It's tough, being tough being lead guitar up there up front. We need bass players though, Thank you for your service.
Yeah yeah, look I love it, Like you get to be the least sober person in the band and people don't realize it, I think is what the fun part is playing bass sometimes.
Did you have a bass face? Did I have a bass face?
Oh?
Yeah, you when you get like nasty, I would have to be.
Like, how premeditated is the face? Is the question that I always have for musicians, like when they're coming in, do you practice the face or does it just like come out of you if.
You're a hack. I mean it's not like I had a face or like time for bass face. It's just more like when you're if something, if you're improvising or something something happens, you're nat You're like like you're just.
If you yourself are funky, it just comes out of your soul, your your face contorts with it.
Yeah, mine's a little bit more like I'm hard of hearing. I'm like, it's not like st Heim like st Him and high. She's like like she's got a full on base face.
Yeah. Yeah, to the point that she.
Opened for titay when I went and saw Taylor Swift and I was googling in the middle of the thing, like.
Is everything okay? Like is that she was just serving base, serving base face, giving you base facease face base for that ass.
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three thirty seven, Episode two of Daly's Like I Say.
Production of iHeartRadio.
This is the podcast where we take a deep dot into America share consciousness.
If you listen to us while you're sleeping, wake up, because I'm sorry.
That wasn't very nice. I listened to so many podcasts like going to sleep. That's really the only time I have to listen to podcasts, so just put them on. And if someone did that to me, I would not appreciate it. So I apologize.
I just woke you up. You can go back to sleep.
It's Tuesday, May twenty first, twenty twenty four.
Mm hmm, you know what that is? May twenty first. Not a lot a lot, Actually, not a lot, a lot a lot of that.
Not a lot a lot.
It's National Strawberries and Cream Day.
That's one of my favorite songs. I love that you references what she do.
Yeah, she was at uack Barns same college as me.
She's in college with you.
Yeah, I guess I learned this after the fact, but my wife was like, yeah, I know she went there and was just like left early because that song was blowing up as we were in school.
Wait, and she was at she was your classmate. I don't know what year she was, but she was there were eighty nineteen eighty, so she what the fuck? Okay out here with black Korean icon amory okay b deal.
Ummm, that just completely threw my momentum. Oh but not a lot a loto is National Strawberries and Cream Day. It's also a National weight staff Day, shout out to people out there having.
To fucking deal with the fucking impatient customers pretending that you give a fuck.
Also National Memo Day. I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing just the idea of a memorandum as they used to call memo.
Yeah, oh a memo.
Yes, my name is Jack O'Brien akaa so so so so mel Lee Balls, please be mean extra mean because because I'm gonna pay it. So so so so mel Lee Balls, please be me an extra me because I'm gonna pay Yeah. That is courtesy of Charlie Xavier to round ball rock Tim Robinson lyrics where he goes bo bo bo bo basketball, give me, gimme, give me the ball because I'm gonna don't get on SNL.
I believe it was. Yeah.
Anyways, great ref Shout out to Charlie, Sorry are you? I fucked up the phrasing a little bit, but you know, caught a whiff of my smellyballs and it just fucked me up a little bit.
Anyways.
Thrilled to be joined as Elias by my co host, mister Miles Grad.
Yes, it's Miles Great, the Lord of Lancasham, North, Hollywood's finest and also.
Just uh, what was I gonna say?
I forgot?
Oh, the latest fan of the Challengers Score.
I've just been listening at Score A lot an't go wrong. Just who would have thought some like industrial electronic music goes soa pairs so well with tennis scenes. Anyway, Shout out to everybody that's been saying to check it out, especially super Producer and who now seeing it. I've seen it. I've seen it, and I know and I know.
Yeah and I know, and of course I do know. Now we both saw weekend. You've seen, you've heard. Of course we know, and of course we have seen it and heard it. Miles, We are thrilled to be joined by today's special expert guest. He's a senior researcher of US hate and Extremist Movement at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. To quote Samuel L. Jackson, hold onto your butts. Oh, it's the return of whole to Mania. The Holtster is in the house, So Holtster your weapons.
It's Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.
Hold hold, hold, hold, it's good to be here.
Hold on, We're not done. Jared, hold on. I feel like I was off there. Give me one second.
Hold.
That's good man, oh man, God help.
Things are good. It's hard to complain too much. It's it's warm in Chicago again, so it's it's nice to go outside and see things start to grow and walk my dog along the lake front, which he is crazy about. But yeah, it's been good. Thanks.
What do you mean like the like the like he's rabid, so when he sees his body's of water. Yeah, just are just loving and generally just excited by the year.
Bas he loving it.
Oh, he he goes crazy. He loves to smell all the weird stuff that washes up on the shore of Lake Michigan, which a lot of stuff washes up there, like kinds of fish you wouldn't expect, Like that's probably a good sign, Like there's a lot of like crab looking things that wash up And maybe I'm just showing my own ignorance over bodies of water, which I will fully right right too. But uh but but yeah, he
just goes crazy. He runs in circles, goes nuts for like ten minutes, and then my wife and I usually carry him the rest of the way.
But he loves it. Yeah.
Wow, like that like that metaphor or that story about christ.
On the beach carrying him? Yeah, do you make him look back at his footsteps and tell.
Him me and me and mom, Oh man, I'm glad you're here. Because the Donald Trump and Race beach drifted into Q town and I was like, oh, we're still playing that music again, so I'm glad you're here to be.
It was definitely on a bit of a Q tip on that.
One, Yes, Yeah, when he could have been on a comal the abstract sort of wave that's a deep that's a deep Q tip cut for all my drive call qust fans out there. Yeah, but I'm sure that was that like getting people excited on the old Q internets.
Yeah, some of the Q and on influencers, which is such a weird thing to say. Yeah, like the same way we think of like, oh, I'm like a spirituality influencer, just like Buddy, I've read a lot of posts and yeah, you're in safe hands, don't work?
Are those are my spiritual influencers? Yeah?
Right right right, yeah, yeah, some of them that I still like kind of keep an eye on from the Q and on heyday we're like, oh, it's this music again.
And it's interesting to see this make the rounds because during the twenty twenty campaign, you know, at Trump rallies, this music would play and all the QUE people would get like really pumped up about it because it's this song by you know, it's uploaded on I think it's SoundCloud or a YouTube channel or something by somebody who is just like straight up Q pilled and or appears to be I guess I should say. And so they've always been like, look, this is this is for us,
this is our music, this is our anthem. And the Trump where us by Can campaign has just been adamant about like, no, it's just a song. And then reporters are like, well, how'd you find the song? And they're like and the next question, you know, and for all the flak they got for using that song four years ago, it's definitely I mean, this was like somebody's conscious choice was like we're going to play this song again.
Right, yeah, oh, and he's gonna pause for thirty seconds, so to just like let that shit cook.
That let everyone based yea, Mari.
And Natean, Well, yeah, I'm glad you're here because I'm I have many questions about that and generally what we're looking at this fall.
You like wears coast off of the vibes of people who are in Chicago during summer because they have to like trudge through like Andy Duframe crawling through ship to freedom. Chicagoans need to trudge through eight months of pure ship to get to really like one of the best places to be during summer months, spring and summer months and like in the world.
Yeah, yeah, Chicago in the summer is like my favorite place on earth.
Yeah, it's really great. Yeah, wow, now I must go. Have you been Jack Sureley, you've gone said, I've never been.
I just uh, you know, I've seen Ferris Bueller and I feel like summer. All right, Well, we're gonna talk more about conspiracy theories u Resa paper about not all conspiracy theory is created equal, some more alarming, some deserve more attention than others. But before we do that, we do like to get to know you a little bit better by asking you what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are or what you're up to.
Do you have a warrant for this question?
We got a warrant for this one. What are some of you recently screencapped on your phone?
Oh?
Yeah, we have a war case.
Yeah, I'll go with the Google search all right. I've been getting sort of back into watching stand up lately, so I've just been trying to remember, like all my favorite comedians and see what they've put out in the last couple of years. The most recent one I watched was Connor O'Malley's Stand Up Solutions.
How I saw him promoting that and I was really curious, how was that? It's so good?
It takes a very weird, almost kind of dark twist at the end.
But that O'Malley, the stand up comedian, the guy who used to just scream at people on his bike on fine the people on the walls.
Yeah, it's weird at the end. Can you believe huh huh so unlike him? Yeah no, but but it's it's very good. So that the Google searching has been fruitful so fun?
Yeah?
Yeah, have you have you come across any bummer ones? They're like, I used to love this person. Then you're look, You're like, oh fuck, man, no, Hey, what's.
Louis c k up to?
I used to watch all his stand up specials, but I haven't been catching the latest worst. Yeah, that dude just been in the lab for like the last seven man. I can't like to see what he comes up with. Well, I looked up.
I guess a lot of people like that. Uh Shane Gillis guy.
Sure, I really do.
And I I mean, he's like good, but I don't get the hype. Well, I think it's like a disappointment for me. It's like the way you see people talk about him online. You think he's just like the funniest dude alive. But yeah, but I don't really get it. I don't know, yeah, I know, like people were like, dude, he came in like Andrew Schultz and like fucking poned him.
And then people like and you also got canceled off s and like there's like this like lore behind him too that I.
Know was a big, big, big boost, big boost.
That's and they think it's like the best thing that can happen to you as a comedian for you lose a job.
Right exactly, and then you can go to Austin, Texas and then you're the new king controversial.
Lose a job controversially, some people just like quietly get fired after once.
That's no fun for them.
They fired me. They canceled me from SNL because they said I was not funny.
They're like, oh man, we got to support this character then. But yeah, I am in my Gilly suit, which is my Shane Gillis T shirt and match shorts all over France Shane Gillis shirt. What is uh?
What's something you think is underrated?
It's warm again? So I'm playing golf again. I think golf is underrated. It rightfully so has a reputation as this like very stuffy boys club. But in the last like five years, especially the game has grown to be
like a lot more inclusive. There's all this like I maybe I'm you know, too cynical but hilarious, like conflict between the PGA and live golf and like the pinnacle of capitalism like coming down to take it to its ultimate end and stuff and like, but the golf is has changed quite a bit, like as a game and like culturally, I think it is very hard, impossible to master and a good excuse to spend like four to five hours outside seventeen hours.
In my case, I'm not very good at it. But how are they changing? Are they hitting it with the stick end? Now? Which what's changed about how we're playing golf?
You get you get two balls and you stick them together and I.
A string and then just whip him around your head.
Real fast and yeah, let it fly.
It's just wild even to see like like one of my favorite rappers, Schoolboy Q, like he started getting into golf heavy and he's just like, yeah, I started going on the tours, like I made more money golfing than I did rapping, and he's like, yeah, it was racist, but you know, you kind of find your community, you get through it.
And I was like wow, like when I saw people like that, like la gangster rappers.
Be like, oh man, I'm really fucking with golf.
Now.
I think that she's saying he made more money. What he said he made more golf. This is a quote he said. He said he didn't wrap for five years because of golf, because he was like lucrative. I didn't make that much money off rap. I made a lot of money off rap, but I would say golfing helped me a lot in times where I probably needed. I made a lot of money off golf, like a lot from connections on the golf course and offers.
I don't think he's necessarily.
Oh okay, he's saying like being in that world just like somehow became very beneficial to him.
He's like, I'm going to this is making me hate golf more. It's just people like because that's the thing you always hear that are like, Yeah, it's just you're out there, you're making business deals. You're I don't know, getting drunk the park.
Those are those are not the people I played golf with.
Jack.
We go out there, we're ready for some deals, ready for these deals.
Hello, my good man. I'm here to golf and make some money, is that you?
Yeah, man, I was like, I was very hopeful. You know, we've long talked on this show about the fact that in some ways, especially in the city of Los Angeles, golf courses are just the best parks the city has to offer, but ones where we're not allowed to go to them. And it would be cool if we just said fuck golf and like took them over. And I was hopeful that it was going to be a generational thing and that people would, you know, well, once all the people who play golf now aged out, like they
wouldn't be replaced. But I know so many people who just right on Q, like they hit forty and they're like, yeah, no, I golf now all the time.
What are you talking about? Why don't you?
Of course they do getting out there.
Well, then top golf too.
I just need to go to I haven't swung a club since I was pretending to be Tiger Woods when I was thirteen, So I think I would have fun just smacking the shit out of the ball. But the other parts that require patients and skill, no, no.
No, no, yeah, I'm gonna start going to try and start a revolution against golf, just because every time I hit it, it like curves off to the right, like the.
Fuck it's goods. The fucking golf's fault. What classes? But it is classes as fuck. But a crazy schoolboy Q.
Was like, yeah, man, like I only like fifteen card dealerships.
Now, yeah, it's wild.
There's like on this I think interview on Lil Yachti's podcast or something, but yeah, he is, he is out there. But yeah, even the way he talks about like just his experience, it's it's very it's very eye.
Opening for me, school boy Q fans, I must listen amazing. And then he came back and just effortlessly dropped a classic. So it's like, I guess it's not bad for the soul like I thought it was.
No, No, dude, good for your bank account too.
Bronna really sound you really sound like the people I know who have started golfing.
I'm going to fuck it.
I'm going to I'm gonna see because I can't go in a country club. I'm have to go to like the public, like like Griffith Park or some ship. And they're like, bro, I can't help you with anything unless you need uh like air conditioning repair. My cousin hook you up.
Maybe that might be so.
You're gonna start golfing and then the sponsorships for the show or they're gonna go from like whatever they are to like Wells Fargo is.
Yeah right, yeah yeah, rather than like the errant Michael Rappaport podcast ad showing up on the ads that it'll be like, you know, when.
I'm out on the links, I like to use my links. It's still a Michael Rappaport when I'm out on the links. My good friends, that's what we do. But yeah, I who knows.
I mean, look, there's already a very iconic blazon in golf. They're like, remember remember this, what about this guy? Except he sucks and that could be me.
That's my link.
I'm like Tiger Woods, except I suck at golf. I fucking suck, bad, dude. That's how I shock. They're like, oh, up to the tee is Miles Gray. I'm just panicking. I'm just fucking stupid ass fucking club. I'm probably gonna fuck this up anyway.
You guys can talk.
I don't care.
You could talk, I don't care, but fuck it up anyway.
Tiger Woods, except bad at golf, is just like a really low level of swag. Oh yeah, that's that's tough. What is uh, Jared, what is something you think is overrated?
Being good at stuff?
Mm hmm.
I think, especially with social media and stuff, a lot of our brains have kind of been rewired by different like cultural, technological, whatever forces in society to seek a lot of our validation outward. So I think when it comes to hobbies like art or sports or whatever it is, I think a lot of us, you know, at least speaking for myself here, can feel pressure to be like good enough, or like past a certain baseline at something to feel like it's worth my time or worth doing.
But I think that, you know, collectively, we have to lean into kind of sucking and stuff, which you know, going back to golf, I kind of suck at golf, but I have to to you know, out there. Yeah I heard that I'm not good. I mean me either, but but yeah, I mean I think just just doing stuff for the joy of doing it. I think right is important and can be easy to lose sight of, especially if you're like me internally online and.
Right you know, well, yeah, I know, like so many times, like people like when you start something they're like, oh, are you good at it? You know, like oh I started like playing this, or starting like oh, like what are you gonna put in an album? You know, Like there's always like this thing of like the sort of assumption is like you're doing it for some kind of success.
A lot of especially in LA, when you tell people you're trying some new shit, versus being like, no, I'm merely just experimenting with something, an activity that might like may bring me pleasure. I'm hoping that it does for sustained periods. I'm divorcing myself from like what the results are of it.
I thought it would be fun, Yeah right, Yeah, it turns out I suck shit at golf, and I kind of like that.
I pissed off all these people that I'm holding up behind me.
Yeah, when it takes me seventeen strokes on, it gives.
Them more time to do deals.
Yeah, exactly. They should be thanking facilit facilitator.
Yeah, I'm just taking pretty good at golf, which you're allowed to pick it up and throw it right where you wanted to go, is that?
Yeah?
Yeah, you're are you guys? Have you ever played what's what was the last time you played golf.
I was not terrible when I was in my like early twenties, but I was always playing on like Part three's and ship just like close to my house. And I got a hole in one on one of those and then stopped swear together on Part three. Yeah, I did swear down, swear to swear to God up and down, my God, and then well you have to just quit after that. It was so it was so lucky that I spent like three minutes looking for the ball before I looked in the hole.
I was like, whoa, you were really like, no way, there's no way. Yeah, I had no idea. How are you a mini golf sucking.
Kid place, fucking castle park Man, that place fucking bullshit, man, fucking bullshit, man, fucking I hate that one.
That shaped like the old Civil War fucking fort ship. Stupid.
I've never been on that on that mini golf course, oh Jack, been there, but not done the I've never played around.
Oh man, you should join me. Man, I got a good group of dudes. Man, we go out there swinging the rubber golf utters and.
We do a lot of a lot of six pack each orange genising golf. Man, You're not supposed to do that. That's why not Orange genis, man, Orange genis. We're not breaking the rules. We do things above board. You know, we're business people. We're business people, man. Yeah, all right, closing so many deals on the back nine of the uh.
Right there and go right off the four or five freeway. Yeah yeah, yeah, I was.
Like trading uh Pokemon cards, killing.
Yo, legit kids for trading Pokemon cards over there, like in the where the lunch tables are.
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about conspiracy theories.
And we're back. We're back, and Jared, you have this piece about to report. I guess we would call it a report. It's official, and.
It's about the fact something that I feel like we've that's been coming up more and more recently, that not all conspiracy theories are created equal. There are some that are very dangerous, but they're not always the ones that get the most attention. So just wanted to like kind of get you to talk broadly about where the kind of impetus for this report was coming from.
Like many things I write nowadays, it's equal parts trying to be helpful and also just my passive aggression at the National news right in the way they cover the stuff I research so generally conspiracy theories and sort of how prevalent they feel like they've become in discourse, especially
political discourse, is important on the whole. But the premise of this piece is basically to say that even though that bigger picture is important, and all the conspiracy theories like make up that bigger picture, it doesn't mean that like people saying that the Illuminati is using Taylor Swift to flush the super Bowl is equally as important as you know, the same conspiracy theorists accusing some random no no name election worker of being a pedophile in that
person's life being turned upside down by freaks on the internet.
Yeah, So it's like there's a power imbalance that you kind of comes up throughout the report that, like a lot of the theories, the one that jumped out to me because it's one that we've talked about on this show is but the Boeing whistleblower thing, where whistleblowers keep dying and everyone's like having fun half jokingly, like with a little you know, while waggling our eyebrows aggressively mentioning the two whistleblowers have died while while they were like
about to testify, and then like just unrelatedly linking off to the Michael Clayton meme or the mic not meme, the Michael Clayton scene where a corporation like murders.
Where they tase that dude and then they shoot the toes. Yeah, shoot him up between the toes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, on the one hand, like it seems like, I don't know, pretty pretty huge accusation to make. On the other hand, I'm not as worried about boeing, Like I don't think our problem as a society is boeing, not like getting too much scrutiny personally, Like that doesn't seem to be the main problem. But I guess I'm curious, Like where does that fall for you on the list of like conspiracy theories to be monitoring and concerned about.
Yeah, so it's kind of conspiracy theories where yeah, we all wiggle our eyebrows and wait for the other person to be like, right, actually gave this though, yeah too, right, like you know, yeah, just keep going. But yeah, but like wouldn't it be crazy if then somebody pulled up the banking documents for this and right, right, so.
I told you we don't have a twelve in that, Sue. I was just back there.
Yeah all right, So so I always think about like like power balances and then also like who is the victim of a conspiracy theory?
Right?
And maybe that's victims the wrong word, but like this is, I mean, what happens we all or a negative opinion about Boeing their corporation. My heart does not break for the stock price of Boeing, or you know, how people
feel about their airplanes or whatever. I think if you know, those kind of theories started singling out, you know, like a specific lawyer and then all of a sudden, like two hundred thousand people are hyper fixated on this lawyer and sharing their addresses and stuff like that can get a little bit you know, then that would kind of get into the territory of like, oh, maybe we should keep an eye on this because this could actually like cause some trouble to this person, who, as far as
we know, could just be like, you know, totally innocent or whatever. It's just like people are coming up with things online to say about it. Yeah, so this piece is really more about like those power balances, like you pointed out in considering the impact of conspiracy theories. I think there's a lot of conspiracy theories that exist in sort of a gray area like truth wise, of like,
this certainly doesn't look good. It looks a little weird, and it might be fun to talk about or explore or like get you know, but that's not something I like, Really, it's not like a place I really try to go in this piece because it gets like a little you know, complicated to talk about is maybe more of like a sociology question of like why do we enjoy this? But sure, but yeah, that's that's kind of how I think about it. I tend to think stuff like that is you know,
generally benign. We're harmless in the grand scheme of things.
Right, yesterday we talked about how Trump is needle dropping these C songs at his rallies, and for me, even I feel like the slow creep of this has sort of like flown under the radar, this latest needle drop, because like at first it was this thing that like, yeah, it might be tied to Q, and then he's started just like playing it during his speeches like on purpose, like in a like music would start swelling out in a movie in a weird way, and like at first
that was like Jesus, well, like what is happening? This is so strange. And now when he does it and like stops for a minute to just like let the music ride, We're just like, uh huh, like you so like this feels like we have a presidential candidate who, if the election was out tomorrow, would win or would be very close to winning, who is embracing what is ostensibly a cult with him as the figurehead. Is that one of the ones that you feel like we need to be worried about? And if so, why or why not?
I would say yes because of you know, again going back to this question of power, there's few people in the US that hold more you know, sway and are very close if not, you know, I mean, like you pointed out, Trump very well could win this fall. It's it's like very much in the cards. I tend to
think he probably will. I hope I'm wrong. But to have that kind of level of power, indulging conspiracy theory like QAnon, which has driven you know, several individuals to violence throughout the years, I think is worth caring about because it's getting the blessing of somebody from a position of high power, which means that you know, if we think of conspiracy theories like that, particularly some of the more deranged ones like QAnon, that have potentially more grave
implications for the people that get caught up and targeted by them, you know, if we think of that as like a numbers game, then getting on stage with the you know, potentially the next president. You know, it's hard to think of a bigger, more consequential platform than that, right.
And what like you know, just kind of watching the ebb and flow of q Andon, like obviously they it's things subsided. As you know, the drops became less and less frequent and then like stopped completely.
Then you see sort of like it popping up.
I just saw an article that you shared about how like QAnon references have been like just resurgent on like on Twitter recently and looking at even like what Trump is doing. Like in twenty twenty, I remember we were all like, oh shit, you're really doing this to try and like get as many people behind you for this reelection push as possible, and like winking at the QAnon people have been like yeah, come on, y'all right, like here's my like, come on down under this big tent
and we can do it all together. Is it, like, you know, from what you've seen, is QAnon still like at this level where like this is sort of why Trump's doing this again to be like all right, guys, like is it or is it kind of like an Avengers assemble kind of like bat signal to be like, hey, we need to I need as many of the fucking freaks as possible to sort of go all in on my reelection campaign because maybe I can then turn that into a you know, potential January sixth type sequel, or
is the only way given because he can't remember the phrasing, so like where we go once, we go, we go always? Many are saying.
We go one.
He's winking at him because he thinks they're kind of cute, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love your shoes, you shoes.
I mean, I think it it generally kind of lines up with both of the previous Trump campaigns and what is shaping up to beat this one as well, which is, you know, put on a show for the freaks and let them kind of do the work of drumming up a larger page base of support.
Right.
You know, Trump has done this from the very start on immigration rhetoric, taking like much harder lines and sort of restrictionist positions than other GOP candidates in the field were at the time, and still has some of the most extreme immigration policies that you know are floating around the GOP. So, you know, between just like dumbing back through the Trump campaign prior iterations, but the reviews with Alex Jones, the praisine of like nutjobs like Ted Nugent,
the getting dinner with the lips of TikTok Lady. You know, it's like very much this effort to cater to and sort of bring along anybody who is going to be ride or die for him. So I think his affinity for the qan On people, I don't think he's like deep in the weeds.
I don't.
I don't think he knows about like que drops or you know, really like truly knows who any of these people are.
But he don't know about q drops because he is que and doing the drops, right, So like he doesn't even think about them as drops, right, is that what.
He to say to say that he knows about him would be under your selling it, you know, you.
Know what I mean, he has Jared is waggling his eyebrows at me, just like.
But yeah, I mean I think generally, you know, he he doesn't meet supporters that he doesn't like, and that's right, you know, tries to give him a little pat on the head and scratched to keep him going. In terms of QAnon more broadly, it's certainly not what it used to be. When the drops stopped, you know, a lot of that energy went elsewhere. In twenty twenty, it was like starting to spill into anti vax stuff. It continued to spill there. A lot of it spilled into election
denihilism more broadly. So a lot of like diehard q people you know, kind of looked up and went, okay, well maybe the president wasn't posting on eight chan for me to read, but you know, it's about the friends we made along the way, and you know, sort of the line in those spaces for a while was like, Okay, it's not literally true, but you know it opened our eyes and got us ready to see the truth or whatever. Yeah, So a lot of these people have spilled over into
like your local GOP office or school board. You know some of them like went through the broken windows at the US Capitol Building and you know, went to jail for that, And so the movement evolved. I don't think
it ever really died. That study that I shared from NewsGuard sort of redid this methodology that I didn't think it was twenty twenty two or twenty twenty one, where I was looking at some of the catchphrases that you used to think about as like, you know, there's the flag that says I'm a queue head, where we go on, we go all right, trust the plan or whatever it may be. Storm, Yeah, and those were kind of rolling off when I did that study, and to see that
come back up, I thought was sort of interesting. I think it's definitely an incomplete picture of sort of what has happened in that movement more broadly, but it'll be interesting to see, if, you know, with this campaign kicking back up, if we do see sort of a return to form for some people, if they're like okay, well, you know they're looking around and they're like, okay, we played the you know, LGBTQ people are demons thing, what what other greatest hits do we have?
Right?
Right?
You know.
I mean they might they might pull this back out the songbook. We don't know yet, but yeah, it's interesting.
The core belief of the Q stuff is that we're all pedophiles, right, Like, isn't that like one of the main ones, is any you jack, it's just me particularly They do have some pretty uh detailed stuff. No, but
I guess that's one. Like there's this a New Yorker article that we talked about a couple of weeks back that is about this idea of misinformation and kind of puts forward this idea that like some of the misinformation, like some of the C stuff, is people like not literally believing it, Like you just said, it's not that
they literally believe it. It's more that they believe it in the way that like a Catholic believes that the bread of the Communion is like actually the body of Jesus, But like they don't expect blood to start like running down their mouth when they like put it, you know, when they bite into it.
They yeah, I think that's the perfect way to put it.
Yeah.
Yeah, they just believe it as a you know, the way a religious person does. And in those cases, the more outlandish the belief like that this is where like speaking in tongues comes from right, like in certain Christian faiths. It's like the more outlandish and wild you can go with, like the thing that you're saying you believe even though you don't technically like adopt it as part of your
reality and like physically interact with it. The more outlandish, the like more people are like, Wow, that person's like going hard, you know, like that like.
You get they're going hard for Q.
Yeah, yeah, they're going hard for Q.
But then like it does I keep waiting, Like once I found out, Okay, there's this cult that likes a lot of their beliefs. When you like pull out the like selected readings of like Q drops and then like the things that people are writing about Q would suggest that they think they're at war with like Satan and like people who are like worshiping the devil and like want to kill their kids and drink their like vi adrenochrome.
And so I'm always like whenever there's like a mass shooting or like something of that nature, I'm always like, well, this.
Has to be cute.
Like it feels like the sort of thing that if people actually believe that we'd be seeing a lot more horrifying violence in response then we are actually seeing. So I guess that makes me wonder like where Q actually falls on that spectrum, Like is it something that people are just like this is like a fun thing that
I talk to with my other weird friends. We hate Joe Biden and this is a fun way to like channel that hatred, and we like think Trump is funny and that's this is a fun way for us to channel or is it something that's like And I don't expect anybody to have the answer on this, but I do think it's an interesting conversation as to like whether you know Q is going to rise to that level of being a justification for really horrifying violence.
Like you're saying like juxtaposing that with like great replacement theory or something right where people truly adopt that as an ideology.
And I mean, I guess I should point out that, like we have politicians spreading stuff like great replacement, like you just mentioned Miles, but as horrifying as they are, like mass shootings are not happening because of it every day, right, And the same thing with qan on there have been
instances of like really nightmarish violence. I remember a few years ago this I think it was a surf instructor in California like took his kids down to Mexico and just slaughtered them because he thought they were like lizard people or something. Right, So it definitely came and do that.
But that's something I also kind of get to in the piece that I wrote with my colleague Lucy, which is, you know, trying to encourage you know, writing kind of directly to news audience here, trying to encourage like more open thinking about the role that conspiracy theories have in people's lives. You know, they, like any other form of media, they offer all kinds of non material things to people, you know, and it's not just like pure information that
must be deep onked. It's also like an expression for the people that believe it of like identity and philosophy and meaning and like these more abstract kind of like front brain kind of stuff that that know, like, well, actually the New York Times said that was false, and then people are.
Like, what what Okay?
Each of the things that you just cited in that paragraph got more than three pinocchios from the fact checkers of the world. What shit you're averaging for Pinocchio's my good man.
Yeah.
So yeah, So it's you know, I think trying to think a little bit more openly about like what theories like that can mean to people. To some people, they can be very literal to people, especially people who are having, you know, some sort of mental crisis or have inclinations towards violence or you know, other dire sort of personal situations. They can be justifications for really terrible things right to a lot of people. They can be entertainment to some people.
It can be like a quasi religion. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
And the point that I was trying to make in the article is it's worth thinking about those kind of implications or like what that might mean beyond just like what a lot of coverage of conspiracy theories and big publications tends to look like, which is they're saying Taylor Swift is gonna, you know, get a sniper rifle and shoot the ball and deflate it and then the Super Bowl is gonna be ruined or yeah, whatever, you know, and then being like damn, that got a lot of clicks.
Is there a lot of Americans that think this is true, and it's like, but that's not.
Like you're linking off to it in your massive news publication by the way, Like, yeah, we the stupidity of other people, like in the abstract is like a myth that I feel like we want to believe in as Americans, Like we want to believe that if you can tell people that, like a big group of people is believing something that like seems incomprehensibly like almost unbelievably stupid, Like they they're going to eat that up. They they love
to believe that. It's just generally when you talk to those people, not true that they actually Yeah, I mean I've talked to like especially when I was doing more like on the ground reporting stuff.
I would just go to like QAnon events and talk to these people and these a lot of I mean some of them. We're not the you know, sharpest tools and the ship, but a lot of them, most of them, I would even say, we're perfectly smart people but had like their intelligence had taken them into like nonsense land. So it was a perfectly rational belief in things that were laughably untrue, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I mean there's a study about people who are being deprogrammed from cults. When you like give people IQ tests who have been in cults, like, they score on average higher than the rest of the population, because the theory goes that they're able to bend their mind around and like construct more complex counter argument for more comprehensive
and bizarre systems of belief. Like basically, they would make good lawyers because they're intelligent, and being a good lawyer means you can construct a good defense of like anything in your mind. This kind of is That's kind of how I've always thought about that factor, like made sense of effect that people and cults tend to be smarter on average than the average person.
But yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons my golf game suffered. Like I was telling you, I took one little trip down to Havana, started hearing some weird stuff.
Man.
Ever since keeps slicy.
That's one that's one that like I don't think people would technically think of it as a conspiracy theory because it's coming from like openly coming from sixty minutes and like you know, the Department of I guess it's less and less coming from. But like I guess former Defense Department officials, but of.
The Havana syndrome, Savanna syndrome, or it's like you have a tummy ache. Yeah, yeah, and.
My ears are ringing and my memory is bad. I'm seventy three.
When when I'm seventy three and I drink an entire bottle of whiskey last night and I woke up, and I feel.
Terrible to make the voices stopped from all the people that I've had a hand in helping the US Army.
Killer maybe or maybe not.
I don't know.
It's fine working at the CIA. I don't think that had anything to do with my mental stretch man.
But yeah, when it's going from the US military to Cuba, I feel like that power and balance worries me a little bit. Like right, that feels like a bad balance overall. But let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about maybe some of the ones that you're most worried about and others that people can maybe not worry about as much.
We'll be right back, and we're back.
We're back.
And so we've already talked about Taylor Swift conspiracy theories maybe not being the most dangerous, damaging thing.
Well, that's just like Jared's right.
Yeah, yeah, we're still I'm sure Taylor has a very different opinion about that.
Yeah she does. She does these tea drops. They're wild. The three albums he releases the year.
No, I mean, I'm sure it's anytime it's a private individual like that, that's scary. And you know, John Lennon kind of test to you know, like that's fucking probably pretty scary. But what what are some other ones that you see? Like, we we've covered conspiracy theories of all sorts. What are some others that you feel like got too much media attention?
I think conspiracy theories about the collapse of the bridge in Baltimore after a like a shipping vessel hit it, right, Yeah, that's just call it bad regulations.
There was there was.
One post I saw that had like ten thousand retweets on it and it was just like evidence of a detonation on the bridge and it was just the footage of the collision in slow motion. And I've probably spent like fifteen minutes watching this trying to figure out what this person thought they saw, right, and I couldn't figure it out.
But it's like something shoots off the side. It's like, yeah, that's a cable snapping or like part of the structure breaking. It's like could have been it could have been something.
It's like, why is the boat moving so slow? And it's like because it weighs like a gazooo.
Gap right, right, it's not a fucking jet boat. Yeah.
That's like, I guess sort of a small local news version of nine to eleven conspiracy theories where it's like the the bad guy in this case is like diffuse or the president of the United States, and so like going back with our old rule of thumb of like who is being targeted slash suspected in the conspiracy theory if it's like just the man or something like that, Well, I feel like that's how conspiracy theories sort of used to be. It was like shadowy figures behind the scenes
and smoky rooms were like pulling the strings and that. Yeah, that feels a little less harmful than this woman I took a picture of carrying ballots from the counting.
Yeah, you're the librarian. It feels like the satanic blonde.
Dude.
There's three sixes in her license plate in a row. No, but just well, technically there's four sixes I saw, but
I mean that's got to be something. But I think too, there's also this thing with conspiracy theories that like there because so many people like have these sort of like fucked up, weird like racist ideologies or whatever, anti Semitic beliefs, that some of these stories are just kind of like gives them an opportunity to sort of start saying that shit too, where it's not necessarily like how like the Francis Scott key Bridge thing turned into like.
The dei mayor of Baltimore, you know what I mean, like.
Oh yeah, yeah, other thing where it's almost like you know, whether it's a conspiracy or just an outlet for someone to be like aha, See this confirms my absolute fucked up way of looking at the world, and this proves it. It's like another weird way we see these things going.
And I'm just thinking too, like now, you know we've seen obviously like with like Laura Lumer kind of being near and not near the Trump orbit and things like that, and like Trump being like I like her and another peuple like get her the fucky.
Everybody else that's around him is.
Like this, yeah, which is like Laura Lumer is she I know she's as who is she not?
No?
She was.
I don't even remember off the top of my head what she was doing before she got involved in politics. But do you remember, God, this was probably like two thousand and fifteen sixteen, there was like a Shakespeare play in the park in New York and like every time they do this play they make the Julius Caesar character or like the sitting president. So Trump was the president that time. And then when the scene came and like Caesar gets stabbed in the back spoiler alert.
But dude, what the fuck? So too Jared, So so.
Her and Jack Phisobic stand up and just start like screaming and hollering and get pulled out of this stage for it. I do remember this, Yeah, And that's how
she made headlines really for the first time. And then something happened and she was in New York City and she went on this like crazy Islamophobic tirade against her lift driver, oh yeah, and got banned from Lyft and she got in really close with like Pamela Geller and likes where the old school Islamophobes and wound up getting banned from like a gazillion billion things, right, So her claim to fame for the longest time was like I'm the most banned woman in America, And then generally like
her whole shtick is just finding a politically relevant figure and getting her phone out and screaming gibberish at them, and when the person is like, get this fucking weirdo away from me, She's like, yeah, they're scared of the truth.
Huh right, right, got them They didn't like, they didn't like that, But yeah, I mean like we see sort of like how these figures get into orbit, like or even I know in that report you talk about like how even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also seeing like sort of this like conspiratorial thinking, what are can you just kind of outline for us, like what you think going into this election, like what's this kind of gaining more attraction because I feel like just from the
last seven years, I'm like, yeah, I'm up on replace great replacement theory, I'm up on QAnon. You've come on and talked about active clubs, not necessarily conspiracy theory, but like a group of extremists who are like trying to
get organized. What do you see as becoming something that is actually gaining serious traction, and like obviously you've been like rolling your eyes at the mainstream media coverage of just being like, oh my gosh, isn't this wacky, rather than like no, no, no, no, no, no no no, like, this is wacky and it's very serious, and it's it's gaining more and more I guess, you know, popularity or support.
Yeah, yeah, And I guess that would I would say, like, that doesn't mean that talking about Taylor Swift conspiracy theories should be like out of bounds or like, oh that's terrible, why would you talk about that? But like, of course not how those are meaningful is different, and they might not be meaningful in a like this is immediately dangerous to somebody kind of way.
Right.
The ones that I have kind of been concerned about going into this year are a lot of the ones surrounding immigration. It's an election year, so Republicans are talking about immigration again. But the way that it's threading into sort of election denihilism and sort of these like anti
democratic attitudes generally mm hmm. I think that is kind of a red flag for me, because if the people that are spreading this get what they want, or like the people in power, you know, Congress people and whatnot, citing this nonsense to justify the kind of policies they're putting forward that has a real material impact on a lot of people and like cuts them off from their ability to vote and participate in democracy as imperfect and fucked up as it is.
Right. Sure, So I.
Like that's something that I see having like sort of a clear through line to a material impact that could
harm people. And then generally, you know, great replacement theory, spreading of hostile rhetoric, some of the conspiracy theories going around about you know, college campus protesters, right, you know, doing the encampments to support Palestinians, Like those students don't have a means to defend themselves, and if people on the line are getting them all riled up with nonsense, it's claiming they're like connected with terrorists and whatnot, like right.
Yeah, the mayor and the chief of police, right right, you know, like it's them versus fucking children, right.
Yeah, So like that kind of thing can be particularly risky too, right, Yeah, So that's just that's like a couple that come to front of mine.
Yeah, and I think there's also this other thing that's it's like not necessarily it's sort of like the re emergence of like the Big lie sort of like it feels like right wing media is definitely setting the table again for whatever the outcome is in November, to at least on the table have it be the possibility that this election was also stolen, because you hear stuff like on Fox or they're like, you know, warning Democrats to be like they better not they better not cheat, they
better not do some you know, like we'll be watching and not necessarily hurling accusations quite vividly or specifically yet, but still saying things rhetorically that being like because we know what they like to do, we know what they're up to, you know how they like to do this other stuff. And I see that definitely becoming, you know, just like a very subtle way that they're keeping sort of like the embers of election denihilism, like very just powerful.
So when the time comes in they need to like get it to burst into flames, like it's able to is that?
Yeah, they did that in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty Comma also right right, you know, before Stop the Steel emerged as a movement. Before Trump started claiming everything was rigged, all of the campaign surrocates were going out on TV and being like, oh, yeah, Trump's gonna win an a landslide. Yeah, right, elections. If everything's fair, if everything if everything's up, up, on the up and up, we expect to win.
It is why we knew what the what was going to have. Like ahead of the election, everyone was like, so, here's what they're going to do. And then sure enough, like right down to like and the like verifying of the electors or you know, whatever was happening on January seventh, like that was going to be a key date for them, and they did not disappoint.
Yeah, so it's the same thing, but like the volumes turned up. Yeah right, you know, you have more people kind of participating in this. And then what I thought was interesting was Trump had a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. I had a bunch of people. They had the everything old is new again.
You know, they're.
One hundred thousand people were on this, you know, in this venue that holds what like twenty or something. I think was what I saw was it was just the feeling on it. Yeah, and uh, you know after that Trump was doing these posts on truth social and some of his like fan boys were doing it too, where it's like it's too big to rig the support, just
too big to rig the election against uff. Oh, sort of seeing this idea that like you know, Trump has this massive, massive base of support and it kind of creates this condition mentally where you're like, oh, well, even if they try to rig it, we're still going to win. Then if you lose, it's like something seems really really up right, right, so it's like getting it.
Yeah, like there being.
Sown, I think you're picking up on the right thing.
Miles, Yeah, well, because that's what I mean, like aside, because I feel like, yeah, like we've seen q Andon go up and down, and with the lack of like corroboration, like of anything happening in real life, like that fizzles out pretty quickly. But now it feels like the more insidious thing along with like because like you're talking about with the immigration conspiracies, that's the kind of stuff where
it's like they're importing voters from across the border. Like that's sort of like the sort of foundation of like what the sort of like the xenophobic anti immigrant bend to that conspiracy theory. But like with this, it's a subtle way, but yeah, like it's it's working on people's emotions again because you're creating this expectation of a given outcome.
So if that reality doesn't come true fruition or doesn't come to pass, then you really have some Now you can take people who have gone from their moment of being like but.
I thought it was supposed to and then be like, you know what it really was they started, and.
Can just easily funnel people into like really extreme beliefs because yeah, like it's just been this constant sort of you know, rhetorical massaging of this shit just to get people, yeah, really riled up for it. That's what is scary. And I'm like, when you look at I know, in the past, who is your colleague that we had on who was talking what was her name, Sabine.
Yeah, Sabine.
When Sabine was on, we were talking about like what what's it look like out there on like kookie telegram channels, And it seemed like for the moment, not sure anything's quite becoming organized for anything that would resemble like a January sixth kind of thing. Now, now that we're like sort of five months I think or four months away
from that. Is that still the case or are is there still is there starting to become like a rallying again of people who are like, hey, we got to be vigil at this time, we got to be vigil at this time.
I mean, I think a lot of those folks are still pretty scared of federal law enforcement, right and the people that were like really bad I'm like, really responsible for a lot of the more like organized violence on January sixth are in prison now, you know. So it's uh, I think that that in combination with like the stories that these folks tell themselves about January six it just made them like way too paranoid to do that, right now. That's said, things can change, right right, Yeah, And we've.
Loved what a conspiracy theory keeps people in line.
I mean, we've still got like five months and some change until the election, and most of the craziest shit that happened twenty twenty happened after the election, right right, So you know, I mean we're we've got a pretty like long timeline to look down where things could change
quite a bit. At the moment, I don't think there's an appetite for it, although in a deeply like cynical it would it would be terrible, But if they did it again, they would be like something at least a little bit funny about it.
That didn't know they're doing right, sick like this time, it's gonna work out for all of it.
I mean.
To stop the steel specifically, Like so if you like had a Supreme Court justice flying a Q flag, like I think there'd be you know that that seems more unlikely to me. But the fact that like Alito had the stop the Steel flag flying at his home or like, it just you know that Ginny Thomas, like Clarence Thomas's wife was like as involved in the stop the Steel
stuff as she was. Like that, it just feels like there's more institutional support for around that one, and that that one is actually like fairly focused and insidious and like specifically able to undermine the very foundation of like democracy.
Yeah, I mean it's it's all like way more organized now, and I don't think they need to storm the capitol, like if they can just build sympathy of like all of the people on one side of the aisle in said capital or the sympathy of people who are doing the vote counting and certifying, you know, like, yeah, I don't think they need to storm a capital right.
Well shit, so they've gotten better. Stay tuned, everybody. Hey, Like I said, November, take your time, take your sweet ass time.
November as time November. God, Jared, such a pleasure having you on the show as always. Where can people find you?
Follow you? Read you all that good stuff.
You can read me. I write periodically for these two for Strategic Dialogue, which is at ISD Global dot org. I'm on Twitter or no? Everything?
Is it?
Everything up? Okay, never mind, I'm in.
I can't wait to give my banking information to the richest idiot.
Yeah, and my blooded it's a Jared L.
Holt and uh yeah that's It's like the two kind of public facing things I do because of the work I do.
So there you go, amazing. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
When it gets warmer outside, I start listening to more like heavier music. I've been kind of revisiting some of my like post hardcore favorites like Touche a More and really getting into or I guess back into this band called the world is a beautiful place and I'm no longer afraid to die, which that's a mouthful. Is a mouthful, but they pull it off somehow. But yeah, yeah, just revisit the music you listen to when you were a teenager. Most of it probably still goes really hard.
Yeah, it does, it does.
Miles, where can people find you as their working media?
You've been enjoying Twitter we call it twitter on Instagram and that and the like, don't know about meta whatever, threads, TikTok at Miles of Gray. If you like basketball man, just get ready for this week's Miles and Jack got Matt boosties because our heads are basically you have spun around and popped off our bodies because the fuck o man, the West, those Western Conference sem they're We're blessed. We're blessed to just see such a such a wild ending
to that. And then also catch me on four talking about ninety day fiance. A tweet I like is from past guest Roywood Junior at Roywood Junior. He's quote, there's fucking Terrence Howard. It looks like he was on Rogan recently and he's talking now. I don't know if this is a recent thing. But it's it's a clip of Terrence Howard on Rogan and he put every black barbershop used to have one of these brothers walk in on a satturday afternoon and fuck up the vibes and let me just play this whole fuck.
Whatever the fuck Terrence Howard is talking about here.
That that we call intellectual phase locking, where when they get different measurements for the speed of light, all of the scientists around the world will average it out to one thing instead of showing the fluctuations in it. Oh wow, it's called intellectual phase locking.
It's not oh wow.
It truly is a shit like bro I don't know, man, where's the guy who's selling bootleg tapes? But anyway, yeah, Terrence, he continues to wow the people with his inferior intellect, I mean, superior.
In the joy.
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore.
Obrian tweet I've been enjoying Boob Dylan at b yu. Super Soaker tweeted you let your cat sleep great names by the way, tweeted quote you let your cats sleep in your bed? Question mark brother, I would let my cat shoot a gun if you wanted to. And then Andy Ryan tweeted, so embarrassing in an antique shop when I tried to buy a vase and it turned out to be the negative space between the faces of two other customers.
We've all been there.
Well.
You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeigeist, where a d Daily Zeichgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page kind of that we're constantly just updating. We just thought we were just told that it hasn't been updated in four years.
But we're gonna keep.
Telling you about way yo big things coming. Bit keep your eye open.
Facebook a website Daily Zeiguist dot comery post our episode than our footnotes, where then go off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy.
Miles, what song do we think people might enjoy?
Yeah, you know, as things get slightly warmer, although la is still stuck in its like late winter ish spring thing, we have not quite gotten the heat.
That we're used to. Although look it's it's the June gloom always hits around this time, but the vibes are getting more warmer in summer.
Ear.
I want to play this track by Reina tropical and it's called Cartagena and it's just like a I've the first time hearing her work, but she's like a singer, songwriter, guitar player and it's just guys like that Latin tropical sort of energy to it. And yeah, it's just a good, good track just to play as we, you know, enjoy the warmer months.
So yeah, this is Cartagena by Reina. We would like off to that in.
The footnotes today He's like, guys, is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever fine podcasts are given away for free. That's going to do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to hell then bye bye