Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Richard Syrett: Toronto Mike'd #238

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

Mike chats with Richard Syrett about The Conspiracy Show, Coast to Coast AM and various conspiracy theories from JFK to 9/11.

Welcome to episode 238 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Beer, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is host of the conspiracy show, Richard Surrett. Welcome, Richard. Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me in your subterranean lair here. Yes. Although I do smell something funky coming from the crawlspace. Should I be worried?

You tell me. You seem to have all the answers. I got a lot of questions, but not a lot of answers. I was thinking, what song would I play when Richard Surrett shows up? And I had a lot of songs I could choose from. And I was thinking this R.E.M. ditty might be the track as we get things brewing here. All right. What I like about this basement, I recently, just like last week,

I took video, like I always talk about this studio, like the low ceilings and just the basement and I wanted to give people a visual of like, what is it like for a guest to come into my basement? So I did a video and I posted it on torontomic.com. So if people are listening and they want to experience what you just experienced,

they can head over and watch that. Well, you know, it's kind of cool as someone who's only 5'8", when someone tells me, you know, watch your head,

it's a great boost for my ego. You know what? If you're greater than 5'7", you're going to have an issue down here. Yeah, I'm not much taller than you are

and I, I mean, now I'm well trained, but at the beginning I was banging my head left, right, and center. By the way, Lou Skizes says hi. He's the last guest who banged his head on that ceiling. Oh, poor Lou. Lou is a good friend. Lou said, have you talked to Richard? And I was thinking, I would love to talk to Richard because I'm not,

I'll be right off the top, I'm not a big conspiracy guy. Why not? I know, we're going to talk about that. What is the matter with you? The way you, your cadence and the way you deliver on the radio, I find it very entertaining. Hypnotic. Yes. Well, thank you.

That's all we want out of our radio personalities is entertainment, so congrats on that. And is it fair to say you're Canada's Art Bell? I have been described thusly, yes. Well, we operate in the same arena, I suppose. But Art Bell, obviously a huge influence. Just a great broadcaster, never mind the content. But he was one of those guys that I could listen to him read the phone book.

Just a great, great on-air presentation. Have you ever talked to Art Bell? I have not, although I have been to Pahrumpf, Nevada, where he calls home. And I am lucky enough to sit in and host Coast to Coast AM, his former program. Are you kidding me? I got questions. Don't worry. We're getting to that for sure. But I was wondering if you had any insight

because Art Bell came back recently with Midnight in the Desert and it didn't last very long. And then I remember reading he said something about security concerns. He was shutting it down due to security concerns for his family. Well, I don't have any insight,

only to say that as a fan, I have noticed, like many people, that Art is a little mercurial. And I don't know how many times he retired. He had back issues and a number of other personal issues over the years. And so this was – in his latest incarnation, it was very short-lived, regrettably. And I heard those reports. Someone was firing shots in his general direction, and he had concerns about his young family. But it wasn't you. We can arrest that right now.

That was not you. I am not licensed to carry and conceal in the state of Nevada, so I can safely say it was not me. Good. No, I just want to clear that up. Yeah, Midnight in the Desert came because I remember my friends, I think they're friends of yours as well, but Humble and Fred. Ah, yes. Were on CFRB 1010, now News Talk 1010 at midnight.

They'd rerun the podcast at midnight. Right. And I think they got news from Mike Van Dixon that we will no longer be doing that because Art Bell has a new show, Midnight in the Desert. So they got booted for Art Bell. It wasn't very long before Art Bell pulled the plug on that thing. I noticed Ben Dixon never called back

Humble and Fred. So you don't have any insight into that one either. Well, they are doing well on their own as far as I can tell. They're great guys. I've been on with Humble and Fred a bunch of times. And they're very generous.

They moved studios because they bought a place on the Queensway, and Howard lives above. That's right. Have you been to that location? Well, yeah. They're doing the show in the living room, and now we're doing it in your basement. That's right. That's the modern broadcasting

world we live in. You're a hockey fan. It's safe to say that there's no NHL conspiracy because we might have an Ottawa-Nashville final, and I'm thinking that might be one of the worst draws for a U.S. television audience. No doubt. I have to confess, I am a Maple Leaf fan. And once the Leafs make their hasty retreat, if they get there in the first place,

I mean, I shut it down. You shut it down? Yeah, I'm not, you know, if it was St. Louis playing Anaheim, I'm not going to be, you know, perched in front of the TV. Once the Leafs are done, I devote my full attention to my beloved Blue Jays.

Okay, well, what that's meant, if you shut it down and the Leafs are gone, it means you've had a lot of spring time outside. I've been to a lot of live baseball games in April and May, yes. Any chance that the Jays can right the ship and make a run? Yeah, I'm not giving up on them. It's early. And they were in about this situation last year or the year before.

Two years ago. Richard, we rebuilt that team, if you will, in late July. That was the team that in late July got too low David Price. To me, we're not going to do that. So to me, it's not quite a fair comparison because the 2015 team that started

was not the same team that went on that mad run in August and September. No, but we won't have those horses back for a couple of weeks. team that started was not the same team that went on that mad run in August and September. No, but we won't have those horses back, you know, for a couple of weeks. And then once we have a healthy Tulo and a Josh Donaldson and Jay Happ, you know, who knows? I still think we could take a serious run at a wild card. I hope you're right. There's just too much talent there.

Well, I keep alluding, referring to 89. In 1989, we were 12 and 24 when they fired Jimmy Williams and hired Cito Gaston and then we went on a, we ended up winning the AL East. That's a very apt comparison.

And there was no wild cards back then, so it's actually easier now with the wild cards. Are you a music fan? I'm a huge music fan. I'm kind of a classic rock guy and I like to kick it old school,

as the kids would say, Sly and the Family Stone. I was listening to on the way down here. Cool, yeah. If you go back late 80s and throughout the 90s, I was a big Soundgarden fan, and this is my first broadcast since Chris Cornell passed away,

so I just wanted to say we lost a legend. This guy had the pipes. For all those grunge rockers that came out of Seattle, this was the, and I loved most of them, but this guy had the voice, the range. This guy had the pipes. Yeah, I have to admit, not a huge Soundgarden fan. Didn't they also, did they do, he was with Audioslave.

Yes. They had a song that I liked, something about the highway. Yeah, I Am a Highway. I Am a Highway. I played that. I get to, one of the great things about doing Coast to Coast is I get to pick the bumper music. Cool. And I get more comments about the music than I do on the actual show.

And I play I'm a Highway occasionally. It's a good driving song. Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah, he had a, like, I liked him because, well, I liked Soundgarden first. And then he did The Temple of the Dog, which basically was, I call it Pearl Jam plus Cornell, because it was a tribute album to Andrew Wood, who died of a heroin overdose, and he was lead singer of Mother Love Bone.

So it's basically Pearl Jam before they were Pearl Jam, plus Chris Cornell, and you get Hunger Strike and Say Hello to Heaven and that cool stuff. Then you still get your Soundgarden stuff, and then you get this kind of a cool Chris Cornell solo thing, which I was digging, from the single soundtrack, etc. And then the Audioslave, which was like, I had high expectations and they were met and then

lately i've noticed cornell's been doing some covers that were like really interesting in uh interpretations of like songs like nothing compares to you and uh billy jean of all things so yeah the cornell career was was kind of varied eclectic, and very sorry to see him go. And he was one of the good ones, for sure. Well, we had the 27 club. Well, we have to start a 52 club now. I was thinking at least he almost doubled Kurt, right? Because, yeah, that's almost doubling Kurt.

A few things I want to mention to everyone listening. And we're going to dive into the conspiracy show and coast to coast and talk about conspiracies with Richard Surrett. I'm looking forward to it, but if you're listening now, I urge you, this is no conspiracy. You need to go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike and help crowdfund this project. So interesting people like Richard will continue to venture into my cold basement. It's cold, right? Are you cold? It's brisk and refreshing, Mike.

Refreshing. Good. I was worried. I was worried I'd have to put the heat on over there because I'm in shorts and a t-shirt because it's like 21 degrees out there. Although not by the lake here, but that's another story. Don't get me on that one. But it's kind of cold down here.

But please give what you can at patreon.com slash torontomike. Do you drink beer, Richard? I have been known to have a few wobbly pops, yes. That beer is courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. It's going home with you today. Great Lakes, actually, they have a... Every Friday, they're starting it this Friday, and it goes throughout

the summer. It's called, I want to get the name right, Street Food Fridays, they call it. So I'm going to be at Great Lakes Beer around 1.30 p.m. this Friday. You get $5 pints of beer. They have a great new patio, which is fantastic. And food trucks show up so you can get lots of interesting street food. So this is all happening Fridays throughout the summer at Great Lakes Beer. And I'll be there if you want to come by and, I don't know, come by and say hi or punch me in the face or whatever.

You can do that this Friday at Great Lakes Beer. You can do that too, Richard, if you want a pint. I'd buy yours. I am a man of peace. I'm a lover, not a fighter. want a pint. I'd buy yours. I am a man of peace. I'm a lover, not a fighter. Mike, I don't want to complain. This is a six-pack. I notice there's only five beers in here.

What's going on? Good observation. I'm just seeing how keen your observation skills are, but that's because. And I can give you a sixth. I'm not even trying to be chintzy here. I have left that space open because I'm going to give you, courtesy. I'm not even trying to be chintzy here. I have left that space open because I'm going to give you,

courtesy of Brian Gerstein, there's a pint glass. You see that? Yes. That's yours. Yes. So my thought is, and I don't know,

maybe this is something I need to revisit, but I'm thinking guests come and they leave. Do you want to have a six pack plus a pint glass? Or if you could just carry the one, no one can see my gesture here, but carry the one six pack with the five beer plus a pint glass, or if you could just carry the one, no one can see my gesture here, but carry the one six-pack with the five beer in the pint glass, I just thought that might be easier.

Well, I will leave that up to you, but obviously you didn't read the writer in my contract, but I will take the five out of the six, and I will take the lovely beer stein. Thank you. No brown M&Ms for Richard Surrett. I think that was the rule.

That pint glass, so more on that. Actually, I've got a jingle here. And I think this is... I've caught people singing this in the subway. I think it's catching on here. This is the Property in the Six jingle. Tell me what you think, Richard. This is...

You're tapping your toes i am i can see that brian says the toronto real estate board has over 45 000 realtors i think i've heard from them all in the last couple of weeks they seem to drop things in my mailbox all the time. And they're all licensed and it's a record number. That's over double from when Brian started. When you're looking for a realtor, the number one question you have to ask is, are you in it on a full-time basis, actively working with buyers and sellers? Are you a part-time agent who lacks the negotiation skills and would not even be available for buyer inquiries?

There are too many realtors. They're in it for part-time, looking to work with their family and friends on the side. And by choosing them, you're not only risking getting less for your house, but jeopardizing your relationship as well. So call Brian, 416-873-0292. That's 416-873-0292.

When you need an experienced realtor who has worked before in the market, we're in now, and knows how to market it properly, Brian Gerstein is a real estate sales representative of PSR Brokerage. And he's given you, Richard, that pint glass to take home with you. Well, thanks, Bri. Can I call him Bri? You can call him Bri. Just make sure you call him.

416-873-0292. All right, let's start at the beginning. The very beginning, Richard. Your involvement in radio and television in this market. So when did it begin for you? Is this in the early 90s when you show up on our radio waves? It was. Well, on the other side of the microphone, actually, in the early 90s, 1992,

my first gig in radio was I was the on-air producer or call screener for Larry Solway. That's going way back. Larry's no longer with us. But Larry at one time was with, I think, Chum AM or Chum FM. I can't remember. But there was a couple of guys in the business who claimed that they sort of were the pioneers of talk radio. And one was Larry Solway. He claimed that he did the first call-in show in Toronto. And then years later, I met Charlie Deering, another legend from CFRB. And he said, no, that was me. Anyway, between those two, I tell you, I learned a lot. Those were the glory days at CFRB. Think of this lineup. It was like the 27 Yankees. I know you'll appreciate that reference. You had Wally Crowder, in the Guinness Book of World Records, longest serving morning man in radio in the world. He was there for 60 years, came right out of the service

and landed an on-air gig at CFRB. Then you had Andy Barry, a little left of center, fair to say, not my cup of tea exactly, but a great broadcaster, no disputing that. And then we had, I think it was Jane Houghton. We had Wayne McLean, who was a crazy train wreck of a guy, just, but a brilliant sort of mad prophet of the airwaves. And then after Wayne McLean, then you had, gosh, I can't remember. Anyway, then you had Ed Needham, who I later was the on-air call screener for Ed as well. Ed Needham was this larger-than-life bloviator from the United States. He used to write for Esquire magazine. He was a war correspondent during the Vietnam War.

They'd fly him up from Florida to do Monday to Thursday, 7 to 10 p.m., which is now like a wasteland in radio. Yeah, yeah. You can't even. Rerolls and syndicated. Exactly. They won't pay you to do that shift anymore. That's true.

They were paying Ed Needham big money to come up at CFRB and do that show. And then on the overnights, overnights with John Oakley. Wow. So, I mean, it was like the 27th. And I got to learn from all these people. And so that's how I started as a producer. That's, yeah, so CFRB.

And for the youngsters listening, like, you know, we referred to it earlier, but that's News Talk 1010. But CFRB, that was the Canada's biggest talk radio station. Well, when I was there, again. If it isn't now, it might still be. I have no idea. It might still be it's it's going it's but it's back really it seems to be they're doing very well um but it was a it was a 10 share station an am station with and it was a 10 share we used to flip-flop i think with chfi uh and and chum fm for top spot or it would be in the top three anyway so uh that all changed of

course when when 680 went all news. And I remember when they came into the boardroom, we had a big staff meeting and said, that's the last 10 share book we'll ever see. Because 680, as all news, obviously sort of eroded some of that audience. But so it was great to be sort of at the tail end of the glory years of CFRB and learn from all these brilliant people. I worked with Brian Linehan. Can you tell me, what was Brian like? Because, no joke, and I've referenced this before, but sometimes when I'm preparing for a conversation with someone like yourself, and I channel my inner Brian, you know what I mean? Linehan,

just he was so prepared. He was, yeah. In his research and and stuff. And I'm like, I need to be like Brian. I have these thoughts. What kind of guy was he? I remember as a kid watching him on City TV doing those interviews. And he was just the way he was on camera. His questions were longer than the answer. His questions were longer than the answer. Just a consummate professional, just a warm, generous individual,

just a nice guy to hang around. And again, learned a lot from him. I didn't meet a lot of media personalities as a youngster, but I met him in a park near Runnymede Station, like near Runnymede and Bloor. There was a park. And I bumped into him, and I was a fan, not only, of course, of his City Line.

City Line? That was on City TV. City Line? No, that was Dean. No, you're right. That's not something else. City Lights or something. City Lights. That's what it was, right?

Well, because I produced Brian's show, it aired Saturday nights, I got to meet all of these people. I mean, the heavyweights that he brought through. James Earl Jones. I mean, this is a name going back, and maybe some of your listeners won't remember, Ali McGraw.

Is that love means never having to say you're sorry? That's it, the love story. And just a lovely woman. Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine. But the highlight for me was meeting my idols, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. They came in town to do The Odd Couple, the original Neil Simon play at the, I think it was called the O'Keeffe Center still. Yeah, back then, yeah, the O'Keeffe. And, yeah, just meeting all these amazing people, John Candy and you name it.

Cool, very cool. And you end up, so you mentioned you start off on the other side of the mic, producing all these greats on CFRB, but at some point you get to see what it's like on this side of the mic. The late 1990s, maybe 98, 99, the program director at the time, Steve Couch, came to me and said, I got a slot on Sunday night. And I mean, they were, they did a great job at CFRB for promoting from within and

developing talent. So, and these were the proving grounds, the Sunday night overnight. So he gave me a show and I did, it was a, it was a three hour show and it didn't start off doing, you know, conspiracies and the paranormal right out of the shoot. It sort of just evolved into that. Yeah, you've got to seep up on that, right? You've got to go in and then, ah, here you go. You can't hit him with that right away. Well, it wasn't by design.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that three hours. And I started off doing kind of a, it was a very lame attempt at doing kind of a humorous, kind of frivolous three-hour show, and it didn't really go anywhere. And then as I started to introduce, you know, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and all of these things, it kind of took off. And then, of course, 9-11 happened, and that really cemented everything.

And I've never looked back since. You might be the only person who benefited from 9-11 happened, and that really cemented everything. I've never looked back since. You might be the only person who benefited from 9-11. This is a terrible, terrible joke. Wow. Terrible joke. I'm taking my five beers and my mug. You know who you look like? So now we've been talking, and I just met you.

I literally whisked you in the side door because the kids were napping. We've been talking for 20 minutes now. I get a Walter White vibe from you. Walter White. Bryan Cranston. Oh. Yeah. So I'm Breaking Bad.

Have you ever seen Breaking Bad? No. I'll tell you a funny quick story, though. Of course, of course, of course. From time to time, I do some TV spots, and I was doing a show called National Park Mysteries for the Travel Channel or something in the U.S. So they flew me down to Albuquerque and the spot I was doing the set was in Chaco Canyon. So they have the chair set up and

they drive me in there and I'm sitting down and there's a second AD or someone, and he's got Better Call Saul. Yeah, that's the prequel. Yeah, Better Call Saul, ball cap on. And he's a Navajo Indian gentleman. And I say, well, what's with the ball cap? And then he explains he's the scout manager for Better Call Saul. I said second AD, scouting manager. Anyway, he used to work on Breaking Bad.

And he said this is the exact spot where they shot the opening. Yeah, it's Albuquerque. That's right. But right there in Chaco Canyon. Wow. And he said right here is where the mobile trailer was. And that's the opening sequence every episode, I guess.

Yeah. Where Cranston would come out of the trailer. Is that the idea? Well, that was the first episode. He's sort of, they go, then they kind of come back. It's kind of neat. But yeah, he's in his underwear by the trailer. And yeah, the show, which I've watched it,

and I quite liked it. Like it was, it drew me in and I quite liked it. But yeah, Walter White is this kind of like the anti-hero, if you will, like the bad guy you root for. Right. Even though it's difficult sometimes to root for him. But you do have a, especially with these glasses

and the beard you got going there, that you look a little bit like Walter White. You could just glare at people and say something like, I am the danger. Or something like that. Just like that? Alright. I am the danger. See? I'm shaking. There you go. Good stuff.

He's in the room. What was the name of your show on, uh, on, uh, CFRB? It was kind of a generic name. They gave, um, all of the shows late night.

I think it was called the night side. In fact, I think there is still a night side. Cause I think Barb DiGiulio does it now. Yeah. They've moved it down at that time. It was, uh,

11, 11 PM or something. And now it's seven o'clock. Yeah. They're very clever that way. They give, if the show is, is called,

you know, the night side and then they can get rid of the host. And this they're very clever that way. The show is called The Night Side, and then they can get rid of the host. You know what, though? That's good advice. If anybody, you know you made it when they put your name on the show's title. There you go.

You got to get that Richard Surrett show, because what are they going to do? They got to rename this thing if they let go. Well, should you find yourself in a small market, and they hire you as the morning guy, but it's called The Morning Show. Don't unpack. That's a good point.

That's right. That's right. Get your name on the show. That's one thing about Humble and Fred. We talked about the beginning. Humble and Fred had to have Humble and Fred. If you didn't want Humble and Fred, you had to have a different morning show.

There was no morning show generic title. Well, they're a brand, and they've cultivated that over what? Almost 30 years? Yeah, that sounds... Yeah, 89. So almost, and they've cultivated that over what, almost 30 years? Yeah, that sounds, yeah, 89. So almost, almost, like 28 years, that's right. I think, had Lumbee, Jeff Lumbee was on this show, so Lumbee

and Howard were doing a show in Montreal when Howard was recruited to Toronto to team up with Fred, who was already there at 102.1, to be the new morning show. So it was 1989. There's your humble and Fred trivia for you.

So how do you, I know, so I guess I'm wondering from CFRB, how do you end up hosting the conspiracy show? Well, I took the same content, the same program that was at CFRB, and I moved that over to AM640. At that time, it was Mojo, Talk Radio for Guys. I went over there with John Oakley to produce the morning show. That was 2003. That's when Humble and Fred left for Mix 99.9. We were four ships passing in the night. And yeah, they came in, we left.

Nothing you said, fellas. Anyway, I was producing the morning show and then Friday nights I did, I don't even know, I guess it was called the Richard Serrett Show, but it was still, it was conspiracies in the land of woo, as we call it. So I did that for several years at 640.

And then CFRB came a calling and they wanted me to do the show Monday to Friday. So I went back to CFRB and did that for two years. And then Inauguration Day 2008, I got the call from the program director, and I thought, oh, great. We had been talking about maybe even syndicating the program. And like an idiot, I walk in there saying, oh, this is going to be great.

And then I see the young woman with the clipboard. That's a sign. That's HR, yes. Yeah, I've heard more of those stories. If there's two, because you always have two people in the room, right? They'll have like an HR person and maybe your direct report or something,

like the person you report to or something. That's right. And if you see like a folder and they're, yeah. Run the other way, because that's the George Costanza trick, I think. Just run the other way. Yeah, I didn't have the presence of mind to do that. I went back to my office with my Pampers box and I packed my belongings.

I had twin boys not even two years old. So out I went and then a few months later I landed at Zoomer Radio, AM 740, and I have been there ever since. That sounds familiar. It's a great track. That's composed just for the show by Jeff Eden, Studio 8, here in the Toronto area. Great composer.

He did a good job on this because it kind of captures that mood, that ambiance. It's nicely done. In fact, I don't even want to talk over it I'm enjoying it here but the conspiracy show theme so zoomer by the

way I have a gentleman coming over next week Joel Goldberg who also goes by the name Jay Gold and he was I'm looking at Maestro Fresh West is let your backbone slide here he

directed that video he used to he created electric circus on City TV. He did a bunch of work with Moses back at the City TV days, and now he's working at Zoomer, or doing something with Zoomer with Moses again, like they reunited. Ah.

Just a small world story. It's kind of strange, because I feel like I've always, working late nights almost my entire career, I feel like a ghost and so i don't you know i don't i miss the commodity the uh the um interaction with employees sometimes but i don't get to meet any of these people you know i'm just a name on a maybe at a christmas party or something i don't even get no i'm not an employee i don't get the invite that's not nice they should still

invite you to the christmas party uh so tell tell me about how the conspiracy show comes to Zoomer and tell the listeners about the conspiracy show on Zoomer Radio, if you don't know, is AM 740. And 96.7 FM in Toronto. Oh, that's right. I always forget that. Yeah, good. Well, you're forgiven.

It's a fairly new development, I guess, in the last year and a half. Well, Brian Linehan would have known that. That's where I just, you know, I feel I failed him. Yeah, good. Well, you're forgiven. It's a fairly new development, I guess, in the last year and a half. Well, Brian Linehan would have known that. That's where I just, you know, so I feel like I failed him. You, sir, standing there, sitting there with your coiffed hair

are correct. Yes, Brian would have known that. What can I tell you? It's a Sunday night, 11 p.m. Eastern. Zuma Radio is a remarkable blowtorch station. It's 50,000 watts.

It's the old CBC AM station, so it's licensed as a clear channel, which means at night they get to boost their power instead of powering down once the sun goes down. Otherwise, they collide with other stations. And because of that, at night, my show will carry all the way down to the Carolinas. Wow. And from Maine to Minnesota. It's one of the largest broadcast footprints in North America. Wow.

In fact, I was down in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. I was shooting an episode of my TV show, also called The Conspiracy Show. And I was in a cab in D.C. And I said, would you mind? I wanted to do a little experiment. I said, would you flip it over to 740? And sure enough, it came in. Clear as a bell.

That's incredible. Well, the Carolinas, I can't believe it. When I was a kid, I had a transistor radio. And one night, I picked up a station in Cleveland. And at the time, I felt like I was picking up a station on the moon. Like, I just was like... Well, pretty much. You're not too far from the truth.

Right. I'm like, this is Cleveland radio station on the moon. Like, it just was like... Well, pretty much. You're not too far from the truth. Right. I'm like, this is Cleveland Radio. They're talking about Fahrenheit and all. This is crazy. Yeah. Isn't it? It's romantic, listening to these far-off places

in the middle of the night. Absolutely. No, I loved it. And is this show... Though this show has... You mentioned the bait and switch, if you will, that you were going into a meeting at 1010 hoping to talk about syndication and stuff. But have you managed, you have affiliates in the U.S. that air the conspiracy show?

I do. I have, I've lost count, I think it's around 35 in the U.S. and some here in Canada. And that's through syndication networks out of Chicago. And they've been working with me for, oh, I guess about five years now and it's a long road. It's a very long road. But like, do you own the show?

I do. So you own the show and then you sell it to Zoomer or whatever and then you can sell it to whoever you want because it's your show. Right. That is correct, sir. Good business sense.

Own your show. I got one thing right, I guess. Very good. Now, you did mention that you sometimes can be heard on Coast to Coast. I also have a song there, too. Now, George Norrie? George Norrie, that's right. He's the regular host, if you will, but sometimes you'll fill in for him.

So when would you be heard on Coast to Coast? Well, George does Monday to Friday. Occasionally, he'll take a Friday off to tape a TV show called Beyond Belief. I've been known to sit in on a Friday night. And then I'll do a Saturday night once in a while or a Sunday night. So in June, I'm doing June the 10th, a Saturday night. And then the next night, Sunday, June the 11th. And I do this out of AM640.

I was going to ask, do you host that at AM740? 640. Right. So, okay, yes. Now, 640, that's right. Because can you remind me about, I don't have the notes here, but I'm trying to remember off the top of my head.

Coast to Coast, was it ever on 1010? Or no? No. They just got the new Art Bell show that we talked about that failed or whatever. To compete with, because I'm sure 640 dominates these, I don't know how many listeners are up,

the Insomniacs and the truck drivers and stuff, but I think this is the show to listen to. It is billed as the most listened to late night radio program in the world. They have over, I think it's around 650 affiliates in North America. And their weekly numbers, I don't know, it's somewhere between 12, 15 million

or something. It's a monster. It's a monster program. But again, and we'll talk about this later, but I don't consider myself a conspiracy guy at all. But when you're in a car, like if you're driving late at night or whatever, there's something hypnotic and soothing about it,

something about coast to coast. It's similar to the conspiracy show. It's just, even though it's not really, I don't have a lot of conspiracy theories that I believe to be true, I enjoy listening to that. Well, it's storytelling. It's storytelling.

And it's the spoken word. And it's great company. And it's not all about conspiracies. Right. There's amazing programs about alternative energy and alternative health. And people who have heard strange noises in the middle of the night. Oakley used to talk about the electronic bonfire and how radio has become the electronic bonfire. And it's the oldest storytelling in the world.

It's like the fireside chats. Gathering around the campfire after the hunt. And there's something that connects people. And I think that's more than anything is the allure of the program. It creates this sense of community. Yeah, and there's a question from the audience. Frank Black. I don't know if it's the Frank Black, but Frank Black wants to know,

and I'll quote him because I can't really speak to this myself. Why do so many Art Bell devotees villainize and slaughter George Norrie? Do you think the Art Bell devotees won't embrace somebody new? Is there anything there? Oh, I'm sure art had such a devote um audience and if you go into any of the the old coast to coast chat forums and and um you know everybody's measured against art bell by these people that that are involved in these in these chat rooms and forums and so forth so if you're not art bell it doesn't matter i mean i've been on the receiving end

of some of that vitriol myself. Well, I can imagine, yeah. You know, George has done an amazing job in building that audience since Art's departure. I mean, Art was the franchise. And then along comes George Norrie. And, you know, he had to win people over. Not an easy thing to do.

It's like, you know, I'm sure the way Daryl Sittler felt when he replaced Dave Keon as the captain. Or Matt Sundin when he replaced Wendell Clark. It's not an easy thing to have to do. So, yeah, unfortunately or fortunately, whatever. You know, you just get people who are going to be haters, right? Haters going to hate. Yeah, and the people that don't,

sometimes people who don't create things, all they can do is tear down. And there's some of that going on as well. Listen, George, you can't argue with success. George has a certain quality, a likability, and people like them. And that's a skill. And it's not necessarily, I think it's something you're born with.

I don't know that you can develop that. By the way, if I ever hosted the most listened to late night radio program in the world, I'd be wearing my t-shirts and my bumper sticker on my car. I would just be making that proclamation. I hosted the most listened to late night radio program in the world. That's pretty cool to stick that on a resume. It is, and I'm blessed. It was actually my lovely bride, the mighty Aphrodite,

who kind of pushed me into that and said, why don't you send a resume and see what... And I said, oh, are you kidding? Why would they listen to me? Why would they be interested in me? And then lo and behold, on a, uh, a Friday night or something, I got, uh, I got a phone call from the vice president of, of talk at premier and, and who, who happened to be from Montreal and said, I think it would be kind of cool to have a fellow Canuck hosting coast to Coast. What do you say? George is taking a night off to celebrate his daughter's birthday. And I say, are you messing with me? Sure. It was like getting a call up from the Yankees.

Can you tell me the origin story of the Mighty Aphrodite nickname for your wife? Well, she's Greek, so that answers half of it. The other thing is, I remember a Woody Allen film called The Mighty Aphrodite. Mira Servino, I believe. That's right. She won the Best Supporting Actress for that. I believe you're right. You are Brian Linehan. Hey, I try. I try.

The reincarnation. Yeah, and I just wanted to give her kind of a nom de plume, whatever the equivalent is on radio, and I didn't want to identify her because she has a life and a career of her own. So I sign off every night with, move over, Aphrodite, I'm coming home.

And you mentioned, how old are your twins now? They will be 11 this year. Have they, a little sidebar before we come back, but have they ever expressed interest in going to a concert yet? Like a music concert? I took them to see the Zombies. They were playing at the Danforth Music Hall. I was expecting, because

my daughter's like, Daddy, I want to see Selena Gomez. I was expecting something like that. No, I have inculcated them with the classic rock, and they love it. That's amazing, because I tried so hard to brainwash my oldest son, okay?

Because I'm a big, I mean, I love a lot of stuff, like a lot of hip-hop and stuff, but I like a lot of rock. But today, so my son is, my oldest is 15, and he's got headphones on all the time he's always listening to music there's not a guitar to be heard the guitar does not exist in his playlists and i just i i tried so hard from the beginning to brainwash him like you know anything from the tragically hip to pearl jam to soundgarden nirvana just just all this good stuff and it it didn't

work who got to him i. Who got to him? I know. Who got to him? And sometimes I'm like, you know, son, you might like, even the Beatles, like the guitar kind of makes a neat sound, and it kind of goes nicely with drums and a bass line. From as far back as I can remember with the boys, they were listening to the White Album and Odyssey and Oracle and the Beach Boys, and Odyssey and Oracle and

the Beach Boys. Thank God they love it because otherwise I'd have to sell them. Well done. I will not have that in my house. Kudos to you because now literally next week I'll be taking my daughter to see Chance the Rapper.

Chance the Rapper. I'm not familiar with that orchestra. On a sad note, though, a very sad note is I was, so I think about, you know, my daughter wanting to go with Selena Gomez because Selena Gomez was like a, if you don't know Selena Gomez, she was a Disney Channel star

on a show called Wizards of Waverly Place, and then she becomes a pop star. So her core audience is like, I don't know, it's like 12 year old girls. Like this is the heart of the Selena Gomez fan base. And why I took my daughter to see her at the ACC. And these thoughts have been just all in my head.

I keep picturing, you know, my daughter and Selena Gomez, and it breaks my heart. Cause I think about the, the poor kids at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. And then I map it over and it's like, and it's just can't make sense how, breaks my heart because I think about the poor kids at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. Right, right. And then I map it over and it's like,

and it's just, can't make sense. How, and maybe this is why so many people enjoy your show and your stories. Some stuff, you just, it's so difficult to find any rhyme or reason or sense to it. And I find that very uncomfortable. Well, there isn't a lot of resolution to what we talk about.

Whether you're talking about this clash of civilizations that we find ourselves in now with radical jihadis versus the West, and that's what it is. It's a clash of civilizations. We will not, you or I, will not live to see a resolution to that.

I mean, this is going to go on for probably a century or more. That's the way I see it anyway. And then, you know, setting that aside, the whole other arena that I get into UFOs and the paranormal, let's face it, we're never going to get to the bottom of that. It's an onion and you peel one layer away and another away and then all you're left with are peels of onions. There's no there there, ultimately. So in a way, I guess it's a recipe for job security, because none of these things, you know, if we could say, well, that solves that one.

Let's, you know, close up the shop and turn off the lights. So where's the line, though? Because something I would read periodically from, they call themselves conspiracy theorists, but I wonder where the line is and whether this gives people like yourself a very bad name. When I think about, like, the Sandy Hook. Right.

And you'll hear people who say that was, I don't remember the terms exactly. You'll know the terms. A false flag. Right. And then all I can think about is, like, what the parents of the kids who came home in body bags from Sandy Hook, like you're spitting in there. The whole thing just upsets me so much.

Do those types of conspiracy theories paint some of the other stuff? Does it paint the whole arena in a bad light? Does it taint everything else? Because I would ask you? Because, for example, I would ask you, Richard, Sandy Hook, do you believe that happened? I'm inclined to believe that it did, yes.

But there are... Talk to me. The pursuit of truth doesn't need to apologize for anything. And when you're talking about grisly crimes and murder and whether it was the assassination of JFK in 63, we call it the assassination and we look at the Zapruder film a million times and it becomes sanitized in our minds. That was a murder.

A father and a husband was shot in the head in front of tens of millions of people. Well, we saw it later. It wasn't live television. But we've all seen, we've literally all seen the bullet hitting the head and the blood splattering. Exactly. So, I mean, the moment that happened, there were people trying to get to the bottom and saying, wait a minute, Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Book Depository.

Wait a minute, there's a tree growing in front of that window. I've been there. There's no clear shot. He was using a Mannlicher Carcano, the humanitarian weapon. You can't with a bolt action, you can't do, you can't fire off three shots. The weapon was, you know,

taken apart. He had to reassemble it and put on a scope and you can't line up the, you can't you know, line up the scope without taking it out onto the range. Impossible, impossible. The moment that happened. So were there people sitting around saying, wait a minute, the president is dead.

How dare you? Or 9-11. You know, I was talking about 9-11 a few days after it happened and raising questions that the mainstream media weren't asking. That a fifth grader would have asked, basic questions. The who, why, what, you know, how does a building fall into its own footprint and all of these things. And yes, there was a blowback.

How could you, you know, sully the memory of these people? Why? What? By trying to figure out who killed them and why? There's no need to apologize for that. Some of it is a little unsavory, yes. And some of it is being done for, you know, other purposes. It's not, it's disinformation or someone's trying to make a name for themselves. Yeah, that's not on. But I don't apologize for trying to ask questions. That's not on, but I don't apologize for trying to ask questions. No, I guess, but is there a difference between asking the questions about 9-11 and, of course, the JFK one, which, by the way, even I can understand that completely. Like, we know the president is dead, a father, a husband. We know he is dead. There's a lot of questions there, and, of course, we should still be asking these questions.

questions there and of course we should still be asking these questions but is there a big do you see a difference between that and uh someone suggesting that nobody died at sandy hook like to me and i've heard that from people sincerely saying nobody died at sandy hook well i'll i'll i have entertained that show and i'll listen to it and i'll challenge uh but you know no no there are i'm willing to listen to those questions and entertain them. I mean, because there are so many gaps in the reporting and so many aspects of that story that don't make sense. You know, who was the other guy in the field with the weapon that was apprehended? Why did they report he had one type of weapon and then we see the police pulling another

weapon out of his trunk and there's so many unanswered questions uh that um the mainstream media weren't even asking and pursuing they just this is what infuriates me about not only you know that case 9-11 osama bin laden uh supposedly killed and buried at sea uh you know, the reportage is just abysmal. I've never seen anything like it. They've just abandoned the playing field. And unfortunately, the result of that is it's being, that vacuum is being filled by a bunch of so-called citizen journalists who are not necessarily properly trained.

But, you know, this is the result. You get a lot of, yeah, there are a lot of wackos out there. The conspiracy field is a big tent. It's a big tent. One thing I am always mindful of, though, is I don't tolerate hate. I won't allow hate to get on the air. I mean, to the best of my ability,

occasionally someone sneaks by and something gets out and I try and, you know, address that. But, you know, I'm not going to talk about, you know, some Jewish conspiracy or the Holocaust being a hoax. The Holocaust was the greatest conspiracy

in that Hitler conspired to murder six million Jews. And I don't even... That was a conspiracy. And they'll pull your license if you even... Right? On the CRTC,

there's a law, right, about denying the Holocaust. I guess there's a gray there, but I know that you can't go on terrestrial radio and make a comment like the Holocaust never happened. And I believe it's like...

That's... Well, I know in Europe it's against the law. Let me, you know, cards on the table. I mean, I don't, I'm a big free speech guy. I don't think it should be against the law. But I'm not, you know, I'm not going there.

I'm not going to talk about it because what it does is it just promotes hate. And that's where I draw the line. You asked the question. Right. Where do I draw the line? But let me, if I have a second. Yeah, please. The idea of the show is, the idea is the line? But let me, if I have a second here. Yeah, please, of course.

The idea of the show is, the idea is that conspiracy, the word conspiracy, and the term conspiracy theory is in fact a conspiracy. Do you know where the term conspiracy theory came from? Because previous to that, it's a legal term, right? Every year, there are hundreds of thousands of criminal conspiracy charges laid throughout the world, right? In the United States, North America, whatever. You know, if two people get together and plot a crime, that's a conspiracy. That's all it requires, more than one person. If Lee Harvey Oswald conspired with someone else to kill Kennedy, whether Lee Oswald fired the bullet or not, then it's a conspiracy.

So that's the term conspiracy. You have more than one person plotting to do something. The Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb, that was a conspiracy. Hundreds of thousands of nuclear scientists and other people, they got together and they conspired to build the A-bomb. Operation Overlord was a conspiracy. They conspired to invade Normandy, the Allies. But conspiracy theory, after the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Report came out, nobody bought the Warren Report. Even three out of the seven Warren commissioners didn't buy it. three out of the seven, sorry, three out of the seven Warren commissioners didn't buy it. It wasn't unanimous, by the way.

It was 4-3. Nobody bought it in the public. So the CIA, and there was a memorandum. It was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The CIA decided that all of these people that were very suspicious of the Warren report and didn't believe the official version, you know, they started like Jim Garrison and others, they started, you know, talking about it publicly and in some cases implicating the CIA and other,

and other people. And the CIA decided that they're going to create this term conspiracy theory so that it could be used as a, as be used as a method of sort of beating people down and stifling discourse, right? How many times, you know, I can't name the number of times people have said to me, oh, that's just a conspiracy theory. They don't even understand what the term means or where it comes from. Well, Seth Rich murder. Oh, that's a conspiracy theory. It may well have been a conspiracy. If there was more than one person involved in his murder, then it's a conspiracy. But it's been used now in the pejorative.

People don't understand the term. And it's annoying. Okay. And again, I'm enjoying this because I have a lot of... I have some friends, for example, that believe some things about 9-11 and stuff. And sometimes I feel sorry for them that they need to sort of tap into this and believe this.

Because I don't believe that. And then they'll say, oh, because where did you read that? And I'll be explaining my sources and it'll be it'll be as if as if you can't trust any source you can't trust i feel like fox molder here uh trust no one right right right so i'm because there's something you know some people uh and i hope i'm not rambling too much here but some people believe uh man never landed on the moon and and that that was staged and this is a and and but then again some i know i've heard a nba player come out and say that the earth is flat right like they're these things is what you're doing is you're inflating all of these

things you see and that's the other thing people do is oh 9-11 you probably believe that the lunar landing was a hoax and you believe the earth is flat as if there is any connection between the three of them you have to take it on a case-by-case basis i believe that man landed on the moon uh although i've done many shows on on and and the the case against is fascinating and it's good listening and it deserves to be told it deserves to be heard what are we afraid of yeah hear them out but at the end of the day uh we can trust the scientists and Neil Armstrong and the many people who took photos and first-hand accounts. We can trust that man did—because at some point, if you can't trust anything, it just feels like your world—it feels like you're on unstable ground. Right. It's a danger, but who's responsible for that? Who is responsible for the

lack of faith in institutions? I mean, I think the mainstream media has to carry the water for a lot of that. You know, people go, fake news, fake news, fake news. Well, the Washington Post and the New York Times, every week they come out with a story. No basis, in fact, in unnamed sources and so forth. And this last presidential election cycle has taught us anything. I mean, look, the MSM, their approval rating is below Congress. It's like one step up above, you know, a pedophile. It's just they are never going to get it back. Okay, they have betrayed, by and large, their responsibility.

Richard, when people like me like to throw studies at you, let's say there's been some research that's been published and it suggests that there's a link between the endorsement of conspiracy theories and low self-esteem, for example. How would you respond? Well, it's interesting that, and I've read so many of these reports and these studies, and they have this, the bias immediately is that none of the conspiracies are true,

so let's try and figure out what makes these poor people tick. You have to evaluate these on a case-by-case basis. You can't just throw everything into the hopper, lunar landing hoax, Bigfoot, 9-11, JFK, as if it's one monolithic thing. It's not. So what you do is you start pulling on strings and see what unravels.

And if it doesn't unravel, fine. Then you move on to the next. But it's about asking questions and investigating things. And if there's nothing there, there's nothing there. So then you move on to the next thing. A number of studies have been done which actually shows that people that are more susceptible to confirmation bias are those people who believe in the official version of things. Okay, yeah.

In fact, now I'm going to pass the baton here. So that Robby Jay, Rob Jay is a long-time listener of this show, and he's a, he doesn't miss the Conspiracy Show, and he's a huge Richard Surrett fan, and he was very excited when I mentioned you were coming by, and he had a bunch of

questions. Now, I don't think I can ask them all because I don't think you want to be here for three hours, but I can ask a few. These are from Rob J. His first question for you, Richard, is, which conspiracy is the one that governments most want to keep hidden? Oh, wow. Well, I certainly think JFK is one of them.

Because there may be a few people still alive that were involved in that one. And I have no doubt that there were people, I'm not talking about, you know, the government, everybody. I'm talking about certain rogue elements, certain cells within certain agencies and so forth who were clearly in the know. within certain agencies and so forth who were clearly in the know. 9-11. And that's not to suggest that it was, again, totally an inside job, although I don't see how that could have been pulled off

without certain people in the know, inside certain agencies. Okay, so specifically of 9-11, because there's so many different things here. People point to the Pentagon and say, where's the wreckage of the plane? I've heard that one. Or there's one of the towers at Seven?

Tower Seven? Building Seven. Seven. It shouldn't have fallen? Is it the way it fell or it fell too late? Well, there was a fire. There was, you know, the generators in there ran on diesel and plus, well, it wasn't hit by any debris. Right, right, right.

So there was a fire in the building. And, yeah, it just, it collapsed. You don't see steel and steel girder type constructions like that just collapsing, you know, falling down almost within their own footprint. Now, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have a lot of questions and most of them weren't asked. And I understand in the immediate aftermath, there was a lot of rally around the flag. I get that. I'm a patriot as well. So I understand why journalists do that as well.

But in the aftermath, instead of listening to some of these concerns and questions, they simply stifled discourse by saying, oh, that's a conspiracy theory. Okay, well, maybe there was a conspiracy. Obviously, it was the idea that Osama bin Laden did this, that's a conspiracy theory. He had to conspire. He didn't do it on his own. He conspired, right? But it's okay, because apparently brown people over there will conspire,

but we don't do that here. That's the mentality. So many, you're right, like an onion. 9-11, whenever I read the theories about, you know, everything from, I've heard people say that

nobody died in 9-11. I've heard things like that. That I've never heard. Yeah, and I'm like, where are these people with these loved ones who don't go home to their family and stuff? Well, the people in the building, yeah, there may be some question as to how many people were on those planes. Right, I shouldn't say nobody died,

but far less people died than were reported. There's so much here, like the melting of the beams, you mentioned the way it pancakes down, and what happened in Pennsylvania. It's just, what a day that was. Holy smokes. But no doubt, there's a lot of questions about 9-11, but I just think it feels to me...

Don't you have any? Well, okay, I had a lot of questions. Maybe I'm too easily influenced by certain sources here. So I read a very comprehensive popular mechanics piece and well site it felt it felt anyways maybe i'm the naive you can tell me but uh it was well cited and it explained the it answered all the questions that you know are raised by people like yourself and in sort of uh experts and scientists and explaining why it fell that way.

Why did building seven collapse? You know, why did the Pentagon have a hole like that? Like those types of things. And it all made such sense to me. And so I, uh, believed what I read. Well, uh, the main thing is, I think we, we, we focus on the how, you know, whether, whether it was nanothermite and controlled demolition. And I don't necessarily – I used to subscribe to that. And then the more I read, the more I get into it, then I'm less inclined to believe it was controlled demolition. Could be wrong.

But that, as a good friend of mine likes to say, that's like counting the blades of grass on the grassy knoll. We get so hung up on the how rather than trying to figure out the why and the who. So whether it was controlled demolition or whether it was some directed energy weapon or whether those were actual planes that flew into the building and then perhaps there was some nukes in the basement, who knows? Who knows? But unless we start asking questions without being fearful that someone's going to call you a conspiracy theorist and don't talk about that, don't look over here. The tinfoil hat or whatever. What is the point of that?

Then we'll never get to the answer. Let's focus on why it may have happened and who may have been involved and why. Why is a big question. I mean, you look at the Project for a New American Century, this document that came out in the early 90s saying that we have to have permanent military bases in the Middle East, and they named the countries that we need to be occupying, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a pretext to get into Afghanistan.

And that provided a pretty good pretext. Sure did. Sure did. Robbie J. also wants to know, of the popular conspiracies, which one do you think has the least likelihood of being legitimate? I think Sandy Hook, you mentioned earlier. Yeah, I find it pretty, I'm incredulous that you could pull something like that off. Now, there are aspects of it that are very troubling, that may have involved some sort of a false flag. Was it to politicize the whole gun control thing? I mean, I think there's some credibility to that argument in some of these cases, not

necessarily Sandy Hook, maybe the Aurora shooting in Colorado, some of these others. But like you, I find it very difficult to believe that you could pull something like that off. In your opinion, what percent... Let me just read this here. I'm not sure. In your opinion, what... Let me just read this here. I'm not sure. In your opinion, what percentage of information does the average citizen have relative to what's actually going on in society?

Oh, that's impossible to know. To put a number on it. That's impossible. And, you know, I don't want to sit here like I'm the arbiter of truth. I'm not. You're just asking questions. I'm scrambling around in the dark

like everyone else. What event was pivotal in our culture that drew more citizens to believe in conspiracies? I'm not. You're just asking questions. I'm scrambling around in the dark like everyone else. What event was pivotal in our culture that drew more citizens to believe in conspiracies? Can I answer this? It's JFK, right? Well, our generation would be 9-11. Our generation is definitely 9-11. The generation before would be JFK and then Watergate

and then, yeah, obviously 9-11. Yeah. Now, let me ask. Now, I came up with a list now I came up with a list. I came up with a list of the five conspiracies that I'm most aware of, because I don't dive too deep, but I read a little bit

and I hear a little bit, and there's five that I know of. So I'm going to ask you, Richard, I'm going to ask you these five, and I know you don't have all the answers, you've got lots of questions, but of these five, maybe you can let me know which of these you can tell me know uh which of these uh you can tell me your thoughts on these okay just okay sure so and some of this is a bit redundant because we've been chatting for uh an hour now but uh the moon landing you know that song i played

for you at the beginning i played it for you because it starts like if you believe there was a man on the moon like i just felt like uh that's one of the big go-to conspiracy theories you hear, which is the moon landing was faked. The arguments that it was a hoax are actually quite interesting. Tell me. And I've done a number of shows. recently he was um i think an editor or publisher with nexus magazine very popular alternate alternative magazine came on a coast to coast with me and on my show and talked about the hasenblatt camera uh which was used to take those famous uh photographs and uh he he was describing how difficult it would be imagine wearing those big thick astronaut gloves like gardener gloves and how almost

impossible it would be to adjust the uh you know the focus and and uh and even hit the shutter and so forth uh and because because of their big helmets they wouldn't be able to look into the viewfinder they had to do it sort of blind and yet all those shots so so wonderfully framed and everything so i think there's's some credence to the argument that maybe the photographs in the film actually were staged because there was so much riding on this and the height of the Cold War and the space race and everything.

For the Americans to go to the moon and then not bring back documented proof would have obviously given rise to everyone saying, oh, it was a hoax, it was a hoax. So there is, I think, an element there possible that they actually did the photographs and filmed the moonwalk and so forth, maybe on a soundstage as backup

in case the transmission didn't work or the photographs didn't turn out. I mean, how do you protect the film from all that cosmic radiation out there? You take your, people don't remember this, it's all digital now, but you take your film through the airport security and if you had a certain ISO or speed,

it would become fogged with the radiation. So I suppose maybe they could shield that. But then there's the Van Allen belts, of course. If we go through the Van Allen belts, then we'll have radiation. There's a way around that. The Van Allen belts, I believe, are sort of thickest, either at the poles or the equator, can't remember which. There's a way of circumventing that, and they allowed for that. We landed on the moon. But there are, again, there are elements that are very mysterious. Yeah. See, I can see why some people, and if I have some free time, I do it myself,

but you go down these rabbit holes, if you will. Like one question leads to another, and then it all starts to unravel. And then the next thing you know, you're... It's a swamp. You can get lost in it. Like 9-11. Like 9-11, which is why I've always been very careful about compartmentalizing my life. You know, I don't... No offense, I don't live in my basement. I don't live in my basement, although my 15-year-old does. But I don't immerse myself in this 24-7. You will go nuts.

I was going to say, Mighty Aphrodite, does she ever say, hey, Richard, can we talk about something else over dinner tonight? There's no need, because we don't talk about it. There's so much going on in the world now, politically and everything, which consumes us. We talk a lot about that. Occasionally, I have my library downstairs, and I homeschool my boys.

That's interesting. I didn't know that. How's that going? It's a little slight tangent. It's incredibly gratifying. It's the most amazing thing. Not like I don't want people to come up, Oh, he's an anti-vaxxer and he homeschools. That's my gratifying. It's the most amazing thing. Not like I don't want people to come up, oh, he's an anti-vaxxer and he homeschools. That's my next one.

Next you'll say he hoards gold and grows his own vegetables and I can assemble an AR-15 blindfolded. Yeah, I'm not a prepper. It's an experiment. We're trying it this year. We're homeschooling. But the point was I have my library downstairs

I have all my books related to the show and so forth so I get questions from my little guys and I really try and kind of shield them from that at this point

some of the harmless stuff like do you believe in Bigfoot yeah we talk about that but I really to me in my mind the JFK one to me that's

okay let's we can go forever on that one then when you start then when there's I guess when you know because we admit The JFK one, to me, that's, okay, we can go forever on that one. Then when you start, then when there's, I guess when, you know, because we admit he had a bullet in his brain, and now we're talking about, like, who's behind this, and how did it happen and stuff.

And then you hear about these, like, Sandy Hook we talked about in some parts of the 9-11, and I'm just waiting for somebody to come up with a theory about Manchester, which I'm just dreading, like that kind of thing. That's where I find it very distasteful and insensitive, and I have difficulty with it. Well, I'm a Christian, and I believe that there is evil in the world, and things that go on in this world are very unsettling and disturbing. And like I say, there is evil.

So in terms of what might come out of Manchester or some of these other terrorist attacks, well, listen, there's no question that there is this existential threat that's out there, but it's also being manipulated by various intelligence agencies around the world. Lookit, the United States is supporting certain groups that are allied with ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad.

Why do they want to overthrow Assad? Because they want to further isolate Iran, and Assad is their only friend in the neighborhood. So, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing. You know, you make those deals with the devil. That goes on. He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. Exactly.

So, you know, that's unsavory, but that's the way the world works. And we have to, you know, we have to, I mean, this is not stuff that gets talked about in the mainstream media, but this is, oh, it's a conspiracy theory. No, it's not. It's the way the world works. You mentioned anti-vaxxers. So my question is more specific to,

I'm specifically, because of course I hear the anti-vaxxers and this and that, but the flu vaccine, every year there's a push to get the flu shot. And every year somebody will talk about, I've heard things from like, what's in it?

There's some go way out in left field, like mind control stuff, and then some are just simply like you're being lied to. It's making you sick. What are your thoughts on this? Well, I'm not an anti-vaxxer per se. Again, it's a case-by-case basis.

It's not like all vaccines are not safe and they're not all effective. It's just flu vaccines, it's kind of a hit and miss thing. Well, it takes a year, right? They guess what it's going to be a year from now when they start to, so basically if it moves, or it mutates, right, you can end up like, oh, this is only 10% effective. You know, on a good year, maybe it's 90%. And I'm not here to tell anybody what to do all right but um personally i'm not i don't take the flu vaccine if you're an elderly person and

you're worried and you want to take it fill your boots that's fine uh or if you have some underlying conditions all right but i i think there are more effective ways you know build up your immunity that's all you know i'm not saying you know go around like doorknobs but uh there are ways you know with your diet. The biodiversity is probably a good idea. We can do something like that. And the whole Andrew Wakefield fiasco with his study on a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. I don't think people understand.

They didn't read the article. He wasn't actually saying there was a correlation between the two. He said, well, there's something here we need to look at further. And then he was – they took his license away and he's been demonized. And I still believe that there's something there that we need to look at. I mean I think we need – in the United States, they'd have a congressional hearing. We need to look at. I mean, I think we need in the United States, they'd have a congressional hearing. We need to do that. They need to subpoena the people from the Centers for Disease Control because they have quashed data.

We now know that from whistleblowers at the CDC. And here in Canada, Health Canada, I mean, I know people that work there and instead of being the watchdog for these pharmaceutical companies, they refer to them as clients. They're not supposed to be clients. They're supposed to keep an eye on these people. So yeah, I have concerns, and I have questions, and I'm going to look at vaccines on a case-by-case basis. There's something called informed consent,

you know? I hear these doctors go on radios and say, if you don't take this, you're an idiot, and how dare you, and you're jeopardizing your children's lives and so forth. Or compromising herd immunity and stuff like that. Exactly, right. Well, the polio, long before the polio vaccine, I mean, if you go back and you look historically, polio was in its decline. And how did they do that? It had nothing to do with the vaccine.

It had to do with sanitation, clean sanitation. Why do they keep, you know, uh, vaxing the people in, in New Delhi, uh, vaccine after vaccine campaign after campaign, polio keeps rearing its ugly head because they haven't addressed the sanitation issue. Right. Same with smallpox. If you look, the smallpox was on the decline before the vaccine. And now it's all about measles, measles, measles. How many people have died from measles in North America? I don't know. Not many. Maybe you could probably count them on the hand of a, again, citing my old colleague, John Oakley, you could count them on the hand of a carnival ride operator.

How many people have died from the adverse effects of vaccines? More than that, probably. Absolutely. Yeah, that's why they have a vaccine injury court in the United States. All right, a third on my list of conspiracies Mike's aware of.

Global warming. So science has, in fact, I believe science now says it's more likely that we're experiencing climate change and global warming than smoking causes cancer. I think like we're at like some, have you heard that line? Well, I'm not surprised because they're in the end game now and they're losing. So they're reaching for more and more ridiculous statements. I'm not, I don't believe in anthropogenic global warming. I don't believe, in other words, believe in anthropogenic global warming.

I don't believe, in other words, in man-made global warming. There is something called climate change. They're called the seasons, right? We have fall, we have spring, we have summer, but there's no, I don't believe in man-made global warming. Okay, well, 9-11, go ahead. Sorry, you know, we have currently 400 parts per million.

That's the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 400 parts per million. If you compare that to other historical periods, ages in the Earth's history, we are on a carbon dioxide starvation diet. You know what a farmer that has greenhouses, you know what they do to enhance the growth of their tomato plants and so forth? They pump carbon dioxide in there. You know how much?

About 1,200 parts per million. That's the optimal level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for plant growth. We're at 400 parts per million. side in the atmosphere for plant growth. We're at 400 parts per million. Never before in the history of the world have we seen this kind of level. We're still in

an interglacial period. There's ice at the North Pole. There's ice at the South Pole. We're still officially in an ice age. All right? So, I mean, because there have been periods when there was no ice at the poles. Still ice up there. Right.

Wow. I was going to say there's less ice than there used to be. I believe that... Compared to when? Compared to 20 years ago, right? Right, yeah, but we... Don't forget, 300 years ago, we had the Little Ice Age. We're coming out of a small glacial period.

So, of course, we're going to be warming up from then. But if you look at the relationship between carbon dioxide and the Earth's temperature, I remember people who saw that nonsense with Al Gore. Right, his PowerPoint. Yeah, well, the big graph there, well, if you actually paid attention to the graph, it showed that the carbon dioxide and temperature,

very rarely have there actually been in sync. But there was a period when they were in sync. But the problem was temperature was going up first, then carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a lagging indicator. The temperature goes up first, then the carbon dioxide content goes up. So they've got it all backwards. That's an inconvenient truth right there. Now, 9-11, we did talk a lot about 9-11,

but do you think, so Richard, do you think 9-11 was an inside job? In part, yes, I do. And is this basically to go into Iraq? In part, Afghanistan, permanently. That's part of it. It's a very complex question. You've got competing interests. The point is, this is not Looney Tunes. This is the way the world has always worked. There was a Spartacus, right?

He was trying to get back to Thrace. He was a runaway slave. So what happened was there was a senator in Rome who thought, listen, I can make use of this terror. Now I can send in the Roman legions and I can force Spartacus, I can pen him in. So instead of hopping across the Adriatic and getting back to Thrace, which is where he wanted to go, he pointed Spartacus and his mob towards ancient Rome.

And then the senator said to the Roman people, look, these runaway slaves, they're marching on Rome. Give me the power I need and I will defeat him. That's one of the world's first false flag operations. That's how the world works. Well, who is responsible for the assassination or as you called it, the murder of John F. Kennedy? particularly within the national security state. So there were elements certainly within the CIA.

Remember his famous statement after the Bay of Pigs? I'm going to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds. And then who ends up sitting on the Warren Commission but Alan Dulles, the guy that he fired at the head of the CIA? There was certainly a mob connection with Sam Giancana because of Bobby, who was the attorney general and was going to get tough on organized crime. So they were lined up, Giancana and maybe even Charles Nicoletti, who could have been the trigger man. Then you had the anti-Castro Cubans who perceived that Kennedy was going to be soft on Castro and communism. And there's some truth to that. So there's three elements right there.

So yeah, there's a lot of, I guess you're right, it was a long list of people who wanted him dead. Yeah, there was some cooperation with all three groups. Now, earlier you mentioned a television show. So we talked about the conspiracy show that's on Zoomer radio, but tell me about the television program Conspiracy Show. Is that still being filmed? We're not currently in production. We did four seasons beginning in 2011, and they aired across Canada on Vision TV. And I'm partnered with Film One, Jalal Murai, is a former martial artist. And he had a string of hits in the late 80s, early 90s as a motion picture, an action star, and then turned to directing. So he's the director-producer of it. We did four seasons. We sold it internationally, Australia, parts of Europe, Africa,

Southeast Asia. It ran for a season in the U.S. and now it's available on Netflix down there. So yeah, four seasons. We're not currently in production. Who knows? I'm not ruling it out entirely. But it was basically a half-hour documentary type, no relation to the radio show

except we covered a lot of the same topics. Right. So you didn't use the theme music from the radio show? No. I'm trying to remember now who composed that. So I would travel. We did a lot of it in the field. So we'd travel.

We went to London, England, did an episode on Princess Diana. We went to Wales, all over the United States, covered a lot of ground. We did 50 episodes. And what did you do with CBC Radio? You did some documentary series with them. I created, wrote, produced, and narrated two documentary series for CBC Radio starting in 2011. I did one called Out of Their Minds, which was a 10-part series. I looked at inventors, innovators, heretical thinkers. We talked about who they were, what made

them tick, also what their device or what their idea was all about. And then the next year, I did another 10-part series, CBC Radio 1. It was called Metamorphosis, and it was, again, a 10-parter examining or chronicling the lives of people who had undergone, you know, amazing life-altering change. A woman, a young girl, rather, who survived a tsunami in Thailand, kind of a high roller who survived a plane crash in Saskatchewan, went on to become a Baptist preacher. Oh, a man who underwent a heart transplant and then started climbing mountains. He was really uplifting stuff. Kind of a nice departure from the land of woo.

Yeah, that's inspiring there. And here's something I saw in your bio that I'm very curious about, because it's a great premise, but Spirit of Rock Radio. What was Spirit of Rock Radio? This is kind of under construction right now. I'm working on another radio program,

at least the concept for it. We haven't sold it. We don't have it on the air yet. This is something I would like to hear. Spirit of Rock Radio is, I think, the Twilight Zone meets rock and roll. Yeah. So I'm partnered with an author by the name of R. Gary Patterson, who kind of made his bones with a book which kind of debunked the whole Paul is dead legend.

Of course. Remember Paul McCartney supposedly died in a car crash in 1966. People still believe that. Well, again, it's great sort of bar talk, all of the clues that were left on the Sgt. Pepper album and so forth. Have you heard the new one with Avril Lavigne? So it's basically the Paul is Dead applied to Canadian pop singer Avril Lavigne. I have not. I must have missed that one.

Somebody's going to call into the conspiracy show and tell you. But yeah, basically it's rehashing the old Paul is Dead but with Avril Lavigne. She commits suicide and they replaced her back in the 90s or something. But nobody noticed. They compared the earlobes.

This was her earlobe back then. Look at the slight difference. It's the exact same thing. You're right. That all started with a phone call to a radio station in Detroit, I think in 1969. This is before the internet. Imagine how things had to go viral. Oh, yeah.

It was hard to make things go viral, right? Sure, to go viral back then, but it did. So, I mean, that's something that we would talk about on Senator Broderick. See, that's fun. I like this, okay? I could talk for hours about the Paul is dead and things like that.

And the 27 Club, all the musicians. Yeah, the 27 Club, right. And all the idiosync, sorry, the synchronicities in the great stories about, for example, the Allman Brothers. How about the day the music died? You could do something there. I, um, we have, we've, I mean, Gary's been on me on, with me on coast and on my show talking about, um, a Buddy Holly, the Buddy Holly curse, which is amazing. You know, when you line it all up, uh, Peggy Sue Guerin I've had on, She was the inspiration for Peggy Sue Got Married,

Buddy Holly and the Crickets. And some of her amazing, these prescient dreams she had, warning Buddy, don't get on the plane, don't get on the plane. I saw it going down and so forth. Yeah, it's a rich vein to be mined. And Gary has written several books on this.

I'm a huge classic rock fan. So that's the idea. We're going to do a two-hour show, Rock and Roll Meets the Twilight Zone. And he knows so many people, members of the Doors, Robbie Krieger, that we'll bring on, and it'll be great. So you're looking for a home for this? We are, we are. Yeah, we're actively involved right now. Let me know when you have a home, and I'll share it with everybody because this sounds really cool.

Thank you. Spirit of Rock Radio. Richard, I got to tell you, I love your delivery on the radio. So I enjoy your show and I've heard you on other podcasts. I've heard you on Humble and Fred and stuff and I've always wanted to sit down and talk to you. But I was actually hesitant about it because I didn't want to dismiss some of your beliefs. I thought maybe what if I come across, like, I don't know, snobby or callous or something?

No, no, no. And, you know, when you say my beliefs, I mean, I'm a skeptic. Differing. I'm a skeptic, right? You've got to show me. But the difference is I'm willing to listen and entertain these ideas, again, as long as they're not promoting hate. Right. But we have to be able to ask these questions.

And there are not a lot of forums available. And I'm lucky to be in the mainstream, sort of, although I'm sort of late night in the hinterlands. And God bless Moses Neimer for providing me a platform here in Toronto anyway. We have to be able to talk about these things and not be afraid to be dismissed and denigrated. The people that use conspiracy theory in the pejorative, they're being ridiculous.

They're being ridiculous. Is Zoomer going to return to doing the... Weren't they doing the live on YouTube? There was a link you could go to on YouTube and watch the broadcasters at Zoom or radio recording live. I think they're getting that off the ground. I have a YouTube channel of my own. People can watch the live

stream of the conspiracy show with Richard Serrett. So you're covered there. They can stream us live on Sunday nights. Hit the sub button, please. And that brings us to the end of our 238th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike,

and Richard is at Richard Surrett. Surrett is S-Y-R-E-T-T. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. And propertyinthesix.com is at Brian Gerstein. G E R S T E I N. See you all next week. I want to take a streetcar downtown Read Andrew Miller and wander around And drink some Guinness