Unclear and Present Danger - X-Files: Fight the Future

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John discuss the 1998 X-Files movie, directed by Rob Bowman with a screenplay by X-Files creator Chris Carter. Starring, obviously, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the X-Files movie tells a convoluted story of hidden aliens, government plots, a secret cabal of evil rich people and a global conspiracy. It is a perfect encapsulation of 1990s conspiracism and we had a great time discussing it.Episodes come out every two weeks, so check back then for an episode on Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s World War II action thriller. And over at the Patreon, we have an episode on Confirmation, the 2016 drama on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. You can find that at patreon.com/unclearpod.

What do you do? I'm an annoyance to my superior is a joke to my peers. They call me spooky. Spooky Mulder. I'm the key figure in an ongoing government charade. The plot to conceal the truth about the existence of extraterrestrials. Well, I would say that about it, Spooky. It's...

...initated. Into what? ...into what? I can't tell you what killed this man. I'm not sure anybody else could claim to either. leader. These men have it secretly negotiated a planned Armageddon. And you have conclusive evidence of this?

Yes. Whoa! I have common sense here. I can't quit now, I'm going to go like, I need you on this. It's a global conspiracy. Key players, the highest levels of power. It reaches in the lives of every man, woman and child in this planet. You've seen more than you shouldn't.

Then you must take away what the old's most valuable. on june 19 the impossible scenario that we never planned for well we better come up with a plan take your greatest fear these people don't make mistakes your most paranoid suspicion we have no context for what killed those men and your darkest nightmare and multiply it by x trust no one mr molda Hello and welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military theaters of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. My name is Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times Opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on Popular Front.

And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Con Men Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the early 1990s available on paperback at all good bookstores. Not the bad bookstores. Not the, everywhere good books are sold is how that old saw goes. And I'm also working on a new book, which we've discussed in the past. It's about Lyndon LaRouche. It's called Crackpot Empire. But that's not going to be out for several years.

We'll keep plugging it, though. I will eventually. They'll come a point when we were demanding that you buy it. Yeah. On this week's episode of the podcast, we watch the 1998 X-Files movie directed by Rob Bowman with a screenplay by Chris Carter, Chris Carter being the, the creator of the X-Files television series. I have no idea who Rob Bowman is,

and I'm going to go look real quick to see what else he has done. He is still living, still working. And his work includes he was a director on the television show, is 21 Jump Street, Star Trek Next Generation, Marguiver, Alien Nation. This is all stuff I watched when I was a kid. Quantum Leap, a show that I love, and the X-Files as well.

Um, not film. He's directed four movies. In addition to the X-Files movie directed in 1993, is Airborne, which is about skating. There, were there two movies about skating in the 90s? At least.

It was big. Uh, okay, so Airborne, which, uh, has Jack Black in it and Seth Green. That's something. I don't, I don't remember. Um, rain of fire in 2002,

which I remember. It's the Matthew McConae movie with dragons. Oh, my God. I totally forgot that existed. I've never seen it, but I know, I know of it. I remember the commercials quite well. It's got to be really, really good. I mean, I'm sure.

Certainly. Must be. You know it's good. And then the 2005 Electra film, the spinoff from the Daredevil movie with Jennifer Garner as Elektra, which is terrible. Bad movie.

and kind of put Jennifer Garner in movie jail for a while. And that was the last movie Rob Bowman directed, so he may just be in movie jail forever. And then The X-Files is the second feature from 98. So that's Rob Bowman. This stars basically, you know, the people you would expect being in the X-Files movie, it stars David McCauveny as Agent Mulder,

Jillian Anderson, as Agent Skelly, Martin Landau, Blythe Dana and Armand Mueller Stahl Roundout the top-built cast. Also, in the film, you will see Dean Hagland as Richard Ringo Langley, William B. Davis is the cigarette smoking man, Mitch Pellege as assistant director Walter Skinner. And then a bunch of other, I believe these are all X-Files people.

I wasn't a big X-Files person. We'll talk about this later. But that is who is in the movie, score by Mark Snow. Yeah, it's the X-Files movie. Here's the plot and somewhat lore heavy. But the plot in short is we start. It's 35,000 BC during the Ice Age and it will become North Texas. And two cavemen encounter extraterrestrial life in the cave.

it kills one of them and infects the other with a black oil-like substance. Flash forward to 1998. A bunch of boys are playing. One of them falls into a hole and encounters the skull of one of the cavemen. And then is infected by the weird black goop that seats from the ground. The goop kills him as well as the firefighters who later enter to try to save him. And then a team of men wearing hazmat suits comes by the government. they extract everyone.

They're from FEMA, presented in this movie as kind of an er agency. They're from FEMA, and they cordoned off the site, smash cut to Dallas at a federal building where Mulder and Scully are investigating a bomb threat.

They discover, Mulder discovers the bomb. And the special agent in charge goes to, presumably, disarmed the bomb, but he stays there and is blown up by the bomb while Mulder and Skelly escape, clear, you know, reference to Oklahoma City there. What follows, basically, is Mulder and Scully are disciplined for casualties, which included

the five people, but Mulder later discovers the paranoid Dr. Alvin Kurtzwell, that the victims were the firefighters and the boy who, were taken from the site in Texas, they break into the morgue where Skelly investigates and finds evidence of a strange virus she doesn't understand. We learn in Texas that one of the lost firefighters has an alien organism inside of his body. The officials monitoring this are told to administer a vaccine to it, but the The alien organism escapes and kills, I guess the lead scientist there. Molder and Schelley returned to Texas where they discover a strange facility where bees are being bred for some reason.

They are chased by black helicopters and flee from the scene. They return to D.C. where Moller. Mulder learns that, uh, okay, things are getting a little convoluted for me now in my head. Okay. Molder and D.C. How did you even remember?

I thought you're reading off of something. I can't believe you remember this. How this movie, the plot is impossible. Okay, anyway, I'm impressed. Go for it. I think, I think it's in D.C. again that Molder discovers that they're aliens. Uh-huh. He's told by the crazy doctor that they're aliens.

Scully, during the FBI hearing, is stung by B from the Texas field. That B is infected with whatever black goop virus. We learn that this is all a plot from basically the Illuminati, who are plotting with an alien race to enslave humanity. And what they thought was that the vaccine that created prevent them for being enslaved, what they discovered, in fact, that the virus just reproduces the aliens. I'm sorry, I don't want to break your flow

because I know you're in the middle of this, but you saying this plot out loud just sounds totally, is that it? Totally insane. Okay, keep going. It does sound insane. We still have a little more to go. It sounds like the rantings of a child or a lunatic.

All right. So, okay, so Scully has been taken by these people. Mulder is attacked by them. He survives. The lone gunmen who are from the X-Fital show. I know who they are. Show up. Kind of give Mulder a plot dump. He goes to Antarctica to find Skelly. That's where she is in the underground facility. He has the vaccine. He revives her. The facility wakes up. In the facility, there are also many humans kind of suspended like Skelly is. She wakes up. The aliens who are cocoon begin to escape. Mulder and Skeli escape from the surface, an alien vessel crashes through the ice and flies away as Skelie comes back into full consciousness.

We return the D.C. They testify. Their testimonies disregarded. All the evidence is destroyed. Molder is like they're covering all this up. Skelly continues working with him because, you know, she's like, if I quit, then they win. And then we cut to Tunisia where the smoking man and the leader of the Illuminati group. explain that Mulder is a threat and that the X-Files unit has been reopened.

And that's the movie. Yes, as I explained all of that, I did indeed sound like a ranting maniac. Yeah. Because this movie is like every conspiracy theory. Yeah. Smashed together. Yeah. We'll talk about that after we get through the New York Times newspaper because this movie,

which was released on June 19th, 19th, 1998. Had a budget of 60 million. Did well. Made its budget back three times for a box office total of a little under $190 million. That's crazy to be. X-Files, very popular show.

Yeah, yeah. It has a basically middling reception from critics. And the big criticism is that unless you watch the show, this movie makes no fucking sense. And I think that's exactly right. It's hard to follow. if you do not know X-Files lore. But it was released in June 19, 19th, 19th, and so let's check up the New York Times for that day.

All right. Iraq is smuggling oil to the Turks under gaze of U.S. U.N. sanctions ignored. Washington looks away since trade aides ally and Kurds who keep Iraqis at bay. Iraq is smuggling large volumes of oil into Turkey in violation of United Nations sanctions, United States and Turkish government officials say. The officials say that the Clinton administration has chosen to look the other way, aware that the smuggling benefits Turkey, a crucial ally in the American policy towards Iraq and Kurds who deny the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein control over northern Iraq. Still, the region is complete with double dealing and surprising alliances.

Administration officials acknowledge that the Kurdish leader benefiting from the subling betrayed the United States less than two years ago. Thousands of trucks transport millions of tons of oil diesel fuel and other refined products to Turkey annually, openly traversing roads that United States and allied warplanes fly over in northern Iraq officials acknowledge.

The smuggling is enriching President Saddam Hussein's government and family. These officials say at a time when the Iraqi leader is chafing under the United Nations restrictions on official oil exports, which have been in place since the Persian Gulf War eight years ago. Until the United Nations determines that the government

has limited programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, has prohibited Iraq from exporting oil through a limited program to raise money for humanitarian relief. But the Clinton administration has decided not to try to stop the smuggling, even though the United States is trying to hold together coalition in support of economic sanctions in Iraq. You know what this just is? I read an article, first of all, there's a lot of things here.

There are seeds of the Iraq war here, the weapons of mass destruction, stuff, Iran being stubborn about it, even though they really weren't really doing anything. I mean, I'm sorry, Iraq being stuff. You know, I think this just goes to show that the United States policies in the Middle East over the past 30, 40 years, really, have been completely contradictory, confused, impossible to implement according to their principles, require all these different kinds of cutouts. And we've just created a worse and worse mess. And now we're sort of at the end game of it, which is a totally absurd war that it doesn't appear to be over or going on. Nobody knows what it is.

I just think like when you read an article like this and you see how convoluted the United States is trying to move around all these pieces on the board, you can kind of just say like, look, this is a, this is an absurd game that they're playing that's never going to play. paying out. And it hasn't. So it's just, you know, you sort of get the, you're like, oh, they're trying to satisfy this interest. The United States security umbrella for the region doesn't really provide security. It just causes problems, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, what else we got here? The Japanese and inertia, a cushioned airbag economy spawns leaders who will tinker, not ineffate. In a few weeks, Prime Minister Rio Trio Taro Hashimoto will face nationwide elections as presides over the worst recession,

than 50 years, a limp stock market and the highest unemployment rate since records began to be kept. Get experts overwhelming expect his liberal Democratic Party to do very well. The latest polls show it with five times as much support as any other party. Now, Hashimoto is more likely ever to do well for President Clinton handed him a political gift by agreeing to a joint American-Japanese campaign to bolster the sagging end, whether job-owning and billions of dollars in foreign exchange intervention succeed in propping up the end, they will almost certainly succeed in propping up Mr. Hashimoto.

I mean, Japan is in the midst of what they call its lost decade in the 1990s, which is basically zero growth and nothing seemed to get Japan out of its stagnation. And really, it's never been the same. I mean, like Japan, it's so strange. I mean, Japan is obviously a highly developed country, not a bad place to live. But, you know, it was considered in the 80s and early 90s to be a rise. power that was, you know, the way we talk about China today, you know, like they're going to, they're going to take us over, they're going to take over, they're going to take over.

And then, you know, the recession of the 1990s really destroys that or it stops it. And Japan has never, I mean, again, not a terrible place to live. It's not like they've gone back to the Stone Ages, but it's definitely, they've had trouble regaining the dynamism and growth that they, that they had in the second half of the 20th century. But so is the whole world. So everybody, we're all having the same problems. Let's see, China's middle class savers its new wealth.

We're in every Friday afternoon. Dozens of late model cars pull up to the Iron Gate of the three-year-old 21st century experimental school, one of several new private schools here. In a city where sturdy black bicycles are still the favored mode of transportation and horse drawing cars supply the streets, men and suits and women's wearing expensive jewelry of light from Ford's, jeeps and BMWs rushing excitedly into the ability to pick up their children. Some as young as five who boarded school Monday to Friday at a cost of $2,000 per year. Not bad. Not a bad price. I'm sure back then in China, that was a lot of money.

But if you want to send $2,000 for private school in this day and age would be an absolute steal. I mean, we begin to see the kind of capitalization is the wrong word. The introduction of market economics into China, the class dimension it brings in. it creates a capitalist society with its classes and it creates a lot of wealth and it creates a lot of growth. I don't know this is just the beginning of a process that now has, you know, obviously accelerated a great deal and there are a lot of very rich Chinese people and very often they used to come to the United States to be educated and I don't think they're going to be doing that

anymore. Not so much. No. Oh, I remember New York Gerting. for grim fear, deadly germ attack by terrorists. New York, Longviewed is one of the world's most attractive target for terrorists. It is. As it turns out, has quietly understood. It doesn't make it sound like a vacation destination. Yeah. Longby has quietly undertaken an ambitious effort to countertacks carried out with deadly chemicals or germs, according to city chemicals.

The city is buying germ detectors, working out deals with regional hospitals for emergency care, striking unusual accords with drug companies to make medications quickly to an emergency, and taking steps to stockpile medication. Although no specific threat of a germ or chemical attack, the city has undertaken an extensive program since September, instructing about 4,000 city police officers and firefighters and how to handle such an emergency. This is before the, you know, I think this is a, when is the, I am Shinrico. I was about to say, I think it's, not long, it's either, I think it's like right before.

Yeah, it's 95. Okay. So it's 95. So, like, that obviously is on the minds of these people. So that's a cult in Japan. It was terrifying. Released sarin nerve gas in the subways of Tokyo. It's just like a nightmare scenario out of, again, like a totally insane mind.

And, yeah, you know, I mean, obviously New York has always been our target. And a few later, we'd have 9-11. And then there was the whole, you know, people forget about that. Maybe they don't. Do people forget about the weird anthrax thing that happened right after 9-11? No, people remember that. Yeah. Because it was never solved, right?

Yeah, it's really unclear. There's one guy they think it might have been. Like, he's like a researcher for the government and he died, I think. He died of old age, I think, or an illness. Administration details defensive controls on satellite exports. Three top aides deny that transfers help China. Clinton administration mounted the most detailed defense of its solid-elized export control policy today, three top officials said that China's military has not benefited from transfers

of sensitive American technology and that safeguards were in place to prevent any such leakage. The spirited rebuttals by senior officials of the departments of Congress, state, and defense marked a counteroffensive against a growing Republican led attack that the administration handling of satellite exports to China, a policy that Republicans have charged threatens American national security. We do not believe that the commercial space launch activities that have been authorized by licenses and monitored under these procedures have benefited China's missile or military satellite companies? Well, that's a little hard to believe because it's basically the same stuff.

I don't know about that one, Clinton administration. Again, you know, the whole context of this front page is, you know, the rivalry that Japan is a fading power and China is a rising power. You have its, you know, defense, it's wealth growing and it's defense industry growing. And that's all over the front page. And that makes sense because we're almost in the 2000s when Chinese industry really picks up and kind of guts American industry. So, yeah, it makes sense that you start to see these headlines about rising China. I think that's about it. What do you think?

Well, Albany passes bill requiring HIV tracking. This is still kind of the period where the HIV stigma has not gone away. It's still very much part of mainstream culture. But it's fading. Yeah. It's fading. But it's still very much there. And I would, reading this, it seems to me that this very much is reflective of that.

Yeah. All right. So X-Files. Yep. Did you ever watch X-Files, John? As an adult, like, so I didn't watch it in the 90s. I think I wasn't allowed, probably. I wasn't allowed to watch how much TV, really.

I was allowed to watch Darkwing Duck, and I was allowed to watch tailspin. I don't know. By 1998, I was like a young teenager, though, so I was probably kind of allowed. But I wasn't interested in the X-Files, really. I don't know. I know I had friends who were. And then as an adult, I kind of got into it because people were like, oh, it's so good. if you want to watch a classic 90s show, like you love Twin Peaks and you love The Simpsons and

you know, all these great shows. X-Files was another one. And I would say I really was enjoying the early episodes of X-Files where it does this thing where it's like, is there a supernatural or explanation or is it just like it kind of is always gives it gives you two possibilities that there's some kind of perfectly reasonable scientific explanation. And then there's another kind of weird explanation. I thought that that conceit was kind of fun.

And then it kind of drops that and goes off into its very weird plots. A lot of people love it. A lot of people find it very entertaining. A lot of people, I think, find it to be fun. I'm not that interested in it. And this movie, like, I guess there's a, I guess there's a campiness to it that you can kind of enjoy. But I find the absurdity of the scenarios combined with the seriousness of the characters

to be really hard to take. And I get that that generates fun for a lot of. lot of people in the same way. I'm sure some, but I don't know, like Twin Peaks or David Lynch's movies, you have like very cliched, often kind of sappy, you know, lines, characters, acting. And it's still like, you know, I can, I can dig it. I can enjoy that. And I just don't get the same buzz off of the X-Files. I'm just kind of bored of it. And the movie itself is such a pastiche of every single. I mean, the show is very kind of postmodern. And this movie is definitely postmodern it's a pastiche of as you said every single parent piece of 20th century paranoia

every conspiracy theory but also kinds of cinematic tropes right so you have like it's an alien first of all this movie has three cold opens and they're all different like kind of like pretty much it's got the fucking it's got the arctic yeah no the the the the caveman thing with the monster It's got the kid falling in the hole. And then it's got the bomb. It's like these are three different films. So it's like that's like a, you know, they're all kind of like different cliched movie openings. Like kid discovers something, you know, go back in time.

There's like a hidden evil or like, oh, we're trying to diffuse a bomb. But the bomb is not where you think it is. It's like die hard or whatever. It's just like two, three movies begin at once. And I'm like, all right, dude. You've got to pick one of these to go with. But the whole movie is like that. It just stacks and stacks and stacks.

So you have something like a all the president's men kind of conspiracy thriller, mixed with an alien invasion movie, mixed with an epidemic disaster movie, mixed with, you know, a natural disaster movie. And it's just like I'm sure that I guess, you know, the other example is like of someone who does little pastichees or, I mean, I guess like, you know, you can kind of see the sources of David Lynch's world, but it's very much his own. But where you can really see the sources is, you know, Quentin Tarantino. I think like a lot of people who like both, a lot of people like both, but I just don't get anything out of recognizing tropes.

And I don't, like, I just don't get any self-satisfaction of the fact that I've seen this in other movies because I don't think it's making enough of a point, a clever point about it. It's not there's nothing like I don't know the movie's not generating any irony for me. It's nothing and it I found like the action sequences to be pretty boring. I also was annoyed about it because I find the things that it's playing on even though it's kind of making fun of them. It's giving fuel to a lot of idiotic ideas and pretending that they're fucking smart, you know? Yeah. It's like the fucking Joe Rogan worldview. It's like, oh, actually, actually they are not, they are not telling you things. It's just like, yeah, so you think, you make up these dumb mythology of like, oh, of alien

invasions and hidden government programs because you don't understand what's, and you don't want to understand or pay attention to anything that's going on in the real world. And it's just an extremely self-satisfied way of looking at the world where you basically just make things up or go along with things. Not to say that I don't think that many people took the X-Files that seriously. Excuse me. I have the hiccups because I got too worked up. I know it's not meant to be taken that seriously. But for whatever reason, I can't do the smirk and enjoy the show. It doesn't ever go into like I'm getting a kick out of this. I don't care how self-serious it is because that It itself is kind of funny.

It just doesn't do it for me. Yeah. Yeah. So I did not watch the X-Files as a kid. My parents did not monitor my television that closely, which is a little surprising, given everything, but they didn't. But I just was very interested in it, although it was hard at the time to avoid the X-Files as a cultural phenomenon.

It was a huge show. And this was my first time seeing the movie. And really, honestly, my first time. first time, like, engaging with the X-Files in a serious way. And I was, I think you're right. Like, I'd love to talk to Chris Carter about this because it is this amalgamation of every conspiracy theory. And, like, I mean, and I mean that quite literally.

So, you know, we have aliens being hidden from the government. We have the Illuminati. We have black helicopters. We have, you know, we have FEMA. You know, FEMA is, like, mentioned as being this almost like. all-powerful agency, which is just funny to think about these days. But there's even, there's mention of like, you know, killer bees in the film, African-ized killer bees.

Yeah, that was a big thing in the 90s. Huge thing in the 90s. The African bees are going to, the aggressive, strong African bees are going to go destroy the docile and gentle European bees. It's very funny. But, like, it's everything in there. like unlike the other i think the the great conspiracy movie of the 90s jfk where the effect of all of the conspiracies and all the conspiracizing is almost sort of like it's to draw you in

and give you the feeling of what it's like to be called up in a grand plot like to think that you've uncovered something um you know i think Oliver stone clearly thinks all this stuff is true but like as a film that's the effect it has on you as a viewer with the x-files movie the effect is just to kind of bewilder you a bit. It's like all these things are kind of like slapped together as, I don't know, just as a grand and incomprehensible lore. I mean, one thing I think that just to move over to thinking about it's a little like lost at that show that everybody loves.

Yes. It just doesn't make any fucking sense to me. And I'm like, yeah, anyway, go on. I'm sorry. To move over a little bit to the politics of, especially the politics. To move over to that for a bit, we've discussed this before, but like the 90s really were this sort of heyday of popular conspiracism. Yeah. And I think the X-Files captures that, captures that completely.

I think its popularity is like tied up in that. It's kind of, it's, you know, both a reflection of and something influencing it. And the thing about 90s conspiracism is that it was kind of Baroque in a way, right? Like these are all very kind of, these are all very extremely complicated

and high level conspiracies that are completely fantastical, even more so completely fantastical. And in a weird way like, how about that innocuous, but like, you know, the illumine,

These men who control the world. It's like, what practical impact does it have in your life? You know, it's sort of like, okay, whatever. There's a Illuminati. There's just weird thing is that like they operate at the level of high fantasy almost. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. And also it was like, it was much more harmless.

Like it didn't, it was kind of like harmless cranks and it was fun. It was considered fun. It was like, what's your favorite conspiracy theory? And it was, you know, we've discussed this before. It was kind of part of like Slacker and Gen X culture a little bit. Like it was sort of an ironic comment on the boomer's feelings of being upset about JFK and about the 60s going wrong. And also the 1970s had a lot of paranoia hangover too. So there was like that element of it.

You know, Richard Linklater, Slacker has all these people like walking around with these insane conspiracy things. All these like kind of cranks. Alex Jones. Yeah. That's the thing. That's an interesting genealogy, which is Alex Jones was like, oh, he's like a really funny local guy in Austin, you know, part of what makes that city a kind of weird hippie place and has all this kind of counterculture stuff.

And then he becomes like a very much more sinister weird figure for whatever reason as things accelerate. But I think that the attitude, I just have less patience for it now. because I'm like, dude, everybody talks this way. Half of like, the culture hasn't gotten. It's just I don't find it funny anymore. I don't know. That may sound a little tight.

But like, no, but I see what you mean. I mean, the, have you ever listened to like the Joe Rogan experience? Like, have you ever tried to listen to the Joe Rogan experience? It is so fucking stupid, dude. You're just like, oh my God, are you serious? Like, these people actually believe this shit. I don't know. It's just shocking. And anyway, go ahead.

Sorry. No, I was going to say it's one thing for conspiracies to be a kind of like harmless crank nonsense. But when conspiracism is sort of forming almost the foundation of like a political movement that's like shaping high policy, then it moves into being quite frightening. And so it makes total sense. You know, I've never listened to the Joe Rogan experience, like, as a full episode, but I've, like, watched clips and stuff. And, like, Joe Rogan, even in the clips seems like a huge idiot. And a huge idiot who, you know, rejects the idea of objective knowledge in favor of what seems,

you know, what seems like it makes the most sense. And what fits this, like, baroque and conspiratorial worldview. And that, that, that, that, that, that appears to be like one of the dominant strains of how people approach the world now. And you see it, I mean, the, the recourse to conspiracism as like the main way you understand and interpret the world is everywhere. I'll give an example. I'm talking about this on the podcast, but, you know, there have been some, a few high profile incidents of, like, young black Americans being. found hanged in various places. And this has spawned a kind of conspiracy. This notion of an epidemic of like hidden lynchings under the, you know, the supposition, like the refrain is that

black people don't hang themselves. So this has been going on for for a little bit now. And out of curiosity, I was like, well, actually, let me like look up suicide rates among black Americans. Let me look up two things. Suicide rates among black Americans, the most frequent age, like the age at which the suicide rates is the highest for black Americans, and the methods for suicide, which that's all available by the way, the CDC.

All information collected. And, you know, this isn't a deep dive, but just sort of like a very casual glance at all of this tells you that like in over the past 10 years or so, the suicide rate for black Americans has been eight per 100,000. that if you, a separate stat, right, is that two per 100,000 black Americans die by self-strangulation or self-affixiation. So about a quarter of those suicides are by some form of strangulation. And that the highest rates for suicide among black Americans is basically sort of early to mid-20s.

So like, that doesn't mean there isn't secret lynching's happening. But the claim that black people don't hang themselves. is like belied by the fact that, in fact, roughly like 800 to 1100 black people every year do self-strangulate themselves, which probably just means some form of hanging. Right. Since it's like the easiest way to do it.

And so I bring that up to say, that's like the kind, like, that's the difference between something's happening in the world and it's an empirical question, right? It's like we can collect information about it. and try to find out what the facts are as best as you can and draw a conclusion versus there's a conspiracy. There's something being hidden from you.

There's something being, you know, you're not getting the full story. And the extent to which I think most people default to the second and not the first makes sort of even like casual conspiracies is like much less entertaining. Yeah, I mean, it's also just with the Epstein shit, like the Epstein didn't kill himself stuff. And then you don't hear that that much anymore. It's just like, you know, and then they treat people, you know, when you, when you try to look at the evidence, you're like, I don't think that that seems that likely. People are like, oh, come on. Like, it's a weird combination of cynicism and gullibility where it's like total cynicism.

But then you're like, yeah, but like it's not, it's actually pretty hard to do things in secret. and, you know, it's not like, that seems highly unlikely and so on and so forth. It's just, you know, and then, and then you seem like the, they're like, oh, you're a sheep, well, you seem like you're the one accepting the official story. And it's just like, look, man, it's going on what on likelihood. You have to judge the world according to. I think there's like a, not till, I guess we are here to talk about politics on some level, but like, there's a. weird collapse of like ability to judge what's going on in the world according to like common

sense standards rather than things that are extremely fanciful like I was watching some fucking like just the the culture is so suffused with these explanations like I was watching some video that came up on my Twitter feed and it was this girl being like revolutions are sciops because they're powerful people trying to like you know control others through their own you know for their own agenda and you're like, yeah, this is like the most simple, simple-minded way of looking at the world. Like there's no social forces. It's just like people manipulating people. There's, you know, it's just making people dumber. And it's frustrating to watch. It's making people dumber as they, here's my conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are themselves

the conspiracy because it damages. It's being pumped into the atmosphere by whatever sinister, to organization. Not an organization. It's just very beneficial to people who would rather not be scrutinized to generate this kind of myths because it creates a climate of total doubt and then nothing matters. So there's a reason why, for instance, Elon Musk, you know, a lot of people say people think Elon Musk is an idiot. And on some level, he is.

The way he expresses himself, it doesn't seem like he's a smart guy, which is strange because he's accomplished a lot. He has a lot of money and he has these companies and, you know, there's arguments about how much of that is him. But there's a reason why, I can think I can say without being conspiratorial myself, there's a reason why this type of thinking has been pumped into the atmosphere of discourse on something like X because it is damaging to people's ability to focus and pay attention and understand the world. It harms the conditions of discourse, which is exactly what he wants to do because he is extremely wealthy and powerful and doesn't want that to be scrutinized.

That's it. You know, that and conspiracy theories, you know, he caught. If conspiracy theories were a threat to the ruling order, you know, there would be a lot more stuff about, oh, don't do that. No, they're not. They, the more, the better. You know, obviously if they're ones that, you know, don't like Trump being the target of Epstein ones that does backfire. sometimes. But, you know, for the, for the most part, they're paralyzing of action because they suggest nothing could really change anyway. And they're paralyzing of thought. So it makes sense for

all regimes that are repressive circulate conspiracy theories about their enemies, but also it just becomes the, you know, if you live in an authoritarian or a totalitarian society, that just becomes a way of understanding things. And it destroys judgment and it destroys reality. So I think that there is a concerted effort, or if not concerted effort, then at least people kind of recognize on some low cunning level that it's in their interest to spread conspiracy theories because it's destructive of democratic deliberation. And movies and movies like this don't help. And no, I mean, I don't want to be that guy. But I really fucking don't. And I don't. And I don't. And I understand the entertainment value.

And I don't think the X-Files is made the country a worse place. I'm not going to say that. That's ridiculous. But it is fucking stupid. Go ahead. I was just going to say that here it's like this is the distinction to make between conspiracy theories and conspiracies. Because there are actual conspiracies, right? Like, you know, right now the president is engaged in a conspiracy against like the voting rights of the American people.

that's like an actual conspiracy by like any classic definition in the term. Yeah. When we think about the way that the political system has been set up to basically siphon money from the vast mass of people to like the super wealthy, that's a conspiracy. Like it's organized efforts for a particular goal. And conspiracy, like the kind of broke, like a conspiracy theory about how FEMA controls everything does serve to deflect from that. Like the white supremacist conspiracy theories that Elon loves, though I think he does believe them, are also useful in that they direct people's attention from the fact that, you know, Elon Musk is like basically colonized the high levels of government contracting and is shaping policy in his interest. And so I'm disagreeing with you, right, that like conspiracy theories serve to obscure the reality of conspiracy. Real power analysis.

Yeah. Real power analysis. Which, yeah, we don't use term conspiracies to, like, think of power analysis in part because that term, as you noted, like individualizes things a bit too much. Makes everything a bit too much a function of, you know, particular maligned intent versus the structure of our political economy, like the interaction of like various systems and forces that that create conditions for people to do X or Y or Z. I just think it's it's just baffling to me that people think that the richest man in the world is somehow on their side

and he's sticking it to the man. Because he hates the same people. Right, he hates the same people. Yeah, it's all, it's all affective, right? It's all, Elon Musk is the, is not cool. And he also dislikes people who have like cultural cachet and so you can see yourself in him. There's a little bit of Richard Nixon thing going on there, I guess.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get that. I get that. It is very, very frustrating and strange to watch because you're just like, this guy is obviously such a dweeb. Has no charisma. But he, part of his power actually and not to this, this, I don't know if he likes the X-Files.

Let me look at it up. Elon Musk. I mean, this is going to be hard to serve. because he's X-Files fan. There's no public right. Okay. I don't know that he's a fan of it. But one way that he gets power culturally is by being a fan,

by playing up his identity as a fan of cultural products that people like, right? So he's like, I'm a fan. I'm also a fan. I'm kind of a man of the people because I like these things. I'm relatable. I'm kind of nice on some level. I'm harmless, et cetera, et cetera. So then, you know, you can see how this all works.

But yeah, I think that I don't think. I think it was obviously be absurd to say something like if the X-Files didn't exist, the country would be in a better place today. I don't think that's true. And I think I don't want to upset. I'm sure many of our listeners, are huge fans. I don't want to upset them and say that you're a bad person for watching it.

That's not why you're a bad person is for other reasons. But like the, the, um, yeah, I just don't think it's aged particularly well and it's not a nostalgia that I, well, I'm sure if I had been a fan of the show,

I would have way more nostalgia for it now, right? So if I had been, if I had watched it when I was young, I'd go back and I'd be like, I remember what it felt like to watch it. But there's so much stuff that capital, I mean,

obviously, stranger things is capitalizing on an earlier wave of nostalgia, but there's so much property, intellectual property series that plays on nostalgia that it almost feels difficult to have genuine, you know, nostalgic feelings anymore. So I don't even like, I don't even like some movies we watch, that's definitely not true because I have very specific memories. But yeah, I don't have any emotional connection to it, I guess it's one way of saying. The emotional connection to is vague irritation. And also, it's just flat out, not that fun of a movie to watch. Yeah, as far as being a movie is concerned, just to, if we're going to switch back to the

film as a film, one effect of it, I guess you pointed this out when I was trying to give a synopsis of the movie, one effect of it being kind of like an overlapping series of conspiracy theories and being heavily in the X-Files lore is it's kind of just incomprehensible. It's sort of Unless you know, you know, have a good sense of who everyone is. Like this wasn't, there's like, there's a type of movie based off a TV show. Yeah, it's like, oh, this character. You're like, I don't know who the fuck that guy is.

It's just like. That is trying to introduce you to the television show, right? That it exists is like an entry point to the television show. So you watch this. And then you can go back and watch the actual show. And, you know, the movie will be like higher. production values would be nicer, but you'll get a basic sense of what it is. And then there's the movie based of a TV show, which is kind of just like a long episode

of the TV show. And so that requires you to have some basic knowledge of the television show. And that's what this is. But like basic knowledge of the X-Files at the time the movie came out would have been like four or five seasons of just like lore. Because it's a lore-heavy show. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. And like, and it's also like these disconnected or connected storylines and characters that reappear and then it gives you the appearance that oh this is all interconnected and the the conceit of the x files is that all of the all of the things are kind of connected right right everything is systematic uh in some way or another but i just don't get it any any last thoughts no the movie or the politics i mean there's not much politics it's kind of an anti politics and it's a substitute for politics. We've made this comment before on other movies.

I would say it's political thriller tropes. It just treats political thrillers as a trope. It's just another kind of movie plotline to cannibalize and to, and I think it's pretty, frankly, I think just if I'm going to be blunt, and I think that just presenting tropes to people, And then having them kind of have this self-satisfied chuckle to themselves as they recognize it is a pretty low form of entertainment. It's like it's pretty dumb. It's like, oh, yeah, I know that.

I've seen that. And it's like, yeah, you think you're having this moment where you're smarter than the film. And you're like, yep, they're doing that again. It's like, no, you're just fucking doing it. You're just like sitting on the cat. I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm so angry. Sitting on the couch, sitting on the fucking couch, watching these things.

And then you have this illusion of ironic distance. And it's like, nope, you're just, you're watching the same slop that everybody else is. And the fact that you can pick out the fact that these are references to something on some level does not make you, you know, superior in any way. And that's a real Gen X fucking thing is that that idea that through your cultivated consumption of media and especially of pop cultural media, you could have some kind of superiority to the squares. and be a kind of cooler, better consumer, even though you knew it was kind of all, you know, it all meant nothing in the end.

So I would say I roll this up into kind of critique of Gen X slacker mentality there too. Yeah. Yep. I mean, my main thing is I just, I found it very, I watched this on a plane.

Yeah. So captive attention. Yeah. And I just, I could not make myself want to pay attention to it. Yeah. The day, it was hard.

day before I had watched, rewatch the Last Centation of Christ, which is three hours, a three hour long Jesus biopic. And I felt, I mean, granted, directed by Marty, Mardi's Corsese. So, you know, Cracker Jack filmmaking. And yet, I still found it much faster than the X-Files movie. Just not for me, not for me. And for kind of some of the reasons why I've discussed, I've just found myself not entertained by conspiracy theorizing anymore. Yeah. All right. That was the X-Files movie. You can find it to watch if you care to watch it on Apple TV or Amazon Prime. That's where I rented it. It's Fox. So it might be streaming on Disney Plus or Hulu or something. I didn't bother the check. But it might be. So if you have those services, you might be able to see it for free. That is our show. Thank you, as always for listening. You can find. the show wherever podcasts are found.

And if you leave a rating and a review where those places are, people will find the show. And that would be great. You can reach it for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have some feedback over a recent episode that I did with our friend of the show, Nicole Hemmer, about the film Gattaca. Lots of Gattaca thoughts.

Here we go. This is relevant to our conversation now. Jamel John and your guest, Nicole. I'm a long time listener and I look forward to every episode. Keep up the great show. Thank you so much, Patrick. I just finished the Gatic episode and have a few comments. The belief in eugenics appears, unfortunately, to be persistent within the tech Silicon Valley world.

To give one non-numous example, there's a company called Nucleus genomics, which offers what they call IVF plus with the tagline, have your best baby. They claim that via gene editing, future parents can optimize. their baby's height, eye color, even IQ, intelligence and longevity. I believe Peter Thiel's VC firm is an investor. Neo, also a big tech VC firm is too, is also an investor. Not coincidentally, Neo is one of the main investors in the gambling platform, Kalshi. As a science geek, this didn't get mentioned, I must point out the letters in GATC are the scientific

symbols used for the four nucleotide basis in molecular biology. Guanine, adenine, thymine, and cystocin. cytosine. These are the organic molecules which compose the genetic code of DNA in humans and indeed all life. I always thought this was a clever way to hint that this is a society based on genetics. Best. Thank you, Pat. And yes, I mean, Silicon Valley obviously is obsessed with this notion of being able to breed the perfect human being.

And they seem, I mean, the guys that we know, the big tech billionaires do seem to perceive themselves as some kind of like higher. form of human life because they happen to get lucky. They got it all wrong. On the stock market. Yeah. And Musk, I mean, Musk, quite famously, right,

infamously. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, he has like a gaggle of children. But they're not really, I hesitate to call them, I mean, they're his children biologically, but like, they're not his children in that, like, he has any relationship with them. He kind of just like, it's brief. I mean,

it's weird. It's like a breeding thing he's doing in an effort to, I don't know, create like super people. We mentioned Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein also obsessed with this. This is an Epstein thing as well. You know, there's just a type of, a type of, I guess a type of person who's like, I'm God's gift of man. And so there must be a lot of me. Yeah. I don't know. I don't get. I'm very repulsed by this kind of eugenics and race science kind of stuff, which usually go together. I think it's evil. And I think it's a sign of an evil person if they're interested in it.

That's just my opinion. I mean, it's a correct opinion. Let's make that clear. This is a anti-race science podcast. An anti-computer nerd. No, I don't know if I would go that far. No, not anti-Silicon Valley type of sinister. where a lot of nerds listen to this show,

and we are arguably them as well. We wouldn't like to cast aspersions on them. But there's a sinister type of dweeb that I really can't stand. And Elon Musk is probably the biggest example in the world. And they're all into this kind of shit. Well, and it's so fun. I mean, not to rant about this, but of course they're into this shit. Like there's that guy, but the, you know,

there's, if you've been following, I guess, like academic controversies, there's the suicide of Jason Arde, a Cambridge professor, and this was all sparked by some investigation by this guy Nathan Koffrus or Koffness. Koffness. And this Nathan Koffness guys is like a huge race science obsessive. And it should be said, race science is like idiotic. It's just, I mean, I can't really, it's hard for me to express how stupid I think he is. I think this is obviously I'm self-interested as a black American, but also just like on the basis of, you know, the notion that race is.

is biologically real and coherent, any sense, the notion that you can use these racial categories to predict intelligence, the idea that like the structure of Western societies is a function of like IQ meritocracy, like it's all demonstrably false and stupid. And like the claims they make about IQ, like one of the claims these people make is that like the typical sub-Saharan African IQ is like, you know, barely above that of an intelligent dog. If that's the case, If that is true, then the way distributions work, there can't be like the equivalent of like a black PhD student, right? There can't be a black genius on the other side. If that's where, if that's where the average is, then there can't be someone that far away from the peak of the curve.

But there clearly are. And so it's like you meet one, you meet one black person with like a science PhD. and it's like, well, the whole theory has to collapse by default. But the point I was going to make is that you look at a guy like that who looks like a haunted Victorian doll and you're like, well, of course you believe this horseshit. Like, of course you're looking for anything

that can naturalize your own sense of superiority over other people. Right, exactly. It is a, it's a massive coping mechanism. It's cope. It's like the biggest. It's like the biggest form of cope. You know what?

Actually, I belong to a superior race. And I was like, well, you're not a very good, if that's true, they're not sending their best. Yeah. If that's true, send me one of the superior ones, please. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, that's the other thing. Like, nobody, it's just so obviously.

I got into a fight with that confidence guy years ago on the end Twitter, screaming about race science. He was around. creeping around forever. And I said to him flat out, I was like, you're a pathetic loser because you're Jewish and you're trying to impress these Nazis with your race science ideas and they're never going to accept you. And he got who's like, yeah. And I was like, yeah, I was like, you're, they're never, you're Jewish. They're never going to accept you. They're just going to be like, oh, like they're not going to be, take your evidence about Jewish. Actually, we're white. Actually, we're white. We're part of European civilization.

No, fuck off. Anyway, it's, yeah, they're disgusting. Have you seen that photo of like him, Richard Hanania, and Curtis Yarvin? Oh, yeah, and fucking Curtis Jarvin. Yeah, the real master race over there. They look horrible. Not to make, I'm sorry, make, well, you know what? I don't give a shit, actually.

I was about to say, oh, you don't make fun of the way people look. You know what? I make fun of the way people look all the fucking time. You should make fun. And if they're bad people, then they deserve it. You shouldn't make fun of the way people look. If they're just like, armless out there living their lives. If you're just like.

Right. But as soon as they annoy me, all bets are off. My line for, am I going to make fun of the way you look is if you are genuinely reprehensible. Then for me, it's like all bets are off. If you have a pretension to superiority, then you have opened the floodgates to to be like, well, you're, any of everyone one's going to look for any vulnerability.

That's exactly my, that's my rule for it. You know, I'll admit, maybe if you annoy me a little bit, you know, the threshold goes down a bit. But in general, I try not to, I try not to make fun of the way people look unless they have some kind of pretension to superior.

Unless they look really funny. No, that's not. Yeah, unless they're fucking busted, bro. Yeah. Yeah, this is more of a Patreon episode we're lapsing into. So maybe we should wrap it up. Yeah, we should wrap it up. Okay.

Episodes come out roughly over two weeks. And so join us in two weeks for an episode on Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg. Really? Oh, cool. Okay. Oh, right, right, right, right, World War II. Stephen Spielberg's World War II drama.

Huge hit, good movie. Great showcase for a sound system. I'll say that. one of those movies full of guys that you recognize. Haven't seen this in some time looking forward to watching it again. So we'll talk about saving private Ryan.

Over at the Patreon, we'll be doing episodes on Talk Radio, the Oliver Stone film, and the order, a recent film about a white supremacist group. And there's a current episode up there on the pawnbroker

as well as on the film confirmation that I did with my friend Mediba when John was on vacation. So you can check it out of the Patreon. That's unclear. Sorry, that's patreon.com slash unclear pod. And if you liked our little less restrained banter on this episode. Yeah, that's a little sneak peek of what you get on the Patreon. We're much more willing to be mean.

And yeah, we talk more shit. So if you want to hear that, check up the Patreon. That's it for the show, which I've already said. For John Gans, I'm Jamel Bury. This is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time.