Some More News - UFOs, $65K Worth Of Pizza, And EVEN MORE Conspiracies With Chelsey Weber-Smith

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Hi. Chelsey Weber-Smith, host of the podcast American Hysteria, joins Katy and Cody to talk about the House Oversight Committee's UFO hearings, Elon Musk humoring vaccine misinformation, and the surprisingly longevity of Pizzagate (and the oft-overlooked Hot Dog Gate). Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews If you want to take ownership of your health, try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 Free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to https://drinkAG1.com/MORENEWS. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at https://shopify.com/morenews (all lowercase) to take your retail business to the next level today.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is Katie Stoll hello Katie Stoll welcome back to the part where I say my name, which is Cody Johnston. Welcome to me. Nailed it. Welcome to you. And welcome to today's guest, poet turned podcaster, host of the podcast American Hysteria. It's Chelsea Weber-Smith. I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me in this first news show ever created. It's amazing to be here.

Nobody ever thought of it before. No, I know. It's brilliant. And it's been years now, so I feel like we're safe. It's just this whole untapped market. No one else is going to jump on this train. And it's just needed. Someone needs to talk about news. Finally. Finally. Finally. And before we talk about news we're gonna talk about holidays

because july 27th take your house plants for a walk day wow this is a well cat you can tell you really can start to tell walking your plants around the neighborhood enables them to know their environment therapy providing them with a sense of knowing, bringing on wellness. That's the sentence they wrote? I took it verbatim. Thereby providing. But I guess it is acting as therapy for them. No, you know what happened is someone's cursor is right in the middle of there and it made it look like they're by.

Okay, whatever. You guys get the idea. Take those houseplants outside. Give them a sense of knowing. Oh, hell yeah. The Today Show did a segment yesterday on it. Oh, gosh. Yes.

Is this a thing? Apparently it is. yeah it's the it's the people that hosted today's show and they're like here's how to take your houseplants for a walk oh boy is there like a distance that's needed like how how far of a walk because i've already got a dog to watch the segment yet i've got so many houseplants yesterday i've got news to read about, not this clap trap. Project all your feelings on your houseplants as you take them out for an existential stroll. Yes. My second cousin, my mom's cousin, that's my second cousin, communicates with her houseplants and swears that one time she was doing something and she heard a plant scream and she turned around just in time

to see it falling off of the shelf and she dove and she caught it. Wow. Anyway, I bet she takes her houseplants for walks. Speaking of walks, July 28th is National Talk in an Elevator Day. All right. Who is doing this?

That is not what anybody wants, right? We don't celebrate that in this house. Chelsea, do you like talking in elevators with complete strangers? I don't, but like on a very weird side note, I was in this like self-actualization class as a kid, which is a whole other thing. But one of the like homework things they made us do

was get into an elevator and say to everyone in there i guess you're wondering why i asked you all here today which is like a really weird thing to get a kid to do but i did it and they did not like it and i would never do that again no that would be so funny like a kid I guess. Some nine-year-old kid. I guess you're wondering why I asked you all here today. It could be funny. Jarring. Jarring as well. Absolutely jarring.

That's like every group improv scene I've ever been in. All right. I guess you're asking why I brought you in here today, refrigerator salesman. Yeah. Yes. Yes, and. Okay. Well, this has been fun.

Now we get to have the real fun. Actually, first we get to know Chelsea a little bit more. Okay, so your show, American Hysteria, it is a podcast about conspiracy theories, moral panics, urban legends, and we're going to talk about some conspiracy-adjac adjacent stories this week. We've got a fun show for everybody.

Recent, a lot of recent. Recent ones. Yeah. But before we do that, in the process of doing your show, what are some of the more interesting urban legends that you've heard about? Well, you know, we're doing this new project called the Urban Legends Hotline, which has been really fun where listeners can call in with an urban legend that they remember from their childhood analyze like why was this story told at this time in this location and what does it mean about American history and politics and culture and psychology. So it's been really fun. The one we did most recently was about a place called Pig Hill where allegedly cannibal pig people attack teenagers making out on a lover's lane on top of this hill.

Well, that sounds terrifying. that were formerly locations of like farms or other types of rural environments that are now kind of being like, the suburbs are being pushed upon them. And that's kind of like where these legends, where folklorists think some of these legends start to happen is like that intersection, you start to get these like really ugly tropes

of rural folks who are otherwise just like living their lives and not really wanting to be invaded by suburban teens. And so, yeah, we did like the history of the pig and the importance of the pig in American culture. And, you know, we get into just the weirdest stuff. Into any what stuff? Boar stuff. Like boar stuff like sorry that's most mostly for our listeners because we have a weird fascination with boars the rise of the show the rise of the boars that's which is not an urban legend in any capacity no no it's just

they're teleporting all over the world and they are in chaos attacking teens that's what i'm saying that's really fascinating though that exploration of like where are the actual roots and and how does this yeah and connecting it to the different locations where they pop because that's very specific i feel like if there were pig people i would have heard about it by now right right and these sort of like the combination of like okay it's yes this sort of uh suburbanization of these rural areas but also like do you find that some are like oh yeah they just said this so the kids wouldn't make out over at the creek or whatever it's always right like it's just scare tactics right it's just the boogeyman legend but

you take that boogeyman legend and then you figure out okay why is that legend this way in this area of the country? And yeah, I think it is the boogeyman legend. You're definitely right about that. And that's why urban legends are in the folklore category, because, you know, we see a boogeyman pretty much in any culture in any time, because, yeah, it is a way to often like keep your kids out of the woods originally, right? Like you don't want your children to walk into the woods and get eaten. woods originally right like you don't want your children to walk into the woods and get eaten but uh you need to make up a more compelling story than just you know there's a a wild boar

that's going to spear you with its horns you need like a pig man you need a pig man honestly if they just told me there was an angry bear i'd probably stay close to the house i don't know if I'd need. Yeah, you don't need a monster. You just need. Sasquatch is real, right? Right? Sure. Why not? I don't. I like some whimsy. I'm not trying to debunk everything.

Yeah, why not? That's no fun. Go for it. Have fun. My town loves Sasquatch. There's Sasquatch. Sasquatch. Wow.

That is hard to actually spit out. Sasquatch. Sasquatch. Sasquatch. And people swear they've seen it. But where are you? I'm in the mountains. I'm not going to get more specific.

Okay, all right. Oh, yeah, but I'm in Seattle. That's why I ask, because we also have a Squatch obsession. Oh, sure, yeah. That Sasquatch gets around, you know? I know. But no Sasquatches

other than the Pacific Northwest, really. There's like a Florida skunk ape that has similar characteristics. But, you know, it's like that's a pretty Pacific Northwest thing. Hello, gentle people. Press your ears directly against your phone or speaker while I tell you about AG1. Oh, how I envy you here at the beginning of this journey. AG1 is a daily nutritional supplement, you see. It used to be that whenever I needed extra nutrition, I would eat sawdust I found at a construction site. But now I know there's a better way. I gave AG1 a try because of these ads that I do for AG1. And let me tell you, it makes me feel more energetic and

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try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash more news. That's drinkag1.com slash more news. Check it out. Journey over. I suppose it's time to actually, yes, talk about the news. And like I already said, we've kind of, not kind of, we've compiled a bunch of conspiracy theory adjacent stories.

And we're just going to go ahead and kick things off with the UFO hearing that took America by storm yesterday. It took nobody by anything. Nobody, right? Like, it just happened and that's the end of that. Nobody cared. Yeah. John, why don't you set some of this stuff up for us? Yeah, here's the what we know, what happened.

So the House Oversight Committee heard testimony on Wednesday from a former Air Force intelligence officer named David Grush, officer named David Grush, who served on some Pentagon task forces that were investigating UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or sometimes unidentified aerial phenomena. He said he was informed of a secret government program that has gone back decades, which had captured a craft or crafts of some sort and attempted to reverse engineer those crafts superior technology he says governments all over the world uh are attempting to reverse engineer alien tech and have been conducting some sort of future tech cold war uh he did not present any evidence for this oh he also i don't know if this came up in the hearing yesterday but he previously told News Nation that we got one of those craft from Benito Mussolini following a tip from Pope Pius XII.

So this really goes back. Yeah. How do you get invited to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee without evidence? Do you know what, like, how do you get invited in like in our meeting yesterday i was like how does this happen and you're like oh not you someone was like well you know it's the house and conservatives but i'm from what i understand it was actually kind of bipartisan i could be wrong yeah this guy yeah he works for he was part of these Pentagon groups, and the Pentagon has had these teams that are looking into UAPs because we've seen those videos where we don't know what the thing flying across the sky is. So a guy being on that team.

I guess they weren't maybe expecting them to say this information specifically. I mean, I think they were right like they like they didn't know what he was going to say but some sort of like information some way to like oh it's got talk to these people whatever it's just he also happens to not have a lot of information right because like they don't know necessarily ahead of time exactly what he's going to say just that he has quote unquote for information yeah he's's saying some other people who have knowledge about this told me about these programs. And then when I asked for access to these programs,

they said, no, you know, the end. And I can give you the names of these people in organizations. You can look into yourself, do your own research. Really?

Is that a takeaway? That's so much. So much is a response to conversations I have. Not with whistleblowers. Yeah. 1933 seems like a really long time ago to just be finding out about this now. Well, it's interesting even that it goes back that far

because the big kind of UFO craze happened in the 40s and it was very much related to to our well it's theorized that it was very much related to our fears about World War II and what we were hearing about that and like invasion possibilities and like I think it's really interesting that we're having kind of another one right now and and I don't know what it would necessarily be in response to I mean take your pick right right yeah I always think this is such an interesting part of the UFO phenomenon is that one of the very, very first sightings was this man named Kenneth Arnold. And it was actually outside Mount Rainier in Washington state. this object as looking like, he described this object as moving the way that a saucer would

if it was skipping across water. But the actual saucer that he described did not look like a flying saucer at all. It was like a much more complicated shape. But because the newspapers printed that he saw a flying saucer, suddenly that was the shape that everybody was seeing and i find that to be like such an interesting part of all of this is like it's right who knows you're the sort of guest for this conversation yeah one headline can just sort of

like permeate through everything and then like that yeah that's what we think it is now yeah little green men any sort of thing like that yeah people see that shape like we're already it's already in our heads. And I don't know exactly what that has to do with right now, but it is just like when these surges of interest in UFOs come up, I think it can speak to some other fears that we have that are maybe less sensational. And we can kind of like be like, OK, this time feels so out of control that let's just throw aliens in the mix because that describes our fear kind of yeah yeah once you plant the seed of something it is a true thing that your brain starts to look for that it's not confirmation bias but there's something that happens too where like you start to see things and then it starts to reinforce your belief i think right what is the specific event i

don't know that there is one specific thing that you can attribute to why people are feeling more on edge or more paranoid but there's a lot going on and i would say both times i mean there's just there is a distrust in in the government across the board say that sort of widespread this has always been something that has felt hushed up in secret so it's ripe we're rife for whatever the phrase is for people to go for their imaginations to run wild and there are i mean unidentified unidentified objects but they're not a lot of times they can be explained sometimes they can't but it doesn't necessarily mean one thing or another you know yeah ufo isn't a synonym for an alien spacecraft it says it means we don't know what it is which is why they switched the name i think is to move away from that very specific

like oh that means that it's yeah yeah how do you do that wop wop Whop. Whop. Whop. I mean, it's not not. They should do a song. They should do a song. Where they say it over and over again. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, and I think it's important to make clear, I do not not believe in UFOs. I just don't know.

You know, I really, I'm like, jury's out in my mind on this one. But it doesn't seem like there was a bombshell that, like, people were expecting or hoping for. I don't want aliens i want nothing to do to do with them i feel like i'm sorry if they're listening but like i i'm very scared of aliens and i just like part of me is just like i'm not even gonna pay attention to this because it is too scary i think that my most toxic parts of me is be interested in the drama of it. Yeah. If aliens came to planet Earth. I don't want them to do me harm,

but I'm very curious to see what they would be like. Yeah. Who doesn't want, who's not a little curious? Well, I think. Also, it's like, you know,

we already have seen Independence Day. We know we'd win. Well, also like in reality, like it's probably more likely that any aliens we do find are like little bugs or microbes or like you know or something like unrecognizable interdimensional yeah you don't think it's like a baby yoda it's probably not like a baby yoda or an adult grogu whichever you prefer it's probably yeah like little bugs or like little,

like, you know, organisms like under what, like the ice in Europa or something like that that are like in like an ocean sort of swimming around and they're a little alien soup. Or they're spaceships. It's fine too. Well, maybe they have tiny spaceships. I don't know.

God, I made the mistake of watching Signs recently when all that UFO stuff was happening. And that is a scary movie because I was like M. Night Shyamalan. These movies are so goofy. And then my partner fell asleep before all of the scary stuff happened. And I stayed up until midnight watching Signs. And I have not fully recovered from that experience because it's very scary. It's like experiencing.

It's like hokey in a lot of ways but they do a really good job of like what it's gonna be like if this does go down where it's like you're watching the news the news people are confused like they're starting to get a grasp on it suddenly you know you hear things outside you hear all this chaos and then eventually the news just like turns off and I think that's like such a scary moment is like when the news turns off. That's like our connection to each other and like the last string of hope that we have. That's what we're all kind of going to experience

separate from each other. Yeah, you don't want the news to go away. Right, exactly. And by the news you mean like this show, right? Only this show. Just on the show, exactly. As soon as your guys' show turned off, was terrified i understand it's only an hour a week sorry yeah that's a lot of hours he is very good at that um effect of the like the scope of

the world event from the lens of just like no you're in your home that's how we're all going to experience it mostly yeah 100 there's that uh what that knock at the cabin movie he did recently that has sort of the same vibe of like it's just horrible things happening outside but you're in this one room in this one house oh yeah absolutely totally before we move on to another topic just trying to think what are ways to push back against the conspiracy theory element of this? I don't know. Or like, what should we do? I guess what I was getting at with the let him just testify without some proof, no one screened it. Because what that has now done is kicked off a whole bunch of ideas. However,

I also don't, in the truth, you want, if you cover it, cover it up or don't let him testify, then people go off to the races as well. Well, you know, I think conspiracy theories, as I have learned in doing this show for the last, like, five years, is just, like, combating them is almost impossible once they take hold inside of a person. And I say that as a former conspiracy theorist, but more of like the Bush years conspiracies. And sometimes that included aliens. And I don't know. I think once you have that mindset, even if the government's like here, we're being transparent, you still have. Well, no, they're not.

They're just saying that like you can never really prove transparency. And that's what's really hard. transparency. And that's what's really hard. And I do think like having a database could be helpful, but then you have so many people who either honestly think they saw something and maybe didn't or like bad actor types who are like, I want to continue this kind of hysteria and just, you know, so chaos because I'm a troll or I'm making money off, you know, people scared of these conspiracy theories or whatever. So I think it's like, I don't really know what you would do to combat it at all, actually, which is not a very, like, you know, hopeful comment here. But I just do think it is the heart of conspiracy theory is that you can take any piece of information

and continue the conspiracy because you can just say that's propaganda. Right. Because, yeah, once you are locked in, any piece of information just say that's propaganda. Right. Like, cause yeah, once you are locked in, any piece of information can mean anything to you. You can interpret it however you want, as long as it fits in your, your comfortable worldview.

Cause if you leave that it's discomfort and we, nobody wants that. Yeah. And I think the best way is to not draw hard lines necessarily and not be like, there are no UFOs. Like I trust Joe Biden with my heart and soul. He is my King and my like, there are no UFOs. Like, I trust Joe Biden with my heart and soul. He is my king and my God. You know, like, I don't I think not doing that or

not like just saying I trust the government because, you know, I mean, we've needed to trust the government in a lot of ways recently. Great. Right. It's been important. But we also need to remember that we can't always trust the government. And that's just like we have a huge amount of evidence for that. And so just not necessarily saying, oh, believing in UFOs is totally ridiculous. There's no reason that you should do that. You're just a conspiracy theorist. You know, I mean, maybe there is some middle ground there where it opens up a place of inquiry without kind of making people want to go to the other side and be like, no,

you're an agent of propaganda. Just yourself tweeting on the internet. Such a, these are such good points. We've established I live in the mountains as our listeners. Well, no, but I have a lot of these types of conversations and you know,

no one wants to be heard told, wants to hear, be told, uh, you're wrong. That's stupid of you to think that you how could you possibly believe that because all that does is make a person more dug into their perspective and defensive versus if you leave room and not and and not paint them into as, you know, like unwell for believing what they believe, you're more likely to both gain trust and open up an actual conversation

where you can ask genuine questions. And something I've been thinking about a lot, I don't know if I've shared this on the show, but I've talked about my brother, my oldest brother, passed away a while ago, a long time ago. But he was a bit of a conspiracy theorist. And we got into a lot of fights when I was younger about this type of stuff. And then after he passed away, some of the stuff that he would talk about was true.

You know? And that sticks with me because I, you know, didn't give, I didn't have an open mind on some of these conversations. That doesn't mean that these people are right, you know, as we'll continue to talk about, but it's tricky. And I think that if you want to keep a person in your life who is a bit more conspiratorial minded, you have to try to find ways to treat them with a little bit of respect i that make i yes it makes sense to me i mean people don't always like hearing it but i think it's a much better way to i mean if you genuinely want to help that person maybe develop a different type of worldview you're gonna have to do that i don't know i can i generally approach it as much as possible with like interest and like yeah okay

you know like I assume you living in the mountains you meet all types of people and have different types of conversations is that right you know it's different than than like probably the conversations I would normally have in Seattle but I also travel and meet different people and I'm not really someone who is like oh I'm not talking to you as soon as you show me anything i don't like i'm i'm just like interested in the conversation you know i'm here for it if it started to get like really ugly i would probably leave it but if you know if we can have a civil conversation it's like why not it's gonna it's only gonna help someone to yeah even just talk to like a queer person like just on a different note is like I can sit down. We can talk.

You know, I'm not on both ways. Yes. De-stigmatize. Yeah. On all ends. Any misconception. Give a person an opportunity to have a conversation. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it's like otherwise the people who win are people making money off of us hating each other and being distracted from the real criminals who are, you know, politicians, billionaires. take your pick. The Illuminati. That's what I said. The lizards. The lizards.

Yep. The lizards and the chuds. This feels like the appropriate time to take an ad break. I agree. Let's do it. I agree. But none of us go anywhere because we're literally going to be right back.

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We didn't get a break. Yeah. Keeping right on this conspiracy train. Let's talk a little bit about Bronny James. LeBron James' son. I didn't know his son. He named his son Bronny. Okay. His son Bronny is entering his freshman year at USC and is causing cardiac arrest or myocarditis.

Another word that keeps getting autocorrected when I type it. And yes, this is, of course, another conspiracy theory that has been around since vaccine conversation began. And it's getting incredible. It's just very frustrating and difficult to push back on. Actually, John, I'll let you set some of this stuff up. You're very good at it. So there have been studies going back from to the beginning of the introduction of the COVID vaccine that shows that the COVID vaccine or the mRNA vaccine is correlated with a slightly higher incidence of myocarditis. It is rare, and myocarditis is much more likely to happen has a heart attack, which has been the leading cause of death in the United States going back decades, you know, vaxxed. Were they vaxxed? Did they have the vaccine? They had a heart attack. And Elon Musk added to this speculation

on Twitter this week, which is part of the reason why we're talking about it, because Elon Musk says something and then it starts this a major cycle uh he tweeted we cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine but by the same token we cannot ascribe nothing myocarditis is a known side effect the only question is whether it is rare or common and of course that is not a question yeah so i guess that was my question it's not a question why does this billionaire with access to so much information and like resources have to ask questions that have been answered um it's so frustrating to see the way he talks about stuff where it's like well we just don't know actually we do he says he does this stuff all the time it's the plausible deniability thing that i hate

i hate that thing it's so frustrating well i didn't say that i merely asked it well you did say it by the way you phrased the question and like there's this this thing because also like many i'll just say blue check types well like see the thing or like oh the the news got this wrong or this person got this wrong therefore like everything they say from now on is suspect or definitely wrong. We're going to bring this up to the end of time. I have to point out this tweet from Elon Musk in March 2020 that says, based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in the United States by end of April 2020.

He was talking about COVID-19. He said there'd be no new cases by April 2020. And then just like time passed and everybody forgot that he talks like this and is wrong all the time about predictions. And I just, just don't tweet, man. Or X, don't X, I guess is what we're saying now. I don't know.

Yeah, it's tough because I want to like, I want to get everything right, and I want to qualify everything. So it's actually quite difficult to introduce this topic in two sentences because there have been many, many studies done on this that show, well, this one shows that it might just be a correlation, and exercise does the same thing. You're at increased risk of a cardiac event if you exercise heavily.

Okay, but this study showed this. But, you know, like, it's not interesting to hear me say that for 20 minutes on the podcast, right? Like, so, you know, we have these studies. You can look at them. But when you boil it right down, it's easiest to tell people you would think covid 19 is associated with a much higher risk of myocarditis right like looking at all these individual studies holistically and like being like well if you look at the entire the big picture here's what we can uh what we can gather from it instead of like well this study says this which is what a lot of where like where a lot of

the tension and just sort of the the back and forth comes from where if like well i saw this like okay but like this and it just the threads keep being pulled well there's also like people trying to unpack very dry medical content you don't really know what you're reading all the time and it can be hard to prioritize this is what i always say i'm like yes but are you looking at it from this angle or for that? You can also look at data and draw different conclusions from data depending on what subset or what factors you're, you know, how you're controlling the information. And it's, gosh, we have so much information at our fingertips now. People, again, confirmation bias. You can find anything you want to back up your position

unfortunately they can say that about us as well you know and which makes it so frustrating uh jonathan and cody both know this but i was sent a video about you know from somebody a doctor type i think it's an old like it used to be a nurse and now like teaches nursing i think yeah but he calls himself doctor yeah yeah it's fine um he's got a phd in nursing or something yeah yeah and uh seems intelligent you know by all accounts he started off in a place of you know we need to gather all the information and this could be terrible in terms of covid and like was pro precautions and then as the vaccine data has become radicalized and pointing out stuff and you know it's this study this one study that he's showing and it's basically saying that there is

an increased risk of myocardial damage it's this study but basically what he's glossing over is that it's within that first period and um it's absolutely whether or not that's even true how does that answer the fact that you're how does that tie to people two years later because the advice of this was saying like maybe you don't exercise strenuously right after getting a shot in case there's like some stress. Essentially, to me, that's what I took away from this study. But it's been taken. And so now it's off the races and he's got millions of subscribers. That's the key. Millions of subscribers.

Yeah, you skip over phrases like it's mild or it's like, you know. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was mild and transitory or transient. And you're like, that means that it's mild and not long lasting. Right. So maybe three years later, it's actually not. What I did was I just responded to this person

who sent this video with, thank you for sending this. This is interesting. Do you know if this person has also studied the increased, like how COVID, actual COVID is affecting our hearts. Because I bet that that's some different, you know, and like just asking questions and like,

if he wants to continue that conversation with me, he can. But, you know, anyway. Yeah. And engaging with it. And instead of being like, well, this, this guy's a crank. You're a crank too. Get out. You know, like you're actually, you're trying to have a conversation.

But it is frustrating, especially when you have, yeah, like a Musk type being like, we just don't know. There's no way to know. How can we possibly know? It's like, well, there are ways to know. There's studies. That's why we have science. And you're like, this guy's smart and successful. He knows what he's talking about well and i think that's a good like thing to refocus on always is like elon musk is doing this for a reason you know it might not

be the most well thought out reason it's not some great conspiracy but he's speaking directly to the people who will worship him right exactly is like continuing to like go on these anti-trans rant all these different you know or not even you know these little stupid shitty little questions that he asks on everything or like his little memes they're not he's not a rant he's not it's not it's not hateful it's just memes it's like worse in many ways to me i'm just like just saying no totally yeah like coward um but i think that it's a very intentional, if not sloppy, tactic to just appeal to people to try to keep this floundering business going and his floundering ego going. My enemy is my enemy. This person who's living, you know, at the poverty line, who's believing all these things because they feel like their life is out of control and they feel like maybe I can blame the government completely for that, which you can, but maybe not in the ways that they're playing. Right. We're not focusing enough on labor issues, which would be very helpful. But instead, you know, that doesn't have as much of like a hero's journey as like we're going to fight the government,

we're bringing down the deep state, whatever. And like you get that hero's journey that feels really good and that can make people feel empowered, even though it's like disempowering them more. But, you know, I think it's like, I always try to refocus like on Elon Musk, not on people,

no matter how much I dislike them and their tactics. It's like, if we don't keep our focus, it's like the distractions are many and we can spend all day fighting with people on Twitter that are at our level. Yeah, the tears go all the way down. Hunch up. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's not always easy to do that and it's not always going to be what we do because we're human and we're angry at each other for good reasons. But that's just something I like to try to always refocus on is that that's really powerful people, you know, solidarity where you can find it. Yeah. Yeah. Because ultimately that's the common threat, you know, and it's frustrating sometimes a lot all the time as we've established, yeah, there are definitely things

that we should not trust our government about. And there's a lot of shady stuff that we don't know about. And there are lots of conspiracy theories that are in fact true. But when I look at this one and COVID in general, it seems so obvious to me that we're not, if there's any conspiracy at all it's that yeah the government people the vaccine makers the pharmaceuticals yeah they're making money yeah having us get shots 100 100 000 that is a true thing but like are they actively trying to harm us no like that

doesn't work in their best interest in any capacity they're trying to chip us and kill off the population why is that in their best interest why is any of that why would they be doing that yeah like manufacturing this mass extinction event yeah right exactly exactly like well you don't want to get rid of all the all the cheap labor how are you gonna get the stuff done take that same energy that you're focusing on this and focus it on the right areas. You know, it's hard. It's frustrating. This is such a template.

There's like the big conspiracy template is like the killing off of a huge number of people so that the like elite can live and like have the whole earth and shit. And it's it's it's a biblical story. Right. And it's it's a biblical story. Right. It's like it comes from this idea that there are an elect few that will like inherit the earth and that evil people was like, oh, the government's creating a, you know, mass panic event so that they can get us to do these different things and like take over our lives and take over control of everything as if they don't already have control of everything. But, you know, and so I think there's like some empathy I have for people who have been embedded in this story for a long time, because then you get this massive, terrifying global pandemic. And then you're suddenly like the old story would be like you have to like FEMA is going to set up all these places and you're going to go and be safe there and they'll feed you and clothe you.

But really, it's like a death camp. And it's like so now, you know, I'm standing in this parking lot and like getting a vaccine and it all starts to feel very dystopian because at the moment it is. But not for the reasons that, you know, we we as a conspiracy theorist, you would imagine. But it's like the pieces are there, which is very unfortunate because it was very easy to bring back up the stories of the Illuminati and like the stories of these FEMA death camps from the 90s and 2000s. And like, you know, this is all stuff that Timothy McVeigh believed when he, you know, blew up his building. And, you know, so it's like they're not new stories, but unfortunately, they just kind of fell into place in this way that I just when I saw it happening, I was like, oh, all right.

It's going to go well. Yeah. There's this vibe like also like we just there's so many movies and things about like end of the world and like and then the government taking control and stuff like that and like crises will happen because that's just like how that's the world that's like living living in the universe and it doesn't need to be like a manufactured crisis for like the government to do any like things also right like it's not like oh they they they did this they manufactured this crisis on purpose so they

could do this no no they like saw an opportunity to like have a little more control and power and took that opportunity not like manufactured it they don't need to do that um not to say that they're like doing all of these conspiracies uh after the fact but just like you don't need that first thing to be made up by them for them to take the opportunity to like the patriarchs like they weren't like we're gonna all right we're gonna do this like this big event and so that we can pass the patriarch no no they saw an opportunity like yeah we'll do this this you know i don't know no definitely i think that's a perfect comparison well since we have you here i guess we can talk about one more little oh good urs story that i actually hadn't heard about but jonathan had so jonathan

oh well i wanted to bring up this one because we got to get a little QAnon-y. Oh, yeah. Sure. We got to. Yeah. Yay. I'm curious what's going on with Q these days. The Obama's personal chef, Tafari Campbell, died last weekend at Martha's Vineyard in a paddleboarding accident. The Obamas weren't home. Another paddleboarder saw Campbell go under the water, briefly struggle, and then didn't resurface. Police took everyone's statements they're investigating um and pretty quickly you know Benny Johnson had a

Twitter live session called Obama lied Democrat Democrat body count exposed uh cat turd says I won't believe a word of it why would they start telling the truth now and q and on influencer liz crokin said that uh campbell probably found too much information about the 65 000 worth of hot dogs and pizza that were sent to obama's white house super bowl party in 2009 which is a reference to i'm sorry the hot dogs and pizza means exploited children uh that's code in an email there's i mean i could go so deep on this and i don't want to tafari knew about all of this hot all these hot dogs and pizzas from 2009 so they offed him. Well, 2023. Well, it's the reveal that came somewhat more recently that, you know, in 2019, it's funny that this got brought up because we did an episode recently with Jamie Loftus about hot dogs. We love Jamie.

Yeah. Jamie's amazing. But we just did like an urban legend hot dog episode where I told her some, you know, hot dog urban legends. And one of them was this very story of Hot Dog Gate, which was like didn't get as much attention as Pizza Gate. But it's from the same kind of email dump where people were attributing secret code words to these different foods. And one of them came from this joke that somebody made about Obama spending $65,000 on a hot dog party. And there's like some truth that it doesn't matter. But basically, Alex Jones took this and ran with it. And I actually I pulled up on my episode notes

and he said, talking about the code word, he said, it's male prostitutes. And look, Obama's having sex with 10 dudes a day, whatever. The point is, is that that's what's going on with your taxpayer time. So, you know, it's like it was it was like the child exploitation. But it did seem like Alex Jones was specifically saying Obama's gay and he has sex with 10 dudes a day, which is like, damn, how does he find the time? Oh, I know. Yeah.

Right. Like a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. He has a long career. Like, are they different dudes every day? I don't have that information. We just can't know.

There's no way to know. I would assume they're free range dudes that are just like wandering in a circle. Constant cycling. Oh, yeah. And then he goes into the pasture and chooses his. I feel like I saw a recent interview clip of somebody claiming that like he blew Obama a bunch of times in college. I want to say it was Sean Hannity interviewing them, but I might be making that part up. That would only make me like him more.

I know. Bless that man. Oh, no, it was Dinesh D'Souza. That's right. Oh, God. God, Dinesh. What are you doing? Wait, he didn't say Obama blew him.

He interviewed someone who said Obama. No, no, no. He was interviewing somebody who said. No, he. Oh, sorry. He was interviewing somebody. He blew Obama. Got it.

Got it. Important difference there. Exactly. Yes, distinction here. Let difference there. Exactly. Distinction here. It's getting clear. So not only is Obama having sex with ten dudes a day, he's very selfish because he's just getting

Not reciprocal, exactly. Apparently he stopped by the person's apartment later that day wanting more, according to the interview with this man by god insatiable convicted fraud dinesh d'Souza one thing i find very interesting because all of the conspiracies or conspiracy adjacent things we've talked about it's like they go in cycles there's

like a a level of vaccine skepticism and information that ebbs and flows UFOs. And it's interesting because Pizzagate feels like a very of its time thing. However, five, six years ago, but like it's still percolating. It still comes back and people will say, oh, there it is. It's the evidence of the the pizza and hot dog party where it's clearly code for sexual exploitation of children. And then it pops up again, yeah. It's the satanic panic. Meanwhile, some Twitter blue accounts

posting these exploitation videos or photos and Elon's like, yeah, we'll reinstate them. It's just absurd that there's this weird cross section of like, ah, we hate the secret pedophile cabal but also elon thank you for saving this person who posted this shit on the website right yeah i mean i think you know it's like we talk a lot about the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s and the idea that like children it was like a very popular idea not even actually out of the mainstream, like people who were on Oprah were saying that either as children, they were in this satanic cult and they saw like all these

children being sacrificed or they were children who were eventually kind of coerced into saying that they were being exploited by Satanists in their kindergartens. I mean, it's like the wildest stuff, one of the wildest things that's ever happened in American history. And the shades of that just like never really went away. But I think QAnon is definitely like the closest we had to this like full blown panic that was fully debunked where like everyday Americans and like, you know, Geraldo's show is saying things like there there's like a factory line of women giving birth to babies just so that they could be immediately sacrificed. And they're all buried in this one abandoned lot. Then the cops go and dig up that lot thinking we you know, these huge trials of the century that happened.

And most expensive trial in American history came out of it. And, you know, so it's like that comes back around these like wild ideas of like one of them was like one video shows. What's Hillary Clinton's aid? I can't remember her name right now. She's in a lot of conspiracy theories, but it was like Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Cutting the face off a kid and like wearing it on their face, you know, so it's like these. Oh, yeah. They're so convinced of her. What?

You know, like just the maddening type of conspiracy where you're like, even if Hillary Clinton has done some bad things, even if there's blood on her hands, like, I don't think she's enjoying that type of activity. Yeah, there's different different blood. Yeah, she's not out there recreationally murdering babies. Probably not. I'm going to go with probably not. Picturing a Fox News interviewer. Are you enjoying that kind of activity? Yeah.

I don't know if she's enjoying it, but maybe. Speaking around QAnon, what's going on with QAnon these days? Anybody know what's going on with QAnon? How often does this come up for you in your work? Like, have you had to unpack the cue of it all a lot? You know, I did this. I pivoted the show kind of a couple of years ago to be far more history focused.

We're like choosing to talk about topics by talking about the history of them. So it's like we've talked we always are talking about the satanic panic, but less frequently we're talking about QAnon. And that's partially to keep me alive because it stresses me out so much to kind of like be able to see all the pieces of this and know how it's working, why it's working and not be able to do anything about it. And also just because I'm afraid of the Internet and I'm afraid of, you know, I just like I'm I'm not in that way. I do not feel like I am an asset because I'm just of, you know, I just like, I'm not, in that way, I do not feel like I am an asset because I'm just being freaked out. But I do follow things with Q when it comes up, but, you know, I don't really know exactly what's going on with Q

because Q kind of is gone. Is that right? Or did Q come back and I missed it? There was an attempt recently I thought where he or that whatever yeah uh tried to post again but it's unclear if it was them I think but the like the Q posting has definitely like fizzled out yeah I think it's more just sort of like they kind of this like trajectory of like they're still like q obsessives but they've more like spread out to like other arenas yeah in in kind of like kind of the same

realm too though right like where they're going after i don't even know because it's not like it seems like the clinton of it all like the oh they're like they're eating the babies or whatever has fizzled out but it's focused on like the the groomers and like that sort of thing and um it's been repackaged yeah exactly um somebody i'm surprised this wasn't pointed out enough back in the day but like it kind of blows my mind that q anon it started on 8chan and like that's such a weird disconnect of, like, we're going to take down the child exploitation. Everybody who goes to 8chan. Right, which is, like, a hub of that. What?

Like, that's where it lives. That's a good point, Cody. Like, what do you, like, who do you think is posting here? It was, it's such a obvious, like. Look over there. Proof of, like, yes. Like, what are you doing? Like, what are you talking about come on

like just see i'm just i was just like when somebody i saw someone point that i was like oh yeah why did nobody point this out enough but i'm sure they did and nobody cared but yeah there is a lot of things to point out all at once but yeah no that's a very good point like they just didn't care yeah also the the cue of it all kind of becomes less interesting when it's probably just jim and ron watkins two guys which is is that what it is it's probably just them or they took it from someone else at some point it's almost definitely the watkinses and yeah also i think i feel like it's less it's less exciting for people who are into that world when Trump isn't the president. Because they don't feel like they've got their fighter in the world doing the work behind the scenes to take them down.

And there's probably an element of feeling more helpless. It's like, well, the Biden crime family is in charge so like no progress is being made um or like you know no progress is we can't perceive progress is being made um because our guy's not in there anymore and i would guess that the next election like as we get closer it'll absolutely ramp up this is what i was thinking as well just now. It's like, I don't know if it'll be the exact same Q trajectory, but all of this energy is going to keep bubbling up. And especially around Mr. Donald J. Trump. Oh, yeah.

Debates coming up. Debates are coming up. Oh, boy. We're excited. Not quite, but in a couple weeks. Thrilling. It was really, really lovely having you on today, weeks. Thrilling. It's just really, really lovely having you on

today, Chelsea. Thank you. Truly the perfect guest for this conversation. I'm so glad. I had such a great time. Thanks to all of you for having me. You tell our listeners where they can find your show, where they can follow you, all that good stuff. American Hysteria, you can get it

wherever you get your podcasts. Instagram, we're at American hysteria podcast and we're on threads there too and then I'm on Twitter but I don't go there because it scares me very often but that's

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