The Conspiracy Skeptic

Fear their power and reach

Steven is a long time listener of both my previous podcast Seoul Survivors and the Conspiracy Skeptic. He emailed me about this The Family organization many months before the story broke in podcast land. I wanted to have him on for a chat between two regular Joes about The Family, whether it's an example of a real conspiracy, and the implications. If you don't know much about The Family, I'd suggest first checking out D.J. Grothe's interview with the author himself before tackling my podcast.

• Point of Inquiry on The Family
• National Prayer Breakfast
• Korean women crazy for plastic surgery
• NBC on Doug Coe, including his "Hitler" video
• The Glenn Beck murdered a girl meme
• The Logan Act
• Suharto Atrocities
• Black Swan Theory
• French Minister Fights For Job After Boasts Of Sex With Young Boys
• The Beast of War - I thought this was the movie Steven was talking about
• Charlie Wilson's War - The movie Steven was talking about
• Hookah
• Steven's blog
• Steven's blog

Team Righteous Indignation: They're a fine looking bunch of Podcasters.

Hayley Stevens is co-host of a funny and thought provoking skeptical podcast produced in the UK. In her spare time she's also a skeptical ghost hunter. On Conspiracy Skeptic we talk about the claims Princess Diana was murdered or even faked her own death.

• Righteous Indignation Podcast
• Where does Hayley live? (It's the ancestral home of Miles "Franglias" Kington.)
• Conspiracy Skeptic in the Skeptical Inquirer
• Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys fell off his yacht and drowned
• Natalie Wood fell off a yacht and drowned
• Newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell fell off his yacht and drowned
• French bombed Green Peace
• Chavs
• Origins of Alison Smith
• Nick Pope
• Warhammer 40,000
• War Hammer craziness
• Wiki on the "official" story
• Wiki on some of the conspiracies
• Final British Report on the death (opens in PDF)
• Wiki summary of the report
• Supposed owner of the Fiat supposedly involved in the crash
• Dodi Fayed
• Mohamed Al-Fayed
• Harrods
• Harrods bombed twice by the bloody IRA
• Royal Warrant - Product endorsements by the Royal Family
• List of products endorsed by the Queen, Prince Philip. and Prince Charles
• Harrods loses its Royal Warrants
• Before Dodi, Diana was dating Hasnat Khan - reportedly no one really opposed their relationship so the claim Diana and Dodi were murdered because he was Muslim appears inconsistent
• Prince Philip and his David Brent like racist gaffes (He famously warned a student in China he'd go slitty eyed if he stayed much longer.)
• Quincy
• Red Nose Day
• Guy Fawkes Night
• Heart Shaped Frying Pan
• Giant Jellyfish Crop Circle Predicts Solar Flares
• Karl on Righteous Indignation

I guess it might be a little tasteless to make a wisecrack about this.

Nigel St. Whitehall (a pseudonym) is a mild mannered lawyer from Hershey, PA, creator of the Skeptical Review blog, and a knowledgeable skeptic of claims that Oswald did not act alone.

• The Skeptical Review
• Log Rolling
• PZ threatened by a Canadian loon
• One of the first 9/11 conspiracies to emerge
• One third of Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy
• 76% don't think Oswald acted alone
• Oswald's wiki entry
• List of JFK conspiracies
• Dictabelt Evidence
• United States House Select Committee on Assassinations
• Can you make the shots? See people actually test the claims.
• The three tramps
• Woody Harrelson's dad actually shot and killed a cop
• Zapruder Film stabalized
• Why the driver did not shoot Kennedy
• Conspiracy nut William Cooper claimed Kennedy was done in by his driver with a shell fish poison gun
• Test of the single bullet trajectory part 1
• Test of the single bullet trajectory part 2
• Damage to WTC 7
• Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance (pdf)
• McKinley Assasination
• E Howard Hunt's claim
• A constellation killed Kennedy. We're through the looking glass here!
• Hershey, PA - Ostensibly the sweetest place on earth
• Puffin Watch
• Magic Bullet Blender

One of the wonderful things that ostensibly worthless fiat currency will buy. Why... a Fiat!

Brett Spurr returns to shoot the breeze about some economic ideas held tightly by conspiracy types: can/would China wipe out the economy tomorrow by dumping dollars? Is the gold standard the only real form of money? When we import goods, do foreign countries just make that money disappear?

• The Long Run Blog
• Shipping dollars is bad? - from the Penn and Teller message board
• Minimum Wage Debate I
• Minimum Wage Debate II
• Minimum Wage Post Game Show
• Karl on The Paracast
• My follow up to the "best cases" presented to me - in short, the way they were described didn't at all match what the primary sources claimed occurred. David's version sounded compelling if you ignore the actual facts.
• How the money comes back - we buy cars from Korea, Koreans buy education from us

Going to sell this one to the LDS Church, proving Joseph Smith came up with Relativity decades before Einstein. Note when Smith was doing physics he wrote in Reformed German.

Charles Morrison stops in to talk about a conspiracy involving the Mormon church.

• Irreligiosophy
• The Thin Red Line(Correction: Clint Eastwood is not in this movie. Director Terrence Malick seems to come out with a new film every 15 years.)
• Adam-God theory
• Mormon Afterlife and Before Life
• White Salamander Letter
• Mark Hofmann
• More on Mark
• Still more on Mark
• Image of Hofmann and Spencer W. Kimball examining the Anthon document - Hmmmm note a person named Marion G. Romney is in that photo. Romney. Hmmm!
• Mormonism and Battlestar Galactica
• Firing Squad Execution in Utah
• Freemasonry and LDS
• Mountain Meadows Massacre
• Hitler Diaries
• Mussolini Diaries (correction I said this hoax took place 5 years before the Hitler Diaries. Try 3 decades (1957)).
• South Park ep on Mormonism
• Alleged Temple ritual
• More temple ritual stuff
• How to avoid pulling your Spencer W. Kimball (In case you were at all curious about how to break your nasty habit of self pleasuring yourself)
• When not helping 19th century prophets translate Reformed Egyptian, salamanders can be found on the Elemental Plane of Fire and are known to be Lawful Evil.
• Exit music is by White Snake. A snake is almost a salamander. Right?

Sure it looks like a Swastika, if you're a complete retard. (photo from google maps)

Rich Orman from the Dogma Free America podcast stops in to talk about one of the greatest high kookin' conspiracy theories ever: the new Denver airport is Reptoid Base Alpha.

• Dogma Free America
• Rich's Twitter feed
• A good skeptical video treatment of the DIA conspiracy
• The demon horse
• They killed Fritz
• Another ummm interpretation of the murals
• Alex Christopher radio interview
• Philip Schneider: Government Secrets Revealed
• Peacekeeper Missile note talk about dense pack and the rail garrison system
• MX missile rail garrison concept
• Dense Pack concept
• A rail tunnel video under the DIA nothing could be more boring than this video or so they want you to believe
• Christians still promoting the missing day idiocy
• Amtrak Wars
• V
• Possible first TV appearance of the greys
• The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports
• Watch the Outer Limits ep here. This grey alien appeared a couple weeks before Betty and Barney Hill first reported them.
• Amateur Scientist podcast interview with William B Davis

No animals were hurt making this podcast, although Abbie's dog was left attention starved

Abbie Smith is a grad student at the University of Oklahoma studying HIV. She has a popular blog called ERV (ie endogenous retro virus). Smith takes on creationists, the Disco'tute's head honchos, the top HIV deniers, all the while trying to find a way to keep HIV from killing babies. All that from a person who doesn't own more than 3 small kitchen appliances. Naturally, she stops in to chat with the Conspiracy Skeptic about HIV denial.

• Abbie and PZ Myers
• Abbie should not be confused with Abbie Hoffman.
• Abbie's old blog
• Japanese scientist who thinks you can change the structure of water if you say nurturing things to it
• Oh Lenny
• Abbie will give you a cool blog for free, earning under 20K a year. Lenny will sell you $188 tuning forks or a $1300 water filter
• Abbie takes on Behe
• Abbie debates Lenny
• Lenny accuses Duesberg of all kinds of nasty stuff
• Lenny's entirely bizarre indictment of Duesberg
• Abbie vs Dembski I
• Abbie vs Dembski II
• Abbie vs Dembski III
• Abbie vs Dembski IV
• Abbie vs Dembski V
• Abbie vs Dembski VI
• One of those crazy HIV photos that aren't supposed to exist
• More HIV images that supposedly don't exist

The one true way to get to the moon

Stuart Robbins who talked about 2012 on Unplugged Episode 2 is back to talk about the Moon Landing Hoax in the run up to the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the current LRO mission. And yes I know I pronounce Hare Krishna wrong :)

• Exposing Pseudo Astronomy by Stuart Robbins
• Where Stuart explains anomaly hunting
• Stuart's coup
• Hare Krishna site with the WTF moment
• Hare Krishna site with the Krishnas who simply hand wave away evidence
• LRO Mission
• Franglais
• Karl in the BBC
• Fiske Planetarium
• Fisk on the Pegasus
• An imperfect Apollo shot
• Space Pen Urban Legend
• HIV Image
• Neal Adams and his hollow planet "theory"
• Texas monkeying with Astronomy in public education
• The podcast is played out by a Korean band called Big Bang and their song "Lies"

Can you spot the real Nazi UFO?

Brett Spurr is cofounder of The Long Run blog, where skepticism and rational exuberance meet finance.

• The Long Run Blog
• Skeptoid on Roswell
• Econ Talk Podcast
• Project Mogul
• More on Project Mogul
• Airforce on Roswell
• Skeptical Inquirer on Project Mogul
• US bomber overflights of the USSR before U2 spy planes and satellites
• Christians at the Air Force Academy
• Penthouse Hoaxed
• Ernst Zundel's Flying Saucers

Michael Goudeau is not only a juggler and skeptic but he helped pioneer the field of DIY home surgery. That's a young Mike on the left. Visit his page and find out the true story behind this photo.

Michael Goudeau stops in to talk about vaccine hysteria, autism, his possible appearance at TAM 7, Penn and Teller's Bullshit, how you (or your boss) can actually hire him to entertain your corporate troops, the possible return of the Penn Jillette Radio Show, and a whole lot more.

• Vegas Comedy Juggler Michael Goudeau
• Jenny McCarthy insanity
• Andrew Wakefield insanity
• Andrew Wakefield: allegations of fraud
• David Kirby: insantiy
• Leading causes of death today
• Leading causes of death at the start of the 20th century
• Dr. Paul Offit: sanity
• The vaccine omnibus trial: judges' sane rulings
• The vaccine omnibus trial: crazed interpretations
• Senseo Single-Serve Coffeemaker

The only thing between Earth and this 2012 killer space phenomenon is the USS Enterprise!

Stuart is a young, gifted astronomy grad student who takes on creationism and pseudoscience in his blog. In this episode, Stuart discusses some of the attempts by pseudoscientists to explain why the universe is going to try and kill us on December 21, 2012 and why that is so much pure crap.

• Exposing PseudoAstronomy on Planet X and 2012
• Alex and his psychic dogs
• The Pontiac Firefly
• Dogma Free America
• Questions Koreans tend to ask
• The Horizon Project
• Andy Lloyd and the Dark Star
• Pole shift claim
• The "consequences" of a magnetic pole shift
• Zach Zechu Zacoor Zecharia Sitchin
• And just don't take Stu's word for it... more skepticism
• Stuart's personal site

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Still working on the sound quality. I have my mike up a wee bit too high and you can hear my sniffling.

• Amateur Scientist Podcast
• The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and The Illuminati
• Illuminati from Steve Jackson Games
• Slapchop (opens loud, irritating video/audio)
• Skepchick: Vince and Scientology
• William B Davis interview
• E Clampus Vitus - an interesting reaction to the anti-European immigration societies that sprung up the early 19th century.
• The Illuminatus! Trilogy
• North American Superhighway
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• Satanic Breeders and Other Satanic Scares of the 1980s
• Shape shifting space lizards

Is this poisoning the well?

In an effort to keep Conspiracy Skeptic going and turning out shows on a more regular basis, I'm creating a new format called "Conspiracy Skeptic Unplugged" (or more accurately "unscripted"). I will interview a skeptical podcaster or blogger. I'm borrowing an idea from the now defunct Reason Driven podcast. The RDP would get a guest to read a chapter from a book called "The Reason Driven Life" and then talk about it. In Conspiracy Skeptic Unplugged my plan is to get a skeptical podcaster/blogger to come up with his/her favorite conspiracy, research it for a week or two, and then have the skeptic on my podcast to discuss the conspiracy.

My former Seoul Survivors podcast cohost Jennifer Booker Young was kind enough to help me do a beta edition to test out the format. The sound quality is pretty crappy on my end. Meh. Still trying to figure out audio on Vista and Skype. Hopefully the Grand Opening podcast with Brian Thompson of Amateur Scientist will have better sound (I bought a USB mike for that one).

Anyway, this is a long winded way to say sorry about the crap quality and things will get better. I hope you'll all hang in there with me.

• Other Losses
• Nizkor Archive - I mistakenly referred to this as the Shofar site.
• Jewish Tax on Food
• The Mall in Korea
• Why delousing chambers have higher concentrations of cynide
• David Irving
• The Irving Libel Suit Ruling
• The Seoul Podcast
• Seoul Survivors
• Bundang