuts people started like coming out of the woodwork. And it's so interesting to see like an OG conspiracy head kind of like, it's how I look at like the, you know, the teenagers when they come into Starbucks and like the Jinkos and stuff. I'm like, yeah, I was the original Jinko skater. Like, you know, you're just, you know, you're just, you're just, you're just, you just want to be me, you know.

And it's interesting to see that in a conspiracy community as well. Are you telling that to youth like in the Starbucks? No, no, no, no, no. I'm not looking at anybody. I'm not barely talking. I'm looking at my shoes. This is all in my head. He's having huge confrontations with teenagers.

He is aging. To be clear, I think the reason he doesn't like them is not just that he thinks their ideas are out there, but that they're like partisan. And he doesn't respect that because he thinks a true space program guy. You know, someone who he, he, would really actually be aligned with would think all politicians are bad. And so, yeah, he's like, he's an old school hippie. And I respect that. Well, still, he'd take the side of the Pleiadians over the Draco reptilians. Well, and it's certainly better than being like a Trump sycophant, you know.

Yeah, something is kind of like weird about, I guess, your description of him is that he simultaneously is a sincere, true believer. I think that I think that I think you're right. And I think that an important component of grifting is in sincerity. You know, if you teach classes on how to unlock psychic powers and you sincerely believe you can do that, and that's possible. All right, maybe you're misleading people, but I won't call you a grifter because you are, you know, you're teaching something you sincerely believe. But in his case, he's like, he's a sincere believer in, like, medbeds, but also remorseful about how it spread online. How does he reconcile that? Because it sounds like he's like, what, he believes that it's real, but also people are talking about it.

it in the wrong way? Yeah, I mean, I think he makes that same distinction, which is he thinks these people who are scamming people, misleading people about medbeds are just, they don't believe in medbeds or they're just making it up, you know? So he's like, you know, he thinks it's all about like what your intentions are, which that is sort of a tension within my article is, you know, what do your intentions matter when this sort of machinery of the conspiracy theory internet can just take it and end up, you know, causing baby boomers. not to take their chemotherapy. But I think he really convinced himself that these med beds are out there.

But he hasn't seen any evidence that they are going to transform the world in a way that will actually materially affect people's lives like in the next five years. And so he doesn't see any point in talking about it anymore. He did, you know, he tried to make one himself once he realized he couldn't do it. He was like, okay, that chapter of my life is over. And he moved on. We will have, in the show notes, a link to the new GoFundMe that Randy and Molly have put together. It's an entirely cannabis-made med bed where you live inside the plant.

Well, yeah, or it pumps smoke into what looks like a gigantic tanning bed and you find yourself sort of like inside of a gravity bong. And for, you know, about four hours afterwards, you'll feel so bad that you'll want all of your old sick. misses back. Well, wait, wait, wait. It may look like you found our illegal pot farm, but, uh, yeah, so my name is Randy Leahy. I mean, I always interested in these people who's like, who have like, I don't know, sometimes just arbitrary and hard to decipher, like, I guess, boundaries of their own

personal credulity. Like, it's like, well, how can you get one, one hand believe in, you know, some of the things that he claimed about like regenerating limbs, but also being like all, you know, suggesting like, oh, but this sky. like prince people. I mean, obviously, that's, that's ludicrous outside. They said they're not, they're not doing it wrong. Right. But it's like, I don't know, it's just a very, I don't know, idiosyncratic kind of like conspiracies belief. Yeah, it is interesting because I feel like so often these ideas, when we encounter them on the internet, on these social media platforms,

they do seem to sort of intermingle. But in his mind, he's got a sci-fi mind, right? Like he sees things in terms of like there's science and then there's things that aren't science. And so for him, the, you know, the Pleadians, that's probably just like woo-woo magic stuff that he doesn't see any legitimacy to. But, you know, yeah, when we, when we encountered these ideas altogether, it seems like everyone's buying into all of it. But it's interesting to think that the individuals do carve out their own lines within it. Oh, yeah. They have like mortal like disagreements, you know, when you go to conferences like this. But there's a lot of accommodation. This is a scene that as far as I can tell, like you said, there's a lot of yes ending. And I didn't see anybody.

confront each other, but I know that there are kind of internecine conflicts where people will accuse each other of being grifters and stuff like that. There are fault lines that do create themselves. And yeah, usually it's because of something that seems like from the outside to be so hyper-specific. Like what, what does it matter if you believe in this or not that? You all believe in crazy stuff. But for them, it's very, very important. It's black and white. I'm curious, is there any parts of your investigation that you feel like perhaps unresolved? Were there any leads that didn't pan out quite as well as you hoped or any sort of like unanswered questions that that you weren't able to nail down before publishing? I think, okay, I still have two questions

that I would really love to have resolved. One is just sort of the bigger question that I perpetually have when talking about conspiracy theories because it's just impossible to measure. We can see how many people encounter conspiracy theory. It's impossible to measure how many people actually believe it. So, you know, I had plenty of anecdotal evidence of people. who believe in this. I have these Facebook groups full of people who believe in it. I've got these telegram chats, you know, all these things. But I just have no sort of concrete evidence for how big the portion of the American public is that buys into this. And if so, do they buy into it just like a little bit? And like maybe they still go to their regular doctor, but they're holding out hope that

maybe one day they won't have to go to their doctor anymore. These are questions that I have with pretty much every conspiracy theory where I'm like, I mean, I did have someone else. asked me recently why I as a journalist thought that I might be sort of more immune to believing in conspiracy theories when I encounter the information than, say, an average person does. And I do think that journalists largely do because we have better visibility into institutions and how they work. So I'm not as likely to sort of believe crazy ideas about them because I know that there's not enough competent people within those institutions to actually make those things happen. But even then, thinking like, you know, there's all this huge loss portion of the American public that doesn't

know what's real and what's not. It's still impossible for me to say how appealing this idea is beyond the like anecdotal. So that's sort of my big question. And then my other big one is how the president of the United States actually like did he believe it? Like Donald Trump, when he saw this, what did he think? And I emailed the White House so many times and they never got back to me and I wish I knew. Yeah, that one's tough too because it would require him believing that Laura Trump, like, had that show on Fox as well. So there's like, there's layers to like, Oh, my daughter's show. Yeah, she got a show. And she's showing off our new thing. Oh, she's doing something. She's showing off one of our beautiful facilities. Retweet. Retruth. Yeah. Yeah. Is it that bad?

Is it that bad that he thought it was real? And he just went, oh, she's tweeting me. I'm tweeting her. He did delete it. So that does show that, like, someone probably. Somebody. I'd love to hear that. I'd love a transcript, honestly. I don't want to hear it. I want a transcript of that conversation of how they made him delete it. Because, yeah, well, yeah, because he deletes things so rarely. So it's like, yeah, there's so many outrageous Trump posts and they're normally stay up. How is it that this particular one was so outrageous that his team, either maybe deleted it without telling him or like deleted it while explaining to him, why we can't leave this up? I think that's a delete without telling. I think that's a delete in the middle of the night and hope that 80-year-old president doesn't scroll back. He won't look back.

Where was that to it that I really liked with Laura's show? I'd like to go on Laura's show. That would be good because her name is Laura. So in this version, in Jake's version, the president's also forgotten his daughter's name. Yeah, because I, the guy imitating the president, have forgotten the daughter's name. Yeah, the investigation.

Yeah, is on slate. It's just like, again, it's a great article. Like it says, one of my favorite kinds of reports where, like, you know, the journey towards, like, finding the answer is just as interesting as, just as, just as interesting as, like, you know, the answer itself in terms of, like, figuring out, you know, where exactly this nonsense come from. And, like, God, it's also frustrating that it's just a gray-haired guy from Sedona because, like, that's so much harder to, like, prevent. You can't stop gray-hard-haired-haired guys from Sedona. Yeah. Travis is laying down poison in Sedona hoping to. control the local population we'll see we'll see yeah beautiful city i love their uh great uh no no stoplight

policy you very beautiful sedona beautiful city would be a shame if the rationalists took care of the rat infestation exactly they got they out their vortices make they make uh make themselves more powerful than any skeptics so yeah they're screwed there yeah so we're going to link to the investigation on slates yeah molly thanks so much for joining us today thank you this was fun yeah Great, amazing piece. Go check it out, folks. Yeah, worth the read. Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast.

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May the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. We have auto-queued content based on your preferences. So, I don't know if you'll be able to share this point, but what extraterrestrial species did we get the holographic medbed technology from? Do you know? I think it was from the Centauri, who, you know, are living around Alpha Centauri. So I think it was from the Centauri. I think that's where we got it from first.

We're manufacturing our... We've been manufacturing our own for a while, but they were making such cheap and efficient ones. I know that we were buying most of all of our holopeds from them initially because they were just making them really cheap and efficiently. But we're making our own now.