1211: Conspiracy Theories | Skeptical Sunday

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Welcome to Skeptical Sunday.

I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, skeptic and comedian Michael Regilio.

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Today on the show, seems like more and more as we scroll social media, we find out that this professional athlete thinks the earth is flat, that rapper thinks vaccines enlarged her cousin's testicles.

Conspiracy theories have gone from the far corners of the internet to front and center of everyone's social media feed.

This topic is equal parts fascinating, frustrating, and downright frightening in my opinion.

From the moon landing hoax to QAnon to Jewish space lasers.

Why do they have to be Jewish?

I guess we'll find out.

We're tracing the strange, often dangerous path of the human imagination when it gets tangled up with fear, tribalism, and bad information.

Comedian and skeptic, maybe in that order, Michael Regilio is here to help us get to the bottom of why so many people believe in conspiracies.

What makes these theories so compelling and how can we separate healthy skepticism from full-blown paranoia?

Hey, Jordan, tell me, do you believe in any conspiracy theories?

It depends on what you mean by conspiracy theories.

One widely accepted definition defines it as an explanatory belief that secret, malevolent groups acting in concert cause significant events, despite weak or contrary evidence.

Then no, not really.

Do you believe in them?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I used to believe in a bunch of them.

Let's start with the classic that America never went to the moon.

I believed this, of course, because

there's no way we went to the moon.

I mean, hello, waving flag in a vacuum.

Well, first of all, I thought we were going to be skeptical of conspiracy theories on this episode.

Sorry, the young man that lives in my brain still gets out from time to time.

Sure.

Of course, I don't believe that.

But it was a conspiracy theory that I once believed.

And I believed it for good reasons because I saw a television show about it.

Yeah, great reason.

So I think I may have seen the same show, though.

Everybody kind of saw that back then.

And most of us were smart enough not to take it to heart, but here we are.

Yeah.

But look, that was old me.

That is to say, that was young me.

And I was all in.

Now, in my defense, this may have been because I was under 25 and my prefrontal cortex wasn't fully formed, which is one reason for believing in conspiracy theories.

Again, this is something we're about to get into, but let's just say it's more likely you believe in conspiracy theories when you're young, particularly a young man, because the young male brain literally isn't capable of processing all the information properly.

Right.

The prefrontal cortex.

I believe we've talked about this before a few times on the show.

It's kind of the final addition to the human brain, evolutionarily speaking.

It's actually fully developed in young women before it fully develops in young men, which surprises probably no one.

Yeah, definitely not me.

And I think I actually mentioned this in a previous episode as well, but when I was a young man, I jumped off an 80-foot cliff into a quarry and blew my eardrums out.

Now, you could blame that on me being stupid, but I blame it on the fact that my prefrontal cortex wasn't fully formed and I didn't have critical thinking skills yet.

That said, that very still developing prefrontal cortex that stopped me from making good decisions also allowed me to fall for some pretty crazy ideas like the moon landing hoax, just because I saw a very slanted television show.

And I will tell you this though, I stopped believing in that one for as bad of reasons as I started believing in it.

Somebody I respected made fun of me.

Fine, I make fun of you all the time.

Haven't noticed you changed your mind on much.

Maybe it has, maybe the respect part is the missing, the missing link.

That's right.

I stand by my statement.

That said, I was in the full throes of the Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin are liars stage of my life.

Oh my God.

And at that time, my girlfriend took me to a comedy show to see a famous comedian she was friends with.

After the show, we all went to a bar and I started shooting my mouth off about how America never went to the moon.

The famous comedian did what comedians do best and roasted the living shit out of me in front of everyone.

I believe he called me the dumbest person he had ever met.

So I went home feeling pretty roasted, pretty burned, you name it.

And I never mentioned the moon hoax again.

And I slowly started looking into it.

It's hard for me to admit this, Jordan, but there's some chance I was, in fact, the dumbest person ever, and we totally went to the moon.

The skeptical atheist origin story.

Something tells me you're not the first one to have been essentially scorned into your skepticism and scorned out of your dumb beliefs.

Oh, I wish that was the end of it for me.

Again, not easy for me to admit this, but around the turn of the century, my friend showed me a film.

that both reignited my interest in conspiracy theories, but it also gave me the final nail to drive into the coffin of conspiracy thinking for me forever.

Turn of the century, eh?

Okay, oh boy.

I seem to recall a rather poignant, important historical event around that time that birthed some of the most persistent conspiracy theories of all time.

I'm no psychic, but let me see if I can read your mind.

Was the film called Loose Change?

Yep.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

So the guy here that I brought here to dispel conspiracy theories is a former moonlending moonlending hoaxer 9-11 truther?

Great.

We are scraping the bottom of the skeptic barrel over here, man.

Come on.

Okay, look, again, my 9-11 truther days were very short-lived.

And it was because of the film Loose Change that I finally found the keys to unlock the skepticism on conspiracy theories forever.

Because I was watching Loose Change, and rather than getting upset by the truth that America had attacked itself on 9-11, I was getting excited.

I was feeling powerful.

My heart was racing.

And I thought to myself, oh, dude, I've got a secret truth that I need to get out to the world.

I'm not just some loser sitting in front of my laptop.

I'm a hero with a secret truth.

That was it.

The second I realized I was feeling that, I realized why I wanted to believe this.

Like, my motivations became clear.

In that moment, I began looking into all the very good counter-arguments to all the very bad conspiratorial arguments.

I learned how to debunk.

You believed and then went, ah, okay, this is motivated reasoning.

That's interesting.

I would imagine people believe in conspiracy theories for a bunch of different reasons, not only that.

Oh, for sure, they do.

But hold on, before we get into the psychology of why people believe in conspiracy theories and even the neuroscience of why people believe in conspiracy theories, let's go back and take a look at the history of conspiracy theories.

All right, let's connect some dots.

Okay, so I'm sure we could go all the way back to the beginning of the human race, just based on how the human brain works.

No doubt one of the earliest tribes of humans blamed one of the other earliest tribes of humans for, I don't know, the crops failing or something.

But for our purposes, let's go back to a persistent theme throughout conspiracy theories and its earliest incarnation.

That is blaming the Jews.

Okay.

Now, this hateful and terrible conspiracy takes on like a ton of narratives, but let's start with blood libel.

Okay, we're off to a rather dark start.

I know a little bit about this.

In a nutshell, it's the idea that Jewish people murder Christian children and use the blood for rituals.

And I wish I was making this up because it's so stupid that I'm shocked anyone would ever have believed it.

But they also believe that Jews would use the Christian blood of children for making matzah bread.

Okay, well,

that's really just so stupid.

I want to make a joke, but I also know where this is going, and I know it's no joking matter.

But Christian children, blood bread, I mean, like, matzah's white, first of all.

I guess logic never really tends to permeate these ideas too much, but where does the blood go if the bread is white?

I mean, it's the whole thing is dumb.

Yeah, super dumb.

Look, the idea of accusing Jews of murdering children, the so-called blood libel, actually goes way, way back.

You can find references as early as the second century BCE in the writings of Appion, but it really took off in medieval Europe after Christianity spread, especially in the 12th century following the First Crusades.

So the first big case was in Norwich, England in 1144.

A boy named William was found dead in the woods and the local Jewish community was accused of killing him.

The story went that they took a Christian child before Easter and tortured him the same way Jesus was tortured.

then hanged him on Good Friday.

It wasn't a Good Friday for William.

Sorry.

Anyway, horrible, sickening stuff.

And I'll be honest, when I first saw that we were going to do conspiracy theories today, I kind of imagined we would have a good laugh.

You know, I wasn't expecting it to be this dark so early in the show.

I'm kind of dreading where things go from here.

You know what?

That's the thing about conspiracy theories.

Although most of them are laughable, when you peel back the layers of this onion, like all onions, you start to cry.

So as the Middle Ages went on, the blood libel myth really spread.

It even got mixed up with other accusations, like claims that Jews were poisoning the wells.

Yeah, sadly, I've heard of that one too.

The whole poisoning of the wells thing.

I guess back then they didn't understand the relationship between microbes and standing water and all that stuff.

Yeah, well, you know what?

Even if they had understood those things, they still would have blamed the Jews because sadly the conspiracy was in some ways financially motivated.

Because Europe was under the grips of the Black Death, rumors abounded because, as you said, they didn't know about microbes or germs or rats carrying germs.

So they blamed the Jewish population, claiming they poisoned the wells to kill Christians.

The Jewish population at the time often lived separated from the Christian population because, well, you know, good old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

Sure.

But because of both their isolation and the fact that they had stricter hygiene practices than their Christian counterparts, they may well have had lower death rates, which just further fueled the fear.

That is so twisted.

Hey, you can't live among us, but also, why are you, Lot, not also getting the very communicable disease that the rest of us are dying from?

Come on.

Yeah, for sure.

And to make things worse, because, you know, it was the dark ages, they would also grab some Jewish people and torture them into giving confessions.

And they would then use those confessions as evidence that the Jewish people were, in fact, poisoning the wells and rivers.

I hate this conspiracy theory.

This one's making me sick.

Tell me we got fun ones later on.

Do we have fun ones later on?

We do have fun ones later on, but I have to warn you that this one's about to get even sicker because at that time, Pope Clement VI actually tried to stop this madness, pointing out that the Jews were also dying of the plague, but his attempts fell on deaf ears because it was politically convenient to blame Jews and allowed local authorities to cancel debts owed to Jewish lenders.

I heard about this.

This is pretty gross.

Pushing something as disgusting as that just for money.

But this actually, this happened to Jews in a lot of countries at a lot of times.

I think entire royal empires, Spain or Portugal, whatever, they borrowed from Jewish lenders and then blamed them for some nonsense, like a plot or whatever, in order to get themselves off the hook for paying the debt.

And then they'd just be like, we got to get rid of all these Jews so that they don't try to collect on the money we've borrowed from them.

I think, again, Spain, Portugal, somebody correct me on this, but possibly elsewhere.

I'm going off memory.

It might have even happened in all.

This might be an all of the above kind of kind of thing and not an either or kind of thing.

We're about to see that a great many people might not believe the conspiracy theories they propagate but push them anyway because of money i don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay that guy yes him so you see if you had a time machine and you could have gone back and talked to them about microbes and germs and rats they would have found something else to blame the other on which we'll get into as we discuss the psychology of conspiracy theories.

A lot of it comes from the fact that we are still very tribal.

The medieval Europeans had found their tribe, the Christian tribe, which meant blaming the non-Christian tribe for their problems.

One of the other tribes of note was, what, the Jews at this point in time?

Oh, yeah, were tribal, and I'm sure medieval Christian Europeans othered quite a few other populations, but yeah.

Yeah.

Let's get on to where this was going, because it ballooned in medieval Europe.

Another famous case was in Trent, Italy, in 1475.

A little boy named Simon went missing around Easter, and his father accused the local Jewish community of killing him to use his blood to make matzah again for Passover.

I so wonder how many of these are like parents killing their children and then being like, the Jews.

Trust me, bro.

Oh, that is such a good point.

Right?

Like, why is the first go-to must have been the Jews?

Not like, yeah, we have a serial killer on the loose around here.

Clearly.

Or like, he went hiking all the time alone and he's missing now.

I mean, it just seems weird to go straight to the Jews.

Or he, you know, ruined a good, I don't know, bucket and the father beat him to death.

Yeah, he's definitely not buried under the cornfield or anything.

So blame the Jews.

This conspiracy theory now, if you look at it, is stretching from William of Norwich in 11, whatever, to Simon or Simone or whatever of Trent across all of Europe at this point over the centuries.

I don't know why the stupidity of the idea that Jews were killing Christian children to bake bread is bumming me out so much.

It's so dumb.

I know that like we're going to think things we believe now were dumb or whatever, but like, God, people back then just so stupid, so freaking ignorant and stupid.

Holy smokes.

Yeah, well, I got news for you.

You're probably going to be experiencing a lot of that particular emotion in this episode.

All right.

Now, in poor little Simon's case, people started claiming miracles were happening after his death, and they attributed them to Simon or the ghost of Simon or the spirit of Simon or whatever, however, miracles work.

He was even canonized into sainthood by the Catholic Church, though the Vatican removed little Simon's sainthood in 1965.

That's rough.

Removing the sainthood of Little Simon.

You wonder what does it take for them to be like, you know what?

Nah, not this one.

It's been done for like a thousand years ago, man.

Chill.

500 years ago.

What's the point?

Yeah, those miracles couldn't have been Simon.

We figured it out, but anyway, look, connect the dots, Jordan.

Sainthood is just one big conspiracy anyway.

But sometimes the conspiracy theorist becomes the one conspiracies theorize about, as we'll see with the Catholics and the poppish plot.

The poppish plot?

I'm not even sure I know what the word poppish means.

Never heard that.

Poppish is an old derogatory word meaning relating to the Pope or Roman Catholic Church.

Nowadays, actually, people still use it.

It refers to somebody who's a mediocre songwriter.

Oh, yeah, man, I guess that song's okay.

I don't know if I'd call it pop, but

poppish.

Yeah, that joke is...

Dumb-ish.

All right, continue.

Keep going.

Away from this.

Away from this nonsense.

Okay, in 1678, England was gripped with a conspiracy theory that was part religious hysteria, part political manipulation, and completely outright lies.

A disgraced clergyman by the name of Titus Oates, kind of a badass name.

Yeah, it sounds like a band from the 60s or 70s, but continue.

It predated Holland Oates.

It was Oates' first.

That's what.

That's what I'm thinking.

That's what I'm thinking of it.

Yeah, Titus Oates.

Anyway, so Titus Oates claimed he had unearthed a sinister Catholic plot to murder the king.

He claimed that priests were planning to murder King Charles II so his brother James, Duke of York, a Catholic, could ascend to the throne.

Titus Oates also claimed that the Catholics were planning to massacre all the Protestants just to put the scare and the hate into the general population.

Yeah, because, you know, if you just say, hey, there's a plot to kill the king, I think there's a decent chance most of the population might be like, okay.

Or just outright cool with it.

Or ask, how can I help?

Yeah, hey, do you need a hand?

But if you add an, oh, and also they're going going to kill all of you guys too.

Then it's like, oh, all right, recipe for mass hysteria.

It sounds a little bit like Game of Thrones.

I'm surprised there's not some HBO series about this.

Oh, man, it would actually make a pretty good show because things go nuts.

See, anti-Catholic sentiment was already pretty high in Europe at the time because of religious conflict within the country.

At least 22 innocent priests were hanged.

Suspicion also hung everywhere.

Even Queen Catherine of Braganza, who was Charles II's wife, who was a Catholic, was accused of treason.

The whole country was going nuts with the paranoia.

So by 1681, though, the whole thing had been uncovered as a complete lie and the conspiracy unraveled.

The tables turned and it was Titus Oates walking through the streets of London while being whipped in front of everyone and ultimately he was imprisoned.

Wow, so that really happened.

There it is, man.

Game of Thrones.

It's hard to imagine that really being a thing.

Maybe we should bring that back.

Some people kind of need that, I think.

Yeah, I know.

Hey, not everything they used to do was bad.

I mean, nowadays it's called canceling, and forget it.

I mean, you see it on the internet all the time.

It needs to be like a trial.

I know some judges do this.

Have you seen this?

Some judges make, like, have you shoplift?

They're like, you have one year of probation, but also you're spending every Saturday.

wearing a sign, a sandwich board that says, I shoplifted from Target, and you have to stand outside Target.

No way.

No, I haven't seen that.

Yeah.

It's controversial, of course, because some people are like, well, it's cruel and unusual.

And it's like, no, no, no.

Thumb screws are cruel and unusual.

Being castrated might be cruel and unusual.

You standing outside of Target with a sign that says I'm a shoplifter is not cruel and unusual.

In fact, it's way less than what you tried to do to this business, and you might need to have your reputation besmirched.

That is crazy.

Yeah.

What's crazy to me is, as you say it, is like they think that's cruel and unusual, but go to prison where there's a pretty good chance you will be raped and there's nothing we can do about it.

That's not cruel and unusual.

I would much rather wear the sandwich board than be like hanging out with people who settle disputes by blinding you with soap or whatever the hell, like or beating you with some kind of pipe that they've found.

No, I'll take the sandwich board.

Thank you.

Yeah, or shitting you in the back with a sharpened spoon.

Whenever I do these interviews with guys who've been through prison, I can't remember who this was.

It might have been like Ricky Freeway, Ricky Ross, or whatever.

But it was like, yeah, I knew this guy was going to kill me.

So I tucked magazines into my pants under my shirt.

And that was like his body armor was these thick magazines.

And when they stabbed him, it wouldn't go through his kidney area because he had like a men's health stacked in there or something, right?

Like a bodybuilding magazine or I don't know, Game Pro, whatever stuck in his pants.

It's like, no, I'll take the sandwich board, man.

Any day of the week.

Continue.

Yeah, don't get me started on prison.

I've watched too many prison docs and the craziest I ever saw is such a side note here, but in some juvenile hall, I believe it was, where people would empty the toilet in their cell because they could talk to the people in the cell below them.

It was called Talking on the Bowl, and they would just hang out all day talking into a toilet.

And then the person in the cell below them could talk into their toilet.

And it was like basically like, you know, kids do with the cups and the string or something like that.

What if you have to go to the bathroom?

You just fill the toilet back up and flush and fill the toilet back up.

You know, roommate or cellmate or whatever does their business, and then you empty it again and go back to talking on the bowl.

And you could tell somebody had been talking on the bowl too much because they would have like rash all around their face and their mouth.

Anyway.

Oh,

that's so disgusting.

And can you imagine, like, hang on, Tim, I got to call you back.

John's got to take a dump.

And then it's like, after that, you know that that person just used like some container to dump every, oh, God, I don't even want to continue this.

Just take my mind off of this with something less disgusting.

QAnon promised secret codes, secret cabals, and secret revelations.

All we've got here, though, are discount codes.

But hey, at least those are actually real.

We'll be right back.

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Now, back to Skeptical Sunday.

Just take my mind off of this with something less disgusting, like murdering innocent people.

Let's go back to the disgusting anti-Semitism.

Yes.

Please.

Okay, so as you'll see, it's not so much about blaming the Jewish people, although a disproportionate number of conspiracy theories do just that.

It can be about in-group and out-group, plus a whole host of other reasons that we are about to get into.

We need to push this chapter of history behind us, but it doesn't seem like we're headed in that direction.

Oh, no, I wish we could, but we have not because there's no way we could do an episode about conspiracy theories without getting into the one that is still reverberating through many hate groups today, and that is one of the ugliest of them all, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Which sounds fake, but yeah, you're right.

We got got to cover that one.

It's terrible.

I know a bit about it.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most infamous and dangerous conspiracy theories ever.

I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it is true.

It's based on, I think it's a forgery, right?

If I'm not mistaken, and it pretty much became the foundation for modern anti-Semitism.

We're doing a whole episode on anti-Semitism, so this might be like a sneak preview or a sneak review, depending on when this and that episode comes out.

So it was first published in 1903 in Russia.

It claims to be the secret minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders who are plotting to take over the world.

Bye, and here comes the laundry list of disgusting anti-Semitic tropes, control of the banks and the media, undermine Christianity, foment revolution, weaken the world's governments, establish global dominance, and build space lasers.

So that part's, I assume that part's fake, yeah?

The laser part?

Yeah, sorry.

Okay.

You said the episode was getting a little dark, and I thought maybe we'd have a little laugh there.

Because Because I was like, wow, they even knew.

Then my brain realized that that's even dumber than the original conspiracy theory.

Okay.

Okay.

So there are fewer conspiracy theories crazier than Marjorie Taylor Greene's Jewish Space Lasers.

But unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene's laughable Jewish Space Lasers conspiracy theory.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was widely believed and has done immense, immeasurable harm to the Jewish community.

I mean, just about every hate group there is still believes it.

From the KKK to the modern Nazis to Islamic extremist groups, again, not known for critical thinking skills.

It's kind of the definition of the term zombie lie.

It just won't die, no matter how obviously nonsense it is.

You're 100% right.

Here's the truth about it.

And maybe we can help put a wooden stake through the zombie's heart or however it is you kill zombies.

Historians traced it back to the Okrana, which was the czarist Russian secret police.

They plagiarized sections from the French political satire, Maurice Jolie's Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, which had absolutely nothing to do with Jews at all, but Russian secret police just inserted Jewish people into this play and created a forgery.

It was meant as propaganda to blame Jews for Russia's problems and to deflect from rising unrest against the Tsar.

But it was just, it seems like too damn convenient of a way of scapegoating the other.

So hateful groups just latch onto this.

It's kind of amazing because the secret police were probably like, we're going to use this this year for this little marketing campaign we're going to do, maybe next year.

And it's like hundreds of years later, it's like, oh, this is front and center.

It's crazy.

Tribal brains, man.

That's our tribal brains.

Yeah.

But the text, I mean, it just went around the world.

It was translated into multiple language.

The Nazis embraced it, as did Henry Ford, who reprinted it in his deeply anti-Semitic newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.

Side note, did you know this?

Hitler had a picture of Henry Ford hanging in Hitler's office.

Wow.

How is that for a wall of shame?

Jeez.

And that little newspaper where he reprinted the protocols of the elders of Zion?

There was a time when every newly purchased Ford came with a copy of that newspaper sitting on the front seat.

Can you imagine being a Jewish guy who buys a new car and you're like, what did I just do?

So, geez, that makes me want to check and see if Ford is a sponsor.

Actually, who cares?

Shamefully insane.

Didn't Henry Ford recant some of this or is is that an urban legend because Ford was like, we got to come up with something here?

I don't think so.

Henry Ford is one of the most notorious anti-Semites in American history.

If you recanted any, perhaps a listener can get back to us about that.

I did not come across that in my research.

It almost doesn't matter.

At some point, it's like the damage, you do a ton of damage.

You can't just be like, ah, turns out I was wrong about the Jews.

Anyway, buy some Ford stock.

Yeah, I mean, the stories of Henry Ford are pretty crazy.

People say like that he was obsessed with it.

Like they would say that they'd go on camping trips and like they would sit around the campfire with marshmallows or whatever and henry ford would be like no but seriously i gotta tell you about the jews and they were like oh dude again with the like deeply anti-semitic individual yeah that's really gross he needed a famous comedian to sit across the table from him and be like you really think the jews are doing all this stuff you might be the dumbest billionaire i've ever met we didn't have real stand-up comedians back then Sadly.

So, yeah, in fact, it's interesting you should say that, though, because after a certain tech billionaire who's very famous right now made some questionable hand gestures, his car company stock dropped.

You may have heard about that.

And I had a friend who was about to buy one and he called me up and he was like, I can't do it, dude.

I don't want to buy a Nazis car.

And I was like, you mean a Ford?

Whomp, whoop.

Wow.

Yeah.

Actually, I'm looking this up right now.

There's an apology that he didn't sign that they think might have been a forgery.

And like he issued this apology or whatever.

But after the apology, he continued to privately express anti-Semitic views.

And in 1940, he was like, I hope to republish The International Jew again sometime, which is basically the, you know, yeah, oh, I forget, I mean, I left that out, but that's worth mentioning.

The Dearborn Independent, which I believe was an already existing newspaper and he purchased it.

It says that is essentially correct.

In 1919, Henry Ford bought a small newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan, called The Dearborn Independent.

From 1920 to 1927, he used the paper to publish a long-running series of anti-Semitic articles.

Those articles were later collected and published in a book form, The International Jew.

So the book was International Jew, but he was just taking articles from the Dearborn Independent.

The International Jew sounds like kind of a nice nickname until you realize it's actually a bad thing.

I know, I'm surprised there's not some TikTok influencer out of Tel Aviv.

Right.

Like, I'm the International Jew.

Look at me.

I'm in Dubai chilling.

I'm going to Vegas next weekend.

No, no, that's not what we mean, pal.

So, anyway, what a mess.

So many companies have had to change their name or their logos after getting some bad press.

I suppose it really speaks to America and our own history with prejudice that Ford just kept on trucking.

It was kind of like, yeah, let's ignore the whole Nazi thing.

Keep buying these cars.

After he died, it would have been so little effort to just change the name.

I mean, I remember Dotson changed its name to Nissan, if I'm not mistaken, in my lifetime.

Oh, yeah.

Fordstein.

It's not that hard.

Got to make up for the past.

Okay, so look, we're going to find out that many conspiracy theories are pretty disgusting.

We will, of course, have to get into the king of conspiracy theories, who you already alluded to, Alex Jones, and some of the absolutely vile things he said about such things as the God, this makes me sick, the Sandy Hook Elementary Massacre.

So let's actually, let's go ahead and mix in a few fun ones along the way.

Have you heard the one that Donald Trump is a time traveler?

No, I have not heard that Donald Trump, of all people, is a time traveler.

Let me guess.

Donald Trump comes from the future.

No, he comes from the past.

And this one is actually pretty pretty funny.

Okay, sadly, though, there are people who believe it, but the theory itself is hilarious.

The theory comes from two 19th century books by American author Ingersoll Lockwood, who in 1893 wrote Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey.

Whoa.

In this book, the hero is Baron Trump, a wealthy boy who lives in Castle Trump.

and embarks on adventures guided by a master of all masters named Don.

That is is actually an amazing coincidence.

I mean, Trump's son, as many of us know, is named Baron and the boss man in the story is named Don.

I mean, that conspiracy theory.

I could see why that has legs.

Oh, we're not even close to being done discussing the coincidences in these two books.

In the other book, The Last President, New York City erupts in chaos after an outsider is elected president of the United States.

Protesters attack the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, which happens to be more or less where Trump Tower stands today.

Wow.

So that is too coincidental.

And by the way, I mean that colloquially.

I don't mean, whoa, it's too coincidental, man.

That does not, you know, mean he's a time traveler, but that is crazy.

I will, I will give you that.

Oh, well, let me get to the time traveler part because the plot thickens and even includes Tesla, the OG Tesla, that is, Nikola Tesla.

It just so happens that after Tesla, the mad scientist, so to speak, passed away, his papers were reviewed for the United States government by none other than Professor John Trump of MIT.

I've heard Donald Trump talk about his uncle, the MIT professor.

Is this the same guy?

That guy's real?

I was, I just thought that that was not even a real person.

Oh, well, no, it is the same dude.

And it cracks me up when Donald Trump talks about like his bona fides, like how intelligent he is.

He's like, because of my connection to MIT.

It's like, not your connection, your uncle's.

We all don't get to claim our uncle's fame, but anyway, that's fine.

That's fine.

As the story goes, and this is true.

So John Trump's examining Tesla's works and he comes across Tesla's hidden work on time travel and that secret fell into the Trump family's hands and they've been bending space and time ever since.

That's insane.

You're right.

That is a fun conspiracy theory.

To an extent, except it fell into the hands of QAnon.

And again, I don't think we could have a conversation about conspiracy theories without getting into QAnon.

So what the hell?

Let's do it now.

Didn't everything Q, whatever, predicted basically fail to come true?

I haven't heard anybody call themselves QAnon in a long time.

I thought they kind of hung it up.

Now, Jordan, we both know conspiracies never go away.

They just put on a new gown and rejoin the ball.

I hope they call it the Q-ball.

Bingo.

Okay, so let's start with the part that most people already know.

QAnon kicked off in October 2017 on the message board 4chan.

Some Anonymous posters, calling themselves Q, claimed to be a government insider with top-level security clearance.

They started dropping cryptic riddles.

They called them Q drops that were supposed to be clues about a secret war.

Donald Trump was fighting against a global cabal of elites.

I'll be honest, if it wasn't for conspiracy theories, I don't think I'd even know the word cabal.

Maybe.

It's all cabal all the time.

I got to start my own cabal.

Jesus, the cabal's on this guy.

Don't make me do my Trump diatribe.

We will be here all day.

But the QAnon story is just warming up.

So at the heart of QAnon is this idea that the world is secretly run by a satanic cabal of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders.

This group, according to Q, is involved in child sex trafficking, ritual abuse, and even the harvesting of blood of children for a chemical called adrenochrome, which they believe keeps powerful elites young and gives them superpowers.

Right, adrenochrome.

All coming back to me now, Hunter Thompson talked about it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a fictional work, not a medical textbook, by the way, in case anyone is confused.

You're right, there is a dark side to this, and it's weird.

Adrenochrome, I guess, matzah was too old-fashioned or too obvious.

Remind me how the whole adrenochrome fountain of youth thing, how does that work?

So QAnon believes that Hollywood celebrities torture children in order to get them to excrete adrenochrome.

And before we go any further, let me tell you what adrenochrome really is.

Adrenochrome is a real chemical produced when adrenaline epinephrine oxidizes.

In medicine, it's been studied since the mid-20th century.

It was once thought to play a role in schizophrenia.

It has been used experimentally to slow bleeding, but it is not a hallucin, not addictive, and not the fountain of youth that QAnon and other conspiracy theorists swear it is.

To say these people have been watching too many movies is an understatement because the whole thing kind of reminds me of the film The Dark Crystal.

Like the evil creatures in that film, the Skexies, they harvest some sort of fountain of youth, like life force from their victims, the Gelflings.

I kind of remember that film.

It's all the puppets, right?

It's Jim Henson, totally not a children's film.

Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

Particularly, there's a scene where they're extracting the life force and it's kind of like traumatizing.

Yeah, exactly.

Hollywood fantasy.

They're living in fantasy and trying to force Hollywood fantasy into reality.

And speaking of reality, adrenochrome is just a boring chemical with a limited medical history, not the magical substance that they claim it is.

They say history repeats itself, and I'm starting to see some echoes of the blood libel here, right?

The whole, we're getting the adrenochrome from killing children, I mean, torturing children, whatever.

That's, it's so obviously the same thing.

Yeah, it's just become a modern twist on blood libel, an update on the old anti-Semitic myth that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes.

Instead of blood for matzah, it's adrenochrome for immortality.

And once again, actual harm can come from this.

By the way, when I was researching this, I saw footage from a QAnon, what would I call it, forum, I suppose.

And one of the people pushing this whole Hollywood celebrities are harvesting adrenochrome from children nonsense is Jim Caviesel, who played Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

He also starred in The Sound of Freedom.

Yeah, so Jim Coviesel is a nutcase.

They pitched him for the show, and I was like, no, I can't.

I've seen interviews with him.

He's just a loony tune.

So a Hollywood celebrity pushing the idea that other Hollywood celebrities are dangerous, that is ironic.

I can dig it, actually.

It's ridiculous.

Yeah, well, this whole thing is dangerous.

It helps reaffirm to these people that they are correct.

So, as you can see, if you really believe in this, you'd probably do some pretty extreme things to stop it from happening, which is why some QAnon believers have committed violent acts.

I haven't really heard about the violent acts, I don't think.

Okay, so there was Matthew Wright, a QAnon follower.

He blocked the Hoover Dam with an armored vehicle demanding the release of a supposed government report.

And he was arrested after a standoff with the police and later sentenced to seven years in prison.

He blocked the bridge, I assume.

Because if he blocked the dam, that's impressive if you're doing it with one.

Yeah, I exactly.

But yeah, so let me guess.

The government report that he wanted to see never existed and it was a bunch of nonsense.

It's crazy.

You think I would have heard about this?

Maybe I just don't follow the news enough because I don't remember that.

No, a lot of them got by me, as did the QAnon kidnapping.

Two QAnon believers in Oregon were arrested after kidnapping one of the women's biological children, who she did not have custody of at the time, probably because the child's mother was a QAnon believer.

Stuff is not going well for her, exactly.

Yeah, but they kidnapped this child, convinced the child was being trafficked by a cabal.

Oh, gosh.

No, they're called foster parents, and it's because you're crazy, Leanne.

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Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday.

It sucks to think about people literally out there just ruining their lives over crap that they read on the internet, on Twitter, mostly.

Right.

Well, I guess it's a good time to start talking about why people believe.

Let's go ahead and start with the first motivation that we've already mentioned, money, which which gets me back to the king of conspiracies, Alex Jones and the turning the frogs gay.

Right.

Now, look, I'm not saying that Alex Jones is not a lunatic who believes half the crap he's saying, but his motivation to keep pushing it and believing it is clear.

It's the giant paycheck.

And the entire empire he's built around conspiracy theories.

Yeah, it reminds me of that famous Upton Sinclair quote from the jungle, something like, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Exactly, yes.

And in Joan's case, the damage he's done is hard to even fathom.

He literally tortured the parents of slain six-year-olds after they were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary by pushing the whole Sandy Hook was a hoax conspiracy theory.

And he claimed that the parents were crisis actors.

Some of these just devastated parents even had to change careers and move multiple times because they were being stalked and harassed by Alex Jones fans.

It's so disgusting.

I can't deal with that.

If we hang out on this subject, I'm going to lose it.

I mean, this apparents' worst nightmare and then compounded by people telling you that it's a bunch of crap and showing up at your workplace and your other kids' school.

It's one of the worst things I can imagine, actually.

Yeah, Jones has real power.

And anyway, so let's talk about another one where he riled up his base.

It was called the Pizzagate, where he pushed again that elites, in this case, Hillary Clinton and her crew, were trafficking children out of a pizza parlor's basement.

This might have made for good clickbait for Jones, but one of his gullible followers showed up at the pizza place with a loaded gun.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, right?

Well, the poor sap we believe Jones did four years in prison.

Right.

Spoiler alert, he was killed in a routine traffic stop a few years ago when he pulled a gun on the cops.

Okay, so he was a nut already, obviously.

Right.

And that's kind of one of the most dangerous things about these conspiracy theories.

They rile up the nut cases.

It's not so much that Alex Jones fans went nuts as much as the nuts went Alex Jones fan.

So let's move into why people believe.

And no, it's not because lizard people really are ruling the flat earth.

It's because our brain's ability to find patterns gives us an evolutionary advantage.

Right.

Our ability to notice the migration patterns of animals, for example, our ability to notice weather patterns, stuff like that, made it easier to survive as a species once we could perceive and maybe predict the regularity in the natural world, right?

Patternicity or whatever?

Exactly.

And our brain's ability to find patterns became increasingly sophisticated with the expansion of our cerebral cortex, particularly, again, the prefrontal cortex.

The thing is, the brain is so good at seeing patterns, it will see them even when they're not there.

This is mostly benign from a person on the plains of Africa point of view.

In other words, we're wired to connect the dots even when the dots are maybe not even really there in the first place.

Right.

It's called hyperactive pattern recognition.

There's a well-known study by psychologist Jan Willem von Proujen, in which he examines the link between conspiracy belief and illusionary pattern perception, specifically spotting patterns in random coin flips.

Participants were asked to observe completely random coin flips.

The study showed that those who saw a pattern in the coin flips were far more likely to endorse conspiracy theories.

It kind of reminds me of gamblers, the whole notion of like hot streaks or, you know, I've lost the last five times.

I'm due for a win, so I'll put more on the next round.

It's kind of like that thing.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

Superstitions of all sorts are connected to our hyper pattern recognition.

In another study, participants were shown chaotic but meaningless paintings.

People with a higher tendency to believe in conspiracy theories were more likely to see patterns in the paintings as well.

And here's where it gets like super interesting.

There's a direct correlation between people with higher dopamine levels and conspiracy beliefs.

Dopamine, the neurotransmitter, right?

Yeah, it's part of the brain's reward system.

You know, every time you do something beneficial from an evolutionary point of view, the brain gives you a little reward with dopamine.

Anyone that heard our episode on high-speed internet and porn addiction knows that that's basically what's going on there.

They're addicted to the dopamine release their brain is giving them.

And studies show that people with conspiratorial minds have naturally higher dopamine levels.

And get this, in one study, and this wasn't 100% conclusive, but it showed that people who don't have conspiratorial minds, when given a boost of dopamine, become more conspiratorial in their thinking.

That is so fascinating.

So people may be predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories because of their neurochemistry.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

In fact, EEG studies show conspiracy believers tend to have reduced beta frequency oscillations.

What are beta frequency oscillations?

They are frequency oscillations that get off on watching other frequency oscillations bang their wives.

There you could not resist.

Only a percentage of the audience is going to get that joke, but I've...

Oh, my.

Okay,

what are they really?

Okay, okay.

In truth, beta activity is associated with cognitive control.

Lower beta means those brains filter less noise, allowing more random associations to feel meaningful.

So it never really occurred to me that it might be someone's brain chemistry that leads them to believe in conspiracy theories.

I kind of, I thought it was, you know, from personal experience, well, I should say observation.

People who felt powerless in the world, you know, life's not really working out for them.

So they believe in all this ridiculous crap to get control or make sense of things.

Yeah, and you'd be correct about that, or at least partially correct.

There are many reasons people believe in conspiracy theories.

Neurochemistry is just the tip of the iceberg.

The iceberg that's definitely not melting because climate change is a globalist hoax.

Damn globalists.

We'll see how tough they are when we cut off their adrenochrome supply.

So people that tend to believe in conspiracy theories fall into a number of categories.

They are people that feel ostracized or excluded, like you just mentioned.

Groups with lower social status, like economically disadvantaged people, people that see themselves as victims, people that see themselves as great, but are resentful that the world doesn't agree.

And this one blew my mind because it really spoke to America, like in 2025.

People on the losing side of politics.

Yeah, I can personally vouch for that.

I've watched some of those crazy conspiracy theories from the right slowly drift over to the left in the last few months.

Yes, and studies show that conspiracy theories flourish in times of despair.

And sadly, the planet Earth in the year 2025 is not short on despair.

We all have the motive to believe in conspiracy theories.

I have the motive to move to the Alaskan woods and get away from all this craziness sometimes.

Maybe not so far north that I get to the edge of the flat earth or anything.

Well, okay, so you're talking about motive there, and experts break down motives for believing conspiracy theories into a number of categories.

There's the epistemic motive, the existential motive, and the social motive.

Let's break it down, starting with the epistemic motive.

The word epistemic comes from the Greek word for knowledge.

People are motivated to understand and explain the world and reduce the chaos.

People turn to conspiracy theories because they offer answers when the world feels confusing.

The epistemic motive satisfies a very deep evolutionary drive.

The equation kind of goes like this.

Understand the environment, survive longer.

So it's like, why did the towers fall on 9-11?

Because shadowy dark figures planned the whole thing.

And if I want to survive in a world where that's the case, I got to understand what they're up to.

Exactly.

Conspiracies offer a clear, intentional story rather than chaos.

Believing in conspiracies allows a person to feel in the know, like a young Michael Regilio did when it came to the topic you just mentioned, the towers falling on September 11th.

I still can't believe that my skeptical Sunday co-host was a 9-11 truther.

You're actually not the only one.

Nick Pell, also a skeptical Sunday co-host, was also a 9-11 truther decades ago.

So I'm kind of outnumbered over here.

You said something really interesting, which is that conspiracy theories, they offer, there's a plan.

Rather than just like, hey, we maybe are kind of at the mercy of the whims of our government being incompetent or like people trying to blow up buildings in New York.

It could be like a failure to have a plan, the failure to get it together, but that's scarier than a dark cabal pulling the strings.

So, isn't it true that people also tend to believe that big events have big causes?

Like, when an event is big and the cause is not proportional, we just sort of instinctively reject these answers.

I'm thinking like JFK assassination is kind of top of mind because my friend covered it in a book.

I read that one of the reasons people rejected the official account is that one lone dude took out the most powerful person in the world.

It's just, it's utterly unsatisfying.

There's got to be more to it.

Yeah.

And you're 100% correct.

That's called the proportionality bias.

And you just summed it up perfectly.

The proportionality bias speaks to a fear of chaos and randomness.

A massive conspiracy of powerful people lined up with the murder of a president.

People feel safe because that makes sense.

The fact of the matter is sometimes reality offers up some very bizarre coincidences that our minds just insist on connecting.

Which gets me to what psychologists call the epistemic closure.

It reduces anxiety, but at the cost of accuracy.

The next motive on the list that I just mentioned is the existential motive.

Do you care to take a guess what that's all about?

I'm guessing that, again, has to do with survival, like basic human needs for safety, security, control, existential stuff.

Right.

And you'd be correct.

It says existential existential here refers to feeling safe.

Believe it or not, believing that powerful people, as we just said, are secretly in charge is less terrifying than believing that bad things happen randomly and no one is in control.

People feel like if they know who's pulling the strings, they can resist.

It transforms a person from a victim to a hero, which is exactly what I was feeling watching loose change.

I see.

Well, you can always get a dog, Michael.

They'll look up to you.

They'll treat you like a hero just for feeding them or showing up at the door.

No need to feel like you're taking on the deep state or whatever it was you were feeling watching loose change.

The other thing that's humorous to me is it's like, you're going to take on the deep state?

Like, you got a part-time job taking tickets at the laugh factory on Fridays.

Like, you might not be the man for the job.

Right.

We talked about lonely people, and that kind of gets to the next motive that we, the psychologists talk about, which is the social motive.

Believing in conspiracy theories fulfills people's social needs, much like owning a dog.

A person feels accepted and loved.

Now, that one I have personally witnessed, if you've ever seen a couple of conspiracy theorists broing down at a party, they are, it's like a tight-knit group, man.

Yeah, and they have a text chain that they got going together.

Once you buy into conspiracy theories, you buy into a social group.

Hell, I'm sure they have pizza parties on Friday nights.

In a secret pizzeria basement somewhere, perhaps.

Yeah, maybe they're over pizza since they got kind of burned on that one.

Maybe conspiracy theorists have taco night.

I don't know.

But look, having friends boosts one's self-image, and nothing brings a group closer together than having a common enemy.

Sure, the deep state, the lizard people, or the Jews, or

I can't believe I know this term, the globies.

Check out Jordan with his knowledge of flat earth jargon.

You're right.

Being a conspiracy theorist can bring people happiness, but ultimately the harm far outweighs the good.

like the strain it can have on one's family.

There are many stories of people ostracized by their family because of their extreme conspiracy beliefs.

It can also lower one's sense of autonomy.

People who believe in conspiracy theories are less likely to take part in civic responsibilities like voting.

Okay, this is the part of the episode where you tell us what can be done.

Yeah, I don't know.

Okay, but what do you mean you don't know?

You did all the research, you know, what can be done to help people from falling into conspiracy theories.

I did read a lot of advice about this, and I came across some that I just thought was terrible terrible advice.

I heard one expert say, do your own research.

And my jaw hit the ground.

I was like, that's exactly what they think they're doing.

Yes, that's the problem.

I did my own research is practically the mantra of every conspiracy theorist.

Yeah, no, I can see that.

Do your own research.

I mean, I even, at the end of the show, I say, do your own research.

And I had to change it to consult real experts or whatever because people were like, no, don't tell people to do their own research.

That's the problem.

It's not great advice when you have no idea how to evaluate credible sources Because do your own research means my doctor said one thing, but then I found a TikTok and a video on YouTube that said the other thing.

So, you know, I'm going to go with that.

Exactly.

One thing I can tell you that you shouldn't do, or at least that psychologists say you shouldn't do, and as a comedian, I have to be honest with you, not going to follow this advice, but they say don't make fun of them.

Why?

Ridicule can drive people deeper into conspiracy theories.

Okay, I could see that.

Although, it certainly seemed to work out when famous comedian dude roasted the shit out of you in front of your girlfriend.

What about maybe helping people find other social groups and acceptance in non-conspiracy theory friend groups?

Like if all your friends are on the flat earth Reddit and going to those conventions, maybe get into video games or something instead.

Yeah, for sure.

And that definitely works on a personal level.

And if you have somebody in your life that's losing a grip on reality because of conspiracy theories, that's the exact kind of thing you can do.

But as a society, I mean, I guess we do have wonderful people who go and read to the elderly.

I suppose a similar loving person could go hang out with lonely conspiracy theorists.

But again, sorry, that ain't going to be me.

Just keeping it real.

Probably ain't going to be me either.

Look, if society does have a role in combating conspiracy theories, it's probably in the schools because it's not about what they think.

It's about how they think.

And we've all heard that before.

And clearly, we need only look at the United States of America in the year 2025 to see that there is something in our schools that has failed us.

Critical thinking is key.

So in a sense, I guess it's about doing your own research, but it's about knowing how to do your own research, how to weigh evidence.

We can't send everyone over 25 back to school to learn how to do critical thinking.

So I don't know what we're going to do.

No, we can't.

I'm not sure why public education has failed us like this, unless, of course, It's all connected, man.

Hits blunt.

No, no, no, no.

Jordan, don't you start now.

Yeah.

Look, here's what I tell conspiracy theorists.

If a scientist proved climate change was fake or a journalist exposed celebrities drinking adrenochrome, they wouldn't be silenced.

They'd win a Nobel, a Pulitzer, and be filthy rich.

The motives run in the opposite direction than you think they do.

Human nature is to dig, to expose, to find the truth.

If the Earth were flat, I'd want to know.

The only evidence I see is that you, my friend, the conspiracy theorist, you check every box on what we know the profile of a conspiracy theorist is.

So what have we learned?

Conspiracy theories are as old as people, from poisoned wells to poke plots to QAnon.

The names change, but the pattern really doesn't.

It's fear, tribalism, and the need for control.

And sure, it's easy to laugh at the crazy stuff, time-traveling trumps, Jewish space lasers.

It's comedy gold, but if you peel it back, you find something quite a bit darker.

Families torn apart, lives wrecked, even violence, all because a lie kind of just made someone feel special or chosen or powerful.

So here's the takeaway.

Be skeptical, but not cynical.

Question authority, but don't mistake your paranoia for wisdom.

Real truth doesn't need secret handshakes or coded messages.

It needs evidence, logic, and yeah, maybe a little humility, which is sadly why the truth rarely trends.

And if all else fails, just remember, if the source of your information uses the word globies, maybe don't copy their notes for science class.

And if you happen to run into Michael Regilio, make sure you roast the shit out of him for those crazy beliefs about the moon landing.

Or don't.

You might just push me into starting my own cabal.

Just join mine.

Thanks, Michael.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers, discounts, deals, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

You can can find Michael Regilio on Instagram.

We'll link to it in the show notes because, as always, nobody can spell Regilio.

Tour dates up now as well.

And his special, War Bar, drops in October.

This show is created in association with Podcast One.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sedlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own.

And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

Of course, we try to get these as right as we can.

Not everything is gospel, even if it is fact-checked.

So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show.

Don't do your own research.

Consult a professional, especially if it's about your health and well-being.

Remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love.

If you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we dilled out today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

Here's a trailer for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show with the legendary Astair Perel as she sheds light on cheating, not just being about the thrill, but about finding a part of ourselves that we've lost.

Affairs also happen often in good relationships.

They're not just symptoms of relationships that have gone completely awry.

Sometimes a person goes looking elsewhere not because they want to find someone else but because they want to find another self.

Nuclear family life is a bitch.

It's really a stressful situation on people, especially if they have on top of it young kids, pets and in-laws and older parents and all the other responsibilities of life.

We were not conceived to live like this.

What's going on is this.

There is what people fight about and then there is what people fight for.

Power and control.

That's the hidden agendas of most fights.

Whose decision matters most?

Who has priority?

Is it about care and closeness?

Can I trust you?

Do you have my back?

Can I rely on you?

And respect and recognition.

Do you value me?

Do I matter?

Much of couples' life, when things begin to go a little bit awry, is putting the responsibility on the other person without paying attention enough to what can I do to make this better?

Or in what way am I contributing to my partner feeling the way they do?

So it's very important what is relational and what is individual and where do you start to make sense of this complicated and often very painful experience.

To hear how our fights can actually make our relationships stronger and what the future holds for love in the age of AI, check out episode 911 on The Jordan Harbinger Show.