'Groomer' panic is sweeping the nation as right-wing types turn against LGBTQ rights, and the talking points—as with the backlash against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools—can directly be traced back to a group of anti-wokeness activists on the "intellectual dark web." As The Daily Beast's senior opinion editor Anthony Fisher notes, the 'anti-wokeness' activists have "created this groundswell that is absolutely affecting policy," with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' own press secretary is now...
Apr 27, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Would you buddy up to a neo-Nazi for a cut of crowdfunded “patriot freedom” cash? That’s the question reportedly wracking a wing of a D.C. jail, where multiple alleged January 6 rioters are being detained. This week on Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill dive into the far right’s money troubles—both behind bars and outside them, as three of Alex Jones’ companies file for bankruptcy. Media Matters associate research director Nikki McCann Ramirez joins the podcast to discuss Tucker Car...
Apr 20, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 57
No, passenger “Let’s go Brandon” does not need to check-in at Gate 10. It’s just the latest right-wing trend that has conservatives paging fake passengers over airport intercoms. This week, Fever Dreams brings you the bleeding edge in COVID-19 conspiracy theories (this time about snake blood), as well as dispatches from Colorado and Pennsylvania, where primary contests are revealing divides between the GOP mainstream and its growing QAnon wing. Finally, we’re joined by Washington Post reporter T...
Apr 13, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer have one thing on their minds: how they can score $2,500 to land spots on a bogus “grand jury” indicting Anthony Fauci. On this week’s episode, Swin and Will discuss the burgeoning trend of soaking your fans by selling them “super juror” spots on fake grand juries aimed at Fauci and Hunter Biden. Street Fight podcast host Murder Bryan joins to explore the world of right-wing shock jocks, with a focus on “Mancow” Muller. Bryan also weighs in on a QAnon refer...
Apr 06, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Some of Donald Trump's lawyers have some cringe hobbies, like trying to do coup d'états. But did you know that one of them is an amateur poet, who has written verses about "THE TORONTO SUBWAY SYSTEM" and, "of life and sex and puzzled joy, a chopped up mess of Miss Playboy." In this week's episode of Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng bring you dramatic readings of the Trump "legal B-team" poetry. Elsewhere on the pod, our hosts welcome New York Times writer Elizabeth Williamson...
Mar 30, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Fever Dreams host Will returns to the pod to talk with Swin about Alex Jones’s maybe-fake illness, which conveniently struck him down right before a Sandy Hook deposition. New York Times reporter Ryan Mac stops by to talk about Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel’s plans for 2022 — what is that guy up to? Also on the agenda: the trucker convoy’s bumbling, accident-prone attempts to terrorize DC and the Ohio Senate race that nearly turned into a real-life brawl. Finally, Swin kicks off his farewell...
Mar 23, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Is this the country’s most off-the-rails local Republican party? This week, Fever Dreams checks in on the Kootenai County, Idaho GOP, where local leaders are accused of trying to force a hostile takeover of the local Democratic party, and install an antisemitic troll as the new Democratic leader. Plus, we bring you the latest from Mar-A-Lago, where Donald Trump is making angry phone calls about his floundering social media site, Truth Social. We’re also joined by Reason reporter C.J. Ciaramella,...
Mar 16, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 52
America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist event, keeps its location secret, in part to keep the press away. This week’s guest, HuffPost Christopher Mathias, found the location anyway. He joins Fever Dreams to discuss his bizarre conversation with former ICE Director Tom Homan, who was a scheduled AFPAC speaker, but bailed out at the last minute. Elsewhere on the podcast, we check in on Donald Trump and far-right “Boogaloo Boys,” both of which have been daydreaming about cond...
Mar 09, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Donald Trump is racking up massive Secret Service bills—and hassling those agents about their physical fitness and whether they voted for him. This week on Fever Dreams, we visit wannabe demagogues at home and abroad. In Florida, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at a Hitler-hyping white nationalist conference. Other members of her party, meanwhile, prefer to heap praise on Vladimir Putin, whom they laud as “anti-woke” as he oversees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That attack is so large that res...
Mar 02, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 50
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is back with a wacky new claim, this time about Fever Dreams host Asawin Suebsaeng. It’s not true—but it’s not even the weirdest conspiracy theory on this week’s podcast, where we preview co-host Kelly Weill’s new book about the flat earth movement. We check in on a flat earther who got arrested for trying to hand out flyers at a school playground, and learn why the movement even alienates some QAnon believers. Actress Dylan Gelula joins us to discuss her podcast “Lectu...
Feb 23, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Even though the Canadian trucker protesters have been cleared from Ottawa’s border bridge and commerce lanes with the U.S. reopened this past weekend, Canada is still struggling to contain the demonstrators—and as Fever Dreams guest and Vice writer Mack Lamoureux notes, more insidious, and even armed, groups are emerging within the greater protest. What’s more, Canada’s trucker blockade is spawning copycats far and wide. Elsewhere on the pod, co-hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill, and very s...
Feb 16, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 48
t’s that time of year again for the Super Bowl halftime show and while the 2022 lineup of Dr. Dre, Snoop, Mary J. Blige and Eminem reads to most fans like a warm and fuzzy 90s nostalgia bath, “to hear certain conservative commentators describe it,” notes Fever Dreams co-host Kelly Weill, “this Super Bowl is ripe for Satanism.” It's all part of the Satanic Panic that’s been brewing in the U.S. for awhile, including the bonkers QAnon conspiracy theories around the deadly Travis Scott concert at As...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 47
The first QAnon campaign finance filing is finally here, everybody! And it’s… hilarious how much cash this congressional campaign managed to raise. “His first campaign finance filing came in, and it seems to support the idea that not too many people want Mr. QAnon himself in Congress,” Fever Dreams co-host Kelly Weill reports. Elsewhere on this episode, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Weill interview Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau, who reveals how an ordinary citizen’s phone can suddenly turn...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Is Joe Biden just as bad as Donald Trump for calling attention to voting rights? The nation’s whataboutist pundits say yes! This week, Fever Dreams dives into the beltway’s favorite new talking point. Elsewhere in D.C. this weekend, anti-vax celebrity Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that he was more persecuted than teenage Holocaust victim Anne Frank because he cannot hide in an attic. (Kennedy currently has a top-selling book, so the persecution analogy falls a little flat.) Later, Jane Coaston...
Jan 26, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 45
The latest conspiracy theory to convulse MAGA-land does not involve COVID-19 boosters or deep-state January 6 plots, but a bit of routine construction at dear old 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—which has convinced some on the right that Biden is about to impose martial law. Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite network One America News is in trouble, and the former president is threatening to crush and “destroy” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis if he doesn’t fall in line for 2024. And finally, the co-hosts discuss...
Jan 19, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 44
One surefire way to garner some extreme MAGA-cred nowadays is to get COVID-19, lie about it and say you just have pneumonia, and remain unrepentant as an avowed anti-vaxxer. But there’s at least one MAGA diehard—an associate of Steve Bannon—who has taken things a step farther. This guy has recently been vlogging (yes, vlogging) from his hospital bed—after being admitted for contracting the coronavirus. Of course, he’s talked about how thrilled he is that he never got the COVID vaccine… even thou...
Jan 12, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 43
When Amanda Moore lost her job, she decided to go undercover in MAGA land, attending QAnon events and CPAC, hanging with Neo-Nazis and “blood-and-soil fascists,” and palling around with Proud Boys at Harry's Bar in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol Riot. But what her new compatriots didn’t know was that she was often recording them, and the result is a chilling portrait “of what the right looks like from the inside.” Elsewhere on the podcast, co-hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng discuss ...
Jan 05, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 42
The year 2021 brought some major grifts in MAGA-land, as Fever Dreams hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer noted in their final podcast of the year—think Melania Trump’s NFT’s and the ‘Freedom phone,’ which was basically a “rebrand of a cheapo Chinese phone” selling at five times the price. But the Qux Box (pronounced “Cucks”) takes the prize as the pair’s “favorite dumb character of 2021.” Months after it was first promoted by its inventors—a former Infowars reporter and her husband—“I’m stil...
Dec 29, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Some internet mischief-makers created a fake DHS website purporting to show President Biden’s plan for COVID concentration camps—and rightwing Senate candidate JD Vance fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Elsewhere on the podcast, The Daily Beast discovers the answer to whether character actor Jay Johnston—who voices the villainous Jimmy Pesto on Fox sitcom Bob’s Burgers —really did storm the Capitol on January 6. Meanwhile, the Proud Boys are teaming up with a radical Black nationalist organiza...
Dec 22, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Her name is Trevian Kutti. Is that the name of the lamest Bond villains of the Pierce Brosnan era? Or is she a Kanye West publicist who fumbled her way into a Coen Brothers-style mission to shred the democratic order and keep Donald Trump in power? On this week’s Fever Dreams, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer are joined by Daily Beast colleague Adam Rawnsley to bring you a new deep-dive into the life and bizarre world of Kutti. Later on, our hosts welcome Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes, the...
Dec 15, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Trump fanatics Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn had a secret falling-out—and it’s just the latest revelation in the ongoing civil strife that’s been engulfing some of MAGAworld’s top election deniers. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng dig deeper on some of the unreported aspects of the backstabbing and high-school-style melodramas that are throttling the once tight-knit community of far-right luminaries who tried to nuke American democracy to make Donald Trum...
Dec 08, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 38
‘Seinfeld’ writer Dan O’Keefe is the man who gave us the holiday of Festivus—and as he reveals for the first time on Fever Dreams, its origins are pretty dark. Elsewhere on the podcast, the big MAGA civil war between Trump-loving attorney Lin Wood and former national security advisor Michael Flynn went nuclear this week and has turned into a circular MAGA firing squad. The co-hosts identify the next anti-vaxxer trend to sweep the far right internet, and it involves black sharpies. Finally, O’Kee...
Dec 01, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In the aftermath of the contested 2020 vote, Trump’s biggest election-fraud cheerleaders—Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn—were a tight crew. But the MAGA clique’s now in trouble as they turn on each other over wild accusations and petty infighting. Elsewhere on the podcast, the hosts discuss how Trump’s hand-picked candidate in a Pennsylvania election has flamed out (possibly to be replaced by Dr. Oz), and eagerly await an upcoming Hunter Biden biopic. And scholar and activist Abdur-Ra...
Nov 24, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 36
One-man YouTube brand and far-right darling Tim Pool came down with a nasty case of COVID-19—and with Joe Rogan’s help, became the latest posterboy for the dubious treatment of the virus with ivermectin. Meanwhile, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is waging war on Insider for an article that detailed his allegedly brutal sexual encounters with women. Bari Weiss’ unaccredited University of Austin is already bleeding staff members. Alex Jones lost big in court to the Sandy Hook parents. And a ...
Nov 17, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Congressional dentist Paul Gosar is tweeting anime beheading videos of his colleagues and the hosts of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams have some questions. Namely, “who on Gosar’s staff is the meme Lord?” As host Will Sommer notes, “Not a good sign for the state of the country, or the right, to be tweeting your anime assassination fantasies.” Elsewhere on the podcast, Sommer and host Kelly Weill discuss the FBI raid on Project Veritas, and the proliferation of TikTok Satanist conspiracies around ...
Nov 10, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Will JFK Jr. rise from the dead and proclaim himself QAnon King in a Dallas press conference this week? Probably not. But that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from gathering in Texas to meet the long-departed lawyer. This week on Fever Dreams, Will Sommer and guest host Kelly Weill discuss the nuttiest legal battles on the far right, from conspiratorial attorney Lin Wood accusing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of stiffing him $5,000, to neo-Nazis representing themselves in a trial over the dead...
Nov 03, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Jesus—aka actor Jim Caviezel—has “emerged from his chrysalis as a QAnon butterfly” and is now spending his days making videos about adrenochrome and appearing at Q conferences to quote from Braveheart . Meanwhile, Sean Hannity and other right-wing types are in a gleeful tizzy over MAGA rap songs, while Gen Z is falling in love with some pretty crazy conspiracies—5G, Scientology, and old-school Pizzagate—over on TikTok. And a civil court case against the deadly organizers of the Unite the Right r...
Oct 27, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Did Dennis Prager deliberately catch Covid-19, or is he just embarrassed now that he did? Will Sommer and guest host Kelly Weill discuss the talk radio host’s coronavirus hunt, plus Laura Loomer’s intense memoir about getting PTSD from a Twitter ban. Author Amanda Montell joins to talk about her new book, Cultish, an investigation of real cults like Heaven’s Gate and quasi-cults like Crossfit. Audit fever hits never-before-seen heights. Plus: Will and Kelly talk alleged QAnon operator Ron Watkin...
Oct 20, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 31
As far-right efforts to “audit” the 2020 election fizzle, some of the movement’s biggest names have accused each other of being communists, FBI informants, and “homewreckers.” Meanwhile, other right-wing figures have more pressing concerns: namely, how to launch their own airlines for pilots and passengers who refuse to be vaccinated. And hosts Kelly Weill and Will Sommer dish on the dumbest new t-shirt slogan that’s about to take off with Trump fans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for m...
Oct 13, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 30
The hosts of QAnon Anonymous dropped by this week to talk about the latest Q conspiracies involving the Facebook outage and the annoying fact that Joe Biden remains in the White House. Plus: Trumpcoins are flooding Telgram via fake celebrity accounts, Corey Lewandowski’s police report is a must-read, and the Sandy Hook parents are finally victorious over Alex Jones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 06, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 29
