Conspiracies, Community and Critical Thinking: An Interview with Langston Kerman

How can we navigate conspiracies in a post-truth environment? Is it true that many conspiracy theories do, in fact, have a grain of truth at their heart? In today's episode, the guys join up with Langston Kerman, creator of My Momma Told Me, to discuss the world of conspiracies, their effects on communities, and how best to explore them.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One quick note before we begin today's interview. Our language
is unedited and uncensored. As such, it may not be
appropriate for all listeners. We hope you enjoy. From UFOs
to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with
unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the

(00:21):
stuff they don't want you to know. A production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Alexis

(00:43):
code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know very special episode. Today we
are joined by writer, actor comedian, the one and only
links Din Kerman. You have doubtlessly seen Linkston on numerous

(01:03):
shows and stages. I'm in particular big big fan of
the stand up. He's appeared on so many things, High Maintenance,
Insecure and one of our personal favorites. Longtime listeners The
Boys over Here Lakes the Lakes have recently launched the
podcast that is very near and dear to our hearts,

(01:25):
called My Mama Told Me. In this show, Linkston his
guests dive deep into the world of groundbreaking and as
they said, sometimes silly, sometimes serious, sometimes problematic black conspiracy
theories often learned from mother's teaching their kids as are
growing up, or other adult figures. And you can see
why this immediately hit our radar. We are live in

(01:48):
person with Lynkston today. Thank you so much for coming
on the show. And well, yeah, this is amazing. I
can't wait to uh to to jump into this toxic
behavior with you boys. You know, it's it's funny on
on your show links and usually there's so much fun
in the maybe the first half of your episode. Then
you guys start to delve a little deeper into the conspiracies.

(02:11):
We're just we're diving right in. Man, I'm sorry. It's
always fun before you do the research, and then you
know this is this is horrible. This is a tragic
choice that we made. We should have just kept telling
our sillies. You know, it's true, it's something we've run into.
And you know, one of the first questions I think

(02:32):
that is gonna be on the mind of a lot
of our listeners is what inspired you personally, because there's
not another show like yours out there now, right in
the world with so many podcasts, this is something special
and new. Yeah, I mean I've I've always been I
imagine you guys felt this way, otherwise you wouldn't have
started the podcast. I've always been deeply fascinated with conspiracy theory,

(02:55):
and I have two parents who uh would not at
any point label themselves conspiracy theorists, but do tend to
follow conspiracy theory type behaviors. Like my mom uh is
now living in Ghana, and UH like is fully like
I don't need the vaccine. I'm out here living a

(03:17):
different kind of life, and like is embracing just a
style of living that that well well aligned with a
conspiracy theorist at times. And so I think I just
grew up in this ship and then wanted to be
able to find a little nuance in those conversations that
doesn't exist. And frankly, conspiracy theory is a really white

(03:40):
space on the surface, But all the black people I
know are conspiracy theorists of some sort. So it was
like I should just be talking to them and figure
out what that is. Sure, and it's something that we
we kind of we kind of contend with on the
show a lot. The difference in separation between conspiracy theories
and actual, you know, full bor conspiracies, of which there
are too many to count. But the term conspiracy theory

(04:03):
is often used as a way to kind of like
negate the point that someone is trying to make or
like to other this notion that something is going on
kind of under you know, behind the scenes. So we
try to like separate the two. But I'm interested in
your thoughts of conspiracy versus conspiracy theory and how you
kind of look at the two. Yeah, I mean, I
think I think in a weird way, and I don't

(04:24):
necessarily even always view it as a strictly racial thing,
but I do think that that there is a white
thing where it's like I just get to have fun
with the idea of supposing that you know, our our
leaders are lizards, or that you know, nine eleven was
an inside job. I just get to to play in
this idea, Whereas I think a lot of minorities have

(04:46):
had to turn to conspiracy theory or conspiracy rather out
of uh necessity. It truly is like looking at historical
facts and going, yo, if I put this in my arm,
or if I act in this way, I in theory
could die from this ship. Um, and so it's it's
just a careful dance of both acknowledging people's like historical

(05:10):
truth but also being like, shut up, stupid, go go
do the thing that everybody is supposed to do for
the well being of society. Oh man, So, so I
have a conspiracy theory about the origins of your show.
I just want to put this Okay, so um, then
correct me if I'm wrong here. But early in your

(05:31):
stand up career, you had a main gig that was
as an educator. You're you're a high school English teacher. Yeah,
so um, I'm thinking that. You know, at least according
to your material, it didn't go so great. But I
think I think I think a party really liked being

(05:52):
an educator, being a lightbringer. Basically, you know, somebody who
gets to show someone else, maybe a younger person, what
reality is, what it what? What? Um? What they need
to know. So I I think you're bringing that like
part of you to the world of conspiracies, your thoughts.

(06:12):
It feels like a Charlie Rose interview without the naked
walks into the shower. Yeah no, I I uh, I
definitely think that's true. I think like there I did
really enjoy being an educator, despite my many failures as
an educator, and I think, uh, in some ways this
is a chance to like slip in some weird education

(06:33):
if it can be that. I don't know, I say
a lot of dumb ship for an hour at a time,
and occasionally I guess somebody you know, walks away and
feels a little lighter. But I I do like that
idea of like, all right, if we could laugh and
then you know, in a schoolhouse rocky kind of way,
learned something at the back end of it. That's tight.

(06:54):
I mean, that's one of the I think the keys
because so many times, you know, we hear legitimate, real,
multi generational, systemic problems being dismissed. It's like as like, um,
you know there there were and unfortunately our people who
will say, oh, the police are getting vilified. They're not

(07:18):
conspiring to do laundry list of things that have actually
happened and they provably did and so and and because
we're talking about um, people who really are victimized, people's
real lives. Um. One of the approaches that you take
that I think is so clever is yes, you can
we I don't want to say trick people into learning.

(07:41):
But if you can get people to laugh, right, if
you can get people to interact with you on that
emotional level, then there's a trust and they can follow us. Uh,
they can follow you into um you know, the more disturbing,
ugly truths that, as he said, must be acknowledged. You know,
one thing we're taught about off air before we recorded was, uh,

(08:04):
we were talking about something that I I want to say.
I want to save this one for later. In our
prior conversations in preparation for this episode, you have one
thing where he said, whatever happened to Cony? Which has
been a hobby horse of mine as well? You remember

(08:24):
how that blew up? And now all of a sudden,
it's just it was the greatest, greatest quotation. But it
was the biggest viral video of all time at one point,
and it was the most important thing that any any
uh Sarah McLaughlin like figure decided they were going to
take on to save the world. And then we just

(08:44):
stopped giving a fuck halfway through twelve. We didn't even
make it all the way to the end of the
year before we gave up on Cony. It's so sad though,
and also just like a product of like this kind
of throwaway Internet culture where like everything's about like what's
the next big kind of like you know, buzzy item
that can then get circulated and then kind of disappears.

(09:05):
Like even Black Lives Matter and like all the protests
and everything that was so huge and ubiquitous and it
seemed like the world was going to change and then
kind of people move the funk on posted that I
forgot about it, and you know what's it's even weirder,
is like, and I'm sure this connects back to the
cony of it all, is like even with Black Lives Matter,

(09:29):
it then becomes like appropriated by all of these companies
and all these quote unquote representatives who decide that they
are now going to be the face of these organizations,
and so the sentiment changes. It isn't it is even
like that black the Black Square was a dumb fucking
moment on the Internet, sure, but it was a sincere

(09:49):
I think want on a bunch of people's parts to
be like, not this is a bad time, I feel weird.
I want to at least show that I care about
this thing. But then some company, you know, Skittles, post
a black square with little rainbows in it, and now
we all feel confused about what this stuff means. Not
to mention that people were kind of co opting a

(10:10):
hashtag with that that was actually designed to you know,
tag images of police abuse, and then they were flooding
that hashtag with these black squares, and that was the
big kind of criticism of that whole thing. And then
people were on that, hey, take off your tags, because
it literally was covering up the whole point of the
movement right right, And then it became a weird game

(10:32):
of everybody being really proud of themselves for being the
one that knew that they didn't they weren't sup post
to post, and then a bunch of you know, Instagram
models took those squares down and put their titty pictures
back up. It just became an ugly dance on the
internet that that, you know, to your point, all all
of these things the second it's sort of becomes co

(10:53):
opted by attention seekers. Uh, it's it's dangerous and scary
and messy, and in this case, the invisible children remain invisible.
It's very sad, it's very We actually did a whole
episode on that. Yeah, it's messed up. Joseph Cody is
still at large, that's the thing. Yeah, he's kicking it.

(11:14):
He's not going to go to the International Criminal Court.
He's not like this. That's that's the thing that keeps
getting us. I mean, I think one of the things
we're talking about here is that, you know, in this
kind of what's sometimes glibly called a post truth era
or this age of conspiracy and Q and on and COVID,

(11:36):
I think one a horrible thing we've learned is no
one has lost money ever betting on people having short
attention spans, right, And when you're exploring in your show, like, um,
do you have moments from episodes or topics you discussed
with your guests that stay with you, like after after

(11:59):
we've stopped rolling tape, you know, go home where you
kick it and you you think, god damn. Yeah, there
have been a few. I mean, one in particular that
I think I think about a lot is the uh
them the testing for like your your genetic DNA, the
uh the genealogy um and just sort of like the

(12:21):
discovery of like you know in California. Now they can
use that information and basically deny you a mortgage or
deny you like future insurance for things, because they're basically
using that predictive technology where they go, hey, you probably
won't live to fifty. We can't give you a thirty
year mortgage because that's not gonna get our our thing

(12:42):
paid back. And so it's like stuff like that where
you know, the world really is terrifying, and all it
takes is is for one of my family members to
be curious about where we come from, and now all
of a sudden, I'm trapped for life because of those things. Man.
And you combine that with some of the social media
tracking that can happen by these third party companies, and

(13:05):
you know, like you imagine the social credit system that's
been implemented in China that could be here really soon. Dude.
It's um, it's a weird time to just be thinking
how our our internet footprint is going to dictate our
lives and maybe even the lives of our children. Well,
and we've talked about it too, where it's like, Okay,
maybe I'm not scared right now of like being spied

(13:26):
on by the man, you know, and with my webcam
or whatever, but what if down the line our regime
changes is something much more resembling like a totalitarian situation,
and then that technology is funneled directly into like a
Gastapo type organization that can look at my past activism,
or my past speaking out about certain types of faccism

(13:49):
or whatever. It might be something that I would think
would be benign and just part of being a human being,
that all of a sudden could then come back to
bite me under a new regime that does not yet exist.
I mean, that's the that's the whole old thing with Zuckerberg, right,
Like he was just a dork who wanted to be
able to meet pretty girls and he didn't know how
to do it, and then he created an app to

(14:10):
try to to make that happen for him. And then
that that sort of landslides into a guy who is
now collecting all of the data that he can collect
about you for the sake of of just using it
however he sees fit. And you know, it didn't have
to be that way, but we allowed it a certain

(14:30):
level of of reason, and now it's unreasonable in a
way that we can't control well, but Apple is trying
to control it. You see, did you see that nine
percent of all Apple users have decided to allow tracking
by other apples, nine only nine. That means the rest
of us said no, no thanks. And now Facebook, like

(14:53):
and a lot of these other companies that their whole
business model is based on tracking what we do. It's
it's being disrupted. But there's a there's a issue there.
First off, I don't believe any of those official statements,
you know what I mean when they're saying like, oh, okay,
honor System, oh you got us, that's hogwash. But it

(15:13):
goes like it also goes in this thing, you know. Yeah,
we were like Mickey Mouse and the Sourcers Apprentice and
Fantasia Marks. We were all like that guy because we
thought we were building something easier, like, oh, it's easier
to meet people online. I can look in judgment from
afar the people I didn't care for middle school in

(15:34):
high school, whose life is worse than mine. Let me
get that endorphin rush. But the But now we're in
something that you had also mentioned before, and it's something
that we speculate a lot about on our show, which
is that first technology always outpaces legislation because we don't
we don't know how to write these laws, right, and

(15:56):
we have a lot of bad actors with their thumb
on the on Congress when they're writing them. But more importantly,
we are not are the species is not evolving to
a point where it can even like understand this technology. Right,
But what are your thoughts? Our brains are I truly
do believe our brains aren't even equipped for this level

(16:17):
of socializing, this level of sort of like taking in information.
I mean, we're all old enough to remember the Encyclopedia Britannica.
They those were where however many books that they would
that you had to purchase, and that was the permanent
information that you could learn out in the world, documented
and kept in your home, presuming you had the storage space,

(16:40):
you know what I mean. Like, and now we just
have this vast, endless resource that really isn't isn't nailing
down any real opinions or understanding of what the world is.
It justice creating constant contradictions and questions that you know,
it's turning us sick, it's making us weird and dangerous

(17:02):
to each other. We have become weird. No, It's true.
And like, at the very least you could assume that
the Encyclopedia Britannica was vetted and fact checked to some
degree of you know, academic rigor, right, And now it's
like we have access literally to every piece of history
and information and opinion and it's all lumped in and

(17:22):
the same record, and you can't tell the difference between
one piece from the other. Yeah, and even if even
if the Encyclopedia Britannica was fact checked by a mean,
bad intention person, it still was making a clear choice
in terms of what history is, so that we can
then have have a baseline so that we can start

(17:45):
to have a real conversation. But at this point, we're
literally at a state in this country where we're arguing
whether or not viruses or bad. We'll all agreed that
a disease is bad. We what are we doing? It's
Apedia Britannica. What have said? It was least and will

(18:06):
pause for a word from our sponsor, then return with
more from Lanston Kermit, and we're back. Did you see
recently this? Uh, this gave me a very gallows humor chuckle.
I think we have mentioned this, but uh, the news

(18:29):
just hit that there were people who are like, you know,
their political identity is that they don't want to wear
masks for some reason, you know, like don't tread on me,
bro etcetera. Uh. Well, now some of those folks are reportedly,
uh deciding to wear a mask to protect themselves from
people who have been vaccinated, which, like I read that

(18:49):
on some group chat. My only response was all caps poetry.
You're you're worried that the vaccine has created something in
me that you need to now protect yourself from. Hey look,
we look, we don't know, We won't know for generations
to canoe. Please please. Alex Jones says that the vaccine

(19:15):
will instantly give you Alzheimer's and likely cause instant death
among some members of the doctor You gotta put Alex
Jones and Muscle Milk won't. That's what I would have
to say, though, is I can I can somewhat identify

(19:37):
with a lot of people who feel that there's something
weird with the vaccine and with the way the whole
pandemic thing is just played out, because it really does
feel like a movie. We've talked about it before. On
this episode, nothing is happening the right way, the established
way it should happen. Where there's a disease and then
a vaccine is being produced, and it takes a long
time and it gets produced, right, it feels I don't know,

(19:59):
something feels off. And if you have a distrust of
the government already, this whole situation might break your mind
a little bit. Well, very valid distrust. I I here's
where I think a lot of liberals made a very
yucky mistake throughout this whole vaccine process. Is Trump spent
the whole of last year being like, yeah, we're like
a week out from a vaccine. We'll have a vaccine shortly,

(20:22):
and and everybody went on the internet and called him
an idiot. There's no possible way that a vaccine could
come this quickly. You're a buffoon, You're wrong all these things.
And then the second that he was taken out of office,
or at least not even the president, the president elect
came in Suddenly, we can't wait to have that delicious
vaccine poked in our arms. And it's like, no, be

(20:45):
honest about what this is. You didn't like that motherfucker,
and you don't trust what he's saying, and it's comical
with the way he did it. But he came out.
Trump came out with a statement immediately like you're welcome
for the vaccine. By the way, this was all me
And to be fair, the notion of operation warp speed
is a good one. They didn't just rush it out.
People of fundamentally misunderstand what they did. They were able

(21:07):
to subvert some of the normal order of operations for
developing a vaccine, and not even skip steps, but do
things concurrently, as opposed to like on a timeline, where
things happen have to have to happen one after the
other after the other simultaneously. Rather they did it all
kind of at once, And if we were smart, we
would have just said, oh, he hasn't done shipped this

(21:27):
entire time, so there's no reason to presume he's involved
in the vaccine. Just a dude who's talking on the
internet or in front of a podium, and so he
has nothing to do with the product. But instead we
pretended like it was his product and then flipped when
it suddenly was Joe Biden's product. And that's stupid because
now we're all arguing over whether or not the product

(21:48):
is safe. Right, it goes it goes into tribalism at
that point when they're treating things that way. Like, I, Um,
I've got I've got to see the there's there's a
missing piece of empathy because social media in a large
way rewards performativism, but it does not reward uh, sincerity

(22:11):
or deep thought or empathy often. And so I grew
up in south of Atlanta, in a majority black neighborhood.
And when I was talking when the pandemic, I was
talking to one of my old high school buddies. He
lives out in Colorado now, and uh, I was like, hey, man,
what's it like in Colorado? You know, we're locked down
here in Atlanta. Nobody's really going anywhere. And then he said, oh, yeah, sorry,

(22:36):
you have to worry about that, you know. And I
was like, what do you mean. He's like, well, COVID's
kind of a white people thing and I'm gonna be fine.
And I was like, are you dude, are you serious?
We were in boy Scouts together. You're smart and he
was in he was like, he was like, no, Well,
I looked into it, you know, I quote unquote did
my research, and I love this guy seal it with affection.

(22:57):
And he was like, and I just I think a
lot of it's alarmist. Doesn't matter and I think one
of the reasons that he was in that in that
mental space was because of this constant these contradictions, these
flips you're talking about. But then also he brought up
a really valid point um that I think a lot
of people don't acknowledge, which is the systemic discrimination of

(23:21):
the medical system. Like it's if you exercise empathy, whether
it's someone who's like really far right wing and they're
like they're microchip and me because I don't understand how
microchips work, or they're like they're like, hey, in what
about Tuskegee, what about all the horrible stuff that doctors
in the medical system have done to disadvantage populations over

(23:43):
the course of history, Like what do you think about that?
Like do you think that informs part of the um
COVID conspiracies that are circulating today? Yeah, I think a
hundred person I think it's it's mainly the reason why
if black people tell me they're they're not into the vaccine.
I get it. I don't agree with it, right, Like, truthfully,

(24:04):
I just wanted to go back outside, so poke me up,
you know what I mean. But at the same time,
it's like, historically you are making the correct choice. There's
no evidence to prove that that bad choices wouldn't be
made with our bodies in relation to experimental or quickly
made drugs that seem like they're coming faster than they

(24:28):
should be coming and are being. A friend of mine
the other day told me that like they pulled a
vaccine truck in front of his apartment, that like they
were like he lives in, like, you know, a predominantly
black neighborhood, and they're trying to promote like vaccination and
getting as many people vaccinated as possible, and so they
sent out like one of those medical trucks and they

(24:49):
were offering vaccines in the back of this medical truck.
And when he told me, I'm like, no, don't do
that ship, don't don't go exactly. But part of it is, like,
you know, we all know that there's a bunch of
middle class and or wealthy Republicans who are now saying
they're not white people who are not going to go
get the vaccine, and they're not pulling up in front

(25:10):
of these like cul de sacs with vaccine trucks. You're
choosing to do this in a black community. And so
whether or not your intention is to put a microchip
in me or kill me or give me syphilis. Probably not,
But whatever it's in the back of that truck, I
don't trust that it's the same quality that I can
go get in, you know, the white right age. So

(25:31):
I'm gonna I'm gonna chew. I'm just imagining one of
those trucks playing up to one of these gated communities
here in Atlanta, and like the ridiculous wealthy areas, just
trying to get into a gated community. They don't even
like ice cream trucks coming around in those you know,
I mean, just the line of white people holding arms
and blocking the way. They wouldn't never, they wouldn't allow.

(25:55):
I just I just want to mention one historical precedent
for this distrust that I think is interest saying Jay
Mary and Sims, who's like considered to be the father
of gynecology. Um experimented horribly and inhumanely on enslaved people,
and some of the stuff that he came up with
was good. It is stuff that is still used today.
So it's like you can still have that distrust and

(26:17):
people that have done these experiments experiments are horrible and
are dehumanizing individuals and minority populations, but the end result
is still something that is used today. So it's a
really interesting, weird kind of dichotomy there where it's like
how do I how do I like take the good
and throw out the bad, or or learn from history
and not completely harbor this distrust of medical professionals on

(26:41):
the whole. And I think the even more fucked up
on the receiving end of that right is is for
black people, that realization is not as scary as the
fact that they will still put that motherfucker's name on
the stuff. Do you know what I'm saying there, Like
it's they only just now pulled a statue down of
him in New York, like as it only just happened.

(27:01):
It's insane. And it's one thing if like, Okay, he
discovered some stuff that we can still use today. But
the fact that you still feel like you need to
celebrate this dude who literally was like stabbing black women's
vaginas with weird stuff just to and and and forcing
them to do all kinds of messed up things to
be able to figure out what he needed to do

(27:22):
with a body. Is It's it's complicated it's Look, he
found some things, that's cool, but we don't have to
keep like sharing his baseball card like he's you know,
like there's not an asterisk in in his performance and
there's not. Yeah, there's not. Like that's that's the thing
because you know, when researched this before, like the terrified

(27:45):
origins of like things that people agree or overall beneficial
or whole. So now we run into stuff where we
still see those people describe like they have a baseball
card like Jay Mary and Sims will tell you about
the horrific, unclean things he did, but we're also going
to tell you he's the father of guy innecology. And

(28:05):
it's like, does he deserve that? You ain't got to
be the father anymore? Man, He's it's a more episode.
Turns out he's not the father given to somebody else,
you know. Compounded on that, the the very long and
uh consistent history, and i'll say it, of Europeans historically

(28:25):
getting credit for ship that other people knew for thousands
of years, like genera in the smallpox vaccine, that like
he Elvis that let's just be honest, that already existed,
and and it makes me wonder though, when we talk
about this stuff, another thing that we had we had
discussed um and it's I know, it's a it's a

(28:48):
big concern and it's almost cyclical in in conspiratorial thought
is the idea of sterilization. I don't know about you,
but I've, like, I think all of us, one at
one time or another, we have heard someone with utmost
confidence say something like, you know, oh, hey, man, you shouldn't.

(29:08):
You shouldn't drink that because you know they're putting stuff
in there so that you can't have kids. Later we're like, hey,
you know they shouldn't. You know insert brand x here.
I drank a ship ton of mountain dew as a kid,
and I maintained that that's the reason I can't touch
my toes anymore. I think that's what did it. Please

(29:31):
don't do that anymore, Matt. You you got to get
off this ship. Well yeah, sorry U, Matt. We weren't
sure how to tell you this, but Lankston and Nolan
I actually got together and this is an intervention. You know,
if we we did. It's so crazy that I'm drinking
is actually because we found out a long time ago

(29:53):
when we were making videos that this product has a
flame retardant chemical and it brominade. Yeah, yeah, it does.
And it's the it's the stuff that makes it look citrusy.
You know, it's got like that cloudy, like that cloudy. Look, No,
that's citrus. It's fine, don't worry about it. Do you
go forth and be fireproof. But here's here's where I'm

(30:20):
going with this, because you know, when you hear stuff
like that and you're younger, your kid, and especially if
it's someone who has authority in your life and they're saying,
you know, I told you this, then it's I think
it's valid, and it's logical to be like, well, we're
right about a bunch of other stuff too. And then later,

(30:41):
you know, doesn't it become trippy? Like you said earlier,
you know, we're well, we examine stuff, we have fun,
we do some silly things, and then we you know,
this stuff is all fun until you get into the research.
Is Isn't it trippy when you look back, you know,
maybe as an adult or as a teenage ager and
you can research whether that's your Encyclopedia Britannica where you're

(31:03):
on the internet and you say, holy sh it, there
were a ton of people getting sterilized. No one talks
about it, like what, what, what's your stance on that?
Do you find that often these things that are treated
as rumors or conspiracies might have grains of truth within them,
I think almost always. And I think that's again that's

(31:24):
the dangerous part about all of this stuff, is like
conspiracy theorists aren't a hundred percent wrong. They almost never are.
There's like a grain of truth in almost everything that
they're saying, even if it isn't uh, even if it
isn't truly the fact that sort of exists in in
their argument, it's more of like the sentiment that exists

(31:47):
in their argument, or the motive that exists in their argument.
And so like, yeah, you know, is there any historical
evidence that Ronald Reagan cooks up crack in a lab
and then sold it out on the streets. Absolutely not.
But was his administration in in a ton of ways
benefiting from the fact that these drugs were out on

(32:10):
the streets and damaging the communities they were damaging. Fuck yeah,
that dude was having a party. And that needs to
be part of the conversation instead of just going, hey,
you're wrong, because you know this article proves it or
this statement never exists. It's like, that's not really the
what conspiracy is? No one in no one in Compton,

(32:33):
No no one in Chicago owns a coca play uh
coca plantation, right, no one has a room to grow that.
How did it get here? Matt? You had a really
great note in our research duck here just about bringing
up the idea of the war on drugs and how
it intersects with the prison industrial complex, which we know
is a thing we know, private prisons or a thing

(32:55):
we know individuals and corporations make ship tons of money
by people being incarcerated. So how do you do that
by making things like marijuana illegal, by flooding the streets
with crack cocaine and causing an epidemic in these communities
that ultimately lead to people who should be um counseled
and treated like, you know, people with a medical condition.

(33:18):
I mean, I'm simplifying it a little bit, but instead
of incarcerated and then putting money in someone's pocket or
literally free labor force that's only we don't have to
get into that. But it's insane, you know, the whole
thing when you look into just the scratch the surface,
it's insane, and then you know it goes deeper than that.
At like said, I'm interested in your thoughts on that
whole universe of conspiracy. Yeah, I just think I think

(33:40):
the hard part about it is that we all understand
so little of the the actual motive that creates these things.
We just understand the results of those motives, right so,
and when you are the recipient of these bad things,
when when crack does destroy your community, or when you know,
the prison pipeline does take all of these people out

(34:03):
of your homes and out of your your your neighborhoods
and ship you go. The government hates us because of
this reason, or because of how we look, or because
you know, we don't have these kinds of resources. And
the reality is it could just be some motherfucker's going like, Yo,
we need to build a bridge, and we need some
people to build that bridge, and we can't afford to

(34:23):
build a bridge by paying people. So we're gonna, you know,
make a bunch of slaves do it. And we can't
call them slaves anymore, so we'll create prisons that allow
us to call them slaves. It's it's gross and it's
it's you know, disheartening, and it's fucking awful for humanity.
But it isn't always the personal attack that we make
it and we as people sort of need to be

(34:44):
able to start to to figure out exactly which what
the reality of these things is and not just what
it feels like to us on the surface. And it's
and it's it's an incredibly I mean, it's an incredibly
crucial and and difficult thing to do because of I mean,
so many of the facts that we've just named, Like

(35:06):
in the course of this conversation already, for every like
out there conspiracy theory that we have just talked about,
we have found, well, there is this one thing that's
that's like there's that asterisk though, and that's like, I
think that's the space and where shows like my mom
had told me and even stuff theyn't want you to know.

(35:26):
I think that's part of where we live. And it
makes me wonder when we're speculating about, uh, you know,
these systems that are in play. One of my favorite
things about government conspiracy theories is there's this contradiction, there's
this paradox. The same people who cannot, for the life

(35:47):
of them get anything right. Are also side like they
can't fix a fucking room. But simultaneously they heard it
all the cats necessary for nine eleven and they did
it in a really smart way. Uh, and maybe that's
why they're so bad at everything else. And this contradiction,

(36:07):
I think is um This contradiction comes from something that
it's like a psychological cost benefit. I want to see
what you think about this. Would you agree that many
of the actual conspiracies that the government participates in are
more the result of incompetence rather than super villain e

(36:29):
because I see a lot of like we see a
lot of um like conspiracies that the bulk of the
actual conspiracy ends up being this someone in the government
was lazy, incompetent, or they fucked up, and then for
decades they tried to cover it up because they didn't
want to look stupid. Like is that out there? Have

(36:51):
I been just like lost in my head or what
do you mean? I think that's a hundred percent true.
I think the government and the police funk up or
than anybody gives them credit for. And I think, unfortunately
what ends up happening. And this is where the conspiracy
theory has become really dangerous in my mind. And again,
you know, personal opinion, I don't. You guys do way

(37:13):
more thorough research than I do. But what I will
say is that what ends up happening is somebody fox up,
they spend a lot of time trying to cover it up,
and then somebody gets employed that's way meaner than the
people who started the thing and decides to just ice
it all, you know what I mean, Just like they'll
kill off an entire population, or they'll they'll dead the

(37:36):
entire thing by doing a really awful mean thing, as
opposed to just continuing to fumble uh football over and
over again for another decade. Let's pause for one more
word from our sponsors, and then we'll return with further
discussion with Langston Kerm. And we've reached so one thing

(38:01):
I want to bring up is we've talked about the Internet,
because I see what you're saying there, Lengs and Uh.
When the Internet came around, one of the things that
gave us access to everybody if you wanted to, were
Freedom of Information Act requests. And I know that sounds
like a weird little thing and almost just a detail,
but before if you wanted to get one of those things,
you had to physically go somewhere, You had to know

(38:22):
what you were looking for. You had to write to
the government, you know, a letter or something and ask
for a specific thing. Now, there were there were places
on the internet early on where you could find this stuff,
and I think a lot of those end up being
the kernels of truth, the little piece at the center
that is true. It's definitely, oh, this is this is

(38:42):
something admitted. This is something the government admitted to doing.
Like when we're talking about the the origins of the
war on drugs in America. Um, you can see all
of these little things that are objectively true, and then
it's the connective tissue between those things that become is
the conspiracy theory that becomes the the scary part. The

(39:05):
the amount of dumbass documents that government officials have signed
and like printed out and and put on a man's
desk and said keep that we're gonna need it is insane.
It's like, truly, you, you as a human, should not
want this documented. You should want this hidden and burned.
Why are you saving it? Why is it framed on

(39:27):
your wall? Sir? Posterity links posteric well, well it's policy.
You know, accounting has been writing me like crazy for this,
and he did something like mk Ultra for example, where
this weird rogue agent, I mean he wasn't really a
rogue agent. He was a dude that was intended to
behave in the exact psychotic way that he behaved. And and
and then he dosed you know, normal people with LSD

(39:50):
to try to test the effects of it, but he
went way over the top with it. And then they
you know, have these like you know, basically c I
a sanctioned brothels where he dosed you know John's and
and sex workers with LSD and observe them in his
little notebook. But in the end, what undid the whole
thing was these like invoices of him trying to get
paid back for all the booze and all of the

(40:11):
like rental of the brothel property and like even like
mirrors and like sexy decor and like you know, like
velvety lampshades and ship that you know that's crazy. Look,
we've all we've all thrown a party where your friend
gets way too funked up on some ship that you
bought and sorry, you have to hurt yourself accountable. But

(40:32):
you don't have to write a letter about this ship.
This is a bad memory for all of us. Don't
don't write about it. Just move on. Pay the dude off,
apologize to his family because you know he's jumping out
of windows and ship, and move just move on. That's
that's the thing that's like, Uh, it goes almost to
like the banality of evil. Not to be too pretentious,

(40:54):
but it always revives me. I was so startled what
I learned that the i RS doesn't care how you
make money as long as they get a cut. It
is technically not illegal to put high profile drug dealer
or like serial arsenists on your little tax forms as

(41:16):
long as you like, as long as you have like
an estimated this is how much money I make burning buildings.
They're like, all right, bro, and this stays between us,
like and you know that's what I'm saying. They might
red flag that, but they're not going to deal with it.
They might pass it along. But also overworking and understaffed,

(41:38):
that that ship probably doesn't happen nearly as much as
it should because yeah, I mean to that point, I
just don't think there are that many talented evil doers
out there. There are a lot of people who do
evil shit, but they're not that good at it. They're
just kind of like capable of like making some fucked
up choices and then going with it. But they're really

(42:00):
aren't that many, like truly talented people. That's why we
can still talk about Hitler because he was just so
fucking good at it in a way that other people,
since you know, haven't been able to figure out or
at least maintain on any uh lengthy level, not for
lack of try it, which is even more depressing. Uh

(42:20):
Like That's that's another thing, you know, Um when we
talk about stuff like this, and I love the point
you make, like why did you write that down? Bro,
like thinking like you had time to think about whether
or not this was a good idea. We also have
to remember so much of that stuff got destroyed, so
what we're seeing are the remnants of the things. So

(42:41):
so like we will never know the people listening to
this show now, well, we will never know the full
extent of stuff like m k Ultra and and stuff like.
That's why these can that's why these conspiracies exist, and
that's why it's so hard to um, quote unquote bunk one,
and I don't think we should set out to debunk them.

(43:03):
And that's one thing I appreciate that you do, um
so well with your guest, is like you're you're looking
at these right, You're exploring these, and you're saying, well,
what do we know? What are the facts? And I
think that's much more helpful and rewarding than to just say, well,
I think this is dumb because we were told, we
were told it was a conspiracy theory that international banks

(43:26):
were laundering billions for drug cartels until it turned out
to be absolutely true. And I like, I I wonder, um,
we gotta do it. I wonder what you think about
some of the things that are emerging now. Like I
would really love to hear your take on and let

(43:47):
me know if this too big of a question, because
I'm just gonna throw this at you in a very
responsible way for all right, okay, all right, um Linkston,
what's going on with you? And on? Wait? Wait, what's
that whole thing about? But what's your take on it?
Like it it came from nowhere and now it became huge. Um.

(44:08):
I think uh, I think in a weird way, white
people stopped uh, stopped being a minority within their own community,
right that, Like it used to be white minorities like
y'all used to have like separation of your own powers,
that like everybody knew to be mean to the Polish,

(44:28):
where everybody knew to you know, we didn't care for
this group or that group. And then it's sort of
became this weird and it's not all white people's fault.
It was a lot of like minorities being like the
white devil, you're evil, you're bad people, all this big
collection of folks. And then with that, uh sort of
became this uh weird hive mind that was born from

(44:53):
that where a lot of people felt like, Okay, we
all have to to join forces to represent whiteness and
that's not what y'all do. Well, you've you've grown culturally
in this sort of individualistic uh society, right Like black
people we've always had to go like, well, I represent blackness,
I represent a larger community. But white people don't have

(45:16):
to represent each other in that way. And I think
h and on is sort of a a fucked up
misunderstanding of representing a community, Like it's a bunch of
people being like, oh, this is where I can find community.
This is where I can find my whiteness being articulated
in a way that makes me feel heard and seen

(45:37):
and valuable. And so you can turn to the Internet
and you turn to these people who have secrets, and
now all of a sudden, you're doing just frankly, a
bunch of hood rat ship with people on the internet
because you don't know what it means to be an
actual community. Well, and that collective, you know, idea of
whiteness quote unquote that you're describing it has a name.
It's called white supremacy, right, Yeah, I mean it, but

(46:00):
it's inherently bad and awful. And you're right, I never
thought about it that way. But the idea of whiteness
as a positive thing, that's sort of like a no
no territory, right. But but white supremacy obviously is a thing.
And Q and On to me is a jumping off
point of that and to me and I think we
we'd all agree it's sort of the first example of
this decentralized internet cult um that is super fascinating that like,

(46:24):
it's the first example of that I think that we've
really seen where we don't really have a cult leader.
It's the idea that is the leader, and it spreads
like a virus through the internet. And also I think
was probably given a boost by the fact that everyone
was stuck at home, uh, just looking for something to do,
and all these like you know, board housewives and people
out of work, they were just clicking around and looking

(46:44):
for something to identify with and just started going down
these internet rabbit holes and then there you go. And
I think I think even more to that point, it's
truly that that group is what makes me feel so
certain that it is sort of like it's white people
who don't want to be white supremacists but also do
want to see being proud of white as a good thing.

(47:07):
It's it's a bunch of people who do have college
educations or at least resources to be able to to
make other choices, but everywhere they go they're being made
to feel like a monster. And then here comes this
community that doesn't make them feel that way, that makes
them feel heard and seeing like they are inside on
on a conversation and it's all very dumb and like, truly,

(47:29):
you should go do some self reflection instead of turning
to these really bad, mean websites for a way of
you know, creating your identity. But also we as as
a whole have to stop just demonizing entire groups because
that ain't gonna fix them either, you know what I mean, Like,
that's truly not how you make a bunch of suburban
housewives come back to your side by calling them mean,

(47:53):
derogatory names every time they complain about something. I think
that's I mean that that is such a prof own point.
And I think that's I don't think a lot of
people have thought about the evolution of Q and on
in that way. Um. And what I find two things
about that. I find one thing incredibly insightful, and I

(48:13):
find one thing, um, profoundly hilarious. Like when you when
you said, you know, now those those inner boundaries that
used to exist are are we're eroding? It's uh First,
it's I think it's tremendously insightful because because we have
to remember, especially in the West, in the US, Uh,

(48:35):
there there were these very popular gradients, like the most
bullshit example of it is like and it's insufferable. There
are so many, so many white people who all of
a sudden feel super irish one day of the year,
they don't, they don't speak Irish, they've never been there,
they have no idea where Dublin is. But by god,

(48:58):
they're getting drunk. And and then there's this other thing
with like you know, it wasn't that long ago historically
when there was a huge um there was like huge
amounts of racism that like trickled down against like Irish
people were like actual Irish people, not the people lying
at the bar in St. Patrick's day were like less

(49:20):
than wider. They would say, like, you can't trust the poll,
and these ideas like trickled down because then those people
who are getting sort of shot upon were able to say, well,
at least i'm not you know, insert person here. And
Lyndon Johnson was the one who was like, if you
can convince the poorest person, the poorest white person, that
they're better than someone else, they will do whatever you want.

(49:43):
And unfortunately he was right. But here's the hilarious thing.
The way you just described Q and On, it feels
like a very weird um superhero movie or Lord of
the Rings where they all get together and despite their differences,
and there's some guy in Minnesota. It was like, even you,
my fellow poll we're not so different. Yeah, they're all

(50:06):
just making this weird uh walk to to their demise basically,
but you know, they think they're saving the world, and
it's in that way. I guess it's meant to be endearing.
I don't know, it's just all I do take a
lot of solace in the fact that they've kind of
that que kind of like just left them out to dry,
and now they they're just sort of wavering with these

(50:28):
feelings and no explanation. It's the same thing that happens
with so many culture They make some sort of doomsday
prophecy and then that ship doesn't come true, and then
where then what are you left with? Feeling kind of
like you were duped or doubling down and just pushing
it even further out of like some weird misplaced sense
of justice. I don't even know. It's very confusing. I'm

(50:50):
sure you guys have seen it. But that that lady
mother God, I think I was certain. Yeah, who she
got killed. She got fucking murdered by her people. Now
mad didn't know she no, I think she died of
cancer and then they like kept her body and it
was like mommified. It was reserving ship. Yeah, they put

(51:13):
glitter on her eyes and stuff. It was it was dasty,
but sorry, like we just didn't. We just talked. It's
a lot to take in though, and like that, you know,
it reminded me of like, you know, Heaven's Gate kind
of situation. Um, but it was even weirder than that.

(51:34):
And I didn't fully understand what the point was, Like
it was about a comet kind of wasn't a matt
We remind everyone, like what did the whole central She
she had been reincarnated over five billion years nineteen billions
dating the existence of this universe, and she was a
mean alcoholic, would beat the ship out of him every

(51:57):
time she drank at night. But I will say, and
you brought up Heaven's Gay I I actually really respect
the Heavens Gay people. As far as the cult is concerned.
I think that they they were they really believed what
they were saying in a way that was truly endearing
compared to I think a lot of these other people,
like Mother God Lady doesn't believe she's a reincarnated version

(52:22):
of God. She's just a drunk who who wants to
control people. But d and or what was his name
dough and t. They truly believed everything they were saying,
so much so that they were willing to castrate others,
castrate themselves, all for the sake of sort of being
free of of the you know, the life that they
were leading. And it was consensual, which I think is

(52:45):
the most head trippy part. Oh yeah, that's there is
a new documentary about Heaven's Gate that just came out
that I really want to see. But Apple White, the leader,
he took his own life too. Write like, I mean,
they all put their money where their mouth was poison
or whatever, and that's fucking tight. I don't know that

(53:08):
they committed to the bit they followed through man and
we you know, we're we're a world with a species
where a lot of people are out of contexts could
sound very fucked up, but a lot of people are
all talking, they're not committal, Yeah exactly, And these these
people truly believed in what they were saying. I don't
think it's right. I certainly am not encouraging anyone to

(53:30):
go join a cult and take their own lives, but
I do think that, like much in the way that
we were talking about Encyclopedia Britannica. Commit to something, make
a choice about what the facts are for your world,
and live in that world as opposed to living in
this nebulous space where everything is right and everything is wrong.
And now we're all just arguing over the most ridiculous stuff.

(53:53):
I think that's fair. But we are also just kind
of describing the way cults take people in because they're
looking for an there, and cults are inherently damaging. I
want to be a cult leader someday. And that's the
whole reason I came on this podcast. I can see it.
I can see it. I agree with good at it. Man,

(54:14):
I think you have again, but I want to like, like,
I want to make sure you know what you're getting into, dude,
Like I walked back, because you're on call all the
time with really clingy people until you get to figurehead status.
You're like a really underpaid anesthesiologist. You gotta take these
texts at three am. Remember what weird ship you said

(54:34):
to them earlier. Get the nomenclature right, that's fair, I
got your back. Brainwashing is a full time job. It's
not the easy, uh, the easy trip on the beach
that I think we've all imagined it to be. Well,
this is how you start. You buy a small store
call it books and stuff, and then just have your

(54:55):
messages blasting out everybody walking on the street. You slowly,
you slowly become more stuff than books and plus you know,
I think we can agree on air man um if
if you, if you decide when and go through with
it and commit to the time, got your back, produce
some advertising to press the flash for you. We'll be like, hey,

(55:17):
we know we talked a lot about cults on this
show over the years. Um, so we finally have one
we'd like to recommend. We checked it out. It's a
good friend Lankston. Uh, he's solid and he's got some
he's got some good stuff to say. I love the
idea of of there being some sort of cult advertising
right after, like Warby Parker Glasses. Just you're promoting certa

(55:40):
mattresses and also a maniacal cult. Both of those things
are available for your your subscription. Are you feeling lost
well to worry? Yeah, So like this is so one
thing we're running into. I know, I know that we've
we've been talking about a lot out of things. Um,

(56:01):
really quickly, the time is flown by there. There are
a couple of things that we just had to I
had to ask you about because this is kind of
this I don't know about you guys, Matt Noel. I
found myself in a sort of rare situation where I
heard a concept, um, we're talking before the show that
I had never heard, which is this Lankston, you said,

(56:22):
what about the idea that vaping isn't bad for you?
Those deaths were just early cases of COVID. I've never
heard that. Oh hell yeah, I I think I that
was just me talking. I think I do think. I
genuinely remember in twenty nineteen, that that end of nineteen

(56:43):
when everybody was like, vapants killing people, everybody's dying from vaping.
No their talk. Yeah, they're taking the fucking jewels off
the shelf. They're like now making commercials to tell kids,
don't you dare go near a jewel, it will kill you.
And then all of a sudden it was the conversation anymore.
But then COVID started popping up. So I don't have

(57:04):
any evidence of this. I don't even want to begin
to present it as if I've done the research, but
I will say the timing seems funky as fun in
my mind. Well, we we have something to bring to
the table here, actually, because it was found that quite
a few of those deaths I don't believe it was
everyone could be explained in this way, but quite a

(57:26):
few of them that made news had to do with
um it was weed oil or you know, the vapes
like weed vapes, and there the juice and the juice
and there were there were a couple of groups. But

(57:49):
it really was found. You could read about this in
the Washington Post. It really was found that vitamin e
acetate was being added to several of the mixtures essentially
and was actually killing people. The vitamin e ascetated levels
that shouldn't be in bodies, and it was actually really
damaging and appeared to kill multiple people. Wasn't that black
market vape juice? Though? It wasn't like the stuff you

(58:12):
would buy off the shelves. I mean, there's so much
black market still obviously with not being legal everywhere where
you get you know, the cartridges or whatever from someone
or maybe they make it at home. You don't know
what the process is, not that it's like super transparent
or you know, everything that comes from places you buy
comes from vapes, you buy dispensaries. But I believe wasn't
it traced to like local kind of like you know,

(58:34):
dealers that were making the stuff themselves. Yeah, but Matt,
I'm disappointed to know that COVID, Big COVID got to
you man. Maybe they did. Okay, the CDC's right over here,
but hey, you know what else is right over here,
you guys in Alpharetta there is the headquarters for the
Colonial Pipeline. Have you guys been reading about any of

(58:56):
that lately? What's going on with the hack? Yeah? So
I try to go out last night to get gas
over here off Beauford Highway, and there was no gas.
So I drove to another gas station and there was
no gas. And do you guys, I mean, I'm sure
we all kind of understand that feeling, or can at
least empathize with that feeling, But needing or wanting needing

(59:16):
or wanting to put gas in your car and it
not being available is really scary, because you know, in
those times, in some of these the most frightful times
in this country and across the world, I think, is
when there's mass panic occurring. And I just wanted to
ask you, guys in lengths and you in particular, like,
what do you do to both prepare your mind and

(59:39):
your surroundings for when one day ship hits the fan
from like it doesn't matter what it is, like there's
just chaos. What do you do hoarding everything? Hoarding everything?
I'm kidding, I gually don't know. I think, uh, you
know this is this is like a news story that's
sort of being hidden underneath a lot of news stories.

(01:00:00):
At least it feels that way, and that like they're
not even sure how to fix it quite yet, so
they're not trying to make as big of a deal
about it as it probably is. That like a bunch
of hackers figured out a way to cut off an
entire coasts of of oil and gas and ship. That's
insane and so like, I truly don't know what to

(01:00:21):
do with any of these feelings. I really want a
gun and I don't have one yet, And uh, I
think I don't know what that's supposed to do. But
boy would that make me feel at least like I'm
I'm preparing for an apocalypse if I had one. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's the uncertainty, you know, you would
think that there would be more like the democratization of

(01:00:42):
information logically should give us more sources of information. But
we're we're finding, at least here in the West, is that, um,
the faucets that control the flow of knowledge are really
being held by relatively few players, right, So, like we know,

(01:01:02):
like I I know this sounds paranoid, but I think
we're all on the same page after seeing so many
things that have had a recording spin, you know, like
like another thing. Just to point this out for everybody
listening who's hoarding gas. I understand it's easy to confuse

(01:01:22):
fear with fore thoughts, but I think a lot of
these people don't know. Gas goes bad. Gas goes bad,
and about three months, yeah, it's it's gonna sit in
your garage next to a pilot toilet paper because if
you were hoarding that, you probably didn't shoot enough to
get through all of it. And then you've got these
tanks that you can't sell, so now your garage just

(01:01:43):
looks and smells weird. Be safe, folks, And if you
only listen to more podcasts and invest in that tushy bidet,
it would have been a much better situation, you know,
when the ship hit the fan. Literally it wasn't that
a weird trippy situation though, Like that feeling of going
to the grocery store and shelves just being bare, whole
aisles like you know, canned goods, like that was the

(01:02:04):
closest I've ever felt to like, Oh, this is what
the Apocalypse is gonna feel like when it starts, and
maybe this is it's starting. Maybe this is it's starting now.
And that that was the part that scared me the most,
was like it very well did feel like this was
its starting, and I truly just still winning got pop tarts,
you know what I mean? Like I tried to pretend

(01:02:27):
it wasn't starting because I wanted my normalcy back, and
that's fucking nuts, Like we we should have all just
started pushing shelves down and fighting each other, but instead
we pretended to still have like, you know, conventions at play.
And it's well, that's your brain helping you out, dude,
because I mean, you're our brains are remarkably adaptable, and

(01:02:48):
we normalize things so quick. You know, I remember how
quickly I just kind of just started stopped paying attention
to the like remain indoors signs everywhere, and like everyone
in masks all of a sudden, like after a pull
a months, it just kind of felt like the norm.
And occasionally I'll do a little reality check where I'm like,
wait a minute, oh yeah, this is still mega weird,
and y'all wonder why people are skeptical of the government vaccine.

(01:03:12):
Come on, come on, just to get your pop tarts,
join the right cults everything, you know. Pop tarts are
a great choice, by the way, I mean just it
would last for a long time, if you need it
on longer than gasoline. That's that's a fact. They should
put that in the box. What flavors you go for?

(01:03:33):
I this is never a welcomed response, but I love
the unfrosted strawberry Those are my fucking favorite. Like unfrosteds. No,
that's awesome, man, Wow, nobody ever likes it. Everybody's like,
what the funk is wrong with you? And I don't know.
I like the cinnamon sugar ones and people don't like

(01:03:54):
those either. I was, I was, thank you, okay, alright,
Well we've got like we're The thing is, we have
so many more things to talk about. It would be
awesome to have you back on the show in the future.
If if you're at all interested, I'm awesome, and we
also want to know. Like, as people are listening to

(01:04:17):
show today, um, they're thinking we'll probably get letters about this,
they're thinking, why didn't you talk more about you know
this thing? Why didn't you ever bring up this thing? Well,
that's because if that's because this show is not My
mom has told me. If you want to hear those
full conversations and if you want those deep dives, um,

(01:04:37):
please do check out this show. I know we talked
about it off air, but one of my favorite episodes,
one that really made me think was the most recent one,
which in which Linkston, you and your guests, but Year asked, Hey,
why are all these billionaires super into getting into space? Now? Yes,

(01:05:02):
we we unpacked a lot of the sort of newfound
space exploration that's coming from Daddy Bezos and Daddy Musk
and all the other powerful people. And butser who is
a very Butsher Salahuddin, who is a very brilliant comedian
and writer, theorized that there's a real possibility they're just

(01:05:23):
planning to send us to space, which I had not
ever considered themselves. But they were like he's like, nah
funk that they're gonna stay on Earth where the you know,
the Earth will be a lot cleaner and less populated
and instead send a bunch of poor idiots to space instead.
Oh boy, one way, the first trip is free. But

(01:05:45):
there is something, uh that that you wanted to bring
up right? Well? Yeah, Well, I I just to give
anybody listening another suggestion, I would say, listen to the
episode where where what is it? Oh, you're you're talking
with the Megan Markle of background actors ums and sorry,

(01:06:05):
he'll get a kick. Uh and uh. It's just a
great discussion and I think it lines up a lot
with if you if you like listening this show, it's
it's funny, but there's like some very serious conversation happening
in the background there. Um, just recommend that episode. Yeah, no,
I I It's one of the reasons I think you
guys have such a great show is the ability to

(01:06:27):
to dance between a healthy, fun, light conversation and some
real heart wrenching ship that maybe people should be stressing about.
And and that's a it's not an easy dance to do,
and you do it well. So I really appreciate you
having me. It's been a pleasure. Many take that coming
from LINKSN take it because we have. You know, I

(01:06:54):
think we've made a pretty clear um to our fellow
conspiracy realist that we we don't just enjoy my mama
told me. We all believe it is an important show, um,
and it's doing something that is only going to become
increasingly important in the future. But also that's not the

(01:07:14):
only thing that as far from the only thing you
have on the horizon. Been hearing rumors about an upcoming
show with HBO. Yeah, yeah, called Pause with Sam J.
Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so, uh,
it's a late night talk show hosted by my dear

(01:07:35):
friend and and uh now boss Sam J. She's hilarious,
she's great, and it it really is just uh grumpy
lesbian taken on the world and and really, you know,
sort of planting her flag in a space that for
a long time has been a bunch of of of

(01:07:55):
sort of like white stiff voices and she's doing the
complete opposite of that. And I've been very lucky to
head right this show and it's great and you should
check it out right now on HBO. It's it's on
HBO and HBO Max. And it's funny and and it
also says some stuff that means something but maybe not.
It's a half hour television. Who cares, that's perfect. I

(01:08:19):
just want to say, personally, thanks so much for coming on,
like it's been Honestly, it's one of the podcasts I
listened to all the time, Like the stuff you did
with some of the snl uh folks that are on
right now, like Chris Red and I go wo to him,
like some of those conversations man, the spaghetti the spaghetti thing,
like I couldn't stop laughing. It's just great. Really, no,

(01:08:41):
this is so much fun. I'm so happy that I
got to be here, and I'm so happy that you're
returning in the future. In the meantime, if people want
to learn more about your work within the field of comedy,
the field of podcasting, the field of acting and writing,
where can they go to to learn more or to
follow you online? Now that we've talked about dangerous social
media is h please please follow me online and all

(01:09:04):
of my dangerous dangerous tweets and Instagram posts at Lengthston Kerman,
It's just l A N G S T O N
K E R M A N. It's my first and
last name. Nobody else wanted it, so I got all
the direct contact for that um and yeah that you
can follow me there and please listen to my mama
told me it comes out every Tuesday's and now Thursdays.

(01:09:27):
We do many episodes. So yeah, it's fun. It's a
cool time. Well that was great. I we're we're recording
this after the interview, but what a fantastic time. And
we looked into so many conspiratorial ideas. You know, it
makes you want to go listen to my mom and

(01:09:48):
told me what you should also do, like immediately because
it's great. Yeah. Man, I'm telling you that Ego Wildum
episode had me just laughing my butt off. Do it.
Go listen to that now. Yeah. Hey, if you want
to write to us with about anything that we discussed
in this episode, you want to contact us in any way,
we have so many ways to do that, so many,

(01:10:10):
so many all over the internet. You can find us
a Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook and Twitter, Conspiracy Stuff show
on Instagram. Yeah, and if you're someone who is not
into social media, if you have Valley concerns about you know,
the episodes that we did in the past on big
data as you stand out of the phrase uh. If

(01:10:32):
you're a little more old school, no worries, you can
contact us directly via our official telephone number one eight
three three st d w y t K three minutes.
Those three minutes are yours. Give yourself a cool nickname,
tell us what's on your mind, tell us if you're
okay with us using your voice or nickname on air,

(01:10:52):
And most importantly, do not feel like you have to
censor yourself. You've got a story and you're like, how
do I tell this ten minutes story in three minutes?
Never fear write it out and send it to us.
We read every email we get at our good old
fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at i heart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know

(01:11:32):
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