The Conspiracy Episode | Ep. 030 Lemonade Stand 🍋

17:59Atrioc:Why? Because it was a parasite all along? Just stop asking questions. So now there are - Because of the majesty of horses. The quote from the Australians is, Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation into possible benefits for humans. Okay, so a little nugget that we get to go off of. All right, maybe this is something. Now, a lot of additional science starts to follow up with Ivermectin. Is this dewormer that a whole lot of people take actually going to help with COVID? And the studies are over the next two years, they're not working. What they do show though, is that it might do something in really high doses.

18:32that aren't safe for humans so we're not taking enough and so that was the problem this is like if you add enough lanes you solve so gets back to my uh i would say life's thesis

18:46Atrioc:which is yes ivermectin in a human dose is now shown pretty thoroughly by a lot of studies to not do anything brett weinstein goes on tucker carlson he says there's communities around the world that are safely using ivermectin and it's helping them and that was true that there were communities in peru and india who were saying it was helping them who years later have now said yeah sorry that wasn't that wasn't working and the studies now show it doesn't do anything but the big thing is that a certain study showed if a high dosage is applied and conveniently ivermectin is for animals and you don't need a prescription for that so you can go to the store and buy horse quantities of ivermectin and so a whole bunch of people went and just self-administer ivermectin joe rogan tucker carlson was talking about it and the government didn't want you to to know okay now there were 25 cases at the oregon hospital in 2021 alone where people were hospitalized due to excessive ivermectin because they were taking a horse but not for covid but at least i didn't get covered i noticed also i've been to the hospital for covid never saw a horse there never saw one horse not one time did i see a horse now i see waiting in A lot of people saying stupid shit like, oh, stop having horse electrolytes.

20:03Atrioc:As long as you increase the dose, that's when it's effective. So you're slowly building your tolerance for horse-related ingestions. And that way, when COVID-20 happens. You're ready. You're the only one ready. I'm like that movie Limitless where my whole bloodstream is just full of it already. I will be this one horse left standing. It'll be me and the horses, and the rest of you guys will be laughing dead. Holy fuck. So look, Ivermectin -

20:26Aiden:There's a super fan of Doug here who is just loading up on horse electrolytes and Ivermectin.

20:33Atrioc:Yeah, okay. Connect them somehow. Yeah, so look, here's how I would connect these things. Yes, the evidence doesn't show that Ivermectin does anything anymore. And yes, if you take a high enough quantity that might theoretically help you, you're probably gonna go to the hospital. But this is another thing the pharma industry won't let you talk about, Atriok, okay? because they prevented you from even talking about it. The tech industry stopped you from even saying ivermectin could be useful on Facebook and Twitter.

21:09Yeah, and I distinctly recall nobody on the internet or social media talking about it.

21:14Atrioc:That you're not allowed to talk about Bush. Name one time people were allowed to say that Bush did 9-11.

21:20Aiden:Can't remember it. I can't remember it. That's why we are the podcast to break this news. It's been suppressed for so long. And YouTube is allowing it this time? We'll explain why. Okay, so I -

21:31Atrioc:If you're watching this right now, save the file. Save the video. And save our memory, because they could be coming for us.

21:38Aiden:I want to add something on the ivermectin thing. Okay, add it on. I remember, because I remember like six months ago, I was like, you know what, maybe I need to dig into this. Like, not as in like I was looking for answers of how to deal with COVID-19. I was like, what is the, you know, where, or what are some of the arguments from the people who are still saying that it was like a valuable thing to take at the time? And there's this, I think in the wake maybe of the Australian study that you mentioned, there's this study that claimed like clinical use in Egypt that claimed like very successful results in like patients with COVID-19.

22:16Aiden:This was early on during the pandemic. and this study is uh was then like copied or like replicated by a few other like countries or like groups of people around the world and then subsequently uh there was a larger study that i've read i think it was like a metadata study that took like 25 of these studies that had been done but all built off the back of that egypt study that was saying or supporting the effectiveness of ivermectin. The thing is, the Egypt study is like made up. Like it's literally, they didn't do it. It was the data for the Egyptian study was literally made up. And then all of these places that had built their data off of the backs of that study also suffered from very similar issues to that study.

23:04Aiden:And this metadata analysis that a lot of people were propagating in like the couple years following that I had read was built entirely off of the back of like one grain of like false basically false premise or false information and uh and I thought that I thought that was wild and the company that or like the group that published that metadata study issued a retraction for it like a year later that this is like clarifying that this is wildly inaccurate and the underlying inaccuracy of the data in all of the studies that it had referenced and the reason I came across this was because I was in a group chat with some people and somebody was like laying in to like how we still could be using the ivermectin to be combating this problem.

23:49Aiden:I was like, first of all, bro, it's 2025. I was like, we're - Move on. It's crazy. It's crazy to get into this in 2025, I feel like. But then I spent a long time looking through it myself. And then I went through it with somebody who is much, much better at breaking down statistics than I am or reading these studies than I am, who's a friend of mine that I went to college with, who's an MD now, who Doug actually is studying infectious disease or is about to do his infectious disease fellowship. And you talked to him about something else we're going to be talking about.

24:22Atrioc:Yeah, we're going to be talking about autism.

24:24Aiden:But I think through this whole process, something I had the realization of was, I think when you take the time to look up studies and you feel like you're looking at something that supports, like so clearly scientifically supports this angle that you're approaching. I think something I personally struggle with is I often don't have like the scientific or statistical literacy to like break that down on my own, right? So if I encountered that metadata study, this does look very convincing. It doesn't feel like I'm reading like some article from, you know, maybe NBC or MSNBC, and I think it's like super partisan and they're not telling me the truth, right?

25:11Aiden:I'm looking at something that feels very professional in its presentation. And if I don't look at the follow-up that happened a year later, I think that whole process of looking through the Ivermectin case specifically gave me actually a newfound empathy for people who do have the conviction and believe in these things so fully. because if I didn't have easy access to a friend who could really break down the details of these studies for me, in a way that I can't even really echo through this podcast very well, it would be hard for me to even challenge my friend who is presenting it to me. And I think that it's something to consider as people navigate things like this, is like there's things that are a little more outlandish that maybe, I'm sorry, I know you're sold, but I don't think Bush did 9-11.

26:03You know, it doesn't seem,

26:05Aiden:it doesn't seem, it's not as comprehensive as QAnon and we'll get to that. And I was just kind of wrestling with that idea is like, I think people that stumble into these rabbit holes or believe these specific things, especially in recent years or especially related to something like medical, it's very understandable how people lock into stuff like this sometimes. Yeah. I will say as someone who is now a conspiracy theory believer after this podcast. Yeah. And just while you were talking and I was just thinking of the easy, funny thing to say in response, it's all, everything has an easy counter.

26:40If you tell me the Egypt study was fake or it was like, was not real, I go, it's a lie. If you tell me the metadata was debunked and it was taken down and retracted, I go, they were buried. It was hidden by the deep state. That's what's awesome. No matter what you say, it's actually really easy for me to fucking keep my worldview locked in.

26:57Aiden:That's such the hard, I was watching a flat earth debate before this, you know, to educate myself. And naturally, because I was like, you know, I look around me, earth's flat. It's pretty flat. Bar as the eye can see. But in this debate, it basically boils down to that. It's like any piece of evidence or longer, more complex explanation that is given to the guy who's like diehard about flat earth, he can just say that doesn't make any sense. Like, think about it. That doesn't even make any sense. And that's the way of escaping the engagement with the other side. Kyrie Irving is better at basketball than you.

27:38And so if he says the earth is flat, I'm already fucking sold. And I don't need your doubter.

27:45Aiden:Kyrie, if you come out to the weekly pickup game, I'll back whatever you fucking say. Kyrie, come on the pod. Not to the flat earth.

27:51Atrioc:look there's a real problem with censorship okay now look tucker carlson with ivermectin they tell us the vaccine is the only answer but why aren't there more treatments turns out there's a number of promising drugs and drug combinations emerging that could treat covid including ivermectin the media hate this right so if you were to believe the truth which is that this is a sort of large global cabal, the government controls these things, that the instant that some of these conspiracies start to really take root, especially in the last five years, the technology companies prevent you from talking about it.

28:26Atrioc:Brett Weinstein starts talking about ivermectin, gets demonetized. People on Facebook or Twitter have posts removed because they're talking about ivermectin. Now let's say ivermectin was really beneficial. Why would they do this? That's right, the pharma companies. Big pharma's trying to control it all, and that's the argument.

28:39Aiden:Or - Can you pull up my screen? Or - I think it's so fucking devious. how Pfizer did all this insane global cabal only to have its stock drop over five years. That was for the deep state. Well, sometimes your long-term - Pfizer is now below where it was pre-COVID. Sometimes your long-term plans just don't work out.

28:59Atrioc:That's a sort of Elon Trump situation. They broke up. They broke up. Pfizer's no longer part of the deep state. Pfizer did all the work and then it - I mean, it's really part of it though. There's this weird balance of if you as a government say that's misinformation, you can't talk about it, that intensely fuels the belief that that's going on, particularly when the people who are strongly backing the prevailing truth, in quotes, are pharma companies who are universally hated. I had a little conversation with my good friend Gavin Newsom recently, actually, where we talked about the rights to free speech in between him asking me about Marshmello's concert in Fortnite, and he did...

29:36Oh, he's sparking up. Does he think Marshmello did 9-11? He implied it. He didn't say it, but he implied it. And he basically said, he has tried to put me on the spot, where do you draw the line on what you take down or what you don't? What is different misinformation that's dangerous enough? Because if you take something down, you fuel the fire. Who draws the line? Yeah. Different parties come into power and the other side gets really pissed. Is Jimmy Kimmel worthy of taking down for misinformation around Charlie Kirk's assassin? Yeah. Or is this person moved down for misinformation over COVID?

30:04Yeah. Where's the line drawn? I want you guys to look me in the eye. Yeah. Okay.

30:08Aiden:I want the audience to look me in the eye. And I want you to think about this little thing called Occam's Razor and what you just said because I think a lot of people think that. Truly, truly, whether it be ironically in a podcast studio or, you know, for real. What else would the government, if say the grand conspiracy isn't true and they aren't trying to hide anything from you and they're just trying to do their best to minimize the public health risk as best as possible in these unprecedented times, wouldn't they also do the same thing they would also do the same thing they would moderate messaging and try to like limit the perpetuation of something that is notably harmful or ineffective that's what i i want i think and whenever you think about this conspiracy theory stuff you know whether it be one or the other whether it be bush did 9-11 or whether it be uh whether it be ivermectin being effective against covid think about if none of the conspiracy theory was true and it was just a bunch of people trying to do their best would have produced the same situation that's to me that's occam's razor with a lot of these things i agree with aiden massad cut occam's throat with a ring and i'm glad we got to the bottom of that let's go deeper

31:27Atrioc:occam didn't hang himself occam did not i gotta put this out i don't know how to smoke cigarettes all right just just for context all right when before the episode started as atriog held up a cigarette, he asked me, do you like the filter side or the tobacco side? This is media misinformation. Neither of my co-hosts have any idea how to smoke a cigarette. I am the last sane voice left in this information economy. Dude, you're going to like throw up. Have you ever smoked a cigarette? Okay, okay, okay.

31:56Aiden:I'm just bad at it. Oh, gotcha. It is a skill.

31:59Atrioc:Yeah, you lose it unless you use it. This reminds me of something that I forgot because I was like deeply lost in your eyes as you spoke to cigarette at me. Let's move on.

32:09Aiden:It's reminded me of my grandparents' house growing up. You still? Oh, just the smell? Yeah. Wait, can I throw a couple at you? Before we have some more deeper dives. Yeah. I want to throw a couple conspiracy theories out. You can get your quick takes. All right. We talked about flat earth. I think we're all in agreement. A little bit. It's flat. I mean, it's definitely flat. I mean, you just look. Look around.

32:29Atrioc:Even in a plane, it looks flat. Even in a plane, it looks pretty flat.

32:31Aiden:Look around you within the distance that you can see, and definitely don't look through like a zoom lens at like a boat that goes over the horizon definitely don't do that or anything i think it's really funny that like we figured out the earth was round thousands of years ago without we didn't even have pictures from space so like back then i could see believing it's flat i'm surprised it held up i look around people people even exaggerate that part though people talk about us collectively believing the world was flat like way more recently than we actually did. We figured out the world was round so, so long ago.

33:05Yeah, but I wonder when it became mainstream.

33:07Aiden:Probably like in like 2020. And when it became woke.

33:11Atrioc:Big media, the big bloodletting companies, they didn't want you to know. Guys, what about aliens built the pyramids? What are you saying on this? That's the one you believe. You're looking. You look pretty convinced.

33:24Aiden:No, be honest. Well, you take the razor to that. It's like humans are going to lift that. That's a heavy stone block. What else could it be? They fucking threw slaves and human suffering at it until they fucking build them. That doesn't seem right.

33:37Atrioc:That doesn't seem right. It doesn't. That's not how big blocks work. Also, it is weird. I went to Vegas recently. The blocks are just too big. It's very similar to software. You can't just throw more people at the problem. And the Luxor is a pyramid. It doesn't look nearly as nice as the pyramids in Giza, despite having 2 ,000 plus years of technical advancement. I do. Why is that?

33:56Aiden:I don't believe in this one, but I do think aliens built the sphere. They did it recently. Aliens came recently and they built this sphere. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. What about Area 51? What about it? Does it exist? It does exist as a base. Are there aliens on it? Have we made contact with aliens, Doug? Okay, I think the aliens one... Do you have any initial thoughts? I actually do have a strong thought about the aliens one in general. I want to hear your thoughts. Culturally, we're very entranced with the idea of finding Earth somewhere else, right? And we have so many pieces of media about it.

34:29Aiden:We seek life on like other planets in our solar system or imagine what conditions they could live under. You know, more reasonable, like more recently, there are very serious efforts or ideas of like microorganisms existing on Mars during, you know, like a couple billion years ago when the conditions could have been, could have made them exist, right? Or Europa is one of Jupiter's moons and it's covered in ice and has like oceans under it. There's a question of like, is that environment capable of creating life under it? However, the idea of finding like

35:10Aiden:comprehensive, intelligent life to us is really, really unlikely for, I've heard two prominent theories. Why it's so unlikely that any of it would have touched anything within our human lifetimes as like a human race timeline while we've been alive on Earth. But you do believe there's aliens out there. It's based on the law of large numbers, right? Infinite universe. Absolutely. I think there's absolutely life elsewhere in the universe. The idea that statistically we're the only planet. Doug, where are you saying that?

35:44Atrioc:I imagine us, like us three. Yeah. We, in our lifetimes, had access to interplanetary travel. One of the things I would want us to do is travel, find other alien life, build a pyramid out of big blocks and then leave. Fuck with them. And just really fuck with them. Come back thousands of years later. Yeah, just fuck with them a little bit, but keep our existence a total secret. Yeah, so it makes sense to me. Yeah. Actually, build the pyramids, then 2 ,000 years later, fly around a little bit at night. In grainy photos. You let them gestate. Yeah, give them a little... Plant the seeds. Plant the clues.

36:19Atrioc:I mean, that was the basis of our entire civilization, right? Everything. Microchips, Red Bull, it all comes from the pyramids. Well, thank you. Thanks. Thanks to little gray men for this one because I need a Red Bull.

36:29Aiden:The two interesting theories I've heard about are the like time, kind of the time scale theory. So something we forget about is it's not just like distance and the amount of space between you and other places where life could exist or life could be traveling, but the time period that the universe has been around and the time that it will be around, you're not just accounting for like being able to find the other place that alien life exists at. but also finding it at the same time period that you exist in. And because time is so unfathomably long, like time, there's so much time in the history that comes before and after us.

37:08Aiden:The likelihood of us existing at the same time as another intelligent species that we could encounter is just so, so unlikely. You heard the theory of like the great filter? Yeah, and that's the other one. Every society eventually gets to a point where we kill ourselves. Nuclear war or underpopulation or overpopulation. So every society is reaching that point. And so nobody ever actually makes it to intergalactic levels. We've all filtered out and we're headed that direction. Yeah. And I think I was going to mention that as the other one, but I think it ties into the other one, right? It's like your species has to exist and get past that threshold.

37:49Aiden:You have to get past the filter and exist for long enough to find one of the other ones that also does it. It's just so unlikely. I think way, way, way more reasonable is we find foreign bacteria. And I think that could definitely happen within our lifetime.

38:09Atrioc:Ivermectin. It would be very funny if that's what Ivermectin is.

38:12Aiden:And then we'll see how the foreign bacteria reacts to different levels of Ivermectin. and then we'll give the bacteria COVID we're going to create COVID 40 it's going to be like a horse related bacteria from Mars that Australians put a bunch of alien bacteria

38:30Atrioc:and COVID and ivermectin into a box one more space one and then we should talk about QAnon

38:38Aiden:we'll get real we'll talk about a serious one moon landing faked believe or no we're locking in on conspiracy theories today. We're figuring them out. Moon landing faked.

38:50Atrioc:Okay, here's the problem. Defend it. Is that if you believe, as I do, that the government is controlling all these things and connects them, right? Why would they hide the aliens? Because that would get them the ultimate power, right? If you are a government and you want to be in total control, the best possible thing you can do is be like, there are aliens right now. We got to rise up against it. That is the most unifying thing. Well, I'm assuming the aliens are telling them they can't do that. To who? The aliens. The aliens are telling the deep state. So the aliens are... Okay, so we're saying it's not just pharmacy.

39:24Atrioc:It goes above that to deep state. I can defend any conspiracy theory. Government leaders. No, this is the beauty of conspiracy theory. Above that, there's another figure.

39:30Aiden:Well, the aliens told them they couldn't do that. It's so much easier for me to disprove facts than it is for facts to like... They have to work so much harder. I can just throw out a statement. You have to go like, well... So working theory is there is somebody above the deep state

39:44Atrioc:who's above Big Pharma, right? That's our current one. Big Pharma into the deep state into the aliens.

39:49Aiden:Sorry, I just want to follow. That guy who's able to bully Big Pharma and the governments is beholden to the aliens still. I just want to track this. To someone. Or part of the aliens. Only part. All right. I mean, if you don't believe Moonlighting was fake, I guess - I mean, I don't believe the Moonlighting was faked. I remember I watched a really good - And this is, you know, it feels silly to cite a YouTube video in an episode about conspiracy theories. It feels whatever you can cite. But I remember watching a really, really good video where this guy who had worked in film for a long time, he was an older guy, basically built the case that it would be more expensive or improbable to have faked the moon landing at the time in the way that they did than to actually have gone to the moon.

40:35Aiden:And he explains like the camera, basically that the camera and like film technology that existed at the time could not have created the images that became available through our exploration of the moon landing. And that was the angle that he took. More proud of our country for being able to pull that off than just the simple moon landing, which is not as exciting. I mean, in a way, I think if we managed to - Convince the world that we did it. Convince the world and then also hold all of the other countries, space agencies, and people at every level that were involved in the execution of the project and actually held those people to secrecy and managed to convince everybody along the way, that would be more impressive.

41:15Aiden:That is a pretty impressive feat. Yeah. If that's true - Makes me more patriotic. If that was true, then I'd be like, we're more fucked than I ever thought we were.

41:25Atrioc:That is terrifying to think about.

41:27Aiden:For the record, I believe we -

41:30Atrioc:Oh, hold on. The jury's still out. Don't get ahead of yourself. What does Q think about the moon landing? I'm so interested in QAnon. Okay. Just separately. Yeah, no, no, no. Just say, yeah. Non sequitur. Just you are interested in QAnon.

41:44Aiden:I didn't even know we were talking about this today. I just wanted to... Sorry, go ahead. So we got a great graphic for this one. Q. He's been the source for a lot of our stories in this podcast, but now you've taken a deep dive. Well, I mostly get my information from him. Yeah. So I don't want to piss him off. There's two... Okay, so QAnon is a conspiracy that came to, you know, popularity mostly during like 2017, 2018, 2019. And it became surprisingly mainstream. And I want to start by saying that QAnon kind of originated from a different conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate.

42:22Aiden:And basically QAnon in 2018, there was a person under the name of Q that started posting on 4chan and claimed that they were a high-level government official and started spreading information that perpetuated the idea that there was a global cabal of pedophiles primarily controlled or participated in by top-ranking Democrat officials and, of course, Jews. Because it can't be a conspiracy theory without a little anti-Semitism. You got to throw it in there. And through 2018, as this following began to build up steam, he posted for years with increasing intensity through 2018. That was when Q himself, or themselves, was posting the most.

43:20Aiden:And this bled into 2019 when he moved on to a different site called 8chan until his account on that site was compromised and 8chan was taken down. And then the conspiracy theory at that stage had become so mainstream and popular that other people sort of started to carry the message and the theories in different directions.

43:38Atrioc:So he is, it's this anonymous user who's posting more and more information that supports this theory. That it's all a bunch of pedophiles at the top.

43:46Aiden:Yeah, and it's important to fall back. I think the reason I wanted to explain this one was I remember kind of being around or like at a certain point, like browsing 4chan when Pizzagate was being perpetuated. And Pizzagate kind of laid the foundation for QAnon to exist. Pizzagate was something that started from initially leaked emails of Anthony Weiner on Twitter, where a user, a right wing, like Twitter user of some kind. I can't remember his account specifically, basically said that Anthony Weiner was participating in some sort of like pedophilic - They mean like a code, right? Everything, all of his emails - That's not yet, that's not yet.

44:28Aiden:So this is Anthony Weiner's emails. And he's, Anthony Weiner, who was involved in a ton of different sex scandals around his political career, I think was an easier target for this sort of thing. And this is the early seed for this idea that democratic politicians are participating in some sort of child sex trafficking ring. And then we move on to John Podesta, who is Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, and his emails are hacked in a phishing scam. Do they think it's suspicious at all

45:00Atrioc:that the first guy's last name was Wiener and the second guy's last name started with Peddo?

45:05Aiden:And that's why I like it, because you think big, Doug. You think big, because maybe it was planned by their parents all the time.

45:10Atrioc:Because obviously they would leave breadcrumbs like this. They would leave clues. Have you ever seen, there's a Nick Mullen joke where he's making fun of them.

45:19Aiden:He's like, you know your friends that put the$20 bill and make the towers burn together? And they're like, see, man, it's all true. And he's like, yeah, it's like after all that planning and da-da-da-da. He's like, you know what they did after? The clues. One last step. One last step. We got to lay out the clues. We got to lay out the clues. And so Podesta's emails are, I would say, the big inflection point for this because his emails are published by WikiLeaks. People read through them and then latch on to phrases within those emails like cheese pizza and refer those phrases to things like child pornography and build out the idea around this specific DC pizza joint that a bunch of officials have either named or said they're ordering pizza from, that there is a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of that pizza place.

46:12Aiden:And I remember reading about, my friend told me, it was telling me all of this at the time. And I remember going and reading 4chan threads about it. And like investigators on 4chan are like taking pictures from the pizza joints Instagram that show like families or like kids there and like using it as evidence for that there's like kids trapped in the basement. uh they're also trying to like spin like pictures of art that like john and tony podesta the brothers the art they own as like evidence of some satanic ritual that these people participate in within the basement posting like weird edited recordings that are like allegedly of these people at the pizza place talking about abusing children and all of that was circulating at the time and this is like the bedrock for the idea that all of these people hillary clinton included for some people it included obama that they were all complicit in this child sex trafficking ring

47:12Atrioc:uh attached to this pizza place and they enjoyed grabbing a slice before doing it yeah yeah and naturally i mean in the conspiracy is there actual pizza there as well or no i mean they did you know because you gotta it's a cover but they yeah okay

47:29Aiden:Obama had to have a slice I think what happens what happens is like in 2016 and 17 another thing I want to touch on briefly briefly is I remember I remember when I was reading this stuff that people were strongly connecting it to stuff like Epstein uh because people knew a lot about Epstein's crimes already because he had already been to jail once for stuff that he had actually done and he was known for having like high friends in high places particularly that there had been proof of bill clinton traveling on epstein's planes at different points in time right so people see that connection and then i think just because bill and hillary are married people like have a very easy jump that like this is all part of the same thing um and then q is taking an audience online primarily from Fortran that is like very, very primed to believe in this stuff.

48:25Aiden:And then kind of capitalizing on this idea that he's a figure of like knowledge and authority. And I think the real power of his conspiracy theory at the time was he actually didn't post many things explicitly. There's a handful of things over the period of time where he was posting. It's all pretty vague, right? Yeah. So like there's maybe a few times he would make a claim that was like directly disprovable, right? Like he said, Hillary Clinton's like about to get arrested and flee, or like John Podesta is like going to get arrested on this date. But outside of specific claims like that, which were pretty rare, most of the time, because he kept it vague, it's like, it's like an astrology thing, right?

49:02You can always fill it in.

49:03Aiden:You can always fill in the gaps and deny or like shape it into some sort of story. And I think a lot of people who were reconciling QAnon's capture of the mainstream in like 2019 and 2020, probably like if you've talked to anybody who believed in this stuff, you can see that the individual often believed in very different things from their counterparts. I remember there was a very good interview at like a QAnon convention, I think by Channel 5, where he's talking to a bunch of different people at like the QAnon gathering, right? And they all have wildly different takes on how this cabal works and what they do and why they do it and i think that speaks to how the the energy behind the the specifics never mattered you could believe and fill it in it's the vibe that this democratic specific sex cabal and also jewish apparently uh that's how good science is done okay a bunch of different theories all coming together at one thing they're trying them out they're putting them together yeah okay it's a scientific it's and they and they build kind of this weirdly you know i wouldn't say cohesive but beautiful tapestry uh of of of a belief and i think this lost some steam um it lost some steam when like q was no longer like the main person posting and like the message because it was no longer centered around him was just around all these random like podcasters and figures that were like in this right-wing sort of media sphere uh like saying the election was fake like it expanded way too far to have like a cohesive message anymore and then i think it slowly burned out over the last few years uh not that i don't think people don't still some people don't still believe this stuff to an extent uh but how's the pizza joint doing the pizza joints i mean i don't know how to shoot it up right so i don't yeah i don't know how it's doing right now but like a guy broke in he like shot open the door and like came in to like save the kids the owner's got a ton of death threats like this did have a very tangible negative effect he like goes down to the there is no basement he's like where's the basement he's like holding up a gunpoint asking to find the basement they open the closet door there's and he's like freaking out it's yeah

51:21Atrioc:god that'd be so weird to be robbed for something you don't have yeah what do you want me to do

51:25Aiden:open the door to the basement that isn't real. And then he's angry. He thinks he's saving the fucking kids for real, right? Yeah, he's trying to be a hero. I think the main message I wanted to walk away from this from was if you, you know, perhaps unfortunately, as I was around for the origin of this theory and remember reading it and being there at the time on 4chan because my friend told me - You're on 4chan too much. Huh? You're on 4chan too much. You're going to believe this shit in two years. No, no. I mean, like, I don't go on 4chan regularly. But I thought it was interesting to, like, read it at the time and see, like, dude, what the fuck?

52:06Like, these people, like, believe this?

52:09Aiden:Or, like, where is this coming from? And seeing that it takes, for an idea to take hold so heavily in the public's mind, it actually does have a very long trajectory to it. Like there needed to be an audience like introduced and primed to it and sort of like groomed into the full fledged, you know, insanity of the theory that there was executed in 20. In a way, there was the grooming of the mind. You know what it reminds me of is because it runs some more time. It reminds me of the GameStop conspiracy. I think these conspiracy theories have a couple of key factors to them. and one of them is that your enemies will all get punished.

52:53It provides this group, you against the world, and there'll be a reward for you at the end. And these things all come together to make it very appealing. And the GameStop thing was like, there's these evil hedge funds. By the way, nobody likes hedge funds. They are pretty evil. But they have some secret thing. And once we hold strong and don't sell GameStop stock, it will go to a million dollars a share. We will bankrupt all of Wall Street and we'll be unfathomably rich forever. like the the the core of it has these tiny nuggets of truth that is then way expanded and and creates a story that can never be broken but same thing with gamestop like it just fades over time because they make promises that don't like they just say they just lose tomorrow this will be five hundred dollars a share it will happen and then it doesn't happen well now i need it to be next week oh there's

53:40Atrioc:but it can't hold forever you know i probably the biggest disappointment that a human being like if you rank the most disappointing experiences a human being could have i would put in the top five that if you spent seven eight years on 4chan deeply soaking in the pizza sauce that all the democrats are pedophiles and they're hiding it and then trump gets elected and announces the epstein list isn't real that's got to be the worst feeling like it's the longest edge ever and then trump's

54:10Aiden:like no i'm not getting you off wait this is what i do we talk about this on a patreon episode this is exactly what i was saying it was like for this is a the epstein thing is something that trump never actually leaned into very heavily or never talked about himself very much but he's paying the price for an audience that has been primed for a payoff over the course of basically a decade about this stuff because if you're if you're one of those diehard people all of these things have been intertwined for so long and you are waiting for your god king to finally give you the fucking cookie. Yeah.

54:45Aiden:And he's not, it's like, why can't I get the cookie? Well, I mean, even though he didn't personally push it that much, like Cash Patel and Pam, everybody around him was like, this is gonna, we're gonna get this out. And then suddenly they're all switching. So it's just like a really frustrating thing for somebody who wants to see Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton in jail. It was her and Epstein. Those and those

55:08Atrioc:fuckers who run that little pizza shop. Yep. Yep. I want to see them all locked in. I don't have too much research on this. because I'm afraid of getting killed. But there was, you know, there is a deep conspiracy theory around the Clinton body count is what it's called, which is that Hillary and, it's funny, I said this on stream and they thought I was talking about the number of people they had sex with, their body count. Hillary Clinton's had a lot of sex. No, the body count in that they, Bill and Hillary, have murdered, systematically, journalists and people over the years. I wasn't able to, like, do a deep dive on it, but there is, they could be killing people.

55:42Aiden:Jamal Khashoggi was in the Saudis. Bill chopped them up? No.

55:47Atrioc:I mean, we know Bill's got a body count of at least one. That's for damn sure. A-O. Sheesh. So I just want to talk about dead internet theory. Yeah, tell me about it. Okay, this one is wild. This may or may not be the one I actually believe in. Dead internet theory is a conspiracy theory. It's not proven. But the idea is that the vast majority of the internet now is just bots. It's bots talking to each other. It's bots on the social media. It's bots making blogs. And everybody's probably had an experience like this. So I found a study that Berkeley did. If you pull this up, Perry. They looked at 1.2 billion posts, and they used a couple of what I will say are like a looser definition for what a bot post is, but still reasonable enough.

56:31Atrioc:And they found that their estimate is in 2019, about a third of the internet, 35%, was bot generated content. Now in 2025, it's about 60%. Jesus Christ. This is across everything. Two-thirds of what you're seeing on the internet is just from bots. And obviously a big part of this is the advent of Chachamete, right? Because now it's incredibly easy to have it post very compelling looking stuff. They found that it's largely coming from Russia, Vietnam, and the Arab Gulf states. I don't know why those... I don't see why those countries would have any interest in shaping the narrative on social media.

57:07I don't...

57:08Atrioc:So the follow-up, though, what's weird about internet theory, the dead internet theory, By definition, it's kind of hard to find good data, right? And so people have very different, like, let's say conclusions on it. So London Cyber Lab did one, and they found that human, so their estimation is that human share is actually about 80%. So only 20 % of the internet is actually bot generated content. Pretty different from what Berkeley said. And their thing, one of the quotes is, the platform filters remove roughly 96 % of AI spam. And they say like Reddit is only like 15 % AI spam. So their idea is like, look, the platforms actually do a pretty good job of ending it.

57:46Atrioc:And then a Yale study, similar thing. They basically said 38 % of posts on Facebook are by bots, but they only get 7 % of the engagement. And so what that means is like, yes, there's an enormous amount of bots generating stuff, but you're not really seeing it. And so there's different ways to interpret this theory. And so I just kind of encourage people based on these numbers to remember, as you're going around the internet and you see people arguing or whatnot, and it feels like everybody is like, you know, at boiling point. I just encourage you to remember all of this is fake. I made up all of this with an AI this morning.

58:19Atrioc:None of these websites are real.

58:25Atrioc:Oh my god. And so, it really makes you think that if you go on the internet and you read a post that says that your conspiracy theory isn't real, that's probably a bot who made that website to convince you it's not real.

58:40Aiden:Hillary Clinton probably made that bot. Hillary Clinton probably made that bot and then killed the guy that designed the bot to hide the evidence. To hide the evidence. It's truly insane. None of these links work. You can't click it. You made a fake Berkeley data lab page? this is psychotic though i was dude i was reading this i was reading this and i was like oh this is kind of good like this is this means that even though there's a horrid amount of like bot posts it means as humans we're like what seemingly relatively good at not engaging with fake content and then you fucking rub pulled me because i was gonna push back i was like um how how because when I see a post on social media, the reason the thing is, human beings are using Chad GPT a lot to write their posts.

59:24Aiden:Yeah. So that's a human being, but it's written like a bot. So how would they possibly know the difference between a human being doing that and someone just tasking Chad GPT? There's no way.

59:32Atrioc:Well, according to my fake website. I don't trust your fake website. That's exactly what I was thinking. No, they have a whole section on validation. Human annotated gold sets and adversarial holdouts from 2022. Look, we cited like 15 different papers that don't exist, by the way. Dude, that's been happening. The lawyers that are in court and they're citing court cases that don't exist and the judges are looking it up and being like, you're going to get disbarred. That shit's crazy. Look at this graph. It just says it's core and then there's just a bunch of... I was hoping you guys wouldn't look too deeply into what was on these pages.

1:00:11It's actually pretty fucking strong.

1:00:12Atrioc:Anyways, I did no research on dead internet theory. I have no idea what's going on. you know what ironically you've probably proven it you've probably proven the ease of doing that has made well i've become less and less this took me maybe 30 minutes and i just had to give it some slight updates on like here's a legitimate looking like website from yale just make it look like

1:00:35Aiden:this i have a question for you so in terms of when you're training ai models and you're feeding them a bunch of data in order to create the answers and outcomes that you want, right? If we exist in an internet that is continuously being dominated by robots or more sophisticated AI posts now, is that feeding into a data pool that is training AI further and they're getting bad data? Like they're just becoming fed more and more AI data. The inhuman centipede.

1:01:09Atrioc:Interestingly enough, the title of my fake paper is correct, which is synthetic dominance. So this is, we've talked about this very briefly. It's synthetic data is the name for data that's created by AIs. And what you just asked is the big question, which is if you are one of the AI companies and you're making an AI right now, essentially they've trained on all the human data we have. So the question is, do you, is the frontier of research around using the human data that we have in a more effective way to learn more effectively? Or is it about continuing to get more data at which point you need AIs to make the data?

1:01:42Atrioc:There are obvious downsides with that because if there are problems or let's say inhumanity inside of the AI and then the AI is using itself to train itself, it's going to just kind of get farther and farther from what humans would do, right? And so there's obvious problems. And then we actually talked about this with ChatGPT5 a few weeks ago. One of the things that I thought was extremely interesting is they admitted that they used their previous ChatGPT model to create data that was used to train the new one. So they now fully, OpenAI and ChatGPT, are using synthetic data. So the question now is, yeah, that might accelerate how quickly it improves, but it might just be moving farther and farther away where every time that you generate a new model, the percentage of stuff it's being traded on is just more bot stuff.

1:02:24Atrioc:That is like one of, if not the biggest question in AI right now. ChatGPT, 40 % of its training data comes from Reddit. As someone who's a regular Reddit user, the amount of AI-generated content on there has gone through the roof. The number of people writing their posts or even filtering their ideas through ChatGPD before posting them

1:02:41Aiden:is higher than that. On r slash the yard podcast, it's all farm to table, OC, no AI. Brain rot. Brain rot. Where slime will yell at you.

1:02:51Atrioc:That's the other side of this argument. Do you really want another five billion human written tweets versus some good shit by ChatGPD? Especially as humans get dumber because they're offloading all their schoolwork to ChatGPD. Right. So you either trade on the world's dumbest humans or the world's most recursive AI slot. We don't have the smartest people necessarily just like churning out content all day long, all right? Reddit is not a bastion of intelligence. You see that? The scale AI guy, Alexander Wing, the guy that got paid. Yeah, I mean, you know, his whole thing was, people have worked for him in my chat.

1:03:26They were part of the minimum. He just hired minimum wage employees to do human data, like to label pictures of dogs, to do simple programming tasks. And he made$2.7 billion. I mean, that's crazy. That's an unreal come up.

1:03:40Atrioc:I guess the one serious thing on dead internet theory is there is real, let's say, evidence in quotes around this, but it genuinely is almost impossible to figure out how this is. So for two reasons. One, the people who would have most of the information about this aren't telling you, right? It's not in Twitter's interest to say, yeah, it turns out 90 % of our stuff is bots, right? Or if it is, they might say, oh, we took down this many, but they're not really going to have analysis. And the second is it just gets harder and harder, both because the AIs are getting better and because what you said, which is humans use AIs to augment their stuff.

1:04:15That's the real insidious part. Yeah. Half the time I can't tell if it's a bot or if it's a human who wanted to sound more intelligent, thoughtful, thoughtful. Anything. And they just filter it through ChatGPT. And so it all mixes together in this slop. Right. What I can't tell is a human.

1:04:31Atrioc:Yeah, it's a weird thing that by definition, you sort of can't confirm whether this exists. You can't go and really say, you know, there's attempts and there's some. And so like I did read a little bit about like some of the people who are doing essentially like security for websites against bots and bots are getting more sophisticated every day. And that's kind of all we got is like they're getting better. But you would have to go to an individual website to really understand how they are dealing with it. I want to go back to one of the first conspiracy theories in modern American history. One that kind of is the granddaddy of them all.

1:05:08One that maybe can tie all these together. This is the murder. Slide, please. John F. Kennedy. President of the United States. Okay? And I want to talk about whether or not there's any veracity to this conspiracy theory. And I want to go through the details of it.

1:05:26Atrioc:I'm already hooked just off that word. I'm fucking in the way you set this up. I wouldn't, I tried to give you that.

1:05:36John F. Kennedy. All right. I'm going to give you the high level again. Motive means motive opportunity. That's how you determine whether there's any truth to this motive. John F. Kennedy comes into office after Eisenhower. Eisenhower, notorious anti-communist, notorious fighter of the cold war. John F. Kennedy comes in. Not really so interested. But he's young. And his advisors are all leftovers from the Eisenhower administration. They're older guys. They really want to fight the Cold War. They want to spend money. They want to have the military. So they give him a plan from Eisenhower to invade Cuba with a sort of a false flag rise up.

1:06:13Bay of pigs type situation. It goes poorly. He signs off. He's a young guy. He doesn't know these guys. I trust him. It goes incredibly poorly. It backfires. They do not take down Castro. It's a huge embarrassment for America. A bad stain in the Cold War. JFK, from that moment on, starts to sideline all these old Eisenhower appointees from the CIA, from the FBI, from the military, from the government. He said, we need to do things different. We're going to do a more peace-focused thing. We're going to talk to Khrushchev. We're going to negotiate. I'm going to talk to Castro. We're going to try and de-escalate the Cold War.

1:06:44Boo! Boring! I knew it. He gives a speech, famous speech, called the Peace Speech, seen here. I don't remember the exact location and date. I had it written down by way. He gives a peace speech where he says, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. We're all mortal. We need to work together or we're all going to die. Except for the Democrats. That's what he'd say now.

1:07:10Aiden:Except for the Democrats that operate that pedophile pizza room. Yeah, he said those guys are those guys. Get those guys. But outside of that, he gives this peace speech. This is considered a pretty iconic moment. And it's galvanizing for those leftover. Here, you can say it right here. June 10th, 1963. the peace speech, where he lays out his vision for the future, where it's about less intervention, less war, less overseas, more focusing on America, more. This is a problem for those in what you might call the deep state. The day we lost our balls. So a few months later, John F. Kennedy, while driving through Texas, is shot in the head and dies.

1:07:51Atrioc:And the conspiracy is he's still alive. Dude, he's with Tupac. I heard at Coachella there's going to be a Tupac and JFK hologram. Driving together? I said, I was doing research for this on stream, and I was like, yeah, the conspiracy theory that JFK was murdered. And they were like, no one's just murdered. That's funny. He didn't kill himself. I think JFK killed himself.

1:08:18Aiden:John F. Kennedy did not kill himself. Well, I did. No, JFK is alive with Tupac and the first, the original Avril Lavigne. So here's JFK in the car and with Lyndon B. Johnson, who would succeed him and his wife, Jackie Onassis. Wait, was Lyndon in the car? Lyndon was in the car. Damn, I didn't know that. Front seat. Immediately after he's dead, Lyndon B. Johnson assumes power as president. And within a few months after that, we're in the war in Vietnam, folks. Suddenly we're in a war in Vietnam, into Syria, into later on Iraq, into Afghanistan. The military industrial complex had reasserted control through their killing of JFK.

1:08:58Now I, oh, sorry. I looked into this as much as I could. Here's the thing. It's because it's all so fucking old and all the film is so grainy and all the data is, there's like, it's very difficult to see if there's any, you know, it's just people, He said, she said on, I heard a puff of smoke from the grassy knoll. And I heard the things I could find that were even slightly interesting or inconvenient were the doctors who operated on him immediately after the shooting have signed notes, autopsy notes that contradict what later became the official story. So they looked at him and they were like, the bullet angle would be here and dah, dah, dah, dah.

1:09:48And then later on, it would be like saying that it only could have come from where Lee Harvey Oswald was in this building. And there was no other shooter. And so there's something there, but they could have just been wrong in the moments. I couldn't really, you know, it's like there, it's a heat of the moment type thing.

1:10:02Atrioc:And they were part of the deep state or they weren't. Oh, they weren't. They weren't part of it.

1:10:07Aiden:Which part of the deep state or not deep state were they in? And then here's the, here, but here's the weird part. So Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot him from the third floor of the building. Yeah. He did, this is proven fact, a few years earlier, defect to Russia, go live in Minsk for a year, then come back and live in Texas during the height of the Cold War. This is a real thing that happened. And there's confirmed reports that somebody named Lee Harvey Oswald, but that didn't look like him, that's what they said, had gone to the Russian embassy twice leading up to this. So that was weird.

1:10:43And then there is official statements from Lyndon B. Johnson saying, whether or not there's any truth to this, we can't be playing up the Russia angle here because it could lead to a war where 40 million people die in an hour. Like we can't, so there's something weird about it. There's definitely, when you read about the time.

1:11:04Aiden:What is even the most like, okay, most crazy conspiratorial implication of that? Is it that Russia did it? Like, what are you saying? Yes, I'm saying, everyone has a conspiracy that CIA killed him because they wanted more military action. But when I look into it, there's like a lot of, like, who was this guy, Lee Harvey Oswald? He has like a lot of proven connections to Russia during this time of, like, he's constantly in contact with Russia. He's living with a Russian landlord. He has like, he's been to, he moved his family to Russia and then moved back. You know, there's like this weird connection.

1:11:38It could also be hamsters if he's a crazy guy. or he's very pro-Russia supportive and then shot separately. I don't want to ask too many questions.

1:11:45Atrioc:I don't like to think critically, but is the idea that Russia killed Kennedy or that he was hired, but was it a collusion between the government? It could also be a lone actor who, like... Nobody sees conspiracy that he was working for the US? The conspiracy normally is that the CIA... The CIA... Oh, fuck. Okay. Yeah, put them up. That's the normal one.

1:12:07Aiden:Well, I think that's... It's the ones I've heard. This is the first time I've heard of him. He's working for the Russians. Yes, dude. Yes, dude. So there's that. I mean, there's the angles of the shot. Oh, and the other thing is that Lee Harvey Oswald, immediately after killing him and then getting captured, is then himself killed two days later by a guy with mob connections, Jack Ruby, before he is able to testify about what happened. Before Lee Harvey Oswald.

1:12:36Atrioc:The Italians were in on it. So maybe the mob's involved as well. There's this web of connections. You know, it's not that I can find any conspiracy theory in this that I fully go on, but it is like everyone involved has proven connections to higher authority. So it's like everyone's getting - But that's what conspiracy theories are, right?

1:12:57Aiden:It's the idea that the evidence is convenient or circumstantial enough that you could connect it to someone's potential gain from this is happening, and then you can say that they did it. Like in the case of the JFK one, I feel like I've heard CIA did it, FBI did it, Mossad did it. And then now I've heard Russia could have done it. It's like, or maybe, it's like, maybe the guy just fucking did it. You know?

1:13:26Atrioc:Maybe. Maybe. I think they need to pay. They all need to pay.

1:13:31Aiden:Oswald?

1:13:32Atrioc:John Wilkes Booth. why don't we ever talk about that one that's a conspiracy yeah no why don't we make one up oh i think isn't it interesting i don't think abraham lincoln killed himself presidential

1:13:47Aiden:because abraham i don't think abraham lincoln killed himself i'll actually i want to make a claim i think the play my american cousin was so poorly written and boring that lincoln offed himself and then the play writer made up the john wilkes booth story to save his professional career yeah because he's like my play's not my play's not that boring it's not that bad so play right because you wouldn't want to be the guy who wrote the play that's so bad that killed the one of the greatest presidents in american history yeah you don't want that to be your stain so you make up who else wait are they only two is there no there's a third president who was assassin There's four.

1:14:22Aiden:Who are the four? Lincoln. McKinley. JFK. And the fourth. There's a fourth. This is also part of it. It's like, why are we making ones up about McKinley and Lincoln? Is it just too old? Is it just too boring? Listen, I agree with you. I think the the miasma the whirlwind around this one is far more compelling it's more interesting

1:14:54Atrioc:this one has more weirdness to it than I think a lot of other ones it is it just feels like why are there so many strange pieces there's a yeah I mean I watched you know a two hour YouTube video about it which is the source of truth to be clear and that also it's like it didn't make any strong claims but it was just like this is weird there's a lot of weird stuff going on whereas to be honest ivermectin not that weird like it's you know it's you probably shouldn't take it i just you know this is this is the one where i'm like okay why is this so bizarre on so many that is the feeling i had i read as much as i could about it and and i couldn't come to a conclusion but even when i'm really putting my best hat on to find sources like concrete sources there are a lot of very weird things like weird like people signing off on documents and saying this is my official thing and then retracting those things later whenever there's a, you know, there's a lot of, I don't know, there's just weird things.

1:15:49It's just weird.

1:15:49Aiden:Isn't part of it feels like age of when it happened and available evidence? Like there's so much of this has to be the example you were laying out at the beginning. I remember hearing the same issue is like when you try to retread through what happened because it just exists at a different time when so much less like camera footage and things like that is around, right? You're going solely off of people's recollections of what happened in a high intensity moment. And there's so many studies that have been done that people are, you know, even eyewitnesses are actually very bad at remembering and recalling specific events that happen around or in front of them.

1:16:30Aiden:And they tend to screw stuff up and make mistakes. Like that's a super common thing in criminal justice to begin with. And now you're going back to a time, you know, now with so many decades past where you're trying to like piece together the puzzles where you just don't, you don't have enough concrete evidence to like build up something solid. So naturally things just seem weird. That's part of, that's how I look at these things is like, maybe it's because it's like at the end of the day, if the CIA did it, it's like, how much does that change? Am I crazy? I mean, it would change a lot for me.

1:17:07Am I crazy? If it came out unequivocal proof that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy in order to get us into more wars, I wouldn't like it. Yeah, but I think that would be a big deal. You'd be like, wow, it's so long ago. Who cares? I mean, it's like... If it was unequivocal proof, that would be a massive deal. I think that would be crazy. It wouldn't be good. I think it would be like the biggest story ever. I think it would be... I can't imagine a bigger story than that. it's like it's like you're talking about it like it's a bad pizza it would be crazy it would be unheard of i don't i can't even you're right you're right but i would like i'd still go to work the next i guess that's true i'm still i guess we're still clocking in and doing the yard yeah you guys are cracking a couple jokes about it.

1:18:00Atrioc:You know, Big A would make a clip. Maybe we would talk about it the next week, but probably not. Yeah. It's tough because, you know, Occam's Razor could explain all of it, too. All these things could be people just trying to maximize their self-interest with an event happening. I have a question. Do you know, because there's two, let's say, very high-profile conspiracies that the current Trump administration was like when Wiegand Powell weren't unleashing it all. One was JFK, one was Epstein. Yeah. We're currently zero for two. Oh, for two, yeah. Is there any follow-up, you know, as of 2025? Why haven't they released the JFK files yet?

1:18:33So they did release the JFK files, but a lot of them were still redacted.

1:18:38Aiden:Who are they trying to protect? I had a question about that. No, I'm not saying that as a funny joke. Who are they trying to protect at this point? That was sort of my question. What is the point of all the hullabaloo around stuff like that when you get to release it with a bunch of stuff redacted anyway? It's like, oh, Mickey Mouse is finally public domain, and you find out it's just Steamboat Willie. That's a step in the right direction. Yeah, they released 10 ,000 new JFK documents, but despite 10 ,000 new documents and a huge hungry audience of content creators and conspiracy theorists and YouTubers, and they had nothing new to say, really.

1:19:15It was all basically what had already been said, and anything new was redacted. So it was a shocking nothing burger, but it did lead to a lot of new books being released, which was interesting. I think it ties to the biggest. The one of our lives.

1:19:31Atrioc:The one of our lives. Autism.

1:19:38Can you put autism up on the board? The face of autism, William Gates.

1:19:45Aiden:I just looked at it. I just looked at it. If his mom hadn't had so much Tylenol, He would not have invented Microsoft. All right.

1:19:56Atrioc:I have done a deep dive to do vaccines and autism. I think we have all in our lifetimes. I would argue this is maybe the biggest conspiracy theory, maybe alongside Epstein, of our lifetimes, at least one of the biggest. At least in terms of people changing their behavior. Yeah, like one of the most impactful. It's impactful right now. So, vaccines and autism, if you are like me, you've probably heard many times, vaccines are obviously safe. These kook heads are just absolutely wild. The science is settled. And so what exactly are vaccine skeptics, obviously like myself, saying? So there are really three core things.

1:20:33Atrioc:It's not just this, I'm sure there are some people, but for the most part, it's not just like, vaccines are scary and bad. There's three things that they specifically are trying to kind of like push. So one is the MMR vaccine. This is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. These are pretty shitty diseases that kids get. So since the introduction of these vaccines decades ago, you know, this problem has largely gone away. We've eradicated measles and mumps, or at least until recently. What I like about this conspiracy theory is that it's pretty apolitical, actually. There's like the crunchiest left-wing California mom, and then like the most southern NASCAR-watching right-wing guy.

1:21:13And they both agree that we shouldn't give their kids vaccines for measles.

1:21:17Atrioc:Yeah, they both have kids with measles. They're kids with measles. 9-11 and vaccines really reuniting the partisan sides.

1:21:25Aiden:I think a quick interjection to add on to that. I saw a map that it was showing the vaccination rates in children in grade school right now. And it was interesting to see how apolitical the map was. So some of the states with like the highest rates of vaccination still are states like, I think, Alabama, I think Missouri. And then other states that have lower rates are states like California. There's just like not a simple, typical political trajectory that you see across issues like this for this specifically. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah.

1:22:05Atrioc:So as I talked, so yesterday I chatted with Ian's friend, Sam, who's a resident in infectious disease. He's an MD, right? And like deeply researches this stuff and chatted with him about some of the core theories about why vaccines might be dangerous and why they might cause autism. but also now broadly there's just this concern. Maybe they're causing the chronic diseases that are growing every year. So I think let's start with some ground truth. One, there is truth that chronic diseases and autism rates have skyrocketed over the past few decades. It is true that the number of chronic diseases and the number of autism diagnoses, at least, has massively increased.

1:22:43Atrioc:Now the number, at least that was said yesterday by Trump, is one in 31 kids. That used to be one in 20 ,000 a couple decades ago. So what used to be this extremely obscure thing is now we all talk about it all the time, everybody being autistic. It feels like it's one in five or something like that. Of course, the caveat here is we don't know what causes autism. And also the way that we diagnose autism has massively expanded. Turns out not a lot of people went to autism diagnoses 50 years ago. That wasn't a thing. And so as you expand the knowledge and awareness and the people who are diagnosing this, you massively increase the number of people who are autistic compared to before.

1:23:22Atrioc:But then there's a 1998 study. Yeah. Also like the severity before it counts as it, right? I feel like people nowadays have, would say, relatively minor autism, but this wouldn't even register on the scale before. This is a part of it.

1:23:38Aiden:there has been a large expansion of what like counts or what is diagnosed as autism uh over time there's like a there's more of a spectrum to these diagnoses than there ever were before whereas in the past it was only people who were had some more severe version of autism where like maybe they can't speak or they have like a stronger learning disability or they can't live on their own without their parents like i think nowadays they just check if you have the eliminate stand Patreon, and if you do, you're diagnosed. They just let you write in. If you have more than 10 messages in the lemonade send Patreon.

1:24:13Aiden:Lock me up. Your mom loved Tylenol.

1:24:17Atrioc:All right, so the conspiracy starts in 1998. There's this doctor, I believe Andrew Wakefield, I didn't write it down, but this doctor in the UK releases a study, and it shows that kids who are getting specifically the MMR vaccine, again, this measles, mumps, rubella one, had a massively increased rate of autism. And it turns out there's only 12 of these kids. That is a tiny, tiny, tiny study to insinuate that vaccines are likely causing, in his conclusion, gastrointestinal issues that are then causing some sort of mental change that is causing kids to have this. It also doesn't help that he was invested, like had stake in another company that was making a competing MMR vaccine that was about to come out.

1:24:58Atrioc:So he had a little bit of a stake. But even if you assume the best intentions here, this is not a rigorous study. There's no control group. It's 12 kids. That's tiny. And so this is what largely sparked everything because now there is a study that points to it. And we've kind of talked, this is a theme we've talked about a bunch today, which is that now, even if somebody comes in and says, no, that's not true. Somebody will say, well, you skewed your research to try to show that it's not the case, or you didn't show for this control thing, or you didn't show for this. One of the things that Sam emphasized to me as I talked with him is that the effect of the MMR vaccine is one of the most, if not the most studied thing in medicine, right?

1:25:38Atrioc:So if you just want to trust data, there's millions and millions and millions of children in cases where this has been examined since. To the medicine, like to the medical community's credit, as it often should have, since 1998, there have been a shitload of studies. In the UK, more than 3 million person years of observation confirmed an increase of autism diagnoses despite the MMR vaccination rates not changing. A whole bunch of this happened in Scandinavia as well. Basically, they're showing as autism rates have increased, the vaccinations have not, there doesn't appear to be any connection.

1:26:10Atrioc:Autism symptoms aren't showing up a connection. They start doing like sibling studies to show that people in the same, you know, home, like one who gets vaccine and one doesn't, that doesn't seem to change anything. And then the other counter argument is, of course, getting measles is really, really bad. And so if you're weighing the risk-reward, even if there are potential side effects, like measles can cause autoimmune diseases, cause immune amnesia, all these horrific things, one in five kids gets hospitalized. What's extra fucked about it is like, first of all, it's parents making decisions for their kids, so they don't get to decide whether they're doing this or not.

1:26:50Aiden:Just ride out the measles, son! But also, but also, that's too partisan. Do a crunchy liberal California mom voice. Son, son, I'm listening to you and you're listening to me, but I think you need to ride the measles out. Can they be a couple now? Honey, stop doing that woke nonsense with our son. He will not be getting measles. Jerry, Jerry, stop yelling at our son. I'm trying to watch the NASCAR. Speak to him like you would another adult. All right, honey. We're still alive, though. It's actually beautiful.

1:27:23Atrioc:It's beautiful. And the kid is stuck in the middle. So this is really the core thing here. I think people, because of this study, there have been a number of studies since, a lot of examination, and it's like millions and millions and millions of cases that as I look through a lot of the resources that Sam provided me, it's like the evidence is overwhelming. And look, I'm somebody who, hopefully it's clear through this show, like I really want to try to understand the other side. I really went into this of like, is there any truth to this? And man, it's like, I don't know how much more data you can get.

1:27:51Atrioc:It's one of those things of this isn't we're pretty sure that it's still fine. It's this is one of the most studied things, man. So it's it's hard to believe it.

1:28:02Aiden:Every time I've looked into this, it's like you it's it's it is kind of this like giant truck versus coughing baby. Like, yeah, it's like you. Well, this study said that there's an increased rate of autism, like sample size 12. And then like a Danish metadata study of like 4 million children says no. That's the thing. Yeah.

1:28:23Atrioc:It's like a million kids in Scandinavia, a million kids in Norway, a million kids in Canada. It's like there's so, so much data on this that it's just like this is clearly not the thing, at least from what I can tell. So that's one, is they're just saying, look, this particular vaccine is too much. And why are you combining all these together? Why are you putting measles and mumps and rubella into one vaccine? Why not spread it out? That also has a bunch of follow-up studies that are like, this doesn't seem to show the difference. This kind of brings us back. This is what I felt was so fucked up about Trump's press conference about Tylenol and autism yesterday.

1:28:58Because if you're just doing this kind of vibes-based, throwing it out, seeing what's the... It can't be bought, whatever. The problem is, I think things like... Sorry, I'm smoking too many packs a day. is that I think for parents, there's just such a deep fear that what if, you know, it's like, even if you're the fact following, you hear all the studies, for like a mom who's like, I don't want my kid to have a lot. It's just like - I get it. Once it's in your head, they start getting, it's a fear that is irrational and it overrides 10 different studies. You can link me a hundred different studies.

1:29:38Aiden:It's just that even if you believe that, it just overrides the other, why does it override the other part of this that is like, yeah, what if my kid gets measles and dies? What if that? That's the crazy part. And also the part that if your kid gets measles, it will spread to people who don't share your fucking beliefs. So now you've like brought back a dead disease, you know, it is a - Well, this is one of, I remember having a pretty serious conversation with Sam, who you talked to about this a while ago. And when it was before Trump was elected and it was the idea that RFK was going to be put into the position he is in now.

1:30:13Aiden:And one of Sam's greatest fears was like, with something like measles, which spreads, it is incredibly contagious. And we're lucky to be in a position where it's effectively been stomped out, or at least was effectively stomped out until more recent times, right? And the issue is that right now, it's under wraps under a vaccine that is really, really effective, right? But you don't need the whole population to stop taking measles vaccines for this to become a problem. You need just a large enough chunk of people to stop giving their kids measles vaccines so that it's spreading around so often and mutating so quickly again that the measles vaccine as it is is no longer effective and kids who have gotten the vaccine start to get it more often, start to spread it around more often.

1:31:03Aiden:And this, as like a U.S. policy, could affect enough children in enough places that the risk of the disease spreads beyond the country itself. Because measles doesn't care about like, you know, it doesn't stop at the U.S.-Canada border and be like, oh, I wonder if I can get in. That was his greatest fear. It's like you're at the beginning of a spiraling consequence that reaches far beyond the parents and families that choose not just to get their kids vaccinated. It affects potentially so many more people around you and around the world.

1:31:36Atrioc:Yeah. As funny as it is to laugh at dead, unvaccinated children, as you always say. As you always say. We have an example in modern memory, which is COVID, right? And COVID kept mutating and we get a new strain every six months that was like more contagious, more shitty. And so we've seen this. If a virus just keeps spreading constantly, it'll change. And that's the fear here is, again, not only the people are not getting vaccinated. On top of that, there's people who can't get vaccinations for whatever reason, if they have some autoimmune issue or something like that.

1:32:05Aiden:And those people are protected by the high rate of vaccination in everyone else.

1:32:09Atrioc:So it's really destructive. It's unfortunately incredibly, incredibly dangerous and pretty sad. The two other points, because we've hit the core of it, but the two other... Again, I think if you want to just understand the argument, why people are afraid. One is MMR vaccine. The second is mercury. So we used to have thimerosal, which is 50 % ethyl mercury in vaccines for a number of years. That was basically to prevent bacteria from growing in it when it was being used multiple times. So you might think, why the fuck we put mercury in vaccine? Well, it's not the same as elemental mercury, but the name mercury sounds scary.

1:32:43Atrioc:So literally out of abundance of caution, American Academy of Pediatrics in 1999 said, let's just remove it so that people aren't even worried about it. And then that was taken as proof that there's mercury in the vaccines that is causing issues. And so like with many of the conspiracy theories, this didn't even have a real grounding in pain in harm. But because they removed it, that was taken as a signal of see, it's bad. And then last is the idea of just there's too many vaccines. And so you might reasonably say, OK, in 1980, kids got seven vaccines when they're a kid. Now it's 14. 14 is a bigger number than seven.

1:33:20OK, so holy fucking shit.

1:33:23Atrioc:Right? Dude, this is the bombshell. Right. Except the wave - Seven is more than zero. So we never should have done vaccines. Yes, yes. That's true. The thing is, so a vaccine, you inject antigens into your body, meaning they're part of the virus, right? And your body learns to recognize those antigens, builds up fighters against them, and then when you actually ever get exposed to the virus, your body's ready to go, okay?

1:33:50Aiden:That was my blood cell? That's how they do it.

1:33:52Atrioc:So in 1980, those seven vaccines had 3 ,000 antigens in them. So you were getting a very large variety and large dose of these different antigens that represented many different viruses. Over time, we've learned how to make those more effectively. So in total, the 14 vaccines now have less than 200 antigens. Oh, interesting. If you're doing the math, it's about a 15th of the amount of actual antigens going into your body now in those 14. So yes, it is true that 14 is bigger than seven. It is also true that 3 ,000 is quite a bit bigger than 200, but that's not the number people think about because they're not thinking about antigens.

1:34:26Atrioc:So, and again, with all these things, there's a lot more you can go into. So these three elements, honestly, I really wanted to come in here and be like, is there something? And I don't have it, man. It seems pretty thoroughly thought through. God, I hate his lack of conviction.

1:34:39Aiden:I really, yeah.

1:34:41Atrioc:And you know, so there's two, a couple of interesting talking points before we kind of start wrapping this. One, what is RFK Jr. doing? There's a lot of, I think, fear around but rfk jr the new human health secretary at america he is for the most part not saying people like he's not trying to ban vaccines so that's good the couple things he's doing he's trying to split the combination shots into multiple separate ones as far as the science shows that doesn't do anything but if people take them separately whatever that should be fine well it's just they're less likely to take them now like right you add the fear and say well you should take them separately just to be safe right removing yeah at a state level removing the requirements

1:35:17Aiden:for your kids to have to take those to go to school. Like I think he -

1:35:20Atrioc:Yeah, so requirements are being dropped. The population level like recommendations of like all parents should do this, that's now being dropped. But again, you still can go do it. He's saying we need to fully eliminate all that mercury from the vaccines. Again, never really did anything to begin with, but that one's like, sure, man, that's fine. He's replacing new leadership. So as of now, it seems like he's encouraging the mindset of make your own choice. He is not banning vaccines. It does not appear that he wants to. He has said, I'm not taking vaccines away from people. Everybody can still get them.

1:35:51Atrioc:So it's not great. The problem with vaccines, though, is you need, it almost can't be make your own choice because if enough people don't make the right choice, then everybody is impacted. Okay, so this leads to the second point, which is the unfortunate piece of this. Yeah. Big pharma and the United States healthcare system blows ass, and that's not a conspiracy. True. They are -

1:36:12Aiden:Conspiracy, it's great.

1:36:16Atrioc:perfectly willing to fuck us over in so many ways to extract the maximum amount of profit i do not think that that is conspiracy we've talked about it many times everybody fundamentally knows us and what sucks about this vaccine thing is that it is enriching pharmaceutical companies that we do have to go okay in this category yes you guys are correct please keep doing what you're and it sucks when the the side that you're trying to advocate for is a side that is universally hated where there's so much evidence of how they are willing to fuck people over for profit and then you have to go no no in this case it's actually fine they're not forcing you to take the covid vaccine for money that's not look it's just literally the best thing ivermectin is not the solution but when you've in your entire lifetime seen how shitty our system is it is easy to question it's what builds the resent and the it's what builds the resent allows in the situation where it doesn't apply to fester.

1:37:08Atrioc:Right, it's what allows then when Facebook takes a post down. Like it's this big cabal of fucking pharma that seems to be related to big government that connects to all of this. Guys, we're coming up on time and I have now realized that you are part of the CIA and you are part of big pharma. Yeah. And we have sold out this fucking podcast to the deep state and I'm going to try and bring this all together and figure out what is actually behind these so-called disparate conspiracy theories. I knew it. Bring up the slide. John F. Kennedy was a notorious sex addict who cheated on his wife, Jackie, okay?

1:37:42Many times. In fact, he's quoted as saying, this is a real quote. He said, if I don't have sex with a new woman regularly, I get headaches.

1:37:51Aiden:What? Just talking about women like Kathleen. Just talking to me. That's crazy, bro. Now I want to follow this up. John F. Kennedy is proven to have visited France in his lifetime. Okay. John F. Kennedy, Ludwig Ogren. I want to follow a theory here that Ludwig Ogren is John F. Kennedy's grandson, who, Ludwig, realizing that the CIA did kill JFK, is out to get revenge. How does Ludwig all these years later get revenge for his dead grandfather?

1:38:38He gets in an airplane. He gets in an airplane.

1:38:41Aiden:He gets behind the wheel. Additionally, who's creating more autism than the hosts of the yard podcast? True. Okay. It all fucking connects. He didn't need to drive. Aiden's a pedophile with Epstein. It all connects. It all comes back to Ludwig Argrin. I should take ivermectin.

1:39:00Atrioc:You added that one. And Ludwig is writing the fake posts on it. What do you think Ludwig's content gets a million views? It's all bots. It's bots. Dead internet. Dead internet theory. No way this guy's a famous content creator. It's all bots, dude. There weren't two towers. There were seven.

1:39:18Wow.

1:39:19Aiden:And all of that, just so I get called a pedophile on two podcasts. something.

1:39:27Aiden:Thank God. Thank God. I didn't want it to let up. My boss is incriminated. This is looking bad.

1:39:35Atrioc:This is my take down

1:39:36Aiden:the whole ship.

1:39:37Atrioc:Okay, Lemonade Stand Curse. Something always happens after we post. Which conspiracy theory would you want to get an update? To get proven true? Like within 10 minutes of this. I'd say JFK, dude. They dropped the unredacted files in 10 minutes. Keep an eye out. Aliens, bro. I really hope that right after this week You're about a real alien coming down. I'm going to feel, okay, that would be hype. I will feel really bad if we post this episode and then I open up Twitter and I see a twit longer from Ludwig. I'm going to be like, oh, fuck, man. I was joking. Concerning the events in New York. Addressing the 9-11 situation.

1:40:16Aiden:Dude, him on Mogul Mail, the 9-11 situation is crazy. Guys, it was a different time. I was new to flying. I wasn't on purpose. I hope we've just, we've pieced together something magical for all of you listening. I'll probably be unemployed after this week and we will see you next Wednesday on another episode of Lemonade Stand. Question everything.