CLASSIC: What on Earth is happening to Britney Spears?

World famous pop icon Britney Spears has sold millions of records, performed countless times, and regardless of whether you care for her music, you've certainly heard her hits. She also has an enormous, fiercely loyal fanbase that's convinced something is amiss, behind the scenes. You see, for years, Spears has been the subject of a legal conservatorship -- this arrangement, which the singer has described as voluntary multiple times, means Spears must have approval from several people for any financial decisions she wishes to make. In short, she does not control the financial side of her music empire. Some fans allege the singer sends coded messages to them via Instagram, asking for help. Others argue this conspiracy theory, as well-intentioned as it may be, will only make things worse for one of the world's most famous living musicians.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, We are returning to you with a
classic episode that I would say hinges on pop culture,
but don't assue it for that reason. One of the
most influential, famous living musicians on the planet, Britney Spears,

(00:21):
has re entered the news cycle due to an arrest
for I believe, driving while intoxicated.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, and there's a lot of stories kind of circling
around that particular incident, toxic family members coming back into
her life. We talk a lot about that in this
episode in terms of the conservatorship and now that was
used to take advantage of her, her father in particular,
and it was a whole messy bull of spaghetti, as

(00:48):
you'll say, Ben. But yeah, she's in the news right
now after an arrest for driving under the influence, and
apparently that has triggered some reports of folks living with
her once.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Again putting her in harm's way in terms of abuse.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
I was just talking about this recently with my partner
about Britney Spears, and there was some documentary and I'm
not gonna be able to recall it, but because there's
been so many made about Britney Spears and her life
and everything, that it.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Has occurred.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
To her for her all all of these things, there's
one in there that talks about the sexualization of Britney
Spears by the mass media, in particular British media.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Guys.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
It was so it's it's a it's around the time
of Honey Booboo, right when there are like beauty pageants
for children and the sexualization of children that is on
mainstream cable television shows. And then somebody like Britney Spears,
who was you know, an MTV I don't, I don't

(01:53):
know if you'd call it star early on and in
this world where the teenagers are being pushed.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I mean we talked all about too, the Nickelodeon of
it all and the Disney Channel and some of these
young actors who have been exposed to horrific abuses by
folks who are supposed to be there to protect them.
And just I was sort of rambling a little bit
before when I was mentioning what has been going on
around the current discussion of Britney Spears.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Basically a lot of people are saying that.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
She is immediately being demonized and put down because of
this dui RS. And it seems like the tone of
the discourse around it is almost saying, well, she should
have been in that conservativeship. You know she doesn't. She
needs to be put back or something like that, and
that is the problem.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Let's roll the tape from UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome back to the show.
My name is nol.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Our compatriot Matt is on adventures, but we'll be returning soon.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Ball mission control deck, and most.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Importantly, you are you.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know today. Maybe the biggest, the biggest
thing to start off today's episode with is the following,
celebrities are humans. I think maybe we should end with
that too. You know, we're in a culture here in
the West where we deify celebrities. They are no better

(03:48):
and no worse than you listening now. It's like we
took those kind of regional or town deities of ancient
Rome and Greece and then just in their place socially,
we put a lot of musicians and actors and stuff,
and that means they get more attention than maybe a
scientist or a philosopher an activist. And you know whether

(04:10):
or not that's just a failure of human hardwiring, or
whether that's somehow a way that society is purposely designed,
that's something for another day. The thing is that celebrities
don't always have a rosy existence, you know what I mean.
This is something you and I have seen before, Noul.
All too often society will build up a celebrity and

(04:31):
one field or another only like they'll praise them the
way that some ancient cultures would make a sacrifice of
a person and give them one amazing year and then
kill them at the end of it. Like a lot
of celebrities rise and then the same people supported them
then take great enjoyment in their fall, like mocking them,

(04:52):
attacking them online. And they're not different from you. They're
human beings. They deserve the same rights and freedom that
you your self deserve and should enjoy. So that's why today
we are exploring to question many Many of our fellow listeners,
including Shannon s in Savannah, have asked us to cover
for some time. Now, what exactly is happening to pop

(05:16):
legend Britney Spears. We're roughly the same age, Nola. Do
you remember when Britney Spears hit the airwaves?

Speaker 3 (05:25):
I guess we're kids, Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I was maybe just coming into my own personal sense
of my body as a as a young man, and
that hit me Baby One More Time video really started
that awakening process.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Let me tell you, very.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Sexually suggestive time, especially with a weird kind of schoolgirl
crossover thing, and it was like is she a teenager?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Is she an adult? What is she?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
It was very like she's got this baby voice and
this mid and it was just a lot to take in.
And that was sort of like the early days of
these like Mickey mouse Club Disney stars being turned into these.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Like massive pop idols.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I think we had in sync on the scene a
little prior to Brittany. I think maybe she like toured
with them, and she and JT had like been on
the Mickey mouse Club together. But I think that in
sync broke first. But to me, I was much more
aware of Britney Spears than I was in Sync and
the Backstreet Bois even at that point because you couldn't

(06:34):
miss it.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah, it was strange to me because the person's seventeen
right when this comes out. And even when that first
video came out, I remember thinking.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
It would have been like what thirteen, maybe like yeah,
something like that, right.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, No, I was thinking there's something weirdly, weirdly off
about this. Later I learned that the schoolgirl outfit was indeed,
spears is own idea. And I love that you mentioned
Mickey Mouse because the path to today's conspiracy is it's a
long one. There's a walk we got to take. So

(07:10):
here are the facts. Britney Spears is born Britney Jean
Spears December second, nineteen eighty one, in a town called McComb, Mississippi.
Her parents are Lynn Irene Spears and James Spears, better
known as Jamie. You'll read him cited as Jamie.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
They moved.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
She spent most of her childhood in a town called Kentwood, Louisiana.
She was the middle of three kids. She always wanted
to be a performer, and she's talked about it in
a lot of interviews.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, it's interesting too, how like so many people from
kind of the rural South end up in this like
Mickey Mouse Club kind of like world. And it largely
has to do with you know, Disney World being in Orlando, Florida,
which is essentially, you know, like slap dab in the
middle of life, the swamp and very similar and not

(08:02):
that far off from Louisiana and Mississippi. And it makes sense,
is like, you know, maybe you would go there before
you would go to LA And it's a place where
a lot of performers got their start as like cast members,
you know, or like being in the shows and what
have you. And I'm almost positive that's the case with
Justin Timberlake.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Not quite sure.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
About Britney, but it's just still interesting that crossover. But yeah,
she was the middle child of three and you know,
made a point in interviews later in life when she'd
gotten famous that she'd always wanted to be performer. I
know she was on Star Search. You can find footage
of her just singing her butt off. And it actually
is a part of a little conspiracy theory that we

(08:42):
might not have to delve into today because it's a
little silly, but the idea that that baby voice that
she does was forced upon her by the record labels,
and often conspiracy theorists that believe in that point to
a video of her as like a nine year old
just belting it out on Star Search and that she
has this like really deep, kind of soulful voice and

(09:03):
that that was all just kind of a put on.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Well castrato or real, that's a real thing to happen.
And also I would respond to that one by saying,
there's twenty seventeen footage of her covering stuff without a
baby voice. So I guess there was an r pressure
label pressure, But I don't think there was a surgery involved.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Oh no, I wasn't implying that.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
I think I think castrado if you want to ruin your.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Day, oh I know, yeah, I know all about it,
and it's basically forced castration for the purposes of raising
the voice to sing in these beautiful, kind of angelic
high registers. But but yeah, really very very troubled history
there with that.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
But right.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
She spoke to the Hollywood Reporter in saying that ever
since she was seven or eight, my mom would have
company over, and I was always performing for everybody in
front of the TV. Even when I went to school.
I was always the weird child. I would go outside
and instead of playing I would I wanted to have
Star Search competitions, and she got our wish ultimately, But

(10:05):
her debut was not on Star Search. It would have
been in nineteen eighty six when she performed what Child
Is This at our kindergarten graduation?

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Well received by the way, clearly a real Bravado performance.
So this let's look at her early rise, some of
which you alluded to. So she had, like many people
pursuing her career in the arts, she had a lot
of swings and misses. Right, It's very rare for someone
to immediately become a world famous icon and get the

(10:38):
entertainment machine and infrastructure's support. In nineteen ninety she auditions
for the Mickey Mouse Club for the first time, but
she's only eight years old, which is apparently the cutoff
for Big Mouse. So they love her, but they say, sorry, kid,
come back when you're older. Two years later, she's nine
or ten. In nineteen ninety two, when she makes her

(11:00):
first appearance on Star Search. She wins the first round,
but I think she doesn't make it past the second round.
Year after that, she's eleven. She does her second audition
for Mickey Mouse Club. She's accepted, and that's where she
meets some of the folks we're talking about justin Timberlake,
Carrie Russell, Christina Aguilera. The show is canceled the next
year and Spears moves back home to Kentwood. There's a

(11:24):
weird four year period between nineteen ninety four to nineteen
ninety eight. In nineteen ninety eight, this is where we
see the breakout. She Iss signed to Jive Records. She
travels to Sweden and records her debut album, hit Me
Baby One More Time. She's going on concert tours. She's
opening for the boy band in Sync with whom the

(11:47):
frontman of that or the guy would become the frontman
justin Timberlake. They're carrying on a relationship that goes on
for about four years, sometimes secret, sometimes an open secret,
a lot of speculation in the paparazzi, and by January
of nineteen ninety nine, her single Baby One More Time
has debuted at number one on the Billboard two hundred

(12:10):
and other. If we can only imagine other people the
same age look around at their life and say, dang,
let's be nice.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Maybe yeah, it certainly It's something that folks, you know,
will aspire to at an early age until they realized
like what all goes along with it, And that's certainly
what we're going to talk about today. And again, that
video was inescapable, like we talked about at the.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Top of the show.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I believe it was. Was that trl era or was
that pre TR? I think it was pre but I
definitely remember it just being ubiquitous and just like inescapable.
And then in May of two thousand, she did the
thing that all up and coming pop stars need to do,
and then that's host Saturday Night Live. More than just
being like the musical act, actually hosting. That's how you

(12:56):
know you really arrived. And that same month, on May sixteen,
she releases her second album, which is Oops, I did
it again? Great, Played with your Heart? She got lost
in the game, you know she did. And she also
released another massively, massively popular album that sold more than
twenty million copies across the planet, cementing her legacy and

(13:20):
legend as like one of the biggest pop star you
know on the planet arguably you know, one of the
biggest pop stars icons of all time. Whether you like
her music or not, I mean, she was just ingrained
into you know what you could argue was a little
bit more of like a bubblegum kind of pop culture
to me, didn't have the same heft as like Madonna

(13:42):
or like even like a Paul Abduel.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Or chan of Jackson.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
But it was a new era of this kind of
Swedish born, you know, pop by numbers kind of world
where we know Max Martin who produced her first two records.
You know, we've done an episode I believe on that
whole thing, the whole Swedish hit machine factory, where they
essentially weaponized psychology to make sure that every little second

(14:04):
of the song is triggering your brain in some way
to make you continue listening.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Sure, it's an audible app It really the same thing
as a slot machine. It's brilliant. Yeah, check out the
episode on that please.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
It is brilliant.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
But it's also like I would argue, a new era
of like internet kind of driven music, algorithm driven music,
and maybe a little less soul. But that's just my
hot take. Then, on November sixth of two thousand and one,
she releases her third album titled Simply Brittany. That's a
popular thing to do like it's like, it's just me, y'all,

(14:38):
It's Britney, get rid of all the pop trappings. And
then on November eighteenth of two thousand and three, she
releases in the Zone or fourth album, and I'm trying
to think, like I remember Circus that was a pretty
big hit. And then there was that song.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
She was in that movie too. She had that movie.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Like a road trip movie with like her and her girlfriends,
and she had Paul was that movie called Paul tells
Us It was called Crossroads. And then she had that
song that was sort of given a second life in
the movie Spring Breakers in the incredible sequence where the
masked kind of vigilante sort of characters, you know, with

(15:17):
their shotguns and their pink ski masks kind of dance
weirdly in slow motion to that song. Was a song
called Paul Dance weirdly in slow motion to that song
called every Time. I think that was in this period,
or might have been a little earlier, Correct me if
I'm wrong, Spears fans.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
That was a shout out to Paul. I'd asked. I'd
asked Paul earlier if he wanted to be on mic
for this one. Paul I respect your decisions, but thank
you for jumping into to give us some guidance, even
even if off Mike. So this is where things start
to get rocky. As I As I established before, the

(15:59):
problem with the deification of celebrity is in part that
it encourages this fickle, vindictive thing in humanity. We want
to see people rise, want to see ourselves in them,
and then we want to see them fall and watch
watch what is sometimes described as a train wreck. So

(16:21):
people like people are staring at this person every moment
of her life. She's being followed by paparazzi. Controversies start
to arise, notably on January third of two thousand and four,
Britney Spears marries a childhood friend, guy named Jason Allen Alexander.
They married a little chapel in Las Vegas. About fifty

(16:43):
five hours later they annull the marriage, and the same
year in two thousand and four, Britney Spears goes on
to mary someone else, a guy named Kevin Federline, who
I think of the time was a dancer. But we continue,
we can laundry list of these. On February twenty fifth,
two thousand and five, she is banned from the Oscars.

(17:05):
This is the same year she confirms she's pregnant with
her first child. People who follow celebrities you may remember
the Oscar ban because Paris Hilton and a couple of
other celebrities were involved. The tabloids are a wash with
reports of child Services checking in on the Spears Feedterline
family cases where the baby has fallen out of a

(17:28):
high chair or is seen in a vehicle on Britney
Spears writing in Britney Spears lap rather than a car seat.
And then the next year things pick up. There's a
whirlwind of these unhinged appearances on television fetter Line and
Spears split and then later divorce, and then that happens

(17:49):
two months after the birth of her second child with
the same guy, and she names her child Jayden. We
come to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
and I know we're doing kind of a high level
here because there's other stuff we're getting to, but just
the background is important. In two thousand and seven two
thousand and eight, we see one of the most infamous
periods of Spears's career. In early two thousand and seven,

(18:12):
she checked into a rehab center rehabilitation and then checked
out of it quite quickly. She showed up at a
beauty shop in LA. She shaved her head as she
attacked Paparazzo's car with an umbrella, and she.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Actually smashed the window too.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And then she went back to a
rehabilitation program. She did have a performance on the VMAs
that led to a lot of speculation where people were saying,
is this person? Well, she got booked on hit and
run charges that were later for the record dropped. And
then around that time she also, before a time, lost

(18:50):
custody of her children to her ex husband. January two
thousand and eight, she's hauled away at an ambulance after
a three hour standoff with police because she would refused
used to give her kids over to her ex's custody
multiple psychiatric evaluations. Weeks later, she's taken to a hospital
in LA and a court declares her father to be

(19:12):
head of something called a conservatorship. A conservatorship is interesting.
We'll spend some time on this in the show, because
it is designed for people who are long story short,
somehow unable to take care of themselves right.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
And if I'm not mistaken, there was like a fifty
one to fifty hold one of at one point during
this period, which is you know, code for a psychiatric
hold where you're going to be a danger to yourself
and others. But yeah, I mean I think, you know,
typically we think of a conservatorship as something that would
be applied to, say an elderly parent, where you would

(19:49):
need someone to have power of attorney to make, you know,
important decisions on your behalf because you've got dementia or
any other you know, incapacitating conditions that would not allow
you to take care of yourself and you want, you know,
you're a caretaker or family member or whomever it might be,
to provide those legal responses whenever they were needed. So that's,

(20:11):
you know, what I would think of. And it's a
big bone of contention that this conservatorship with Brittany.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
There's a lot of bonus of contention, but the big
one that.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Comes up is that it's lasted so long because it's
still in effect today, so you know, people are wondering
back then, we've got this oscar band, which is literally
because everyone knew about these incidents that she had had
this hit and run, she was considered kind of like

(20:41):
a liability, and you know, the Oscars don't want to
make a scene on the red carpet.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
So that's why she was sort of for.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
All intents and purposes canceled in Hollywood back in these
early days before that was as much of a thing.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
But so here's the question.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
People were wondering what was going on with her, Like
is this just a run of the mill case of
too much pressure of a child star kind of spiraling
after too much money, too much excess. You know, there's
talk of substance abuse. I'd never really gotten did you
see Ben Was it a particular substance or was it
just alcohol? Like I've never really seen it, you know,

(21:22):
zeroed in on what the substance was in question, But
I imagine it was just probably a cocktail of things
like alcohol and likely cocaine and you know all those
kinds of things ether coeludes.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I'm making that up. No, there's no there's no confirmation, no,
no public documents where I saw the act, Like, I
did not see anything other than alcohol and substance abuse.
So almost any substance can become you can have an
abusive relationship with almost any substance. I mean, of course,

(21:57):
I've had eight cups of coffee today and I'm going
to have four more because I resent sleep. But you're right,
could one of the world's most successful living pop stars
actually have now fewer legal rights than a child? Was
she being held in some way hostage? And how could anyone,

(22:18):
even a person's father, have that much control over another adult?
What happened? We'll pause for word from our sponsor, and
after the break we'll try to figure it out with you.

(22:39):
Here's where it gets crazy. Conservatorship, freedom and control. There's
a little bit of semantic slight of hand here, because
this might be more familiar to people as like legal guardianship, right,
you know, like I have to I have to take
care of to your point, no, my retired parents who

(23:03):
are ailing not doing that well something like that, Or
I have someone in my family has a mental issue
and therefore they cannot be relied upon to do things
that you have to do as an adult, like pay
your bills, make sure you're going to a doctor, make

(23:23):
sure you're regularly taking prescribe met medication, and so on.
This this is called a conservatorship in California. In other
states you'll hear it called a guardianship maybe, But what
this means is is pretty explicit. It means that as
soon as this was declared to the present day and

(23:44):
I've got I've got like breaking news as we record this,
Britney Spears cannot make personal or financial decisions without the
oversight of that conservatorship, which is going to be the
oversight of her father, James or Jamie Spears. And we
don't know to your point about fifty one fifty, we

(24:06):
don't know. We the public do not know the details
of what led to this court's decision. It is a
legal decision to institute this conservatorship. It hasn't been made public.
You'll see stuff on like Reddit or different fan forums
where people purport to have photographs of the paperwork involved,

(24:29):
and I think that's where some of that fifty to
one to fifty stuff comes from. But there hasn't been
any solid evidence about her mental condition or a diagnosis.
You'll hear people also say that she was diagnosed with
some kind of early onset dementia in her twenties, but
again none of that is confirmed.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Well, she was we were talking about these psychiatric valuations
and she was placed on a seventy two hour lockdown
for mental value at Cedar Sinai Hospital And that was
back in two thousand and eight, and that was during
the dispute with her ex husband and.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
You know, with the children.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
But that you know, it's it's speculated that that would
have been considered a fifty one to fifty hold the
medical code of a person being held essentially against their
will or with the permission of someone close to them
who can vouch for their state.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, she was on a psychiatrical that part is true.
We just don't have the confirmation that the court said
literally because of we don't know what they found, you
know what I mean that led them to that decision.
But we do know there was a confirmed psychiatric hold
and there's a lot of money at stake. This is something, Okay,

(25:48):
this is something is going to be important later. So
how much is the Britney Spears conservatorship controlling? It controls
the Spears estate. So like, how many times did you
hear hit me baby one more time?

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
How many times did you watch Crossroads?

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Paul?

Speaker 1 (26:05):
How many times did you watch Crossroads? Paul said five
hundred times?

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Oh, well, I was going to say I think I
probably heard hit me baby one more time, somewhere between
sixty million and two hundred and fifty million times.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
So if they had a dollar for every time you
heard that, just you by yourself, that would be a
very disturbing. And I find a vague estimate of the
conservatorship right now. That estate is estimated to be somewhere
between sixty million dollars. That's the number you'll hear most often,
But then you'll hear other wilder claims saying actually it's

(26:39):
worth two hundred and fifty million dollars.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Sixty seems low.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Sixty seems low to me based on how famous she
is and was and how many hits she's had. But again,
like my whole thing we talked about this off Mike
is it's interesting to me that this conservator ship is
used in this way because, like I said, I mean,
it seems like it's more designed for people who literally
can't take care of themselves and are potentially either a

(27:05):
danger to themselves and others or just incapable of taking
care of themselves. Because there's no law in America that
says you're not allowed to be stupid with your money
and squander it and be a bad steward of your
fortune and all of this, so much of this has
to do with making business decisions on her behalf, you know,
investing her money, giving accounts of her fortune to the courts.

(27:29):
All of that seems very financially driven. And I just
don't know of any law on the books, especially in
a place like Hollywood where we see you know, rags
to riches and riches to rags stories all the time.
That part of it makes this really suspect to me.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
I would also point out, and this is something I
found that that should pique your interest, folks, if you're
familiar to this story, another big cost for the estate
is the maintenance of the conservatorship itself. So think about that,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
Is this a.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Fox run henhouse?

Speaker 3 (28:06):
You know, mainly guess.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Meaning a salary, right, like a salary paid out to
the conservators.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Multiple multiple And so there are two people for a
very long time that worthy what are called the co conservators.
They ran this legal arrangement which got quite complex with
all the money and expenses and opportunities for income involved.
The first one was her father, Jamie Spears, and for

(28:32):
a very long time there was a lawyer in the mix.
His name was Andrew M. Wallet. I'll go watch the
brain Stuff video about nominative determinism. Wallet is on the
case and they came down hard on her, like, okay,
if you have ever in the days of more free travel,
a lot of times people who travel for work are

(28:54):
familiar with this issue. You go on a work trip,
right and you maybe you have a per diem or
maybe they just say, look, you have to take these
people out, wind them, dying them, transport them places, transport
yourself places, and you know, get whatever you want within reason,
but keep all your receipts. And you have to give
us your receipts and then send them off to some

(29:16):
accounting department or whatever. Britney Spears was having to do
that in her daily life, like she would take her
kids places, maybe take them to Six Flags, she had
to account for those expenses or like even going to
Sonic or something. And because the court required this, and
so the conservatorship is keeping an eye on every nickel

(29:39):
and dime. The implicit idea here should be said out loud.
The concept is that they are saving her fortune from herself,
the money that she has earned, which is her money
should not be under her control wallet. Interestingly enough, last

(30:01):
year and for a long time, no one replaced him.
In later statements, though, he said that this conservatorship could
last for the rest of spears life. And I hope
a lot of people are listening to our episode today
and popping by conspiracy stuff on Twitter, popping by our Instagram,
et cetera, and hitting us up with the old hashtag

(30:22):
free Britney. That's something you've seen, even if you're not,
even if you hate pop music, you've heard about this.
It's older than a lot of people might think too,
which is kind of surprising.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
It is.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, this is something that popped up right around the
very beginning of the conservator ship, really right on the
heels of it. I mean in two thousand and eight
is when she had that very public kind of meltdown
situation where she was held in the psychiatric unit and evaluated.
And then it was two thousand and nine that the
Free Brittany campaign kind of came into existence through a

(30:56):
fan site called breatheeavy dot com. Assuming that's a reference
to Britney's trademark heavy breathing.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
It is trademark, by the way.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah, and this idea that she was somehow being held
against her will, not just in a psychiatric hold, but
in a much larger and perhaps.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
More nefarious way.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
The website's owner, person by the name of Jordan Miller,
said at one point that he received an irate call
from Jamie Britney's father, who threatened to have the website
taken down. Ten years later, Brittany has released three major
label albums, appeared quite often on television, including a period

(31:36):
as a judge on the singing show The X Factor,
and also performed live several times in a residency gig
in Las Vegas that she did famously kind of abandon
but that was for health reasons, right Ben.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Her father, Her father had some serious health concerns, and
so she dropped. She dropped the Vegas stuff because you know,
when it comes to uh, I hate the lazy TV
writing trope about this, but family is important.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
So that comes from that concept, comes from TV. I
love that.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
No, like it's okay. If you see you'll see a
lot of fantastic television shows brought low by a very
lazy decision to like make everybody related, or to have
characters that cartoonishly are are saying look, I know we're
saving the world, but I'm real the only thing that

(32:33):
matters is forget everybody else. The only thing that matters
is me talking to this one person I'm related to.
I don't mean it sounds cynical, but like Ruin shows
like Utopia, which otherwise are fantastic no spoilers, but it
is based in a real thing. What she's doing is
very understandable. It's not like it's not like it's going
to break the bank for her not to be at

(32:56):
Las Vegas right now.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
But a lot of times there's contracts involved with those things,
and you know, maybe there's an escape clause or something
like that, but it would it would be a great
financial cost. I would imagine you'd have to like pay
out the promoters and and I mean, I don't know. Again,
these these are these kind of these contracts with celebrities
of this level are very complicated and they go through
a lot of negotiations and back and forth and both

(33:18):
sides making sure they're protected. But I can't imagine you
could just jump ship. You know, It's not like you
can have a Britney Spears understudy. Like I imagine if
you've got like a residency. It's probably pretty gonna be
pretty expensive to get out of it. But to your point, Ben,
we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars here potentially. But

(33:40):
I would argue, and I think you would probably agree
and listeners too, that these do not sound like the
activities of a person that cannot take care of themselves.
I mean, doing a concert performance like that night after
night requires lip syncing or no, which is another discussion,
entirely requires stamina, requires good memory skills to be able

(34:01):
to remember all that choreography, you know, physical fitness, discipline.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
If you miss a show, you have to make up
shows like I would love to see one of those contracts.
You're right, there's probably not an understudy. People who pay
for these kind of concerts don't want to watch a
show with Sidney Brears or whomever the person would be.
But also at that level, you know, yes, even if
you can take the financial hit, you are going to

(34:28):
perhaps irreparably burn some bridges. So this was seen. This
was seen as problematic for people who are watching this
individual's career. But something strange happened recently. People who are
members of the Britney Army or the DDE and the
wool fans have always been watching this since since that time,

(34:54):
but now there's renewed interests in this strange situation, this
conservatorship that never stopped, and we have to ask ourselves why.
Part of the reason, I would argue is the pandemic
gave a lot of people a lot more time and
they were stayed. They were glued to Britney spears social
media presence, especially while they were in quarantine for months

(35:16):
this was mysteriously inactive. And then a fan podcast and
we're going to mention their name because they're part of
this story. A fan podcast called Britney's Graham released a
voicemail message from someone claiming to be an anonymous paralegal
with firsthand involvement in the actual Spears conservatorship, and the

(35:42):
voicemail raised concerns about Spear's physical, mental well being and
her personal agency or autonomy. So the host of the
podcast started speculating right asking valid questions, what's happening to
this performer's instagram? You know, usually it's like a fun

(36:03):
slice of life behind the scenes. Look at this cool
stuff I'm doing with my two kids, you know what
I mean? That's a very wholesome Instagram, but they said
why has it gone dark for a few months? And
then she started coming back, dancing around her mansion, posting
videos on Instagram as well as TikTok, and people started

(36:24):
reading into what she was posting, which for maybe more
skeptical people, seems pretty innocuous, right, but maybe for other
people there's something deeper there, some kind of code or
hidden message. That's why you would see. There was one
video in July where Britney Spears is dancing to a

(36:46):
song from Rihanna called Never Ending, And then if you
look at the comments, it's thousands of people who are
just writing free Brittany. They're writing about that conspiracy theory.
And if you're not, if you haven't read much about this,
then you might think, what the heck's going on with
this Rihanna song? Where are these people coming from? This

(37:06):
leads us to a rabbit hole of conspiracies and speculation,
some of them, I would argue, more plausible than others,
but it leads us to some disturbing stuff. What are
we talking about? We'll tell you. We'll dive all the
way into the deep water. After a word from our sponsor. Okay,

(37:30):
we're back. We hope you had a good break. Sometimes
during the break through the magic of editing, we kick
it for a second and just talk to each other.
So that's our stuff. They don't want you to hear anyway, Noel,
you brought up something, something fascinating on the break about
this dark period on the Instagram.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Yeah, it's like you said, I mean, and I do
want to say.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
I follow Brittany on Instagram, and it's like you said,
and very free wheeling, kind of you know, spirited dancing, practicing, yoga,
working out with her like personal trainer, boyfriend and things
like that. And it's but there's a sense of isolation,
even pre covid in it. And it's you know, clearly

(38:18):
a product of this conservator ship. And it's like she's
a prison, like the princess, you know, trapped in the tower,
but it's her own tower and the tower of her
own making.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
It's it's sad, but also it's interesting, you know, And
she's obviously got everything she needs. And she doesn't openly
talk about the conservatorship. She doesn't openly like act as
though she is in any way under duress. She seems
pretty chill and a little bit kind of you know,

(38:50):
goofy and lighthearted, and she's on the beach sometimes and
doing these amazing time laps yoga videos.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
But you're ripe. And when she went dark for that period.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I should have looked up the full text and if
you want to listen to that episode, or there's a
specific episode of Brittany's Graham that I listened to where
they play the voicemail and they talk about this too.
When she did go dark, there was she communicates in
a way that her fans clearly recognize. She uses very
specific emojis. She loves the rose emoji. She has, you know,

(39:22):
just like a kind of lexicon of the types of
little kind of brittanyisms that she uses on her Instagram.
And when she went dark, I would believe it was
either before or right after, or somewhere in there that
a response or a post was made that was very
clearly not in her voice, didn't have the same emojis,

(39:43):
didn't have the same light light hearted spirit, felt like
someone that didn't know enough trying to pose as her.
And I believe that a million percent. And there was
a discussion that when she was out for this period
that she was once again, forcibly committed and forcibly medicated.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, yeah, that's a well, it's it's not even an
open secret that many celebrities don't actually run their own
social media. Still this, if you read the message, it
does have this egregious tone that reminds me of that
Steve buscem meme Hello fellow kids kind of, and.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
It is I Britney Spears as well. Please pay me
no mind.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
And buy the new Classics collection right whatever it is. Yeah,
So people are understandably weirded out by this when when
we love, when we love something, I do believe that
you can love a thing or a person that you've
never met. So people have grown up with this artist

(40:49):
and they feel they feel a kinship with them, and
it's understandable and there's nothing wrong with that. So to
many people across the planet, this is like seeing one
of your heroes or someone you can or a loved
one in dire straits. So there's the conspiracy theory we've
talked about that Britney Spears is somehow being held hostage

(41:10):
by her father and that a team of handlers ultimately
controls her. A lot of this comes from what appear
to be coded responses found in Instagram post and comments.
One Instagram commenter wrote on a Britney Spears post quote, Britney,
if you're in trouble, wear yellow in your next video.

(41:30):
And sure enough, in a video published afterwards, she wore yellow.
So now we have a lot of people saying coincidence.
Did this massively successful person really read through hundreds and
hundreds of comments take that one? You know, like how
much time is there? But you know, for people who

(41:51):
believed it, they're like, wow, she's listening. She's trying to
tell us something. And you see other examples of this
process occurring, Like the other commentary said, please tell us
where you are so we can save you. Next video,
she's dancing around. It's kind of like the Rianna video,
you know, improvised dancing, a lot of like.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Spin dancing kind of yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's wholesome, you know. But the thing is
the song that is playing in the background is Malibu,
and so at.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Least probably where she lives. That's probably where her home is, certainly.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Right, And also, wouldn't that have all here's my thing?
Wouldn't that have also already been common knowledge?

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Of course, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
I mean every rich person in Hollywood lives in Malibu.
Maybe not every, but like you know, you do a
certain achalon of rich. You probably got a place in Malibu.
It's beautiful out there, but the sheriff is a real pill.
If you've seen The Big Lebowski never mind, and you
remember and probably know this on your own. We talked

(42:56):
about how conservatorships are sort of more designed for folks
that are genuinely unable to take care of themselves, use
the bathroom, get the food nourishment they need to live.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
It's like it's a humane act to grant.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Someone a conservatorship so that they don't just die, you know,
alone without any care. I mean, and it's something that
you would think of with the elderly. And there is,
you know, a claim that her father is using this
idea that his daughter has early onset dementia.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
You'll recall early in the episode we talked.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
About that how that kind of came up that she
had been tested for that I believe in her early twenties.
And you know, dementia would be a case where a
conservatorship could be required, but this isn't proven, and there's
a lot of screenshotting and you know hubbub on Reddit
discussing these kinds of things, but we really don't have
any proof, and they claim that she's not allowed to

(43:53):
leave her home to do any of these things, to
go shopping to buy you know, stuff for her kids,
or take her kids. The six flags like we mentioned earlier,
that she definitely does, and then she has to where
like that she has to have her fault phone calls monitored.
There's no evidence to support these things either, but we
do know that she doesn't have control over these financial

(44:13):
decisions or business decisions, and I would argue that in
and of itself is the fishiest part.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Of all of this, Right, Yeah, you have like if
you have sixty million dollars and you want to do so,
I have a list of just billionaire pranks that I
have shared the past I think are funny. If you
want to do like a prank somewhere and you want
to hire a skywriter to go over a metropolis and

(44:38):
write something like tacos are just okay, just just to
weird out people in the city. You should be able
to spend that money if Britney Spears wants to do
that under these terms legally, she has to go to
someone and ask them if she can do that right,
ask them almost for kind of an allowance.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
To do this.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
If the conservatorship wants to change the setup for investment portfolios,
she doesn't control that. She can't really veto that. She
can make her voice known if they talk to her
about it, but when the rubber hits the road, it's
up to them her and again it's all her money.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
And the lack of transparency in all of this is
also pretty striking, and I believe her attorney has petitioned
the courts to at the very least make the nature
of this conservatorship more transparent because that's in the best
interest of his client of Brittany, and I would.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Completely agree with that.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
All of the shadowiness behind all of this is what
makes it super sketch. And the fact that she has
openly and her father has acknowledged that they do not
have a good relationship. He is not a lawyer, He
is just a dude. And what right does he have
to her to any of this.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
It doesn't have a finance degree.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Doesn't have a finance degree, doesn't have a law degree,
doesn't have any qualifications other than being her biological father
who she is openly estranged from. And we can get
into more of the restraining order stuff in a minute,
but like, I'm just fascinated to hear Ben, what.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Do you think? Like what how does that?

Speaker 2 (46:13):
How do you how do you have that much? You know,
bravado that you can make that happen? Went with zero,
Like how do you petition the court for this when
you have no claim? She's an adult, she is a
legal adult.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
I have a fantastic theory about this towards the end.
It's interesting. So I have decided I've built this out
to like save that for the eight because the most
important part of the show is you folks who want
to hear from you, And I'm sure we'll hear from
a lot of people about this. There are other Instagram things,
There are things on TikTok as well, right we I

(46:47):
believe we both saw the Spears account where there's like
a flower, maybe a white rose, with a quote she
wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in
her eyes. A quote comes from a novel called The
God of Small Things by urundhate Roy And I didn't
quite understand this when Will maybe explain it to me.
It explores the story the novel of these twins laboring

(47:11):
under what are called love laws, and these love laws
decree how a person can be loved and win and
et cetera, et cetera. And I have yet to read
The God of Small Things, but some fans seem to
interpret this as a metaphor for the men in Britney
Spears Life and the you know, the balancing act of
love versus control. I don't know. It feels like a stretch.

(47:32):
What do you think, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
It feels like a stretch in that respect. But I
do still feel like it's a good metaphor for being
kind of a kept woman, because you know, whether you
look at this as like she's forced to love a
certain person, I don't think that's accurate. But she certainly
is not able to be a full human, as is
the case if you are forced to love somebody, or if.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
You're in an arranged marriage or whatever.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
And you know, there's something to be said of the
agency that it takes to be able to love who
you want, and I think you could maybe apply that
same agency to just the agency of being a fully
free human. So maybe that's part of it, but you know,
we we do get a sense that she is able
to love who she wants. You know, her boyfriend, twenty

(48:17):
five year old, Yeah, this is this is from this
year Iranian bodybuilder and trainer named Sam Ascari. You see
her kind of a lot, and she appears to lean
on him for you know, everything from from working out together.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
She's always posting about how much she loves him.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
And seems very happy with him, and he seems to
certainly be there for her. We don't know a whole
lot about how they met, Actually we do kind of.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Let's see, Well, there's a free Britney claim that says
that said that alleges Jamie Spears pays various has paid
various guys to be Britney Spears boyfriend. But I didn't
find I didn't find hard evidence of that either. I
did find previous boyfriend's ex boyfriends who said that wasn't true,

(49:09):
and they also said Britney Spears has control of her faculties,
kind of implying that this has been overblown. But you know,
if people are on TikTok looking at a video of
someone dancing with a hat and saying, if you zoom
in far enough, you can see one of the fingers
holding the hat pointing to a tiny message that may read.

(49:32):
Help People who believe that aren't going to be persuaded
by someone's ex boyfriend saying something, and certainly not by
the father who is you know, if it isn't clear already.
Often the antagonist or portrayed as such in this narrative
for reasons I understand.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah, he's been super open in the media as well
about their relationship and talked to them to Entertainment tonight
about how he would marry her, and that they are
genuinely in love and.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
The boyfriend the boyfriend, that's right.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
And they met on a music video shoot for her
song slumber Party where he played her love interest, and
that that video has reached ninety million views on YouTube
as of earlier this year.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
But he is thirteen years younger than her. No, not
that that matters, who cares.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
It's just it's just a thing, just just in terms.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Of like what we know about him. But that's really
about it.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, I want to. And she's had multiple like boyfriends,
she's got a love life. Everybody does. You can read
statements from these x's most of them, most of which
seem to not really take some of the accusations in
the Free Britney movement seriously. But there there is one

(50:56):
contingent that the people are definitely paying close to to.
As we said in the beginning, this is, for some
reason a celebrity worship being society. So any other celebrity
commenting on this situation is going to be, for no
real objective reason, considered an expert. And that's not a

(51:17):
ding on these people. Let's just saying again, is what
happens when society just worships celebrities. Rose McGowan, for example,
tremendous actor, had a tribute post on Instagram to a
deceased actor named Brittany Murphy we recognize from multiple films.
She caught the attention of the movement because in the caption,

(51:39):
if you scroll down to the bottom, she writes, there's
another Brittany on my mind today too, one that is alive.
One they can be saved from the leeches that are
controlling and trafficking her. Free all the Brittany's and all
those who get hurt by the trauma of Hollywood values
and toxic rules. So people were saying, look, this is

(52:00):
in our minds. A lot of people are saying this
is confirmation right that something really mess up is happening,
and other celebrities came forward and said similar things. But
as is the want of this show, we have to
There are some issues you can raise with some of
these claims, like why the Koi cryptid replies. Some of

(52:20):
the skeptics in the audience may be asking, if this singer,
it was, a multimillionaire, needs help, then why hasn't she
made more explicit statements. Why hasn't she come out and
said this conservatorship sucks. Someone rescued me. I'm thirty eight
years old. I should be able to do what I want.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Oh yeah, but I mean the implication there is what
feeds the conspiracy is that there's something even more nefarious
at play that would not allow her to even speak
her mind, that she's under duress in some way, or
like you know, under fear for her life or the
life of her loved ones. Perhaps one of her children
is being held hostage. These are just my like baseless
kind of like possibilities, right, But that would be the implication,

(52:59):
wouldn't it. She can't she has to do it secretly,
so no, so the bad men won't notice, and then
maybe someone will come.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
To her rescue.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
There has to be some leverage over her in order
for her not to just like outright go on Instagram
to her like millions of followers and say, hey, I
am being taken advantage of, or I am being threatened,
or I am being this.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
I mean the law is on her side.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
You would join me at the courthouse and hold a
protest or something like that of mobilizing the Brittany Army.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
When I was thinking through this, I said, I found
three possibilities that I would use to respond to that
question from skeptics. Those three possibilities would include stuff like
someone else's running or curating the social media, and so
if she does something too out of pocket, maybe that
filter won't allow it to reach the public. And then,

(53:53):
like you had just mentioned, a threat over custody or
custody of the children or contact with the children, because
that'll give you control over person very very quickly. Or
some cynical observers noted this. They said, well, it's possible
that this is just a means of garnering interests for

(54:15):
and focus from fans, which I find a little too
cynical for me, you know what I mean. That feels
like a lot to do because it's an actual court battle.
And again, this is an actual human being, which I
think a lot of people are forgetting in these stories.
But we do have the latest news. A lot of

(54:38):
stuff happened is we were coming in to record today.
As you said, Jamie Spears had temporarily stepped down from
the conservatorship in September twenty nineteen due to health reasons.
In the interim, Brittany what's called Brittany's care manager when
Jody Montgomery stepped up, and now Jamie Spears is back

(55:00):
running the operation against his daughter's explicit wishes. She has
repeatedly said, uh, I this conservatorship is voluntary, but I
just don't want this guy running it. I will not
do anything. I will not do any work ever again.
If this guy is still the cat in charge.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
And she's even gone so far as to say that
she's afraid of him, you know. And so there was
a petition to get rid to dissolve that relationship, and
the judge overseeing that legal you know, dispute between her
and her father shot it down. So it's gonna stand.

(55:45):
He and I don't understand that. I just don't understand what.
What is it? That's the thing with the with the transparency,
It's like, what entitles him to this position? Why can't
they just install another mister wallet, you know, pocketwatch, you know,
just some other guy whose job it is to manage
people's finances and who potentially would be doing her more

(56:09):
of a service by investing better, you know, like be
more objective, Be more objective, because you know, I have
no qualm saying that. I'm pretty sure he is in
some way fleecing this estate.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Oh I got I've got a Oh I've got a
pepisilvia moment. But okay, so Jamie Spears need some statements.
On August first of this year, the conservatorship renewal hearing
was like August twenty second, That's when it was going.
That's when they were going to be back in court
again for something. He called conspiracy theories surrounding this legal

(56:49):
arrangement a joke, and he said, quote, all these conspiracy
theorists don't know anything. The world don't have a clue.
It's up to the Court of California to decide what's
best for my daughter. It's no one else's business. He
denies he or anybody else is Embezile is skimming money
from the estate, saying this is interesting to me. He says,
I have to report every nickel and dime spent to

(57:10):
the court every year. How the hell would I steal something?
That's very much not a charismatic denial. That sounds like
like the implication there purposeful or not to be fair,
The implication there is I can't steal because they're watching me.
That's way different from saying I love my kid, I'm

(57:31):
not going to steal from them.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
But then you've got the wide swath of like this
differential between what the estate's actually worth. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
Surely there's a real number on the books, you know
that the courts are aware of.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
But sixty sixty is the final the financial statement. But
how look, the more money you get, the easier it
is to hide the money. It's counterintuitive, but that is
a truth. That's why things like the Panama papers are important,
because you have the where with all the hide stuff.
Britney Spears just last month was got a small win

(58:05):
in court. She was allowed to expand her legal team
despite her father's objections. Do you know why he objected
in court? He said it would there was too much
of a cost to add more lawyers.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
And still the court said, okay, look, she's only working
with a court appointed attorney up to this, up to
this juncture, right, and the other side, her father is
working with people that she is paying, if you think
about it, through the conservatorship. That's my stuff for everything, right,
That's that's what like when oh what what is it?

(58:43):
Creeden's Clearwater Revival guy John Fogerty. Yeah, that's like when
he had to defend himself against plagiarizing himself in court.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
It's like I'm my own grandpa territory right there.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
But no, it's it's it's bonkers because she's not even
allowed to have to use her own lawyer.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Oh it wasn't for some time.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Yeah, okay, So.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Now okay, and you know there was some concern. You know,
even in twenty twenty she claimed to have burned down
her own gem, but that was because of like a
couple of candles that were unattended. So I mean, I'm
sure that was maybe part of the calculus behind not

(59:26):
allowing her to be free of this arrangement.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
What do you think?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah, that's the thing. You know, if you look back
through history, society finds the strangest, most arbitrary reasons to
persecute women. Really, I mean, you don't have to read
the Yellow wallpaper or history textbook to know that. I

(59:51):
think they are hinging on some stuff. But again, the
most frustrating thing about this is we don't know. We
don't know the specifics. The arguments for increasing trans parency
have not been accepted by the court. We're recording this
on November eleventh, just before we came into the proverbial studio.
On November tenth, twenty twenty, an LA judge overseeing the

(01:00:15):
conservatorship declined to remove Jamie Spears as the head of
the estate. And this is despite all the stuff that
Britney Spears lawyer Samuel d Ingram the third was saying,
she's afraid of him, she can't work with him in charge.
The lawyer called Spears a high functioning kirk conservati and

(01:00:37):
said that just like you said, they've been estranged. And
this Judge Brenda Penny out of the LA Superior Court
said she might consider further petitions for the removal of
the father down the road, whatever that is, because that's
not an agreement. A lawyer for Britney's mother said was

(01:00:58):
also there. The mother is not considered, by the way,
a member of the conservatorship arrangement, but she's thought of
as an interested party. And her lawyer said something that
maybe it's here say, I don't know, I want to
hear what you think. She said that the father, Jamie Spears,
had referred to his daughter as quote a racehorse who

(01:01:20):
has to be handled like one.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Pretty rough soies.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, it makes me think of that episode of Black
Mirror with Miley Cyrus where it's like, what is she
like Ashley, Oh, and she's sort of under the thumb
of this sort of like wicked stepmother type figure who
you know, only wants her to do the pop stuff,
but she's actually secretly like writing all this more brooding
kind of like stuff that's more her. I mean, this

(01:01:47):
isn't one to one that, but it's certainly the kind
of things you think about with like these kept kind
of pop stars who become cash cows or prized race
horses for a whole lot of stakeholders, but at the
end the day, like you said at the top of
the show, Bend. They are human beings who just want
to live their lives and just you know, be normal.
And they're already kind of prevented from living normal lives

(01:02:10):
by how bloody famous they are. And then you have
stuff like this to deal with. I mean, the idea
that she is being subjected to this by her own father.
Can you imagine how difficult and traumatic that must feel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Yeah, this, this is messed up. The latest update is this,
as of now, the conservatorship has been extended until February
of next year, February of twenty twenty one, which I
know seems like a long, long, long way aways, but
it's not really. You know, we're almost at the end
of twenty twenty. There's been a new co conservator appointed.

(01:02:47):
It's an outfit called Bessemer Trust. Because the Spears Britney
Spears I was asking for a qualified corporate fudiciary. They
also pointed out that old man Spears does not have
financial train I mean, Bessemer Trust is interesting. They're very
very odd. They date back to the days of Carnegie

(01:03:08):
Steel in a way. So here's my theory, you know,
keep it brief. Now, here's my whatevery. So we know
that according to the documents that are available, the father
Jamie Spears, gets about one hundred and thirty thousand dollars
each year to oversee the conservators ship, and that according
to the documents in the court, that conservatorship is somewhere

(01:03:30):
between fifty nine and sixty million. That's what they're talking about.
But according to the court documents obtained by Entertainment Tonight,
there is one expense that is the largest expense of
all of the Britney Spears estate in twenty eighteen. That

(01:03:52):
was the fees for her conservatorship and the legal cost
maintaining that. In total, those equal more than one point
one million dollars. So my question is how much does
Andrew Wallet make when he was supervising this and is

(01:04:14):
it possible? Right, is it possible that Jamie Spears is
only making one hundred and thirty k but this other
guy and it's not an accusation of mass I'm thinking
out loud. Is it possible this other guy and these
other legal beagles in the crew were drawing massive amounts
of hourly pay or an annual retainer and then Jamie

(01:04:38):
Spears is getting a piece of that is it possible
that could happen, that could be totally off the books
because once the money goes to the lawyer, the conservatorship
cannot do any cannot have any visibility on what that
lawyer is a private individual gets to do with the
money they've earned.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Well, It's also it's like one of those construction scams
the mafia runs right where they like charge you a
bunch of money for like a chair or or like
some piece of furniture, or they like do all these
overages and you hide. You know, no one says you
got to get a good deal on your employees. No
one says you have to like, you know, get the
cheapest chair or the cheapest like office worker or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Again, these are all, yeah, just ideas, But I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Do the Defense Department.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
It's very very interesting. It's very very interesting, Ben.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
The Defense Department, three hundred dollars for a hammer or
komosi whatever, like this stuff happens. I love that you're
bringing up construction scams because there's the possibility that this
could exist. I'd also like to point out that I'd
also like to point out that Jamie Spears attempted to
rehire Andrew Wallatt after his resignation, but later withdrew that

(01:05:52):
and Britney Spears was against the guy being rehired because,
according to her, she said he was singularly unsuited to
the position. And she also said they couldn't hire him
back because they were facing hard choices about budgetary constraints.
So how much are they paying that dude? And where's

(01:06:14):
that money going?

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
Yeah, no, it's it's interesting. There's a lot to consider here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
And I don't think we've heard the last of this man,
I really don't.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
I mean, they're going to.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Keep fighting for it, fighting for her to be free
of it. I don't do we have a copy of
the ruling? Is that public? Is that public information? Surely
it is right? Like, I mean, don't have to give
a reason, or maybe they don't really they just say no, deny.
It's like it's like they don't have to give you
a reason when your parole is denied.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
They just say denied.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
They don't.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
I don't think they have to give you a reason
why your parole is denied. I think you make your
case and then they accepted or deny it. I believe
they said that she. I believe they said that she
could petition it again, Yes, in the same way that
you can, you know, apply apply for parole, h make
a petition for early release again or whatever. But it's

(01:07:08):
similar to me, and I think it's really messed up
that there's no like data pointing to like, what is
it about this situation that a causes it to be
your father and B that that is that makes this
this necessary?

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yeah, agreed, This reminds me of a comic book. I
want to give a shout out to that friend of
the show, Lauren Vogelbaum introduced me to uh, The Wicked
and the Divine. Check it out if you love graphic
novels and the dangers of what happens to the people
behind the label of celebrity. Primary point remain, celebrities are

(01:07:47):
human beings. Something weird is a foot here. A court
has decided to apply something that's generally reserved for the
ill or the infirm to a human being, to Britney Spears,
who has said who has been fighting unsuccessfully against various
aspects of this, namely her father. So how did a

(01:08:10):
court decide that a conservatorship was necessary? We don't have
that information, unless, of course, the court was somehow compromised.
But that's very deep conspiracy theory territory. So we want
to hear from you. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
It's an overall look at what, as Noel said, is

(01:08:31):
a continuing case. We're not going to hear the last
of it. It'll probably heck, it'll probably end up in
a strange news segment at some point. But what's your take.
Do you think people are reading tea leaves here? Do
you think there's much more to this story? And if so,
what let us know? You can find us on the internet,
because we're a podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

(01:08:55):
All the hits.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Yeah, you can find us as a show or conspiracy
stuff or conspiras stuff show, or as individual as I
am on Instagram at how now Noel Brown?

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
How about you, my friend?

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
You can find me should the spirit move you to
do so on Instagram as at ben Bolan or on
Twitter as at Ben Bolan hsw. If you hate social media,
you can call us on the phone. We're one eight
three three std WYTK. Literally, all you have to do
is let us know if it's okay to use your
voice name on the air, and if you hate doing

(01:09:27):
all of that, we have one more way. You can
always contact us our good old fashioned email address.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
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