Conspiracy Clearinghouse

EPISODE 171 | A Thousand Universes: Public Transportation Weirdness

Even in the urban transportation space, usually reserved for city dwellers, NUMTOTs, NUMTOAs, and other transit geeks, conspiracy and weirdness manage to infiltrate. There’s the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, which might explain why the US has crap public transport. There’s the story of the Tucker 48, an innovative car that got shut down before is could get up and running. There are early electric vehicle rumors and other ways we might have made cars better, but powerful people made other choices for us all. Dieselgate showed that even big companies lie for profit. And then there are the histories and mysteries of underground networks – subways, tubes, metros – filled with oddities, ghost stations, and even a few actual ghosts.

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EPISODE 170 | Loose Screws: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

A little under two weeks ago was the 25th anniversary of the attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. So perhaps it is now time to take a quick look at some of the chatter that has gone on about those events.

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EPISODE 169 | Harping on about HAARP, 5G & More

Radio waves are invisible and yet somehow carry sound and signal. They are used for transmitting messages, codes, news, and music. They enable us to speak to one another using small portable devices, and even access the internet. They are used to help us know our position on the ground with pretty darn good accuracy, and they allow us to study the depths of space.

So, surely they can be used for other things as well? Like controlling the weather, brainwashing humans, activating viruses, and much more.

Because, when you don’t know how anything works, then everything is a conspiracy. Or could be, right?

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EPISODE 168 | Eating the Onion: War of the Worlds & Other Scares

In an environment of experimental fiction, metanarratives, postmodern satire, disinformation, deep fakes, and fake news, a sizeable portion of the content gobbling audience takes things that are not true as being actually true. Online, this happens with alarming regularity with articles published by satirical news site The Onion; so often, in fact, that there’s a term for this phenomenon – it’s called Eating the Onion.

The subjects of intentional disinformation, deep fakes, and fake news are one thing, but what we’re looking at here at times when something that was never intended to be taken seriously (though it used real world tropes and structures for narrative effect), were accidentally thought to be base din reality. And people quite rather lost their shit. Like the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of The War of the Worlds. But there are other instances as well.

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EPISODE 167 | American Trickster: The Cults of Carlos Castaneda

Guest: Ru Marshall, American writer and artist

Carlos Castaneda made a big splash with his books about the Yaqui shaman Don Juan, but there was a lot more happening than just those increasingly fantastical tales. A LOT more. Author and artist Ru Marshall spent more than 20 years looking into what was really going on with the man who was, at one time, the most famous anthropologist in the world. 

And yeah - it gets weird.

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EPISODE 166 | Sassy Squatches: Chupacabra, Bigfoot & Yeti

Some of the most famous cryptids are the bloodsucking Chupacabra (which is of fairly recent invention) and the always popular Bigfoot and their higher latitude cousins, the Abominable Snowman. Is there any truth at all to stories of these creatures, or is it all misunderstandings, misapprehensions, misidentifications, and tomfoolery?

There’s only one way to find out: listen to this episode.

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EPISODE 165 | MAHA Mia: The Misconceptions of RFK Jr

Guest: Evan Nadler, pediatric surgeon and researcher, pioneer in childhood obesity

The conspirasphere has been weaponized so much that actual conspiracy theorists now hold important and influential positions in the US government. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. What does an actual doctor think about some of his nuttiness? Listen and find out. 

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EPISODE 164 | Walk Like a Panther: The Palantir 22-Point Manifesto

A company many have heard mentioned but don’t know much about caused a stir in the interwebs when its CEO dropped a 22-point manifesto of sorts. Many felt the whole thing smacked of some sort of comic book supervillain’s shopping list, while others nodded their heads at the sage wisdom of the post of X (formerly Twitter).

Palantir is the company and the poster was Alex Karp. But just what is Palantir and who is this Karp guy?

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EPISODE 163 | Vanishing Point: Missing Scientists & the Erosion of Certainty

Someone recently wrote that, these days, a conspiracy theory is sort of a political position. It sure does seem that way sometimes, and new conspiracy theories continue to evolve in this disinfo-rich soil we’ve scattered about the internet like so much incontinence. Plus, those in power seem to have figure out that they way to many a voter’s heart is by encouraging conspiracy thinking, tapping into whatever it is that drives people to invest so much in them.  In an attention economy, there’s no such thing as good or bad attention. 

So, we look at a brand new conspiracy theory that showed up earlier this year, the Missing Scientists Conspiracy Theory, and then dabble in some of the ways conspiracy thinking has infected and infiltrated the highest levels of American government. Maybe this is a cautionary tale, but it also might be an alarm bell.

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EPISODE 162 | In Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

One of the great unsolved cases in FBI history is the tale of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a commercial jet and then jumped out the door with a parachute and a bag full of cash. The story has been written about, films have been made, numerous “Mysteries of…” shows have had episodes about it, and there even a few songs that reference the famous gentleman thief of the Pacific Northwest.

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