Conspiracy Clearinghouse

EPISODE 123 | A Heritage of Nonsense: More JKF Stories Guest: Fred Litwin, author of A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination The JFK assassination truly is the gift that keeps on giving, as this third book on the topic by Fred Litwin demonstrates. People who became suspects after just a two-minute phone call, a comedian who claimed to have channeled Oswald's ghost,...

EPISODE 122 | How to Be a Communist One of the many words tossed about these days as a snarl term is “communist”, but do the people using this sobriquet know what that really means? It certainly doesn’t mean every leftwing philosophy or ideology. In fact, Communism is a very specific set of applications of very certain ideas, and, like it or not, helped define the 20th century. So let’s look at wh...

EPISODE 121 | Coup Coup G'joob: Civic Disturbances in the U.S. 1900 - Present This is a continuation of our previous episode about coup attempts, rebellions and civic unrest in the United States prior to the 20th century. This time, we jump into the 20th century and bring us right up to the present day. After hearing all this, you decide if things really are, as some would have you believe, the wo...

EPISODE 120 | OOPArts Doompa-Dee-Doo Sometimes people find something… interesting, maybe even mysterious. What is that? they ask. And then they or someone else makes a logical leap and says oh, wow, here is the missing link I’ve been looking for that proves all my theories that until now have been ridiculed or ignored. And not even scientists are immune to this very common and very human process....

Episode 119 | False-Flag-A-Go-Go (WIW 14) The false flag trick started with naval warfare, but has also been used to initiate wars and to sabotage political opponents. And the conspirasphere uses the idea of the false flag, both in general and specific terms, quite often to justify certain narratives. In that regard, the two most influential are the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the attack...

EPISODE 118 | Public Enemy Antifa Much has been made about Antifa. Is it a concept, socio-political stance, or an organized group? Do they oppose oppression by any means necessary, or are they simply hooligans who want to break things? Or, as Trump and others in the Maga mirror world have suggested, are they the quasi-military arm of some insidious plot to undermine the very foundations of western...

EPISODE 117 | Stay Awake: The Wokeness Issue In a classic example of the weird mirror world days we are currently moving through, a term used by Black people to mean one thing has been turned by opportunists into something totally different.  So, let's look at the origin of the term "woke", how it's been used, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), the Black Lives Matter movement, Defund the...

EPISODE 116 | High(er) Strangeness w/Eric Bickernicks Guest: Eric Bickernicks, writer, author of High Strangeness and Higher Strangeness What does a guy who's made novelty songs, short comedy videos, an indie film for $32k, kettle corn aplenty, and a novel about art theft do next? If he's Eric Bickernicks, he writes two books about UFOs, hoaxes, alien thoughts, UFO cults, gullibility and Cape Cod....

EPISODE 115 | Cuckoo Coups in the U.S. Alarmist rhetoric has been used multiple times in America’s past with the express intent of fomenting a rebellion or even a coup. The game is to create a sense of urgency in the hopes that enough people will commit to extreme actions, so you can get what you want (which is power). According to Wikipedia, there have been 13 coup attempts in the United States s...

EPISODE 114 | All Your Base Are Belong to Us: U.S. Military Installations The United States spends more on their military than the next nine countries combined. With around 450 bases (or maybe 500 or maybe 750 or maybe 800 or even more) operating more than 111,000 installations in 80 or more countries, there’s a lot to keep track of. In fact, no one is really sure how accurate those numbers are, s...

EPISODE 113 | Power Is Power: The Vulnerable Electrical Grid Guest: Chris Underwood, author of the The Cold Winter series Our digital age needs electricity more than anything else. But what would happen is part of the power grid went down during one of the worst winter storms in history? That's the premise of Chris Underwood's thriller series The Cold Winter. The fact is that power grid is vulnera...

EPISODE 112 | GESARA & the Red Caesar What do proposed economic reforms, the idea of a post-constitutional American dictator and Christian Nationalism have in common? Donald Trump, for starters - at least for some people. Scammers and grifters of all stripes find common ground with would-be authoritarians in a weird confluence of conspiracy narratives that hope to create and capitalize on chao...

EPISODE 111 | Us vs. Them: Antisemitism Goes to School Guest: Scott Shay, president of Chai Mitzvah and author of  Conspiracy U Hamas forces swept into Israel on October 7, 2023, committing atrocities and taking hostages. Literally the next day, American student groups were blaming Israel. Protests on campuses began to multiply and today the situation seems out of control and pro-Israel and pro-Pa...

EPISODE 110 | How to Be a Fascist People use the term "Fascist" a lot these days, but do they really know what that means? Fascism is a very specific combination of ideas and goals that occurred within very clear historical and philosophical contexts.  This is a look at where Fascism came from, Mussolini's rise to power, and variations and offshoots of the first Fascist ideologies. And while not e...

EPISODE 109 | What's in a Name? The Shakespeare Authorship Debate Guest: Scott Jackson, Mary Irene Ryan Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at the University of Notre Dame, current vice president of the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) and incoming president, actor, director and Shakespeare scholar  William Shakespeare wrote at least 36 plays, 154 sonnets, two narrative poems and a few...

EPISODE 108 | Swiftboating Redux: Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome She's the most successful pop star today, yet some people seem to suffer brain meltdowns when thinking about Taylor Swift. Call it TDSD, Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome, and it takes hold especially in MAGAmaniacs, Trumpeteers, Trad Chads and broflakes.  Tracing the conspirasphere's treatment of Swift along with her career and l...

EPISODE 107 | Traces of Reality: Abstract Art and the CIA (World Is Weird 13) Guest: Mandy Theis, founder and director of the School of Atelier Arts , academic director and professor at the Florence Academy of Art Maybe you've walked into a museum or gallery and seen a big white, blank canvas, or a huge circle, and thought, "So, this is art, eh?". But why is there so much of this abstract stuff ar...

EPISODE 106 | Suffer the Children: Pizzagate, Wayfair & the Seeds of QAnon "Without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism." In the world of the internet, this is known as Poe’s Law, and it’s especially applicable to the weird narrative Gordian Knot known as Pizzagate....

EPISODE 105 | Capitol Assets: Weird DC (Travelogue 4) Guest: Fayge Horesh, co-creator, writer and host of the D Listers of History podcast, and licensed tour guide Washington D.C. is an interesting place and, like many cities, has some oddities. We take a look at some of the things around town that might not be obvious at first glance, like (not-so secret) tunnels, ghost cats, strange clocks, holl...

EPISODE 104 | Fatal Attraction: Magnet Woo While we use magnets all the time, most of us don’t know some of the subtleties of magnetic fields and the electromagnetic force. This lack of knowledge is the perfect opening for scam artists to sell unsuspecting folks all kinds of sham cures for illnesses and injuries, opening up a wide world of woo and pseudoscientific narratives. Like what we do? Then...

EPISODE 103 | Down in Bermuda, It’s Easy to Believe: The Devil’s Triangle Back in the 70s, the Bermuda Triangle was all over the place but today, not so much. Whatever happened with that? Did it go away? Was it debunked? Or did the woosphere simply get bored and move on to juicer subjects?  A bit of both. Plus, the are lots of other supposed interesting/mysterious/dangerous triangles out there. Th...

EPISODE 102 | Conspiracy Thinking in the Middle East (Because Reasons 10) Guest: Adel Aali, creator and host of the podcasts History Behind News and Unravelling the Middle East Conspiracy theories seem to thrive in the Middle East, but why? Adel Aali takes a look at some of the more common CTs, as well as where they come from and why that region might be primed for conspiracy thinking due to its h...

EPISODE 101 | Panic! at the Disco: The Jan. 6 Event (World Is Weird 12) On January 6, 2021 at 12:53 EST, a mass of people overwhelmed police on the west side of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC. At 2:11, a window was broken, and they entered the building. What followed was a bizarre scene, with some happy to just wander around, while others had more active plans. When it was over, 5 people...

EPISODE 100 | Conspirasphere Rising - A Talk w/Derek Arnold (Because Reasons 9) Guest: Derek Arnold, Senior Instructor at Villanova University, where he teaches a course on The Rhetoric of Conspiracy Theories The modern conspirasphere sort of starts with the assassination of JFK, and events in the two decades that follow help shape a growing trend toward conspiracy thinking in the United States. M...

EPISODE 99 | A Bridge Too Far: The Mothman Visits Point Pleasant The strange events of 1966-1967 in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia gave rise to one of America's most enduring legends - the Mothman. It made the headlines and also the careers of Gray Barker and John Keel. But it was more than just a large winged creature. There were visits from the Men in Black, UFOs aplenty, poltergeists...