You're Wrong About - The JFK Assassination Part 2 with Mackenzie Joy Brennan

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

But seriously, who really killed JFK? For part two of the JFK Assassination series, law correspondent Mackenzie Joy Brennan takes Sarah through the conspiracy theories that have surrounded the tragedy to see how the combination of too much information and too little information helped solidify a general feeling that things were not as they seemed. Together, they go over the Warren Commission report, the Zapruder Film, and the story of the “magic bullet,” and look at how Oliver Stone’s movie JFK changed our collective memory of what happened that day and who was really to blame. Digressions include the Sharpie art on burned CDs, the series premiere of Monk, and the unfortunate nostalgia for George W. Bush.More Mackenzie Joy Brennan:http://www.mkzjoybrennan.comEdited + produced by Miranda Zickler:http://www.linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonsterFact checking by Julie KliegmanMore You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchYWA on InstagramSupport the show

He's like, well, good night, Mr. X. That was a great game of Connect 4. Welcome to your rung about the podcast where we discuss the one conspiracy theory to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. Did I make that joke last time? I don't know. Maybe I did. It's still good. I don't think you went that far with it. Okay. I think you mentioned that this is the mother of all conspiracies, but I don't think you one ringed it. Yeah, we're committing now. Um, especially after. what we learned last time. And with me is McKenzie Joy Brennan. I suppose last time we learned about the details of the Kennedy assassination to start with a foundation of truth or, you know, what we were able to figure out at the time, given, you know, the forensics that people were

able to conduct, which seemed to have been oddly minimal for reasons that we got into. Some of them very Kennedy type reasons. Yeah. And now we're going to talk about, I guess, what grew in that vacuum where people didn't have as much detail as they expected they should have or where there was, I don't know, where people had to fill in the kind of bigger questions of how could such a thing happen. Yeah, I'm excited for us to get to the end and talk about why we think people were so eager to jump to different conclusions. One thing that occurred to me since the last time we talked is, you know, in regular criminal investigations, while people's interest is developing, there's a holdback of all the details from the investigation, either to protect the case or to ensure that the case is solved without outside interference. And this, because of the public interest, was so the opposite.

And the interest stayed sustained even after the Warren Commission because there was no verdict or anything that put a bow on it. And so I'm wondering how much that like combined release of information from early on and no resolution impacted the way that people processed it. And then I guess we have the fact that like we have a perpetrator who also was shot and killed very shortly after. And we kind of ended on that story. But yeah, I feel like again, there's something, There's like a lot at play here, but one of the things seems to be the lack of detail in crucial places and people needing to fill that in is a guess I have. Yes, I think that both the lack of detail and the amount of detail about maybe avenues that were closed or not pursued, you know, the government agent rumor comes to mind that like a combination of unfilled information and two filled information. Right. And also the people feeling that the government was high.

things from them. Yes. Which it obviously was. Right. Just, you know, maybe not these exact things. And it really goes to show you how damaging it is for a government to be withholding and up to these nefarious dealings, because then nobody believes you. And to be really, really sneaky, which the FBI and the CIA, again, absolutely were, like doing some quite evil things during this exact time period. The agencies really were at their zenith. Well, no. No, not Zenith, because... Evil Zenith. I think right now we're giving them a run for their money.

But I will preface this whole episode with the whole don't blame on conspiracy what could be due to incompetence idea. Yeah. Which is often true, especially of the federal government. So I figured since we got through the Warren report last time, we'll get to a tiny list, a primer list of some of the rumors that were already circulating as that report came out. And that's especially funny because in that Life magazine Deep Dive that Gerald Ford wrote, having been on the commission and recapping all the results,

he says that the report lays to rest to the lurid rumors and speculation that hit spread after the assassination. Ah, Jerry. It's like, you and me both, pal. We're like, now that we have facts, everyone can move on. And it's like, hmm, no. We did it twer. Yeah. Like, Like, we had not seen anything yet at that point. But I found some bits compelling. I don't even think it's worth spending too much time on this list of rumors because they deepened with time. Yeah. Yeah.

So the first nature of rumor, I'll say, is like, eyewitness-based confusion. So I think anything that maybe came out in those initial reports and left some information out of initial reports totally understandably. but then ended up with some different conclusion than people wanted. In the Warren report, there was some tension that happened there. So one of the witnesses is H.L. Brennan, no relation. And he saw Lee Harvey Oswald stick a rifle out of the window at the depository on the sixth floor where he was supposed to be. But there's some question about whether he could have seen him where he was at the time that he was there. Well, you do have the issue. I imagine that, like, there is this phenomenon, which I'm sure you've, I imagine, noticed with this story where people want to get close to a tragedy to kind of establish a relationship to it. And we'll sometimes, I think truly through no fault of our own generally, exaggerate our proximity to something or how much we might have seen just because it feels like a way of expressing how much we were affected by it, you know, or that we want to be.

be more helpful than we can necessarily be, which is like a very pro-social urge. And also like a lot of people give like very accurate accounts like down to surprising detail of what they've seen. But the fact that we struggle with it doesn't mean that we're being untruthful on purpose. Yeah. And I mean, that certainly came out, I would say more so with time and an easy parallel that we've made with other aspects of this case for folks who maybe did not have family members in the generation to have been through this, I think you see it a lot with 9-11. There's this desire to want to have stories that put you close to that event, to share how it affected you. And I think you're right that that is pro-social, but it also, there's a fine line that's difficult to cross to

attention-seeking when it's a criminal case. And that's always challenging to draw. But in this case, I don't think that's what was happening. So H.L. Brennan, the reason that people didn't trust his account, I guess, was that his initial description of Lee Harvey Oswald was hasty. He did it from 120 feet away, but he later identified him in a lineup. So in the beginning, it was a question about why it was so inconsistent early on. Brennan said to the Warren Commission that he had a lot of early fear that there was a major plot in progress. And so he didn't want to be totally candid with police. And that feels plausible to me because we didn't know what the scale of this was. Well, and also, I mean, is it accurate to say that like in multiple witness accounts of

pretty much any crime that sort of unfolds in a brief period that there's generally going to be kind of conflicting accounts just because again, it's like a very tricky thing to recall, especially if you're scared. Absolutely. Yeah, trauma has such direct and probably no, even better now or studied better now than at the time, but still. Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, you know, the satanic panic spurred a lot of progress, honestly. I mean, that's great. Yeah. We're still not perfect. It's obviously like we still use witness testimony and that's fine and good and beats nothing. But trauma really impacts the memory. Sometimes sleeping on something helps. Sometimes sleeping on something if you've heard other accounts doesn't help. Well, and also if you're questioned incorrectly, you know,

I think it feels like one of the issues with memory is how easily it can be contaminated. Yes. And how one of the factors in wrongful conviction it seems like sometimes is like, you know, having the police want you to identify a certain person in like a lineup or a photo lineup and kind of like. Hinting. Without ever being explicit, kind of like steering you in that direction. And you're like, yeah, yeah, it was that guy now that I think about it.

Yeah, like it does not even have to be an overt suggestion. It can just be like a finger on the page or the setting that's something. somebody's in. So, yeah, it's super fallible. And to that point, there's another person who is seen in a really far away crowd picture. I can send it to you if you want. Yeah, please do. So this is the case of Bill Love Lady. Bill Love Lady. I know, right? Such a fun name. That sounds like a novel by Gwarvedal or something. Myra Breckenridge and Bill Love Lady. Like a gothic novel also. That too. There's so much possibility to Bill Love Lady.

Yeah. So he was another employee of the Depository. So he's in this photo in a crowd picture that gets super blown up. It's of the parade route. And somebody says, or presumably a fair amount of people say that this looks a lot like Lee Harvey Oswald. Because apparently they know his face well enough and they can identify it in this minor detail. and going from there, they ask, how could he be in this doorway when he was on the sixth floor moments before? Because this is taken the moment after the shooting.

So it's like, he can't be in two places at once. How is he here? But, of course, it's Bill Love Lady. And you can see, I just sent the picture. The detail in it is so minimal that, like, you can see that phenomenon you're talking about of people wanting to have something to add or some new insight. and this was not helped by the fact that is also understandable, like, both things can be true, that Love Lady was really leery of public media, and he went into seclusion after the assassination.

Yeah, I sure would. Right? Like, so no interviews, no more pictures, nothing. Yeah, and it's like, he looks like Kevin Costner as well, you know? What does it mean? Do you know the conspiracy theory that, you know, because the Elven. citing thing I think actually really emerged and took off in the late 80s. Like there's an episode of American hysteria about this. And of course, one of the theories that kind of came up around that

time is that, or maybe later, but like, you know, this is the heyday of the American Elvis citing is that Elvis had apparently gotten a job as an extra and home alone and was loitering behind John Candy and Catherine O'Hara and an airport scene. And it's just like, so, wow, what is Elvis thinking in the scenario. Because if you can't give me a theory of what Elvis is thinking about, like, what is he there? Explain. He's going to blow it all up for this, for this bit part. To what end?

Yeah. To what end? Wait, what is that from? That's Maya Rudolph as Deanne Warwick. Thank you. So, yeah, Bill Lovelady is just a guy who didn't want his photo taken by people after. Yeah. And a lot of people look like other people.

Like, that's truly, like, a big thing I counter in my head a lot of conspiracy theories with. It's like, there just aren't that many features that humans can have, honestly. Especially within, like, age group, racial composition. So, like, a white guy of that age group and build. Right. Hair cut, clothes. Like, there's very limited options. limited fashion options for pale white men in 1963 in Dallas, it's fair to say.

And minimal now as things go. We're broadening the options. Very slowly. Yeah. So those were some of the eyewitness confusions early on, but I think it also like planted a seed of something's not adding up about the timing or the people from the beginning, even though he also was interviewed by the commission. and he independently confirmed his exact location and so did his boss. Yeah, but no one's going to read all that. And then is there like a theory that there's like multiple Oswalds and the, you know,

the government has like a bunch of different Oswalds dispersed through the crowd, like the multiple Louies at a ball in France. Yeah, right? Or like the Biden body double nonsense you hear now. Ooh, I don't know that one. but this will work our way forward. Yeah. I mean, now we have a president who's like actively decompensating and dying and no one is mentioning it. And so it's like we're back in the 1960s or before when like Eisenhower was basically incapacitated and Nixon really should have been given

executive power, but wasn't. Or just, you know, where he had like Wilson pretty incapacitated and the American public not being informed. It's like, yeah, we've gone back to before. of the 60s. Well, that's frankly, a through line, because Reagan also had his little brain nap. His little brain naps, yeah. When President Reagan's brain was

resting. Resting. Yeah, they gave him jelly beans. And not to defend Reagan, but, you know, at least he could ride a frickin' horse. Is that where our standards are now? Yeah. Because that's how I'm feeling about G.W. Bush, like, longing for the healthy on days. Yeah, I know.

of somebody swatting shoes away. The nostalgia is so odd. Yeah. I hate it. And I don't endorse it. No. But I do feel it. It's very complicated.

The greatest trick the Bush has ever pulled was pretending to be from Texas. Were they not from Texas? Well, the bushes are from Connecticut originally. And so George W. Bush is like, you know, pretty Texan. But I feel like there's a lot of Texas culture being like, my family's been here for five generations. And then there's someone whose family's been there for 18,000 generations and you're trying to detain them obviously. Yeah. But the whole like a Connecticut Yankee in oil country thing was very clever of them.

But that's also like the presidency is all about theater. And the kind of access that Americans have has always been interesting because there's a, I don't know, if you look at this period in American history, we did kind of expect to have information withheld from us, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's part of it. And that's like there's an odd security. Yeah. And maybe you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Yeah. Because you have to have an informed electorate to be able to critically think about information that they have access to. And I know that that always becomes an argument not to release information. I think it should be an argument for education. But that would be nice. Obviously, that's not the prevailing conservative thought. I mean, I have a lot of faith. than the American people, and that gets me in trouble pretty consistently. And yet it would be more heartbreaking to give it up than to continue to have it. Right. Okay, so we have the false Oswald, which I enjoy. Well, yeah.

And then speaking of access to presidents, interesting segue, another one that I had heard referenced myself is that this 1961 Lincoln Continental that they were driving is a convertible, right? But it does have an option of adding this bubble top to the top. And so people, I believe they even mention it. Split top bubble top car. Yeah. And they talk about it in the JFK movie.

They say like, why did they remove that at the last minute? Well, they removed it at the last minute because it was only good for keeping rain out. And it was a sunny day. It's a plastic bubble top. It's not bulletproof. It wouldn't have stopped anything anyways. This is not the PoteMobile. Right.

Well, and also, like, this is the assassination that I think teaches people to be afraid of being shot at. Right. To make a Pote Mobile. Yeah. So he wouldn't have that fear because he's the reason for the fear. Yeah. I can also imagine a scenario where, like, they removed it because it, like, got a crack in it or something. Like, human fallibility, I feel like is so frequently the answer here as opposed to there being a plot.

And then, of course, like, there are plots. And, like, you know, we'll get into that. But a lot of plots are carried out in broad daylight. Without code. And yeah, and don't require that much secrecy because no one cares about their victims all that much. Girls. Yeah, because like you're saying, you know, they've been getting away with it for so long that why would they bother to bury their tracks? Because it doesn't matter.

Right. In this case, the bubble top was literally in the trunk like it's there. They could have broken it out. But again, plastic doesn't stop bullets. But it feels like they. kind of thing where they would have chosen aesthetics at that point. And like, not unwisely because no one had shot at them. And also, like, isn't it nice to see the pretty first lady and the hot president? Isn't it nice to see them without a cover? Right. That's like the whole point. That's the reason they're

there. Right. So that one does very little for me. Yeah. I'm sure you've heard about connections between Jack Ruby and Oswald. Is that something you're familiar with? Not really. Yeah. Let's get into it. Well, I don't really know the basis for that rumor. It's another one that the commission tracked to its origin just to see. And as you recall, the commission described him as a sad and strange little man, Jack Ruby. I really love that. So my. They really did not pull any punches. And it's the saddest kind of pity because they really pity him. They talk about how interrogating him was so touch and good. because he was terribly tense, and his buttons were done wrong, and he wore sandals to his government deposition. I feel like this is like a Jason Alexander role. Yeah, just like a sweaty boy in over his head.

But either way, and still, to this day, there's no evidence nor concrete claim of any prior relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald. So there really was nothing to investigate further or disprove. And I feel like this, I want to call this the Carrie-Always problem. Because in Kiss the Girls, spoilers for Kiss the Girls, you guys, it's a fun movie. It's a movie about multiple serial killers and they're like collaborating. And this is a pre-Hannibal world. So it's pretty exciting.

It's Ashley Judd versus the serial killers. Love it. I would watch Ashley Judd do anything. We love when men have hobbies, though. Yeah. It's great. Male friendships are important. You're right.

Serial Killer is one of the few hobbies offered to men. Allowed to me. Yeah. And we give them so many ideas. But so Carrie Elways is a character, and he's, like, listed in the opening credits, but he, like, doesn't do very much for most of the movie. And so when you're trying to figure out who, like, the killer is, you're like, well, Carrie always has had nothing to do. So either his role got cut way down after it tested poorly or he's the killer. Like process of elimination.

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like there's a thing. you know, we're like stories do teach us a lot of great stuff, but they also teach us to have certain expectations. Yes. And to want to find the same kind of pattern recognition in real life that we can find in fiction. And so when there's limited characters and open questions, I feel like we want to believe that like within the cast that we know about is the answer as opposed to like, you know, there's characters that we aren't aware of or like it's just the satisfying answer that we seek isn't even

there. So it's like, well, this Jack Ruby guy, it can't be random. It's a carry-always problem. Right, exactly. It's kind of, I think you and I have talked about this with true crime in general and how it gets so messy with real people being involved because there's the Chekhov's gun problem. Yeah, which is similar to the carry-always problem. Yeah, basically. Like, as narrative consumers who are raised on fiction to be given these things that are non-fiction but presented as narratives. Yeah.

If Carrie-Always is in the opening credits, he must. do something. He must be fired by the end. Yeah. If we have questions, like, why would Jack Ruby kill a stranger in public for no real reason except civic-mindedness? And then, and also like some guy who is so full of information that we need to get out of him. Like, what if the next guy has information? Like, this is the thing they do in law and order, which I love and also really, really teaches us to be tough on crime, where they find someone. who's guilty of something or at least appears to be, and of course it's Law & Order, so they are. Yeah.

But they can't prosecute them for whatever reason. And so they find a different person to prosecute so that we can have a fun episode to watch. I feel like maybe Jim Garrison watched an episode of Law & Order somehow before the Clay Shaw case. Or he like was on a plane with Dick Wolf and Dick Wolf emerged. Like I know what I'm doing now. Proto Law and Order, because that's exactly what happened in the Clay Shaw case. Shawcase that we'll get to. Wow. But I don't know. I also think a great point that Vincent Bouliosi makes is that the squalid living conditions of both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, if you look up the apartments that they were living in, oh man, that really belies any government

involvement, government money, big money angle. Wait, tell me, I want you to drive their apartments. Tell me everything. Let me see. I, you know, I saw the photos and I don't know that I would have describe them with such vitriol as Buliosi did, but let me see. Well, these men had houses that magically cleaned themselves every day as far as they knew. Right. So Oswald was like renting a room from some nice, unassuming older lady. They always are. They're no great shakes. It's nothing to write home about. And I do think that's a valid point. Where's all this big government or mafia or communist money? Like, where is the paper trail? Then I think the last, Rumor that I want to get to before we get to the real like cultural fallout of the post-warren era is introducing the gun. So do you know anything about the gun that was used or rumors surrounding it?

No. Well, I mean, it's like bigly familiar, but I couldn't tell you specifics. And I assume it's like a rifle because I think we learned that in full metal jacket. But please tell me everything. So I'm going to call this like the witch gun. theory slash fodder. Sorry, for a second, I thought you meant a witch gun. Witch gun. Cackling, witch gun. That's the whole other topic. That's even more fun.

In fact, if we want to come up with an additional rumor. Yeah. How did Oswald pull it off if he was just some loner? He had a witch gun. Fucking witches. So this starts. You get sheriff video footage taken about 46 minutes after the shooting. So they're pretty on top of it, despite the fact that all these investigations

have holes and people who are ill-equipped to undertake them. They do canvas the depository within an hour, and they get prints from Lee Harvey Oswald. It's a hard crime scene to flee when I think about it. And yet he managed to get to the movie theater. Yeah. It shows the finding of three spent cartridge casings on the floor, which that to me is also pretty compelling. And here's where you get to some of the ballistics. We'll get to more of that in the second round,

there's new fun testing. And I do mean fun because it's not, it's removed enough from the horrors. So firing a gun marks the casings with identifiable scratches. And that matched them to the gun. And it's like different freak gun, right? It's like kind of like a fingerprint. Yeah. So I'm not a big ballistics person, but that that is my understanding. And the bullets were pointed. It is a full metal jacket, indeed. And it's like around a soft shell. So it's like a hard, external casing and then there's a soft shell inside. And it's like, it's basically military ammunition that was used in World War I and two. And within this particular gun, which is called a manlicker carcano, it's an Italian rifle. There's like spiral ridges for accuracy, kind of like

throwing a football with a spin on it. Oh, wow. That's a good metaphor. This is some great ballistics describing. I try, man. I am sure I'm going to get comments about like, actually, Well, this is not how guns work, and I'm sorry. You know, I kind of enjoy having a little bit of a lack of knowledge about guns at this point in time, I've got to say. Right. So that feature, which marked the casings, is an uncommon feature of the manlicker carcano. So that in and of itself is pretty identifying. The gun itself, it's this Italian World War II bolt action rifle.

And it was found at the depository. And the serial number on that gun shows. that it was mail-ordered from this Klein's catalog in Chicago to a known alias for Lee Harvey Teabag. Yeah. I can imagine, of course, people being like, how could he, he couldn't have really been so sloppy. It's a false flag. And to that, my response is, couldn't he? Right. Have you met people? They're very sloppy. Have you met men? Look at his house. Especially murdering men. Like, he's a 24-year-old jackass. Right. I know I talk about this all the time, Like, people talk about Ted Bundy being a genius killer and like, he's not.

He was not. Like, he, you know, he was filing receipts for the gas he bought when he was cruising around Colorado, finding women to murder. You know, he was like saving his own evidence. It's not, you got to start thinking about how perhaps it's the police doing a bad job more than anything that allows criminals to get away with it for so long, not them having superior intelligence. Yeah. And to your point about conspiracies and powerful people in general, like, they don't have to use code. They don't have to cover their tracks because nine times out of ten, nobody pulls a thread, except that here you killed the president, so the thread was going to be pulled. Right, exactly.

And also, like, not to be too simplistic, but like, or two L. Woods, if that's such a thing. You can never be two L. Woods. Exactly. Really smart people don't murder women for fun. They just don't. Right. They have model trains. And same here. Like this guy was either going to write a really subpar book or kill the president.

It was either this or found Scientology. It's hard to know which would have been worse. Which is worse? Hard to say. I don't know. I mean, at least people aren't being like indentured because of the Kennedy assassination as far as I know. Scoreboard. I don't know. But like one of the arguments made. about this gun is that it is rare to use it for homicides.

There are lighter and, like, greater capacity options in the same catalog. But it was $13. Oh, there you go. Yeah, he's only, look, he's like 24, right? Of course, that's a lot of money back now. Yeah. So that to me closes the case. Yeah.

It is so depressing to think of, and like, I've never, you know, my family has never, like, had a thing for the Kennedys. I know a lot of people do. Um, I feel pretty neutral on it. But like, they were like a nice, cute young family with little kids. And like, it's just so sad to think of like anyone's dad dying because someone got a $13 gun out of a catalog. And didn't have any friends. Not that it would be better if it was more expensive. But yeah, because it's like just, just learn chess. Nobody made him feel special. So he was really mad, got a $13 gun. done with the $7 scope. The rumor that comes out of this early on is one of my favorite illustrators in the whole

case because it's so, I think all of us will relate to how well this exemplifies like the 24-hour news cycle and how it twists facts. So it's this mammaker carcano that is eventually identified pretty early on, right? And once that information is released, there's this big, compared, contrast. with early reporting that came from one source that the police had identified it as a Mouser, which was a German gun. So they tracked this down to the source,

and what actually happened was there was a reporter on a deadline in Dallas, and they're hanging around the scene. They press an officer who's just standing nearby. He's not got any special knowledge or doing anything that relates him to the crime. They pressed this guy for specifics on the weapon. And so they're asking, asking, asking, Finally, the officer says, it might have been a Mouser.

Yep. But the reporter didn't qualify that this was like under duress. Right. And again, I mean, just from like hanging out on newspapers.com, it's, I'm often reminded of the fact that like in the immediate aftermath of an event, like in breaking, like, it's called breaking news because they're breaking it as you're reading it. And it's inevitable that stuff is going to be incorrect. And that's, that doesn't even mean that people aren't doing their jobs right.

It's just that there's conflicting witness reports, as we've been talking about often initially, and it takes a minute for things to get sorted out. And this does feel like a very classic case of like where a lot of conspiracy theories, when they're grasping for straws, they can grasp them here. It's like, well, someone said this for a second before it could be corrected. It's like, well. And I think there are a couple dirty hands here because the one thing that I'd counter to what you said is like it would be a lot better if reporters and anybody service. as a news purveyor now, qualified information with like, this was an officer guessing. Yeah, and the newspaper's like refusal to not write in that kind of voice of God style. Like this is maybe what came back to bite them in the ass as kind of punishment for that for

acting too omniscient, is that we believed them. Yeah, maybe. And also, like, the fallout doesn't really touch the person that perpetuated this rumor in the beginning. Yeah. Like the fallout hits more the Warren commission, which whatever, they can handle it. But more in a like principal sense. When the Rob Reiner killing happened, there was a story, a little video on social media. And I try to like, cull my feeds, but you can only do so much. Yeah. It was this gal talking about some information from TMZ. I don't think the information ended up being correct, but I forget what it was. But I remember her saying,

Now, TMZ, they don't just say something like this without knowledge. They have lawyers. And I'm sitting there like saying out loud, that's not true. And this fact isn't true. Like, lawyers just show in court that, you know, you didn't have malice about a public figure. That doesn't mean that they're telling the truth about every piece of info they get. But like she, that gal will never have any repercussions befall her. The person who said this was a mauser gets to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

So that fast turnaround really fucks us all. Yeah. And the confusion would like the public's need to know with our right to have more information than exists yet, you know? Yeah. And it's all capitalized. So like there is a financial incentive to have the next big thing. Right. And of course then it's like you're as a news source competing at the time with other news sources to like at least create the appearance of having more or newer information.

Yeah. Like special access. So that, yeah, that was such an illustrative piece of info. Well, we really screwed ourselves. And we sure have fixed it now, haven't we? That's great. So we're going to get more into the ballistics and forensic misunderstandings with the second wave of fodder in a little bit. But this is kind of the end of part one. And we will note here that all the lurid rumors were not laid to rest despite Gerald Ford. Ford's best predictions. Good for him for thinking that.

He tried. He's like, and now you're going to move on, right? We're like, no. Why don't you go fall off a letter on SNL? I don't know, man. This gets us to the fun stuff. We can move to Clay Shaw now, which is I think what both of us are champing at the bit to arrive at.

I think so, yeah. Because I, this is where we get into Oliver Stone's JFK, which feels like it's kind of a milestone movie for people and that it's fun to question the government. Yes. Even if when you zoom out, you're like, oh, this movie actually made this seem like a lot more persuasive than it appears to be in the cold light of day. Like JFK is the equivalent of like the episode of Sex and the City Valley of the 20-something guys where Carrie goes home with I think Timothy Oliphant and he's in his 20s.

speaking of guys in their 20s apartments and it's like sexy and hot and amazing and she's like so thrilled and then she wakes up and it's like messy and filthy and gross and in the cold light of day she's like what have I done and that's like the equivalent of like watching JFK versus looking up those theories on Wikipedia the next morning oh and I will say like having so I watched it a number of years ago and then I watched it the other day because you and I talked about watching it. And it was so much harder to watch now. It's so hard to watch once you know the information because it's so star-studded. It's a lot of fun. Yes. It's incredible Lori Metcalf, you know, material. Oh, yeah. You can watch it for the Lori Metcalf alone. And she's not even the top biller by a long

shot. You got Ed Asner as Guy Bannister. I mean, we'll get to who's who, I guess. But I want you to introduce the movie. We're kind of splitting it into two temporal parts. And because there are other things I want to talk about in this phase, but Clayshaw trial happened in 1967. And then the movie that really was based on that trial and the book about it more than anything else, like that was the primary source for JFK. The movie came out in 91. So like you have a 30-ish year gap there, but JFK, the movie, really is what publicized the trial. Yeah. And it feels like it, you know, there's like that sort of nostalgia cycle that I think. think it's gotten a bit faster lately, but that it was like, if you're like a, you know,

a teenager or young adult in the early 90s, you really don't have any living memory of this. So it was kind of the introduction people got. And then it's us observing that thing that happens in history where the balance shifts and people start knowing something primarily through fiction rather than through lived memory, like in terms of population numbers, which is also really interesting. And even more so now. Yeah. Well, so basically JFK is about Kevin Conch. Plasner playing Jim Garrison, who is the district attorney of New Orleans, is that right? Yeah, yeah. And who figures out a way to kind of try the Kennedy assassination within his own jurisdiction in an odd way.

Yeah, what a nice coincidence for him that it all landed on his doorstep. Yeah, that worked out great. And it's got like the classic wife in these movies character played by Sissy Spacehack who's like, the kids have been waiting up for you while you've researched and this Kennedy assassination conspiracy. She doesn't talk like that, but you know. She kind of does. I have one southern accent I can do, and it's just Dixie Carter, you know. I have limited range.

I think that's fine. You just have to add, like, molasses to your mouth to do a New Orleans version because it always feels very belabored. Do you want to know what he called that wife in real life? What? He called her egg. No. Why would he say that to Anne? Anna and the egg.

Because she's the bell of the ball. Yeah, not pictured. Just like a bell. We're having yams. He called her egg because she was such an egghead. Isn't that sweet? No. No, it's not.

So we love Jim Garrison. He seems like a nice guy. And he's played by Kevin Costner at his peak. It's like celebrity washed. Do you want to run down some of the cast of this movie? because I feel like it's wild. Look, let me, let's just going to pull, let's get a list here.

Okay, so we have Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw, who this trial is about in the end. Kevin Bacon. Lori Metcalf, Gary Oldman is Lee, Harvey Oswald, Michael Rooker, Sissy SpaceX as Egg, Chopee Pesci is David Ferry doing great wig work. Oh my God. Jack Lemon, Walter Mathau, Donald Sutherland.

It's a really amazing collection of people, mostly men. But, you know, it's an Oliver Stone movie. It's for sure what we expect. Wayne Knight, importantly. Yes, yeah. Who we talked about. He's always good. He's good in everything.

Vincent Dinafriot, Lolita Dividovich, John Larichette. John Larichette. It just goes on. Yeah. So you're just like, and I do think there's like an element where we just trust celebrities. And like there are so many movies. I think about this a lot with while you were sleeping, where like if the plot elements of that movie,

if we encountered them first on TMZ, we'd be like, that woman's insane. Let's execute her. I hate her. But if you learn about it in the context of a Sandra Bullock movie, you're like, she couldn't hurt a fly. Or at least I am. It's very influential to this show.

Or like, I support her rights and wrongs. Yeah, the show is really just kind of an attempt to replicate the experience of while you were sleeping. Okay. for women who got in over their head and be like, well, when you think about it, we love her. But so basically it's, I mean, it's like, it's a very long movie. It's beautifully shot. The script is like, well done, in my opinion. Like, you have great characters bouncing off each other. Like, and it probably is that like wealth of characters and really fun actors to watch John Candy among them that makes it sectioning enjoyable experience because then it doesn't have to lean so. hard on like the substance of the theories driving it because you're kind of like well the character like Lori Metcalf is like super excited about the idea that this photo might be edited. And I don't care,

but I care about how excited she is about it. Yeah. And you notice in that scene, they cut to the photo for about one and a half seconds. Like yeah, which it was a real photo. It's a real photo that we could have looked at. It's a black and white photo. Yeah. And so it feels like, I mean, basically Kim Garrison is just like a guy and he's a district attorney. So he's like, midlife crisis. Yeah, he's a guy in midlife. And he reads the Warren report when it comes out and kind of, and like in his capacity just as a civilian, basically, he's like, I don't like this. Feels wrong. Yeah. And starts investigating and questioning people and puts together a theory that despite me having seen this movie quite a few times over the years and more recently now,

I could not describe to you. And I would love for you to. give us that. Oh, God. Give me the heavy lifting. Yeah. Yeah. So, come to my house and move my furniture. I'll give you a piece of pizza. Well, I think the reason is that Jim Garrison's first and primary theory about this case would not have sold as well, even in 1991, as whatever the hell they were doing. And it was that, like Leopold and Loeb, in fact, he said, it was a homosexual thrill killing. Come on. Whatever the hell that means. You can't blame everything on homosexual thrill killing. He's really riled up about the gay men that either are identified in this story or he has identified.

Okay. And is Clay Shaw basically involved also in like pimping male escorts? Is that fair to say? So Clay Shaw's involvement in that this is a real like chain of connections because enough time goes by. that like two people die and not under suspicious circumstances. You know, one dies, I think shortly after the assassination in like early 1964 of a heart attack. And that's Guy Bannister, the Ed Asner character. He's an ex-FBI man.

That is confirmed. That is a true fact. He was working as a PI in New Orleans. He got in a fight where he pistol whipped his assistant Martin. And that ended up getting back to the police. and that was the first involvement of this story with the cops in New Orleans. Now, in the interviews to explain away whatever pistol whipping happened, or potentially I read it as like get back at his boss,

Martin tells the cops that his boss, the FBI guy Bannister, knows this guy named David Ferry. And David Ferry served in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol with Lee Harvey Oswald. That's about it that we have. He tells on his boss, because they got in this conflict, that he knows a guy who knows Lee Harvey Oswald. So they're probably involved. Which again, is like a very classic being in trouble with the police thing.

It seems to me. We were like, hey, I know this other thing. You want to be nicer to me because I know something? Yeah. Or like, I'm pissed off at this guy, so I'm going to tell you all the dirt I have on him and maybe amplify it a little bit. Yeah. And these are like very basic power dynamics.

Yeah. And of course, this is like, the biggest crime of the last year. And so, hell yeah, I'm going to implicate him if I want to. So that's what we have. And then that was promptly referred to the FBI during the Warren Commission process by DA Garrison. Martin was interviewed by the FBI, so they actually looked into it. Okay. So he does have like a criminal, like a connection to it through a criminal case early on. Yeah. I'm being a little bit unfair to him. Yeah. I'm sorry, Jim Garrison. Well, I don't know.

I'm a little bit sorry. I'm sorry. Like, to have some guys that come into your office mention this, do you know how many times somebody mentions disliking the president or thinking the president is involved in some conspiracy when they're trying to get off the hook in a criminal context? Like, that could connect anybody to anything. Well, that's a good point as well. Plus the homosexual thrill killing from there.

I don't know. Well, yeah. And, you know, not to make broad sweeping pronouncements, but from what I can tell, homosexual thrill killing seeming extremely rare. And in the 50s, we were ready to think there were millions of them, I think, or the 60s. And right, that's what this captures to me, because he also, when the FBI interviews Martin, he says, I bet that Ferry might have hypnotized Oswald into doing something. And that was such a common refrain, that hypnosis thing of, because you heard with RFK,

his assassination too. There was a lot of like, yeah, we're hypnotizing people into killing and oh boy. So-and-so might have corruptly and secretly hypnotized someone and there's, that's why there's no paper trail, because it's hypnosis. Which is a very Manchurian candidate influenced theory, I think, in view of hypnosis in a way. It's very of the time. The FBI considered Martin unreliable and wasn't able to find any connecting information to this story. But they interviewed about 20 other people in connection with this allegation. So they did follow it through. And then you get even further attenuated.

So Guy Bannister, the FBI guy, he dies of a heart attack right after. So fuck, we lost our main guy. Now what? Garrison in 1966, he's really wanting to pursue this. So he reinterviews Martin and they get some more story out of it. And so, yeah, and the fact that he wants to keep digging is interesting. too. Yeah. By the way, Jim Garrison was let go from the Army and in the assessment that is left out of the JFK movie, an army doctor concluded that Garrison had a severe and disabling psychoneosis that interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree. But when I picture him, I see Kevin Costner, so I trust him.

Who must not be debilitatingly neurotic? No, impossible. He's an actor. Despite calling his wife Egg. So, like, on this new interview with Martin, who now is getting his 15 minutes, I guess, there's this cabal that starts to materialize, and that connects them to David Ferry, more concretely. But David Ferry, who was going to be the chief suspect, he dies of a brain aneurysm. God damn it. Yeah. And that apparently, you know, Garrison thought was a cover-up. As somebody who's had a very close family member die of a brain aneurysm, it's so obvious.

obvious on an autopsy, like, there's bleeding into the brain. It's very hard to fake that. What if he has crammed a gusher up his nose? Yeah, maybe. One of those blood capsules. Just smash it into the bits. Yeah, maybe. Oh, God. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's really, if you believe that an aneurysm was some kind of a cover up, then like, you're probably prepared to believe a lot of stuff that I would personally have trouble with as well. Yeah, like, that's what. one of the more difficult things to fake in an autopsy because it's such a clear cause. I don't know. But so he now has put together that Jack Ruby, there are these rumors about Jack Ruby being gay, and David Ferry is pretty certainly gay. So now you have two gay guys who are involved. No,

Jack Ruby does not appear again in this narrative, but because we have two gay guys, then Garrison Gleans that all six people involved. So, you know, you know, Martin, Bannister, Oswald, everybody, they're all gay. Oh, okay. Yeah, because the gays can't consort with the non-gays. No, no. And if they're consorting, it's probably a cabal. But doesn't this mean the president is also gay? Well, you know, they were jealous, he said, of the president because he was so hot. No.

And that inspired them to kill. Jim. Jim, I mildly trusted you for two hours once a couple times. So he turns his focus. to Clay Shaw, who the eventual trial is against Clay Shaw. The key witness against Clay Shaw, it's a lot to keep track of all these names. I have like a chart is this 25-year-old guy named Perry Russo. And the way that we connect Perry Russo is that he tells the police that he was at a party with Clay Shaw. And Clayshaw mentioned the killing of Kennedy with Lee Harvey Oswald.

But the first mention of this party and Lee Harvey Oswald is not included in multiple early versions of Rousseau's testimony. But then Garrison gives him sodium pentatoll. Okay. Yeah. And that's one of those. It was called for a time truth serum, although by 1954, narco-analytics and criminal law kind of eschewed the use of this, because it's like any nervous system depressant. You know, think of alcohol.

So the way that the American Journal of Psychiatry described it is like, it may allow somebody to give new information. It also could cause somebody to deliberately withhold information, persist in giving untruthful information, or falsely confess to things that they haven't done. So it's inadmissible and it has been since the 60s. So it's kind of like it's not maybe as different as we would like. it to be from just giving someone a bottle of rum. Totally. And imagine like all the different

outcomes that you could get from somebody being drunk when they're examined by someone who really wants them to say a certain thing. Yeah. And here you obviously have, like he clearly wants him to say there's a connection to Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. And then conveniently, he's given this drug and he mentions it. So it's really, it's a lot of like garden variety wrongful confession type stuff, which I wouldn't have expected. And not even from the agent himself. Like, just from some other 25-year-old who was at the party. Yeah. It was one of the fastest, not guilty verdicts in New Orleans history.

Ah. Yeah. Less than an hour. Some people say less than 30 minutes it took. So what is Clay Shaw being accused of? Oh, conspiracy to assassinate the president. Okay. And he's leading a gay cabal because he's jealous of the hot, hot president.

Well, that, I think he tweaked. the theory. And so the eventual conspiracy was one that involved the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and LBJ, abstractly. Well, that seems more complicated. So, right?

Like, I don't know. When you're watching it, especially without a whole lot of knowledge of the facts, they really mix fact and fiction. In fact, Roger Ebert reviewed the movie and said that it was a film about the feelings of Americans surrounding the event, not the

By Roger Ebert was right quite often. Yeah, but again, it doesn't qualify it as that. It just puts it out there as something, like a version of a real thing that happened without any qualifiers that we made up a lot of this. Yeah. So is it ultimately just everybody's fault or sort of like a general government plot that doesn't point the finger at any particular agency or anything? But the idea is that Clay Shaw is being used as like a government pawn. to execute the president in order to something, something cold war? I'm frankly not even super clear on what the nature of the conspiracy was, because there are also mentions of anti-Castro-Cubans, and then there are also some mentions of pro-Castro-Cubans

and gun running to them. To me, it's not a coherent theory that I could even articulate, especially with all these moving parts that actively have interests opposed to one another. or at best, kind of like we were talking about quibono, what do all of these individuals and entities get? So you have six private citizens who are not connected to the government, and you have almost six causes or agencies institutionally involved. Like, how? I don't really know how you connect all of those, except that it allows you to unite all the people who think there's a conspiracy, because it's abstract enough to pull them in. Right.

Which does remind me of the satanic panic because if you start off with a theory that doesn't really make sense, then the more details emerge, the more you have to compensate for. Yeah. And so your theory has to get bigger and bigger until you're kind of pointing the finger at the entire government. Yeah. And it's not because your theory is so compelling, but it's because you have to compensate for so much contradiction.

And especially if you're peddling this. to people who are not informed about the way that the investigation has gone and thus can rule certain things out on their own. I mean, this movie was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture. Like, it was hugely popular with folks outside of the governmental sphere. And it's 1991, to your point, like, we have some removal from the events. This is how a lot of folks were acquainted with the facts of the investigation, but they're wrong. Yeah.

There's just one more good quote from a frontline review in 1992. Somebody was very upset, John Leo, who wrote this review, said that a writer undertakes many unpleasant tasks, but fewer more repugnant than sitting helplessly in the dark, suffering a three-hour rant from Oliver Stone. It's essentially several hours of shameless propaganda, and the dishonesty of the movie is breathtaking. So it was controversial. Yeah.

And I remember some of that. But it's like, again, it's really, it doesn't have the reputation for insanity that I think it deserves. And I mean, why do you think that Americans responded so strongly to it and that it's remained? Like, it's also, it's not like something that people stopped watching. Like, people still watch JFK. Your point is something that I felt also in researching reviews. And I was glad to find this one from 1992. But it also seems like the traversy surrounding it is inversely related to the time that passes because, kind of like we were saying, like, the more time that passes, the more likely somebody is to have seen this than have any other connection or frame of reference to the facts of this story. I mean, you put all these faces in a movie. And Oliver Stone has a record of directing great movies. He did Platoon, right? Yeah, which I walked with my dad when I was far too young. Yeah. That's the thing with dad movies, right? Yeah, I know. They're always like, you're 11. You're ready for... Good culture. Alien 3. Yeah. I saw The Godfather at like 10 and I'm like, I don't know what's happening here. Yeah. So, I mean, that's my guess. And then Seinfeld opened up, frankly, a whole new audience to it. Like, free advertising in that episode of Seinfeld, which I love.

I do too. But it also brought some comedy to the movie. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I don't know. that like A, it's a good movie on the level of filmmaking, like Oliver Stone at this time in his career, like, was really firing on all cylinders. It's enjoyable to watch. It's edited really well. Like, it feels persuasive. You feel like you're smart when you're watching it. I think it's a movie that flatters you.

You feel like you're really intelligent. And of course, you're really just being taken in by something that doesn't make that much sense when you actually think about it at all. But do you think maybe that's part of it of feeling a little bit stupid while you're feeling smart? Like, he knows better than I do. Yeah. But I'm keeping up. I think so. And I think it's like the thrill of being led in on like the conspiracy theory experience and like maybe a more recreational way that you can then just like move on from.

But for three hours, you can be like a truther. Yeah. Because I think that like conspiracy theories are pleasurable a lot in many ways. And that's part of what draws people to them. I think it does hit on all those things that we talked about before similar to being the first. one to break any story. That it gives you an edge. It gives you something special to offer to the story without necessarily having to do the work. And not that this is like a conscious or ill-intentioned process, but you watch a movie like this and you feel like you have the inside track and you can

help others to understand it abstractly. Yeah. And that's a great feeling. And that's the same feeling that I think brings people into MLMs and so many other things is, you know, being on the inside of something. And I'm like, if Donald Sutherland told me about anything like kind of fast, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. I believe you. Thank you, Donald Sutherland. His character, by the way, is fully fabricated. That Mr. X character, that's when they just... What? You're telling me there's no Mr. X? I know. That's because Kevin Costor's imaginary friend. It's actually a giant bunny named Harvey. This is why he probably had to leave the military because he was seeing Mr. X everywhere.

He's like, well, good night. Mr. X. That was a great game of Connect 4. An egg is like, there's no one there. So that's KFK, which is a fun movie. But again, it only a movie. It sure is. He's actually in it. Jim Garrison plays Chief Justice Earl Warren

for a couple minutes. And I'm sure he had a lovely time. Oh, I'm sure he was so tickled. And he died like a year after. So it was like, I can die happy now. Yeah. My conspiracy has been realized. The homosexuals have not one.

I can go to my grave. This movie has stopped the tide of homosexuals, yeah. Oh, thank God. Yeah, and it is like just the sense of like one man taking his own discomfort and turning that into a theory of everything. It's like, yeah, we're really living in that world, aren't we? What an innovator. I think that watching it now audiences might have more of a recognition, kind of in the same way

that I think they would recognize the lone gunman. Lee Harvey Oswald phenomenon more in this era of mass shooters. I think more of us would recognize than they would have in 1991 this weird midlife crisis, small town, well, not small town, but not a federal prosecutor who's feeling frustrated that there's nothing to put a bow on his career. And so he runs with false confessions because he's in law enforcement. And like this archetype to me is so much more recognizable now. then I think it would have been in 1991 as a fallible character.

You know what I mean? Yeah, right, because we have had the chance to develop pattern recognition. Yeah, yeah. Because of all of the news. Because of that good old 24-hour news cycle. There are some silver linings, I guess. Which was just crawling out of a rhinocerus's butt at the time, like Ace Ventura. Pretty much.

So there are a couple other post-waron things that are worth mention. And one is what we have already foreshadowed a couple times. And that's the Zeprooter film release. Yeah. Tell us all about that. Who is Zeprooter maybe to start? I think we touched on this briefly last time. He's just this unassuming, this sounds way more pejorative. I sound like I'm describing Jack Ruby. I mean more like he's not involved in any government agency. He is a dressmaker, Abraham Zeprooter. has this 8mm shooting home video camera. It makes pretty good footage for, you know, home video at the time, but it's grainy. It's in part blocked by a sign in terms of tracking the actual motorcade, but it's about 30 frames from the first shot to what we think is the fatal shot.

And there are a lot of assumptions about what happens behind the sign, but the ultimate thing that people take away from seeing it in motion where they had just stills from the report is that it looks like Kennedy is moving back and to the left to quote Kevin Costner when he's hit by that final shot. And we'll get to that with some of the forensics in a bit. Nice. Yeah. And also I'm sure there are people who find it a coincidence that this film exists. because it is kind of astonishing on a cosmic level that it does exist. And it is like, I did an episode last year with Lulu Miller on Bigfoot. I think it was a bonus episode. And like we talked about the Patterson Gimlin film.

Yeah, same footage type. Yeah, that idea of like shaky footage without sound captured by someone who can't believe what they're seeing, which like honestly, the Patterson Gimlin film, a Bigfoot feels a little bit inspired by this, if anything. Maybe. Right? or it's just the kind of movie you could make at that point. I mean, think of those of us who grew up with that footage.

It feels like, and it's probably the other way around, but it feels like a found footage horror movie. It's like, I can't believe I'm watching this. This is so authentic because of the nature of the film. Yeah. And it's footage. It's like from a distance and it is grainy, but like you are seeing a president be assassinated,

which again, like before this, you had to be there. Like, do you ever see the, the episode of I think I've got a secret who's a 50s panel game show where they had this 96-year-old man who had been a child who was at Ford's Theater when Lincoln was assassinated. Wow. Yeah. But that would be the level of connection that you could have to something. You'd be like, well, I heard this guy describe it one time.

Yeah, that's, boy. So the ability to feel personally traumatized by something through media, I feel like, is suddenly entering the picture. It was a fresh concept. Well, yeah, I mean, I think we... A fresh and exciting one. Yeah, like we mentioned, just like how Vietnam was the first televised war, relatively shortly thereafter. Yeah. All of these things that we are so...

Thanks, Johnson, at all. Right? Like, weirdly desensitized, but not desensitized to, on a certain level. Or things that feel normal now were so distinctive at the time. Right. Well, and then there's this fascinating thing where, as, you know, that it was very normal, I think even just 100 years ago, to have seen quite a few dead people as you were growing up because you would have funerals, you know, you would have a wake in the parlor

or something like that. You would see, you know, you would see dead people. Like grandpa's downstairs for a week. Yeah. Right. Or I guess that there would be accidents, you know, that I, and you know, there still are. But that we did not have the technological capacity to whisk people away. and make their death a kind of secret. So it feels like it left the home and it went into the TV. And that's why Poultergeist felt so scary. It literally went into the TV. That and the clown.

Yeah. I mean, there's probably a confluence of health care moving death out of the home and thus it becoming less familiar and also mortality rates changing. So one is good and one is questionable. I think dying at home would be nice. to be more common because that's a side note. But point being, I wonder if that... It is.

But, you know, my dad died at home, which, like, practically nobody pulls off these days, it seems like... Mine did, too. So many times I've been like, hey, he died at home. I feel better about that. Yeah. Like, that's such a comfortable place to go. And frankly, for me, it's like, that's fine that his ghost is here.

I like that. Oh, yeah. You wouldn't want his ghosts to be... In a hospital. That sucks for him. I think. I think. he would be so annoyed by that.

I hope they have free range, but I don't know. It really depends. According to the Amityville horror, they can't travel between Long Island and Manhattan, which has to create problems. And I do trust, I trust the veracity of the warrants. Nothing could be more.

Yeah. But I wonder if the fact that it's such a new phenomenon made people more prone to seeing something in the footage that nobody else saw. Like, we now know if we're consuming, say I mentioned the Charlie Kirk video because I saw it and it was so disquieting, but I also know so many people saw it. So for any one of us to say, I saw something special. Yeah. And without

consenting to see it. No. And also that, you know, and so this premiered on Geraldo in 1975. Yes, 75. And it goes without saying, but it's worth remarking on anyway for anyone who's not thinking about it, that like, you couldn't watch it over and over again like we can now and like study what you thought you saw. You saw it like once on TV. People didn't even have VCRs at this point in time. And that was it. And then again, like even with media, you had to operate off of what you thought you remembered because you didn't get second chances the way we do today or 45th chances. That's like the eyewitness phenomenon compounded, right? Because if you want to think that you... Yeah, you're just a witness to the TV.

Yeah, like you had some distinctive thing to offer about what you saw. You're going off of memory of a memory. Yeah, and because we build community when we're, you know, we witness these things. And so, yeah, that we're trying to do the same thing with the images we see on screen. I saw, like, as someone refer in a TikTok comment today to, like, when the screens had fur, you know, which is like when you kind of can feel the static. Yeah. And I was like, that's the most beautiful thing. I've ever heard. The furred screen. And I could totally picture somebody who didn't experience that

not knowing what we're talking about. Yeah, but TV screens, like, you run your hand over them. It's the static. Yeah, there's just a little field of fluffy static. It's great. It's kind of like, have you seen, I think it's like a recycled tumbler post of somebody really puzzling over why millennials talk about burning CDs. Like, did we have to actually burn them? And then someone was gatekeeping the actual. Well, they came out warm. Dick them out warm. But for the uninitiated, no, we did not burn them literally. It was just.

Yeah. You put them in your CD-ROM drive and then the computer could put songs onto a blank CD and then you would draw all over the top part in Sharpie and give it to someone who you had a crush on. It was incredible. The more you love them, the more you drew on it. Yes. Exactly. I know you also have talked about like losing the monoculture and how they're used.

to be such a monoculture at that time. And so when you talk about community building from watching this one thing, that's what everybody had to talk about. Right. So of course, all of this got drummed up. And then in 1976, there was the second governmental body to investigate the assassination. So you can picture how much this had reached a fever pitch in a short period of time after the release that they had to have this House Select Committee on Assassinations, which I think is really funny because it didn't include RFK's assassination. It was just looking into JFK and MLK. Wow.

They're like, ah, let's, look, let's not add too much to our plate here. Yeah, I guess. But it was basically just on public opinion. Hmm. Okay, interesting. And they reached largely the same conclusions. So they concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots. The first one missed.

The second one was the so-called magic bullet that we'll get to, and the third one killed JFK. But they, and what feels to me like a weird compromise that accomplishes nothing, they said, Lee Harvey Oswald fired those three shots, including the kill shot, but there was a second gunman somewhere. What? Just like hanging out. Why? But why, you guys? Do you think that they believed the evidence was compelling?

Like, what was that about? So I think, A, they were trying to appease people who clearly were not satisfied by the first Warren report. So they had to do something differently. Come on, you guys. You can't read a child just one more story. We know this. Or give a mouse a cookie, so I hear. If you give the American people a second shooter.

This is totally opposed to your trust in the American people, though. Well, okay, but here's, I was just thinking as you're saying, saying that. I feel like it's possible to make the argument. And like we, with the language we use, have suggested this already. Like, I'm not totally inventing this. But when we talk about like the nanny state, right, which we don't want for some reason, even though all I want is to be wheeled around in a pram by somebody at this point in time. Make my doctor's appointments. Wouldn't that be incredible? Yeah. Put me to bed. Please. But, you know, this idea of like the citizen as a child and the government or, you know, the ruler as parent, which I think there is some degree of reality, too, you know,

not for everybody and not in every way. But it feels like I see that. I believe that as like a pretty big dynamic in the way power works in our lives. And it feels like one of the things that we crave and one of the reasons that we're living in the world we are is for that parental figure to validate our feelings, you know? And we just be like, I understand you don't trust me because I've done so many horrible things to your ancestors and to people like you and also maybe to you personally. Because just look at me. And of course you can't ever get that kind of confession from the government. And even if you do, as we know from when this happens in our own personal lives, like when you get someone to admit that they abused you.

You're not all better. Yeah, exactly. Like even if it's like people do deserve and need that. but like it doesn't heal you, which is very annoying because it should. And somehow that's work that you have to do. Yeah. Which is insane because you're the person who is wronged. Why should you have to heal?

Why can't someone else do it for you? Yeah. A lot of my beliefs come back to the idea that it would be very comforting if someone could do it for me. Me too. And yet it must not be possible because if someone could do it, then I would have found someone and made them do it by now. God, I wish.

That's how I feel about guardianship, which I used to work in guardianship, lot. And I was like, man, all these people are really fighting for their freedom. But I want somebody to make my doctor's appointments, apply for insurance, feed me. Yeah. And someone who you can trust implicitly, which is the hardest part of all that. Well, yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? But it feels like that we have the second report where, like, as Americans in 1975, having just gone through the 60s, you know, where like the FBI is like, you know, conspiring to try and drive MLK to suicide, you know? Or is that the CIA? All the about, I mean, but like, it's arguably a more fraught time, or it certainly reached a

more fraught moment than it was in 1963. Because you think of 1968 being before now, certainly the pinnacle of domestic unrest. And so if there was mistrust in 1963, there certainly was, or at least there was in very recent memory when this second select committee convenes. They do have one piece of evidence, which is audio from a police motorcycle that was shortly thereafter debunked by a ballistic acoustics examination by the National Academy of Sciences that said it didn't support there being a second shooter. And we'll get to, I think I briefly mentioned last time that acoustics in an urban environment, especially one that amounts to a bowl made of different buildings of different

consistencies. Really tricky. And that was the only piece of evidence that they really pointed to as new second shooter proof. Okay. Well, that's pretty good. And is there just like a lot of echo, you know, in that kind of a landscape? Yeah. An echo that isn't standard. Like, you have buildings of different densities, heights, moving pieces of matter that are also messing with the acoustics. I feel like the first episode of Monk was kind of about this. Oh my God. Yeah, the, when they shoot

the politician, yes. Yeah, the premier event, opening episode of Monk, yeah. You're totally right, and it's in a bowl. Like, it's, yeah. Wow. That was who we needed. He's still around. Maybe he can help us. Someone turns up at Tony Shaloobs' house

at 9 in the morning, like, please. You're the only one. You're the only one who could. save us. God. Your only hope. Peter Falk is not around, so it's up to you. And you know what? Peter Falk is actually the source of a lot of guardianship regulations in New York because apparently there were some estate abuses. Yeah. Yeah. We do awful things to old people when we want their stuff. It's, I feel like, I don't know. I don't, I can't really tell anyone to talk about something more because there's so much to be talking about that we apparently all should be talking for 18 hours.

hours a day because we're out why we all have podcasts now but yeah it's I would love to see like colombo at the Trump White House you know oh Jesus that would be so comforting just like you know exclaiming about how fancy all that all the all the all this too god it's a gold ballroom monk would need so many hand wipes too no monk would not be able to all the all the handshaking for a start oh disgusting if you're inspired by these proms don't ask AI to do it for you. Drink a big glass of water and write it yourself and then do a play in your yard. Thank you.

Drink the same amount of water that AI would use to create the scenario. So, yeah, that's our post-warren rumor fodder fuel. All right. And yeah, and I guess the thing of them being like, well, I guess there could be a second shooter that does feel like, you know, a compromise where it's like what people may be. I don't know. I don't think anything could have stopped it, but maybe what people needed more was for the government, like, for whoever's writing this report to be like, you know, the federal government has really done some scary things to you all over the past 12 years. And yet we didn't do this. But instead, it's kind of like, yeah, it does feel like if the idea was to compromise with that, then that goal does not seem to have succeeded. Yeah, I feel like the more worthy compromise would have been, don't reexamine this one thing that you argue. arguably got mostly right the first time you did it. But like maybe actually apologize for the things you did do that harmed people in the same period.

Yeah. It was the FBI, by the way. Trying to kill MLK? Yes. So then we get to our second wave rumor fodder, as I like to call it. Second wave I kind of designated as such because a lot of it is more fruitfully disproven by forensic testing. And not necessarily because it didn't exist at the time, right? So there's a lot of stuff, especially about the ballistics and second shooter acoustics.

The question was always out there and some evidence was always out there. But I find the recent testing to be more compelling. So what are some rumors that you are aware of that are intermixed in this conspiracy? Are you aware of any that stand out? I feel like, yeah, I'm not as JFK literate, perhaps. as I should be. But yeah, then there that we've gone over maybe the stuff that I've heard about, which is, you know, the second shooters we've been talking about, right,

this idea that we got summed up in JFK that like the bullet could, you know, travel in such a direction that it could not possibly have been fired by just one person from one angle, the idea that it's like some government agency is somehow behind it, although it's hard to say why or who. Or which one, yeah. Aside from that, I really, yeah, I don't know. I've just like, I've never found it super compelling. And I also got to say, like, I don't think I'm super smart or anything.

Like, there's a lot of things that I do not understand. But with this one, I've just never been tempted. Not sold. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe a good place to start is recapping some of the early autopsy mistakes that I think were just so compounded upon. Yeah.

Let's get into that. We have Dr. Earl Rose is the medical examiner in Dallas. Dallas County. And he is supposed to, and they mentioned this in JFK, the movie, they say he's illegally taken from Dallas. And like we mentioned last time, like it's a like a separation of powers kind of issue because Dallas law says that the county Emmy should perform an autopsy, but also this is the president. So you have federal law kind of clashing with that. The Secret Service acting on demands of the Kennedys really wants to take him back to D.C. Instead, it almost comes to blows.

Oh, boy. They take him on Air Force One. The coffin doesn't fit, so they have to chop off the handles to shove him into the plane. Wow. Just messy. But they get him to D.C. And the question of an autopsy is again raised because, like we mentioned before, a forensic autopsy is really critical in bullet murders, especially before we had all this modern testing. So the Kennedy Entourage doesn't really get the difference from forensic pathologists and regular autopsy technicians.

And since he's a Navy man, they take him to Bethesda, that's fine. It's a random hospital pathologist. He's a military guy, and they'll follow orders. In Dallas, they had given him a tracheotomy for a breathing tube, and that masked an exit wound in the throat. So in the autopsy report, we have one bullet entrance wound in the back without an exit wound, but no bullet inside. So that's the first problem.

They also weren't shown the clothing in D.C., as they would have been required to in a forensic autopsy, but that was left on the stretcher in Dallas, and that also would have shown blood on his collar that showed that something exited there. And that's just because of the fact of, you know, having an autopsy hundreds of miles away from where the crime took place

and why we don't typically do that, maybe, because it's nice to have the evidence all where you need it. And also, like, we don't usually do things on such a time crunch, especially then, except that they wanted him to lie in state and, God forbid, anything, get in the way. Yeah. And it is like, it's such a strange thing, you know, for anybody, not just in this case, where, like, your body, you know, in many ways is you, like is the person who has just died. And it's also now almost all the evidence he will ever be able to use.

Yeah. So this basically means that his autopsy report was finished without the body itself, because they had to get him to the Capitol. Wow. And it also was not finished with the revelation that there was a bullet in his jacket on the stretcher. The autopsy had like TKs in it. They were like, we're just done. Basically. It's almost done.

It's getting, it's 90% done. Can you imagine this poor military pathologist just like. No, I cannot. I imagine him as just a very unfortunate man. He's got a ham sandwich in his pocket. You know, he tries to get a piece of tape and accidentally wings himself in the forehead. Jesus, like the worst 12 hours of my life. This is my John Candy character.

And probably a lot less amiable. I don't know. So he basically finishes on assumptions because they also take the photos away for discretionary reasons. So this is the first grain of real forensic conspiracy because this report concludes that there are two bullets because they didn't have that third one that was left on the stretcher. Right. And they couldn't see the exit wound because it was covered by a tracheotomy. Yes. So now we have like early conflicting evidence. And that's also going to feed the magic bullet

nonsense. There's also some fuel about the number of shots and Zeprooter frames that they use in the report. I think that's a little dry. So I'll just say that like they were able and many experts over the years have been able to replicate the number of shots in the amounted time with the same weapon. So that is compelling enough to me. Yeah. That brings us to the magic bullet. This is the big one. Oh, boy.

Are you ready for this? Yeah. Please tell us, I'm ready to go back and to the left and back into the left again, I assume. Will you explain what the magic bullet problem is? Because this is kind of a tongue-in-cheek name that is given to a bullet that presumably can't do this. Yeah. Well, I understand it mostly from Seinfeld, honestly, where we have the magic luke with Keith Hernandez. But the idea being that, like, if you are to believe that the bullets were only fired from the book depository, that they, like, took a path that was physically impossible based on where they were supposed to have been fired from.

And therefore, there had to have been a second shooter on the grassy knoll or the gravelly road. And I guess this idea that like if you examine the trajectory of what's happening on this film, that you can prove it to yourself with your own eyes, which is very compelling, I think, to people in terms of theories within a bigger conspiracy theory. And of course, you polish it off with the phrase, now that is one magic luke. Oh, is it ever? I just sent you a couple of photos that help illustrate this. In the Warren Commission, and this is why modern forensics are so helpful, they literally. really had to figure out the bullets path with like metal rods. So the top left photo is them sitting in the car holding these like long metal dowels trying to figure out where the bullet. Okay, that's very cute. Isn't that funny? So there's also like a common drawing that conspiracy theorists use that has Governor Connolly seated directly in front of JFK because that's a lot of this source of this issue such as it is. It's like the same.

bullet that hit JFK also hit Governor Connolly. And if he was sitting right in front of him, it would have to bend its path. Okay. Yeah. Then you look at the actual photo of how they're seated. It's pretty obvious that Connolly is seated to the left and in the front of Kennedy. Oh, left and to the front. Maybe Connolly did it. But this is the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, you have a theory that hinges on misunderstanding information or on, you know. Or incomplete information. Incorrect assumptions. Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, where it's like, well, if someone's in front of someone in a car, then they're like exactly lined up with them every time. And it's like, well, not really. Both pieces of this make so much sense to me. It makes so much sense how you would assume that the drawing of directly in front of somebody else, that that would be what you assume. But then it's also so easy to disprove that piece. Right. By just looking at a photo. Yeah. And I guess this whole thing is like an early test case in a way of like how people who are committed to a theory respond to contradictory information, which I mean we have a lot of examples of this. It's kind of how doomsday cults work where like when the doomsday doesn't come, it often makes people dig in deeper. They just edit it. Right. Or just yeah, find a new theory that explains it. And in this case, it's like, yeah, we can really see at work here in all this the way people will if, you know, if they've got that sunk cost fallacy in place, maybe we'll figure out how to just lay another theory

on top of the original theory to compensate for whatever holes someone might appear to poke in it. Yeah. And part of what went into the conspiracy itself, I just sent you another photo of the bullet itself, because this also plays into it. There's the fact that there are seven wounds altogether, which is the way that they put it to amplify how much damage they presume this bullet should have. It's like seven wounds. Well, okay, it hit JFK in the back, goes out his tracheotomy spot, essentially. Then it goes through the back of Connolly's chest, comes out, shatters a bone in his wrist, and then embeds in his thigh. So it hits a couple things, only like two of them being bone.

But you look at the bullet, because they did recover this bullet, and it's pretty undamaged, at least if you look at it from the side. But if you look at it head on, you can see some squeezing. And so that we'll get to with the ballistic testing. And I think that's super fun to look at if we're ready to go there. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Basically, they said it was too pristine that if something hit seven wounds worth of flesh, it would be destroyed.

And again, it's like I would really want to know how many bullets who have been through this basic, you know, who have had this kind of a trip. How many of those have you seen? What kind of, you know, what's your baseline? Because again, the establishment of the baseline of what you would expect to see based on some statistically meaningful number of examples. Like, that's what we want in any field. Because I think there is an anecdotal image that you see even brought out in the JFK movie

of memory serves of another bullet that hit something else and it was more destroyed. It's like, okay, but was it the same type of bullet? Was it this full metal jacket and soft center? Did it hit the same types of materials? Was it as old? Had it been stored in the same conditions even? Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why this testing is so, so helpful because they literally mimic the number of surfaces and what they were made of and they do multiple tests of, okay, first it's flesh, then it's fabric, then it's bone, then it's yada, and they act. and they actually prove that this is how a bullet behaves multiple times. So that's what they do in this Nova documentary. Facts. I love him.

So great. Yeah. So then we test how did this happen? So this Nova documentary, it's this father-son duo, I believe their last name was Haig or Hag. And this had not been previously done. Not for any of like the many books and studies done on the Kennedy assassination, which is wild. They do two more tests with muscle and tissue simulence out of ballistic soap and ballistic gelatin. Do we want to explain what those are? I would love that, yeah, because I'm not

familiar with those. I think my knowledge stops at the point when I think in the infancy of ballistics testing, we were using dead pigs, and presumably this is like farther down the road than that. A little bit. So ballistic soap apparently is basically the same texture as like nutrigenesis. Jena soap, that amber colored. Nice. Yeah. They never mention that in the ads. We can do this at home, but don't.

It's, I guess, the same texture as flesh. Changes my feelings about neutergina a little bit. Positive or negative? Positive. But you're not sure. I'm going to think on this. So what that one does is it freezes the whole, the trajectory of the path in the shape of the path. And then the ballistic gelatin is also a same texture to go through to flesh and

muscle. But that cavity opens and then collapses. So you got some variation. Okay. So this is a really fun part. They try it with two people's worth of ballistic muscle and tissue simulence. And you get this phenomenon over and over that the bullet starts to tumble. It gets this yaw to the path. So when it hits the Kennedy simulant, it has a straight path. It's going straight on, front is front, back is back, hits him, goes through straight. Once it exits Kennedy, though, every time it starts to yaw and it starts to kind of tip on its axis when it's spinning, meaning that when it hits Connolly, it's hitting him long ways. Oh. Yeah. Wow. And does that maybe save him from worse injuries?

It actually shatters his wrist because it means that the full side of the bullet hits his wrist. You know, I just, I, bullets are so scary. Yeah, that's my thought. Yeah. Pretty much that. But it also explains why, as you see in that photo, it's undamaged from the, if you look at it long ways. But if you look at the tip, it's made oblong in the way that you were talking about, because it's hitting from the side.

And when they examined Connolly's wrist, there were actually bits of that soft lead squeezed out into his wrist. So that really is consistent with the inner bit under the full metal jacket having squeezed out. Wow. Yeah. And which is so horrifying. And also it's a kind of thing that the average person, or even the average expert in ballistics,

without having done testing on this specific scenario, just would not anticipate. Right. And there's no way to either verify or debunk without doing that. They have a witness panel, what they call a witness panel, that kind of stamps the position of the bullet when it stops, like a ghost image of where it hit. And it also shows each time that it is in a yawing sideways position when it exits JFK. So that really corresponds with the bullet that was eventually recovered from the stretcher. It's an unmatched. tip, but if you look at it long ways, like hot dog position, it, uh, it's squeezed out at the tip in the back. So that to me fully explains magic bullet. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I buy it. I don't need more than that. Yeah. Because I just, I feel like, unless I'm someone who has experience with this like all the time, like people getting shot in a row and a moving vehicle from far away, I'm not going to assume that I know what should happen, you know.

But I understand that it gives us a sense that we have a better grasp on just the laws of physics and so on in the forces governing our world than we maybe do have. Yeah, maybe that's part of it, assuming that this is so cut and dried because we all have skin. We all have seen fast things. But frankly, like, if you look at Garrison and I'd say he's like the best person, sonified version. We're all constantly shooting two people right one in front of the other. We all know what that's like. Am I right, ladies? Hey. But like the version of the magic bullet argument that I have heard frequently is not anything comparably scientific. It's just like, you're telling me that hit seven surfaces. Right. And that's kind of it. It's not. And it's like, yeah. Yeah. If you do the test and it starts to ya. And so the damage is hot. dog ways. Yeah, I buy that. And also the flag wasn't flying on the moon, not because they

faked it and there was wind, but because they didn't want a limp flag. They thought ahead. They prepared. No flaccid flags. So we, I think we've put the magic bullet to bed. I'm sold on that one. Yeah, it's all tucked in. It's got like a sleep, some white noises playing. Yeah. It's good. It's oozing lead from its tip as a good bullet should. Yeah. I don't know why everyone underestimated you. Bullets can do terrible things and you sure did. Raise your bullets to think they can do anything, even seven wounds. Sorry, this is how I cope. I don't know. Raise your bullets to have poor self-esteem, I guess. Raise your bullets to say, oh, I just stay in bed today. Honestly, that's probably better. The second one that we have is the location and second shooter nonsense.

And one thing that I noticed that was really interesting was in the Life magazine version. So this is like early in the process, 1964, but after the report, there's a lot of debunking of this premise of a second shooter being on an overpass. And that's something that I don't really hear anymore. And I wonder if it's because it was so comprehensively debunked by the facts. They have so many witnesses. Like the police were patrolling that overpass. There were some railway men.

Everybody was interviewed. And the grassy knoll is kind of close to the overpass. So I really suspect that once that was so definitively disproven, people were like, okay, so maybe it wasn't the overpass. But I bet it was the grassy knoll. And if that's the case, that to me proves how piecemeal these theories have become, that it's just like, all right, fine. That one doesn't work, but I bet something was off. Like Jack McCoy, we need a new thing to fixate on. Exactly.

So if we actually listen to facts at debunk a location, we have to sub in a new one maybe. Yeah, yeah. And the thing with both of those locations that they are in the right front. So if you're looking at that footage and it looks like he goes back into the left, that's a primo spot to place your second shooter theory is somewhere in the right front. Now, the Life magazine and Warren Report assessment talked about how this overpass was sealed off. It was monitored, yada, yada. You can look up the witnesses that were deposed and it was easily disproved.

The one interesting thing that came from that is how inconsistent the witness accounts were. And they don't all say that it sounds like it comes from the grassy knoll area by any means. but some people say it sounded like it was either the depository or the overpass. And then somebody says it was definitely the depository. And then somebody says it was definitely the overpass. So it's very clear that there are really messed up acoustics going on because there's no consistent account, regardless of where it is. So you just really can't find anything to cling on to maybe. Yeah.

And you also can't find anything to not cling on to if that makes sense. Like, there's always going to be conflicting accounts of the acoustics here. Right. The Nova documentary, I feel like this is one that's especially better to hear and see rather than hear a description of, but they use this like bullet travel photography and sound wave photography. So it's kind of hard to describe it. But they do like these echo reflections.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I want to see that. We can put a link to that. Yeah. Essentially, what it does is it shows how you hear. two sounds from one shot. And I guess that's all a really complicated way of proving that there is an echo in this location. Right, which again is like, is highly believable. But again, it's nice to have proof. Yeah, you got a lot of hard surfaces, which are really good for conducting echoes.

You have, again, they describe it like a bowl. So there's no place where you're not going to get an echo. Right. Like that Hollywood bowl, if you will. Yeah. Different timbre of different materials, like the asphalt has something different than building. And I know it's like, I get that I think it is scary to hear that like you can't always trust your immediate perceptions, but you can trust forensic testing that is done afterward. And I find that extremely empowering that like if something is confusing based on our immediate data, we can get more. And maybe what it is is that like some folks and I think I've reached this point, I think

you've reached this point, are comfortable and have come to terms with the fact that they don't know what they perceive necessarily. I'm comfortable with the fact that I can't always trust my senses, but I'm also comfortable that we can critically analyze facts through reliable testing, and that can be my consistent metric. I like that. I find that a lot more soothing than the idea that the entire government teamed up somehow, but only the one time because they famously can't get along to do anything that helps us. Right. I know. Like they're impudent with everything else,

but they also worked together and with Cuba. But when they want to ruin our lives, they're incredible. Yeah, which again, it's like there is a lot of efficiency to life ruining, but it's not because people are colluding usually or because people are executing a very, very secret plan. Usually when people are conspiring to do something horrible, they don't have to try that hard to keep it a secret. And we have a lot of examples of that in our lives right now.

Right, exactly. But that's what, I mean, I think I said towards the beginning that part of what is convincing about this review of evidence to me is that there's so much scientific explanation on one side and the conspiracy side is basically, you know, the depth of their argument is that doesn't make sense. That's not how I think it would look. It's like, well, yeah, like that's true of the magic bullet. You don't know.

Yeah. Saying like, are you telling me that bullet hit seven things? I don't think so. And then this one back into the left, are you telling me he got shot from the back into the left and he's going back into the left? I don't think so, but that's it. Yeah, I mean, I just, I, it's great to have not everything make sense to you. It shouldn't all make sense to you, you know, the fact that we have the ability to learn more than we knew before is one of the greatest things about being a human being, I think, and we should enjoy it. Yeah, how boring if your

brain and your existing knowledge and your initial sensory perceptions is your only source of information. Like there's so much more out there. And I think this is so interesting, because I didn't know these things, but also, as it's being described, it makes total sense that, yes, there is a bullet moving faster than sound, pressing through the very soft, comparatively matter of your brain within a confined space. That's going to push out very quickly. And the lift force, they also mention of the Karkano bullet, it kind of takes a curved path upwards.

So they do get even more specific on, if anybody's interested in picking this apart and watching what they do, it's a great documentary. Plus, always subscribing to your local PBS station is a great thing to do. But the point is that we have

a really consistent pattern that matches his skull shatter pattern. And they also did find that bullet, the pieces of it in his brain, and his brain and in the car, and those are more consistent with it moving forward from the back than from the position of the grassy knoll. And then we get to the last thing, which is the movement of his body specifically. And this is the most interesting part that I don't know if you can explain even, like, without the knowledge. So this pressure wave in the brain that we're talking about

from the bullet passing through it, that also kind of explains the back. force on his body because it stimulates the nerves. Your spinal cord enters at the bottom of your brain at the brainstem, and that connects to your entire system of nerves. So when there's this pressure wave in his brain, it stimulates his nerves and the back muscles on everybody are stronger than our abdominal muscles. So when every nerve in the body is stimulated and all your muscles tense, your back is stronger than your front. So you pull and you tighten backwards. It's similar to like how dinosaurs look in fossils.

How they're kind of like rearing backwards like that. Oh my gosh. I know, right? And I remember learning that that's because like as they died and decomposed and whatnot that their spinal cord like dried and shortened and pulled everything in the same way. So there's actually a name for this in emergency medicine that my mom and cousin knew, and I think a lot of people in the medical field will know. And it's called decerebrate posturing. And that occurs in all sorts of scenarios when somebody's nerves fire in this same way.

And the way that they describe decerebrate posture is your legs extend straight out and get rigid, your head and neck arch back, and your body kind of pulls towards. the back. So that's what happened to his body. You know, his brain was damaged. It affected his nervous system. And then he went into a disarabrit posture and you see that happen in the video. So that's not the force of the shot. That's very sad the whole thing. I think that like when you learn the details of it, you get closer to the sadness. And I kind of, I kind of think that one of the uses of conspiracy theories is to distract from the sad parts of things because you're like, there's no time to be sad. We're on the hunt for who really did this. And it's like, what if it's just what if we know and we have to get to the part where we're sad now?

I think I agree with you and I wonder if that's part of maybe some of the psychological impulse behind wanting there to be another step to the investigation of like, I can't sit with this. So let's keep moving. Look, as a country, we'd never been able to see this much death and destruction. You know, no human being had, you know, the kind of age of media that's dying. in the fact that we're at the beginning of America's involvement in the war in Vietnam and that we're going to be seeing it for the next 10 years. I don't know.

It feels like we're at the beginning of this process of being changed by what we're asked to witness, bizarrely. But I feel like we all know where this is going. I'm going to reference the new documentary on America's Next Top Model where it feels Oh my God. Right. I've been consuming that too. It's all very upsetting.

Everyone should buy Sarah Hartshorn's new book about her experience as a plus-size contestant on A&M. Yeah. Well, and it talks about, you know, the episode with Shandy, which was sold to everybody as a cheating story and, of course, was a sexual assault story. And they filmed her through it. Yeah. Yeah. sort of this way that media especially of that type likes to blame the audience for what they're doing. And I, you know, certainly comes up in this as well where they're like, well, you wanted this.

And it's like, I don't think your audience of 15 year old girls told you to do that. And no, it's a bit much for you to be blaming the audience you're traumatizing for the things that you chose to traumatize them with. But that's like the great American tradition of media. I think a big question there also, even if it were true, and I don't want to minimize your point because as I was watching it with a friend of mine who we used to love watching the show. But we both talked about, you know, I never hated this about myself until I saw people being called, you know, ugly or overweight or whatever for looking better than I did, you know, in a Western beauty sense better. Oh, yeah. And that like the point of the show is to make pretty girls suffer. You know, that was like, we know that was the pitch.

Absolutely. But then also you have to ask, like, who bears the responsibility of being the guardrail? Is it the watchers or is it the creator? And I think it's the creator. I agree. Yeah, because I think if you're watching something. Like the power is with the network and with Tyra. Yeah.

And maybe not all Tyra herself, but what she represents and the people she's working with. I think the thing is we know the industry sucks. So their bad behavior doesn't surprise us. And like we expect more from a woman of color because she had been through this type of discrimination. So it's like she's getting damned by the higher standard. She's held to. And like she was kind of selling herself as a bit of a matriarch figure. But it was like, and I think that's part of why it felt so gross is because it was like, she's like, I'm on your side.

But I'm also very sadistic. So have fun. with that. But yeah, I guess to say that like it feels like Americans sort of being shown the Kennedy assassination in a way, like up close, in a way that we hadn't witnessed this kind of violence before really. And then having to figure out what to do with that. I don't know. I get that it was a bit much. It's a bit much, you know, it will always be a bit much, I hope, for us. And I also think that there's kind of this like essential innocence that these theories like for as much trouble as they've caused and for as annoying as I find sort of this

attitude of being allergic to the truth. Like, I don't know. I do feel fondness for this, what it feels like reveal, it reveals as the sense of like, but nothing this, this senseless and sad could ever really happen, right? And it's like, oh, no, it sure did. Yeah, I think, I think we also have to hold the JFK movie to account because I really think That's where another generation that could have at that point been introduced to things like forensic testing. Oliver Stone is like Paul Verhoven.

He's like too good at being a filmmaker. So his movies are full of like the stupidest ideas imaginable. But it likes you kind of feel smart while you're watching it. And it's that same idea of, you know, it pairs with reality television a little bit of is this fact or is it fiction? And if you're pairing the two, you got to be really careful about making it clear. was something of this caliber importance. Yeah. Where the fiction line is.

And the movie really is kind of pointing a finger at the U.S. government. Yeah. And three right back at Oliver Stone. And right, like immediately post-Ragan, that came out. Not immediately, but pretty quickly thereafter. You know, and then we had an interbush. Yeah, but he counts as Reagan because that's where he originated. He's kind of a soft Reagan hangover.

Yeah. He didn't get us too far. from Reagan. But like that government mistrust, I think, was sewn so calculatingly by Reagan and Thatcher. And then you have something like this coming on the heels of it. That's interesting. You know, it's got a, yeah, the fodder is right there. But do we want to talk about speaking of government blame? Because it is blame, but again, less conspiracy, more stupidity. Should we get to the actual cause of how this was allowed to happen? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, so this is another one that I hadn't heard how clear the missteps and the errors were that caused this.

You know, I heard grassy knoll 75 times, but I'd never heard what actually allowed Lee Harvey to do this. So there is a mandatory channel between the Secret Service and the FBI before an event like this that allows them to communicate that in this case never existed. It was never established. Oh, good. Yeah, it was never maintained. So per the Warren Commission, at the time, the Secret Service had a really archaic record system. And it only tracked people who had already made express threats against the president. So that, you know, this is always tricky to categorize people in the other way.

But, like, it didn't keep track of violent people. It didn't keep track of extremists. It didn't keep track of groups that had made threats. and then individuals who are members of that group. So think of like how few people would have actually come out and said in the Dallas area that I want to do this. There was nobody on that list. Right. But the FBI did have files on Lee Harvey Oswald because of his membership in these broader groups.

But the FBI didn't have that channel with the Secret Service for this particular event. So they had no input from the FBI. So that's that. That's it. Yeah. If they had, they would have had Lee Harvey Oswald's name ahead of time. How did that feel to you to find out after all this time? It feels so definitive. And it fits so much with, I think, what a lot of us have learned about government bureaucracy.

You know, I said at the beginning that I worked for the government. I also left the government because the bureaucracy was just, mind-numbing and it's the too many cooks problem that you have so many people with power and competence and sometimes that's an issue. It's why the founders thought we should have a single executive because eventually you need the buck to stop with somebody. Now, the person it is right now is terrifying, but like- Never stopped a buck in his life. Yeah. And then of course you get into taxes funding that, yada-a-y-y-a-a. But like, oh my gosh, there was a communication channel that nobody ever set up and if they had, they would have had this guy's name, like, his literal

information, but they didn't do that. So, oops. Well, isn't this also like one of, I don't know, part of the kind of whole 9-11 truth or conspiracy is like the government had information, you know, warning them of a possible terrorist attack and didn't follow up on it. So they knew. And it's like, no, they just, you know, got sloppy, like always, you know. Yeah. And like the fact that is implausible people is wild for the very reason that you're pointing out. You know, it happened again X number of years later. So I don't know. How do you feel about that? I mean, it feels like the missing puzzle piece where you're like, oh my gosh, of course, there it is. That's the old mill. Yeah. Yeah. You know, or it's like, yeah, of course we fumbled that because and also like, you know,

and not to be like, I of course would run perfect security for a sitting president. Because even if you're running an incredibly tight ship, these kinds of things, I think, can happen. Yeah, I think so. Right. You do have these breaks and insecurity or instances of human error no matter what. I think that this was not a particularly tight ship for so many of the reasons we've talked about, but even if it was, you know, human error accounts for so much. I mean, again, it's like if you believe in these, in a conspiracy theory where everyone is sort of working in perfect lockstep and not making any mistakes, then why do I keep leaving my coffee in the bathroom and not being able to find it until hours later, you know? I mean, I know we're imperfect. I think there's that,

and this will connect to our end discussion on conspiracies in general, but I really find that a lot of folks, especially apolitical folks or people without a really strong understanding of the government, tend to assume that there is some greater protective capacity that, exists. I think that probably is soothing to think that somebody is, like, does have the ability to prevent this from happening. And thus, the very fact that it happened is proof that somebody is conspiring. Like, that is soothing because then it means that the only way that something bad can happen is if somebody intentionally wants it to versus like, oh, geez, even the top of the country can fumble it to a fatal degree. Yeah. Which is like, at a certain point, that feels like

a belief in a deity. It is. Yeah. Or like, you know, if I end up, you know, pinned under a boulder, I know that it will cross my mind of like, God, you can't allow this, right? This is a bit much. Help me, God. And God will be like, oh, I either don't exist or don't like to intervene in things really. Or I might give you an idea, but I certainly won't lift that rock off of you. Yeah. But to feel like somebody like Sky Daddy is looking out, yeah, that's soothing. Yeah. And we'd rather have evil Sky Daddy than no Sky Daddy. daddy. Exactly. Exactly. And I think you can even see that with what people want from their president. Like, do people want a dictator who, even if they're bad, at least has all control, which of course we know being a dictator doesn't make you infallible by any means. So like even those people make really stupid choices. No, but you can you can fool yourself for a while. But you can tell, yeah,

and you can certainly tell the people. But. that's better than having to take a hand in your own defense kind of by voting and staying informed and all that good stuff. But so I figured we could wrap up the JFK specific theories with the fact that they're like, per a very recent poll, like within the last 10 years, most Americans do believe that there was a conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. But, and this is just as important, I think. I'm excited for the butt.

There's no agreement at all on who and what. why. So, come on, you guys. Get it together. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, like, there's no way we could ever cover all the permutations of theories. And I'm sure we haven't hit them all. But there's, like, the anti-mafia, RFK angle. But that kind of requires Ruby to be involved, because otherwise, there's no teamster connection. And this is that RFK is going after the, the mafia too. My and his capacity is attorney general. Yeah, that, like, it was some retaliatory things. that they decided to enact on the more difficult person to target. Yeah.

Which again, and I have the same question about that as I do interestingly about Astro World, which is that if I want to kill someone as a satanic sacrifice or, you know, to stop a crackdown on organized crime, why would I do it in front of as many witnesses as I can possibly find? Yeah, and of the two, you think like there's the president and then there's RFK. Who's the easier one to kill? Probably not the one with Secret Service Protection. And then it's also unclear to me what incentive the FBI would have to cover all this up.

Well, yes. I just, I don't even think I'm not sensible of a person. It's just that the conspiracy theories don't appeal to me. And I'll cling to that in order to compensate for, you know, my flights of fancy elsewhere. But, okay, yeah, the organized crime thing, it's, again, it's like, don't you think they would be better at killing someone if that's kind of like a big, you know, big part of the job. I don't know. Yeah, more secretly too. Like their whole MO was pretty different. And also the person they're actually going after as opposed to, you know, his brother, who's the president. Anyway.

And I kind of feel the same way with the CIA involvement theory. Again, we have no positive evidence that really holds water. because what I think we all have to remind ourselves of when examining these things is that really all the theories are based on motive and violent propensity. And then from there, you kind of imagine a scenario and it's not a really testable, justiciable theory with the information that we have to create all of these conspiracy theories. And you think of, for example, like when an investigation gets to this scale and notoriety of whoever would have. done it. Like, you got to take even confessions with a heavy grain of salt, because think of how many people have said something like, I want to kill the president. I mean, it's been known to be said. Yeah. Yeah. That's a far cry from actual evidence of a conspiracy. So, like, even the evidence that they lean on is not the type of evidence that connects Lee Harvey Oswald, for example. Right. It feels like

the evidence against the CIA is basically like, well, just look at them. And it's like, yeah, that's fair. Yes, exactly. It's propensity. But what's the incentive for them to kill the president of all people as opposed to just, you know, trying to drive college students insane or whatever else they're up to? I mean, the agency wasn't allowed full confidentiality in the investigation, A. And then you also think with what we've learned about what the CIA was doing at that time, again, more through their goals than what they actually achieved in many cases. Like, they were trying to learn to create citizens, soldiers. They failed, but they wanted to do this.

They had a lot of freedom is the bottom line. Like, under that administration, I understand, you know, with the Bay of Pigs and there's a lot of... They had cart lunch to quote Philly Boy, Roy. Yeah. Like, even with the conflicts that they had gotten into, like, this administration gave them a fair amount of freedom. And do we know that they wouldn't be posed to lose it under L.B. well yeah that's a good point i mean they kind of you know it seems like they have a pretty sweet deal at the

moment yeah yeah and again it's just like if you can't give me a motive in like a sentence or less than like i don't know that feels like the most important part something beyond these are shadowy groups known to do violent things which seems to be the basis for all of the theories which is that's a place to start an investigation yeah but again you know know, famously take on powerless people as often as possible, because they like to punch down. Yeah, exactly. Like, they weren't really investigating on the administration. It's military members or smaller countries. Yeah. And this maybe connects us to the new release of documents, which I want to say happened last year under President Trump, which Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of JFK himself, has called

a false re-investigation. Like, he's come right out and said that it was pointless. And there really was not any new information. We got some additional details of, like, other CIA operations, like the poison sugar idea to kill Castro, Trujillo involvement. They were spying on France. But there really wasn't anything new about JFK. The only thing that they added to, like, personnel details, and this also fits with the administration

that released it, is they, exposed a whole bunch of social security info and birth dates of still living military members. Oh, good. That's nice. Yeah, like, they just unsealed a whole bunch of documents, and some of those people are still alive. So they just made identity theft more likely for military members and government employees. Again, is exactly their type of thing, right? You know, to your point. Thank you.

Like, great job. And it also smacks of the Epstein file release. that Bondi gave those binders without any tangible information because we know they have been holding onto that pretty tightly. But it looks like we're doing something. So let's do the little dance. The only last thing I have with the Kennedys is like the idea of the Kennedy curse. Oh yeah. Well, yeah. Tell me tell us about that. Kennedy curse. Real or not so real? Yeah, I don't know. it's interesting, right? Like, it's a family that for all its power and control has been hit with what seems like a disproportionate amount of tragedy. And I say scenes, and as I'm saying it, like,

also being from an Irish Catholic family, you do have a lot of death from both addiction and just sheer volume. Like, if you have seven kids in my mom's family, you're going to be more likely to lose one than if you had just one. I don't know. It feels like a numbers game, potentially. But, But most recently, Tatyana Schlossberg, who also was a granddaughter of JFK, died of some super rare, untreatable cancer. And she was in her 30s, I think. And then from the beginning of the JFK generation, his older brother, who's being polished to be the golden child politician, Joe Jr. He died. Yeah.

You have this big family where it feels like, I don't know, to me, if they're. occurs, it's the dysfunction that is inevitable maybe when your job is to perform the idea of a family, not just on a normal dysfunctional family level like at church, but like on the national stage. Yeah. And the potential for, I think, addiction and mental health issues and just dysfunctional family dynamics to further entrench and multiply because you're not allowed to ask for help. Yeah, like you add to that the fact that in a lot of Irish Catholic families, the mode of coping was repression and that maybe if there was some sort of venting of these feelings, it could have been easier. But you add national scale and repressive norms. Nobody's ever getting better. So you quietly take substances or take risks. But then you also have, I should mention that Kathleen Kick also does. died, I believe in a plane crash.

The eldest sister of that. Yeah. Yeah, the JFK generation. And this is World War II related, right? Because you have this like, you know, this deep vein of tragedy running through America and the Kennedys too. Yeah, I believe she was later. But Joe Jr. was World War II. Yeah.

Because I was telling my friend about the, doing a Kennedy run down. And I was like, well, John F. Kennedy is not a junior because he wasn't meant to be the air. They had like a whole air set up and then he died and they were like, well, you'll do. Yeah. And it's kind of like the, or I guess the other direction, but the Bush family, that G.W. Bush was not supposed to be the one who ascended to the throne for less tragic reasons. Was he the one selected? But like, that these political dynasties have the one that they polish up for performance, but then often the world. gets in the way, and they got to put the backup sun on the national stage instead. You're Roman Roy's, if you will. Yeah. But so the Kennedys, yeah, I'm like, not to say it's a

self-inflicted curse, but you can see there's some clues as to where this is coming from, you know? Yeah, because it does get darker than in the next generation. Yeah. You have William Kennedy Smith, who I guess was more grandson generation, but he was charged with rape. Because a trial we should talk about sometime, because this is like at a point when, yeah, media and sexual assault trials is, well, not that we've figured it out now, but we really didn't know what we were doing at the time, I think. We were just trying to think of something to do, yeah. Yeah, what a nightmare of a time to have to be doing something like that. Yeah, but yeah, we start to see the Kennedy curse inflicted on adjacent women around this time, it seems like. Yes, exactly, because then you have Chappaquittic. with Ted Kennedy, which really, it didn't seem to affect his career in the Senate, which is a little

bananas. Or is it? I don't know. Like, look at where we are now. I mean, but there was a period where it at least was surprising to keep your career going. Despite crashing a car with a young woman in it and then leaving her to drown. Yep. And then lying about it to save your own ass. And maybe you could have helped if you even had called law enforcement when it first happened. Classic career, not ending move, but bruising a little bit, yeah. And certainly now it smears his, well, smear always has a connotation of falsely done, but like it colors his memory, certainly. But then you have Michael Kennedy, who first was in the headlines for probable statutory

rape of their babysitter, Marissa Veracchi. And that, I think I told you about this when I was listening to a podcast about the Skakel murders, which are adjacent. But they talked about like a vodka sauna being a Kennedy family tradition. Come on. Where they all sit around hot rocks and they pour a bottle of vodka on the rocks. So they all absorb vodka through their skin. Like you can't trust rich people.

And also, that's really just like. a very club-med version of the like disordered teenage girl thing of like the tampon the tampon exactly I'm so glad I wasn't going to be the only person who knew about that yeah hadn't tried it but look when you're in high school you have these things in your back pocket because your parents hear about the men on PR and say Sarah are you and your friends doing that and you're like well not to this point but now that you've told me about really nobody I've met has done that but uh I guess the Kennedys are doing a version of it on family vacations together. Yeah.

But then that guy, the statutory rapist, possible statutory rapist, it's unclear if their relationship started when she was 14 and started working for them, or he said it was when she turned 16, which was the age of consent, how convenient he waited. Very nice. He died, though, in a ski accident. So cleaned itself up. then another Joe Kennedy paralyzed a woman in his car. Her name was Pam Kelly.

She's now a disability advocate, or she might have died now, but she was. So good on her for making something better than anyone in the family did. And then David Kennedy OD'd, and then there was the Skakel murders, which there's a bit of a question as to whether the RFK family member did it. Or if that was a false conviction. Yeah. But still, there's enough creepy stuff from that story that's true. Something to look at if you wish to.

Yeah. And that, you know, regardless of ultimately what happened resulted in the death of what a 14 or 15 year old girl, Martha Moxley. Yeah. And his alibi, if you will, and if you believe it, was that he was not murdering her, but he climbed up in a tree and was masturbating looking through her window. So that part is by his own word, true. So even if you take it in the light most favoring the skakles, yikes. Yeah.

Yeah. And it is, I don't know. And now we, of course, have the Kennedy curse most visible in the farm of RFK, the man who makes Kierig brewers jealous. God, boy, howdy. Yeah. And, you know. we all know, we're all here, but it's just exhausting.

It sure is. And it's not that I don't think that he could have made it as far as he has as a regular insane person, because I think he's saying the kinds of things that fit with the whole general anti-science vibe we have going on here for sure. And, you know, and also, you know, creating, like not, I'm making fun of the guy because he's very funny to me. But like the fear that we are going to start, you know, putting neurodivergent people in internment camps is like, I don't think that's an overblown one, you know? Like I doubt that we, that the government could figure out how to do that in a fire fest kind of a way.

But it's saving us is their incompetence. They're gross incompetence compared to, say, this administration that we were talking about. like they couldn't even get it together to that level of incompetence. Yeah. And just the sort of, I don't know, the, the, the, the way this administration has fought so hard to repeal the progress that this country has made in terms of, of disability rights. Yeah. It's clear that it's part of, it's clear, it's clear, it's clear to me that this is part of a bigger and much scarier agenda and one that I do fear because it's cheaper to let your citizens die.

Yeah. And we know how deeply everyone running this country currently is motivated by money. And there doesn't have to be more complicated motive than that. That, you know, greed and ego and whatever other psychological profiles we have running amok. But it's also, you look at somebody like RFK Jr. and you're like, I know that you ended up as the person you are partly because of your name and that you got this far because of it, in my opinion. and also maybe you could have had a chance to be more normal without it. And I just, you know, the purpose of a dynasty is to transfer power and to aggregate power. It's not really to produce healthy people.

And I don't know if the Kennedy dynasty has succeeded on either account, honestly, at this point. Well, I think there's a relativism, especially when you look at the likes of RFK Jr. That's worth mentioning, because most, if not all, of the remaining. Kennedy family that comes from the JFK line and much of it from his own line, the RFK line, has spoken out against him. So it's like there are certainly degrees of dysfunction. Yeah, not to paint everyone with too broad of a brush, because there are some candidates that you never hear about because they're reading a library book or something. Yeah, like Caroline Kennedy, I think, has done a wonderful job of quietly supporting important causes. Marie Schreiber, married

Schwarzenegger, another curse. That's a weird move. But, yeah, I don't love that. Has Chris Pratt for a son-in-law? More curse. That's punishment enough, yeah. Yeah. But maybe fitting.

I don't know what she's done, but she doesn't deserve that probably. But then you got to think, like, if you married Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's not that weird if your child picks Chris Pratt. You know what I mean? Yeah. God. That's not super out of pocket. But, yeah, RFK Jr., then is. pretty much on the outs with his whole family from what obviously what we see as lay people.

You just has Cheryl in the ostrich now. Disgusting. And she's also burning all her bridges, even though he's sleeping with people, which is just embarrassing for her, but also kind of sad for her. Yeah. I don't know. I feel pity sometimes. Cheryl, you can still turn this around, I think. Maybe. Thousands would disagree with me, but. Well, then Tignitaro split with her. I guess they had a podcast, but from what Tignitaro has said, Cheryl has been really nasty about it behind the scenes. So you love to see a powerful, shitty person who's also shitty in their personal life. I guess it's not super weird, but damn. I think maybe the lesson is just that like don't get too powerful and don't take it too seriously.

And keep the no people around, like, because we're seeing the yes men syndrome. Yeah, that's the really big one. Yes. There was a great piece in the Atlantic about, well, the article is the new Resputins, which I think is perfect and apt, except I'd say that RFK Jr. has less of the rumored charisma that Rasputin had. Right. You see pictures of Resputin. You're like, this guy had to have been really persuasive. Or he smelled amazing or something. Yeah. That can't be the case in that time period. It wasn't the face card. Yeah.

but I mean, they talk about how something that I think all of us know to be the case, but like they distill it into a reason that makes a lot of sense. But they talk about the anti-science mysticism and how it enables autocracy. And the quote that really stood out to me is when conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too. And I was like, damn, that is so. True. Like we're, once we move away from truth and science and testing and experts in the field being the reliable parties, of course we don't have a reliable way of measuring guilt or elections. And like, these are things that we all know because we see the correlation, but yeah. The connection makes so much more sense put that way. Yeah. Well, and that, you know, that if the goal of power is just to maintain power.

and amass more power and to sort of create whatever arguments you need to in order to make that happen. Then like I think you kind of, I don't know, I think we can see this in what we're living through right now that like the logic maybe inevitably gets pushed toward rulership by divine right. Yeah, almost. Maybe not literally, but like in. I think that's why they like him. Right. And that we're in a, you know, we're living in America's season in the prosperity gospel as really a pretty dominant religious discourse. And the prosperity gospel would suggest that the right person to be in control of all of our lives is somebody who's, well, not made money technically, but managed to not lose all of the money he started out with at least.

And it's like, I feel like so many people are trying to sort of express in a way that will affect people's thinking, like, don't you see that the presidency is being used very cynically as like QVC basically and to make money on like crappy products that make no sense? And I think that maybe like for some people that isn't a problem. Like maybe it feels good to be included in the profit-driven arm of democracy that way. I don't know because it's one of the only things we respect maybe. Or it fits with the Sky Daddy sort of worldview slash political view of I have to assume that somebody has the power and can do something with the power because the alternative and any alternative that vests me. like once we get to politics, you really do have a responsibility if there isn't a sky daddy and a country daddy controlling everything. Like, then you must vote. Then you must stay informed. And that's a big responsibility. Right. And then it becomes your job. Yeah. Yeah. And like not to get

too religious necessarily, but we are talking about a bunch of Catholics. It's like religion can be the biggest cop out to doing good works, right? Because I think for a lot of people it can become like, well, God will do it. And it's like, don't make God do everything. You do it. If you think something is godly, then you give it a shot. Right. And the treatment of fallibility in how the institution of Catholicism and a lot of Christian religions have become is like, you can kind of just apologize at any point. And then you're all good. Yeah. So that can be a pretty carte blanche excuse to not live by, say, what Jesus wrote in the Bible, or not wrote, but like. Is alleged to have said. Yeah. Living by those principles would be great. Like if all these people who are thumping on the book were actually living that way, that would be lovely. But instead they'd rather fall behind a eugenicist, which weirdly eugenics and divine right, they really are two very similar concepts, huh?

Huh. Yeah. I'm special because I'm special. Yes, it's all gotten quite creepy. And I mean, of course, you know, our education makes us familiar with divine right. you know, through British and European monarchy historically, which is also inevitably, you know, a wing of white supremacy. Exactly. Because that was how power worked when you could take over a country by force and take all their stuff. I mean, people still do that. But you have to be a little bit more sophisticated about it.

Well, and I'm glad you brought that up because I think we would be remiss not to shout out the other originators of this mistrust in the government. Because I think there's a subplot here of both sides, almost idealizing small government. And it's easy to understand where that comes from, even on the left, when the executive is what it is right now. Yeah. We all hate the DMV. We all hate all this paperwork. Yeah. There's someone out there who likes the paperwork and good for them. And we see how scary a bad executive can be.

But when Mamdani was sworn in, and I'm getting this through Robert Reich, so I trust him to report it well. He said something like we have to get away from the idea of small government being the goal because government is necessary as a protective mechanism. And you think of things like the Americans with Disabilities Act. And I always use that as kind of the poster child of why regulation is necessary in that kind of refuting libertarianism way of thinking. That companies and individuals, even with the best intentions, which is assuming a lot, they need something to hold them to what disabled people actually need. And obviously it's not perfect and its application is flawed,

but you need a government to do that, to look out for the people and that's what it should be. But with Reagan and Thatcher, you saw that government mistrust so actively sown. And then I was just listening to this guy who wrote a book on Ruby Ridge. And he was talking about the origin of that branch of anti-government conspiracy theory. mindset being so knit with white supremacy. So like remembering those origins when we idealize small government, I think is prudent because the ideal is a government that protects us and that we participate in.

Yeah. And this idea maybe that sort of the basic flavor of American libertarianism is like, as an able-bodied white man, I have everything I need. Yeah, I don't need help. It generally isn't true either, interestingly, right? I think a lot of the people who identify as the victories historically need the very things that government could provide them with. Absolutely. If everybody stopped voting against them all the time.

But I kind of wonder if what people, because of course there's the issue of taxation. But I think there's also maybe in addition to that, sometimes when people say they want small government, what they mean is I want government I don't have to see or think about all the time. Sure. And it doesn't inconvenience me, which is a more reasonable thing to desire, you know, because I think that, yeah, That's also a big difference. Like, you need even more trust in who you're voting for if that is your goal. I choose to believe that people mean that some of the time. I don't know.

I mean, and the point, I guess, ultimately to me, is that a healthy society is one that will afford protections to people even if they try to reject them or don't understand them. And I know that everyone's so worried about the nanny state. But, like, that's what I want more than anything. Like, I want a government that. is able to know more than I do about a lot of the issues affecting my life and that I can trust to behave in the best interests of its citizens. And I think the feeling of betrayal people

experience when they understand that's not happening, I don't know. I can see how that can manifest in wanting to throw the whole thing out. And I can see how that shows up in creating conspiracy theories. I think I just, I don't believe in another way out. So I have to stick it out with this one. Yeah, and I think even when when people do get disillusioned with the nanny state not performing to what they had hoped, is that with the conspiracy theorist bunch, they kind of get stuck in still thinking that the capacity to have this enormous power exists, but they're just not going to participate in it, which is weird internal logic. But like, it seems that there are two different branches of nanny state. There's the, what I kind of would be okay with, the term aside of like protecting disabled people, knowing, say, let's use the FDA as an example, they know better what the ingredients that are safe are than I do because I am not an expert in that. And I don't care if I want to get a beer with you. I want you to know this better than I do.

That's a nanny I want. But then the pejorative version is like a level of power that people seem to assume the government already has if these conspiracy theories are true. which is like they can pull these strings and they are hypnotizing us and in the book that I'm reading right now, the Naomi Klein book. Doppelganger, she talks about defining conspiracy theories and the context that she was talking about I thought was really helpful that in COVID we saw all of these tech companies and Amazon, etc. really benefiting from stay-at-home policies and profiteering, operating.

opportunistic uses of like we're going to try our new technology, et cetera, et cetera. That's true. But then you had the next branch of people who took that reality and said, well, this must mean that Amazon and their ilk caused COVID. Yeah. And that's a bridge too far. And so like... That was a fun one.

Yeah. So the distinction that she adds to the definition of like the government and some cabal is involved in in some nefarious plan is that the accusations. are also false and unproven. And I think you even mentioned making money being the motive. And it's why the Naomi Klein book says, apolitical people tend to be the first ones to fall victim to these conspiracies because they don't tend to have a firm grasp on the mechanisms of capitalism. And when you understand that that's the motivator, no more, no less, everything makes a lot more sense. Yeah. And I think it's, you look at history.

and you're like, well, there's plenty of government cabals. You know, we talked about MK. Ultra, and that's like pretty much that, right? It's like a semi-secret bad thing that a bunch of people are involved in doing together. But what we can see sort of throughout American history, at least, is that when you do have something that kind of fits the criteria of the kind of plot you imagine in a conspiracy theory, it's often, I think, being perpetrated by people who are working somewhat too entirely out in the open, who's very very much. victims are disempowered within society and therefore who there's a very low chance of anyone trying to protect. Yeah. And doing so in a way that is kind of, that people are at least somewhat aware of and that

just doesn't really seem like a problem enough to anyone in power to really stop it, you know, and that's scarier. You know, that is scarier. Yeah. But it's also nice to be able to accept information that you didn't think of all by your and to believe that even if you couldn't personally get to the moon, maybe other people could. And also the evidence-based piece, because that that bit of the definition that the Naomi Klein book presented on what's a capital C, capital T conspiracy theory really helps me distinguish the

things that are based on very little from the things that are scary and dark and large scale and from people who have more control than we do, but are real. And she pointed out some examples, like how Nazi propaganda was fundamentally contradictory, and that's often true in conspiracies. Nazi propaganda presented Jews as both greedy, which would fit with capitalistic goals and communist, which is not really greedy. And with COVID, it's like, either it is mild and we shouldn't be worried about it, or it's a bioweapon. Perpetrated by the Democrats. Yeah. So the contradictions and the falsehoods are what really flag a conspiracy. theory and then obviously time helps it evolve too because that's when we get more facts.

The JFK thing has been investigated so deeply over so many years. So the likelihood of things that we don't have any evidence for being true is much lower. I mean, the nice thing, too, is that like if you're trying to sort of theorize how something hypothetical might have gone, you do have the real world to use as a baseline, you know, and you can look at how other criminal conspiracies do work or how what tends to happen when people are trying to pull off a plot together or keep a secret. And you can learn these patterns of human behavior and you can't necessarily predict what's going to happen.

But I think that, I don't know, I'm never going to feel that more information isn't the best possible route to take. Yeah, I think I agree with that. It's nice to be, it's nice to be on the science. of learning and finding things out when the people who are trying so hard to hurt you and those you love are against learning things because that maybe allows for a bit of an advantage. One would think, one would really think. I mean, to your point about patterns, so many of the conspiracy theory started to remind me

of like the Knox prosecutors theory in the Amanda Knox case where instead of working with facts, and this is kind of the recognizing patterns piece, that you just have, I can think of a version of the story and we don't have enough facts to disprove it. And so if I can imagine this and nothing actively disproves it, then that is a strong theory. I was like, that's really not a strong theory. It's really just, it's, you know, just something that you thought of in your very own head. Yeah, like, congrats on writing a story. Maybe take it in that direction and become creative. So this comes from the Nova documentary, and they interviewed G. Robert Blakey, and he was counseled to the House Committee on Assassination, so the 1977 group that investigated the assassination. And he said that what someone thinks happened to JFK says more about them than it does about what happened to JFK.

And that's from the man who investigated it himself. And I think we could apply that to a lot of conspiracy theories, too. Yeah. Yeah. I believe that. And I mean, I don't know, there's kind of, there's something nice to me in that statement for many reasons. And one is that it turns even an avenue for misinformation into a way to get more real information about, you know, if only just the person who's saying it to you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Even conspiracy theories can be used to try and get more of a real understanding of the world. I just, I won't stand by as my best friend research is slandered like this. She will rise again. Someday, we might not be alive to see it, but someday she'll be back. You know, it's just, it's fun to learn things.

I think so. What if we market it as fun? Has anyone tried that yet? We're probably preaching to the choir because I feel like if they're listening to your show, they're on our side and they're hand ringing with us. That's true. Well, just, okay, go out, go out and learn something, but make it look fun while you do it. Yeah, do it on a skateboard.

Oh, that's sick. If you can. Hell yeah.