In short
The Onion’s planned relaunch of InfoWars (the conspiracy site formerly run by Alex Jones) and Tim Heidecker’s role as creative director, including the legal/financial context and the intended comedic format.
Guest backgrounds
Tim Heidecker is a comedian and writer known for satirical work (including Alex Jones impersonation) and for building subscription/streaming-style projects like The High Network and Office Hours (via Patreon).
Key claims
The Onion is acquiring/relauching InfoWars despite court delays; the relaunch is scheduled for July 2 at theonion.info. Heidecker says the content will be direct parody with an “Emergency” arc, plus additional Onion tentpole shows. He argues InfoWars’ core business was selling supplements/gummies and other products, and that merch revenue will help repay Sandy Hook families.
Notable examples
Sandy Hook defamation—Jones claimed it was a hoax; families won about $1.2B (and later orders referenced around $1.5B). Heidecker cites HBO’s The Truth vs. Alex Jones and describes families’ harassment and threats. He also discusses Alex Jones’ “60% act” performance vs belief and mentions court stays in Texas that put the keys in “limbo.”
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOOverview of InfoWars Acquisition
0:45 to 1:00
Discussion on The Onion's attempts to acquire InfoWars.
“Tim Heidecker, the influential comedian and writer, has been named creative director of the revamped InfoWars.”
The Verge News Update
1:00 to 2:48
A brief roundup of news including iPhone rumors and political updates.
“Hey, it's your friend David Pierce, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, June 30th, 2026.”
Tim Heidecker on InfoWars Vision
3:26 to 6:00
Tim discusses his vision and creative direction for the new InfoWars.
“In 2024, Ben Collins says he's going for InfoWars.”
Programming Details for New InfoWars
6:00 to 8:00
Details on the programming for the revamped InfoWars including shows and themes.
“But to me, that doesn't have a long shelf life.”
Character Lore of Jim Haggerty
8:00 to 10:00
Discussion on the character Jim Haggerty and his evolution in satire.
“And that's got like a like a six episode arc that I can't reveal much about, but we'll kind of well, we'll see.”
The Challenge of Satire Today
10:00 to 12:00
Tim shares insights on producing satire in a rapidly changing news environment.
“And then he, I guess his trajectory was He got, you know, red-pilled I guess or something And got kicked off I'm not sure.”
Navigating Parody and Reality
12:00 to 14:00
Exploration of the balance between parody and the absurdities of current events.
“What do they do when you look through them?”
Discussing the New Infowars
14:00 to 15:00
Explore the intention behind the new Infowars parody and audience perception.
“I imagine these clips will be everywhere from the various programs that you're producing.”
Finding Inspiration on the Internet
15:00 to 16:40
Learn how the hosts gather material and inspiration from various online sources.
“But sometimes it hits in a beautiful way where it's just like, oh, he took the bait.”
Conspiracy Theorists in Today's Landscape
16:40 to 18:30
Understand the evolution of conspiracy theorists and their online presence.
“Like, there's a small group of people I know that we treat these like, that's like our reality show.”
Show all 19 chapters
The Changing Nature of Conspiracies
18:30 to 21:00
Examine how conspiracy narratives have evolved and their cultural implications.
“Like those young guys, mostly guys, and a lot of them are on the left, were like really fast talking and know everything.”
The Changing Nature of Conspiracies
21:10 to 22:17
Examine how conspiracy narratives have evolved and their cultural implications.
“And, you know, that's true for like, you know, Cheers the sitcom too.”
The Performance Behind Conspiracy Theories
25:30 to 27:30
Delve into the complexities of Alex Jones' character and belief system.
“But he was also fighting tooth and nail for his show, for InfoWars, on the brink of losing it.”
The Business of Conspiracy
27:30 to 28:00
Explore how conspiracy theories intersect with commerce and media.
“So that's the scary full circle of it, I guess.”
Peptides and Sponsorships
28:00 to 29:40
The hosts discuss the implications and humor around peptides and potential sponsorships.
“Like, he's not peptidin, from what I could tell.”
Impact of Alex Jones
29:40 to 31:19
Exploring the consequences of Alex Jones' actions related to the Sandy Hook tragedy.
“And the families have been harassed and threatened.”
Collaboration with Families
31:20 to 34:27
The hosts share how families affected by Alex Jones are involved in their creative response.
“Like, there's a documentary anyone could watch on HBO called The Truth vs.”
Legal Limbo and Future Plans
34:27 to 37:16
Discussion on the legal status of InfoWars and the plans to continue the project.
“was what their message was, which was pretty intense.”
Hope in Comedy and Creativity
37:16 to 40:08
The hosts reflect on the role of comedy and creativity in countering negativity and fear.
“Actually, a lot of Verge readers love going to theverge.com.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Mia Sato:Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the international chip shortage. I'm Mia Sato and today I'm talking to comedian and writer Tim Heidecker about The Onion's takeover of InfoWars. A year and a half ago, the satirical news site The Onion announced it was trying to acquire InfoWars, the conspiracy news website hosted by Alex Jones. Among the many lies peddled by Jones was that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. The victim's family sued Jones and won$1.2 billion in defamation lawsuits. InfoWars came up in bankruptcy auction and The Onion emerged as a potential new owner.
0:39Mia Sato:The legal process to acquire InfoWars has been through a lot of ups and downs, but The Onion is relaunching it anyway on July 2nd. Tim Heidecker, the influential comedian and writer, has been named creative director of the revamped InfoWars. I'll talk to Tim about his vision for InfoWars in an era when reality is stranger than fiction. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. Hey, it's your friend David Pierce, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, June 30th, 2026. We're starting to get looks at the next generation of iPhone, and they're coming in the strangest ways. First, there were reports that photos of the iPhone 18 Pro were starting to appear on the dark web along with a list of the device's parts.
1:17Mia Sato:Then, videos that supposedly showed the 18 Pro undergoing a drop test showed up on X. If this really is the 18 Pro, boy, does it look a lot like the 17 Pro. Call me when the iPhone fold starts showing up on the dark web. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, a couple of important political things today. First, the Supreme Court stopped President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, which means that still, nearly everyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen. And the Kids Act passed the House by a pretty wide margin, actually. This is a package of bills that, among other things, implements safeguards for minors on social platforms and would require AI chatbots to tell you that they are in fact not human.
1:54Mia Sato:Versions of this legislation have been around forever, and there are still a bunch of hurdles to clear, but this idea is starting to move. And finally, Verge contributor Sophia Chen just published an excellent piece on the state of quantum computing, which has supposedly been the next big thing for like forever at this point. In reality, there's a lot of progress being made, but you don't have to learn what a qubit is just yet. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, June 30th. Back to Mia. Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise.
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3:06Mia Sato:And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone. But when you switch to GEICO, you've got claims reps available around the clock. So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Wow, isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to Geico. Tim Heidecker, welcome to The Vergecast. Hi, thank you. How is it going?
3:29Tim Heidecker:It's good.
3:30Mia Sato:In 2024, Ben Collins says he's going for InfoWars. What is your thought? Immediately, are you like, I want it?
3:37Tim Heidecker:I want it, yes. I think my thought was, that would be fun to have, to play with. I don't really know what he means, so my first thought was, who do I know over there? and couldn't I, I'm such a fan of the onion, that how can I insert myself somehow into his plan?
3:55Mia Sato:Yeah. And are you thinking, you know, when you see this news kind of developing, do you have an idea in your head about what you would do if you had the keys? Or is that something that kind of developed over time?
4:08Tim Heidecker:The first attempt for them, I reached out with, I think, just to talk to them about what they were thinking. and then I never heard back. So I didn't think about it. I kind of just thought, oh, well, I guess I'm no longer relevant because I can't get the onion on the phone. And then out of the blue, they called me and I hadn't realized that this was back on. And really, I think in that first conversation, I was just spitballing. And my first two thoughts were, well, it would be fun to make fun of him for a little while. but then that joke would go stale but then you'd have all this you'd have a media site you'd have the infrastructure of like a streaming site or anything you wanted it to be so it would be and at the same time I was like developing my own independent streaming sites the High Network which is where I do on cinema and Office Hours which we do through Patreon and I'm just really excited about the possibilities of like, you know, building your own networks, your own subscription, you know, streaming sites.
5:18Tim Heidecker:And I thought, well, there's my sites, my, especially the high network, which is very specific. It's very similar to the Onion because it's very restrictive in what we can really do because of the sensibility has to be very straightforward or it has to be united. And you can't just, I have so many funny friends and ideas that don't fit into that box. and The Onion was thinking the same thing. They have, they want to do so much in comedy, but they're kind of restricted by their own voice for good reason. But so if there's this other thing, maybe we can expand outside of our limited sensibilities.
5:56Mia Sato:Yeah, kind of drag the cinematic universe out a little bit. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
5:59Tim Heidecker:They're a big old parent company, which it's not quite that yet, or it's evolved since then, but it has become sort of these, we talk about it in sort of phases Like, first phase, we're going to come out and be very, like, directly parodying that world, that sort of conspiracy world, you know, supplements and hoodwinking people and, you know, crisis actors and all that stuff. But to me, that doesn't have a long shelf life. So then it would, phase two would evolve into, well, let's make a platform for the kind of comedy we all like.
6:35Mia Sato:Yeah, because I think when, you know, an earlier announcement, there was a clip of you doing an eerily good Alex Jones impression.
6:43Tim Heidecker:Tim Heidecker here. I'm broadcasting now live on the Internet. Thank you for joining me. We have major, major announcements to go through here. Lots going on.
6:53Mia Sato:But to clarify, you're not going to be trapped in his skin. You won't be Alex Jones forever.
6:58Tim Heidecker:I'm walking in his skin, but I can take it off whenever I want. Yeah. No, I'm going to do it for a little while, but I don't want to be, I mean, I just have other things I want to do. So I'm not, I don't want to get trapped in that mentality for too long.
7:14Mia Sato:Yeah, the stress on your vocal cords must be crazy.
7:17Tim Heidecker:Actually, people are like, how do you do it? And I said, it's fun and easy, but I've only been doing it in short bursts. And then last week we filmed like two proper episodes that kind of took all day. And by the end of that, I was stressed. I mean, like, the vocal cords were pushed. And the next morning, I was like, oh, boy, I don't know if I can do this. I'm on vocal rest. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure I could go to some kind of a coach and get to where I can do it every day. But I don't think I want to do that.
7:48Mia Sato:Yeah, yeah. So, new InfoWars scheduled to launch in just a few days, July 2nd. What will people find when they go to theonion.info?
7:56Tim Heidecker:We're putting together like a kind of an hour or so of programming that is essentially it's my show, which is InfoWars, essentially the kind of the very direct parody that we're calling Emergency with Tim Heidecker. And that's got like a like a six episode arc that I can't reveal much about, but we'll kind of well, we'll see. We'll see what happens. but and then the Onion had before I got involved had produced the Jim Haggerty show that is very much like a kind of a Tucker Carlson parody that they've teased already so we have we have those two kind of like tentpole shows and then there'll be some like interstitial stuff you know we want to start presenting the idea that this is going to be like you know the way Adult Swim was this block of time that you would go and it all felt kind of connected.
8:52Tim Heidecker:It was kind of similar sensibility, a voice that's consistent. And so that will get us hopefully, you know, into the fall. And then I think we'll try to kind of relaunch or sort of present our, you know, fall programming schedule. That stuff that's now just in the works. It's just being developed now.
9:15Mia Sato:Yeah, I wanted to ask about Jim Haggerty. You know, the Onion social media accounts have been teasing and reposting old stuff. Can you tell listeners what his lore is?
9:26Tim Heidecker:Well, I don't know at all, but I was a fan for sure when they're still doing ONN, their sort of CNN parody. And he was like the morning guy. It was like very much local news. And I just, I mean, I was such a fan of those.
9:44Mia Sato:Fewer Americans than ever are planning to travel this summer But what if taking that vacation doesn't turn out to be as expensive as you think? Travel expert Kathy Barnett joins us now with an affordable summer getaway solution Taking a vacation in your mind Hi Kathy! Good morning Kathy!
10:00Tim Heidecker:And then he, I guess his trajectory was He got, you know, red-pilled I guess or something And got kicked off I'm not sure. I don't have all the details, but now he's sort of this anti-new or anti-establishment parody of, you know, kind of exactly what happened with Tucker Carlson. Sure. Yeah.
10:21Mia Sato:Yeah. I was looking up the actor who plays Jim Haggerty, Brad Hallbrook, and apparently he used to be a reporter in a previous life. Oh, okay. It kind of adds like a really funny dimension to it.
10:31Tim Heidecker:I mean, that's like a great trick in my world of casting is try to find as close to the real deal as you can. Yeah. And work with them. I'd much rather see a real guy like that than a comedy actor, some kind of improv person pretending to be that. Just go for the real deal. For 35 years, I was part of the problem. A mouthpiece for the mainstream media, spewing their lies and kissing their feet, all while they turn me into something I'm not.
11:09Mia Sato:But now I'm free of my corporate shackles and my only business is freedom. Yeah, find a disgruntled former news anchor and get him in. And write him funny lines. Yeah, give him a red pill script.
11:24Tim Heidecker:Put the teleprompter up there and let him go.
11:26Mia Sato:Yeah. This is such a funny time to produce satire. Sometimes I wake up and read the news and it's like the Trump administration has stolen Onion headlines, right? And beat me to the punch. Not the Onion Reddit page. Yeah, right. How do you keep an edge? Where do you look for what's next or what getting one step ahead?
11:47Tim Heidecker:It depends on what project I'm in. I mean, office hours is much more reactive to what's going on in the world. You ever use Snapchat? They've announced these new, everyone's got the wearables, the glasses, the technological glasses, right? This bombed apparently. What do they do when you look through them? You see people's faces in a baby filter? And sometimes that can just be, you don't need to really, like, you know, you can kind of just talk about what's actually happening and have a laugh about it and remind people that you're not going crazy. This is crazy, you know, and be angry or be befuddled or whatever your feelings are.
12:25Tim Heidecker:And that's more like immediate reactiveness. In this Infowars space, I think it's finding, I mean, just ratcheting up the absurdity to where it becomes funny. And it's more about, like, human relationships and not the specifics as much. I'm more interested in, like, the deeper flaws that we all have that are kind of universal. And so, like, with Alex Jones, I think there's, like, the idea of paranoia and everyone's out to get you. And you can do that in a funny way by—sometimes it is hard to find something crazier than what he's doing. But you can try to—you can usually find something funnier, I think, or something that makes me laugh, you know.
13:18Tim Heidecker:You know, I like, it's a, I like playing, in this world, I also like playing with religion and, like, the idea of the sort of the school yard or, like, the elementary school level ideas of hell and heaven and demons. Because he talks about demons a lot. Yes. And I just think that's very silly, you know. I think demons are silly. It's like thinking about witches and stuff and goblins, you know. And he treats them so seriously that that's like a fun area for me to play in. But I hope with all of that, you are getting to like a deeper universal connection to like what we're all feeling and like finding those flaws in us and just getting them out in the open and laughing at them.
14:07Mia Sato:Yeah, yeah. I imagine these clips will be everywhere from the various programs that you're producing. Are you worried about people not realizing that it's new Infant Wars? I mean, worried about people realizing that it's— Not realizing that this is parodying something. I mean, I guess they would see you and be like, Alex Jones looks a little different.
14:29Tim Heidecker:Yeah, I mean, we're not trying—like, we're never really trying to fool anybody. You know, I think we're playing to our audience, playing to our fans and people that are into different kinds of comedy or get—you know, think that guy's a scumbag. and want to goof on him with me. But I've always been presenting stuff in a way that might be confusing for people. We confused the hell out of Alex when we exposed ourselves, and he started finding all my old Tim and Eric stuff. You can't predict that. You can't control it. But sometimes it hits in a beautiful way where it's just like, oh, he took the bait.
15:12Tim Heidecker:The story writes itself. Yeah.
15:14Mia Sato:I'm curious what corners of the internet you find yourself fascinated with. Where do you go to find weird things? Or where do you go to find material or things to play off of or things to, you know, sort of shape your work on?
15:30Tim Heidecker:Well, I love a few Reddit accounts that I look at a lot. I think that I'm the main character one. Sure. That always is like, that's a character I want to do. Who is that person? What's their deal? I think our guy I do office hours with, Vic Berger, is an absolute Instagram addict where he finds like the people with 200 views that are, you know, absolutely from Mars and sends them to me. and sometimes I watch them. But, you know, sometimes it'll be like, it'll come back in a way where you're like, I forgot about that. But then now I'm writing a character who's, you know, is a guy who is always like showing off his wife and he's taking his wife to the mall.
Read the full transcript
16:21Tim Heidecker:Like showing how much he loves his wife and how well good he treats his wife. And that's like funny on the surface, but then maybe a month or two later, there'll be like something unrelated that's like, oh, that would be a fun note to play, that similar thing. Mm-hmm. I mean, I love also, like, I'll definitely dip into, like, the Roganverse or, like, the, you know, Patrick Bette David.
16:45Mia Sato:I don't think so.
16:46Tim Heidecker:See, people don't know these people. Yeah. Like, there's a small group of people I know that we treat these like, that's like our reality show. Okay, okay. And they're these right-wing guys who do broadcast every morning, and they just talk about the news and everything. But they are hilarious. I mean, unintentionally. Yeah, sure. The way they interact. And so that will inspire something. But yeah, I mean, unfortunately, like everybody else, I'm on my phone a lot. You're watching reels. Just looking at crap. Looking at crap.
17:15Mia Sato:Yeah. Okay. So if we send you a reel, there's like some small chance you might see it. You might watch it if it has like two views.
17:22Tim Heidecker:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
17:25Mia Sato:I'm curious if you and folks working on Infowars, whether that's Ben Collins or someone else, have talked about like the contemporary space of conspiracy theorists and what it looks like. Because I was thinking about it and Alex Jones almost feels like, not quaint because it's like monstrous, but almost like old school in some ways compared to some of the sort of new gen, like Nick Fuentes types. or, right, like they're very tapped into how platforms work and how algorithms work and what young people want. So I'm curious, like, if you guys talk about sort of the real ecosystem and what it looks like.
18:08Tim Heidecker:Well, we haven't talked too much about it. I could tell you what I think, I guess. Yeah, Alex, that brand of conspiracy theory does feel a little, he is an older, you know, he's been doing it for a long time and his media generally does feel a little dated, I think, if you look at other stuff. I'm fascinated by these like millennial, maybe even what's below millennial, Gen Z.
18:32Mia Sato:Oh, yeah, Gen Z and then Alpha.
18:33Tim Heidecker:Like those young guys, mostly guys, and a lot of them are on the left, were like really fast talking and know everything. They know everything. They sit in that Jubilee thing. Oh, my God. Actually, if you look at the GDP from 2026 to 2026, you can find that. It's like debate, high school debate. It's debate talk where I just like, you know, they run circles around you. And that's like a whole new breed, I think, of internet personality that kind of came recently. And, I mean, I don't look at Nick Fuentes. That guy creeps me out, I think, too much to actually listen to him. But, yeah, I mean, it's also just so spread out and has just kind of dissolved into the general culture.
19:24Tim Heidecker:And some of it, like, the weird thing about this one when we started really ramping this up was you had – it was at this period where suddenly there's all the Epstein stuff and Alex was breaking off from Trump. And you started feeling like, well, some of the stuff he has been talking about is actually real. There is a secret society of sickos out there. And – but then it gets – you know, it just gets so messed up with – you know, it gets into this anti-Semitic stuff. It gets into – you know, Tom Hanks isn't the problem. Right. I don't think, you know.
20:00Mia Sato:TBD.
20:01Tim Heidecker:But like, you know, but people that Alex is very close with are. Sure. So – and then there's, you know, the break in foreign policy. So it's like it's a weird time, sort of a weird time to go hard on him because some of the stuff he's like saying is actually quite anti-Trump and anti-establishment. But it still goes back to, I mean, I tuned in the other day just to get some inspiration for The Voice. And I literally hit on him talking about somebody who had faked his own death. And they were talking about Charlie Kirk faking his own death. And like, what? Like that doesn't, I don't know. They just love that.
20:40Tim Heidecker:Magical thinking, I guess Yeah And I think for their audience It's a way to make the world make sense And to like feel like there's order Even if it's an order that is against you Yeah At least it's not just, you know I could get struck by a bolt of lightning Sure You know So, but his main function is to sell pills Right, right, right You know, pills that probably don't work
21:07Mia Sato:Gummies, pills Yeah, and that's at the core of his.
21:11Tim Heidecker:And, you know, that's true for like, you know, Cheers the sitcom too. It was just to sell, you know, Chevrolets. So it's very similar.
21:19Mia Sato:Yeah, I wonder what we sell. I don't know.
21:22Tim Heidecker:Oh, I'm sure you sell lots of crap. Phones, chips. Yeah.
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24:50Tim Heidecker:When I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedgeman.
24:58Mia Sato:I have definitely already been here. Now, was it left, right, or right, left? Well, maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later.
25:10Tim Heidecker:But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the GEICO app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.
25:17Mia Sato:It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to GEICO. I don't want to spend, you know, too much time talking about Alex Jones because I think, like, what you're working on is more interesting. But I do have this nagging thought that's like, you know, he obviously can perform, right? He can do the character. But he was also fighting tooth and nail for his show, for InfoWars, on the brink of losing it. where he was spending days posting on X, where he seemed to be like conflating characters you'd written and played and saying that it was you, the person who had taken over InfoWars. Do you have a sense of how much he truly believes any conspiracies or anything he shares with his audience versus how much is the performance?
26:02Tim Heidecker:I don't have any clue. I mean, I could just tell you what I, I don't have any inside information on that. I think it's like 60 % of an act. And then he's been doing it since like the 90s, you know, so somewhere in him is a worldview that is, you know, conspiracy driven. Yeah. Back from 9-11 to, you know, you name it, Kennedy assassination, Bigfoot, you know, UFOs, all of it. All of it's fun in a way, you know, like there's a recreational quality to this stuff that, you know, I think Joe Rogan used to center his show around like, hey, let's talk about ghosts. You know, there was a show I listened to a lot.
26:47Tim Heidecker:It was Coast to Coast. It was Art Bell and then George Norrie. And it was a radio, late night radio show where people would call in and say, hey, George, I saw, you know, Loch Ness Monster about three years ago. And we were, and you're like, uh-huh, go ahead. And it was just good radio. So I think that's what a lot of this started as. And then it changed. It really changed more with Trump because Trump basically was like one of those listeners or one of those callers. Yeah, literally calling.
27:19Mia Sato:Yeah, he would love to call into like TV programs.
27:21Tim Heidecker:Yeah, and he'd just shoot from the hip and say what he thought. And a lot of it was nuts. And now he's actually running the world in a lot of ways. Yeah. So that's the scary full circle of it, I guess.
27:35Mia Sato:Yeah. A big part of, you know, the InfoWars ecosystem and Alex Jones finances was selling crap. I looked at the store the other day. Yeah, what do they got these days? Well, I was kind of surprised because I feel like he hasn't been keeping up with the trends. It was mostly gummies, supplements, but I feel like he really should be on the peptide train. And I was surprised that he wasn't. Right. So will the onion be selling peptides?
28:00Tim Heidecker:I'm a little behind on peptides. I keep seeing it. Sure. Is it like steroid? What does it do? What does it do? Yeah, it's like injectables. I mean, look at Alex. Like, he's not peptidin, from what I could tell.
28:14Mia Sato:It could be a different peptide that I'm not aware of. A new horrible thing.
28:18Tim Heidecker:Yeah, it's a ballooning peptide. That's, yeah, we'll, I mean, we'll have to figure out the funny version of that. I don't know if that just doing peptides is quite there, but maybe Pepto, maybe injectable Pepto-Bismol in a syringe form. Yeah, right, right.
28:36Mia Sato:The pink stuff. The pink stuff. Have you heard from any of the sponsors of the show or any of the—
28:44Tim Heidecker:I don't know if there are any. I mean, I think it's their stuff. Yeah. I don't know if these were—
28:49Mia Sato:They're like manufacturing it somewhere in Austin. I think so, yeah. No, I haven't heard from anyone.
28:52Tim Heidecker:We did hear from somebody that, I don't know how much I could say about this, but who actually makes gold and like he sells gold. And you could, if you were in a company, you could work with him to like design gold, whatever, you know, things and sell them on your site. And he, I guess, used to work with Alex and used to work with Rogan and those guys doing crap. And he saw, he's like wants to do business with us. He wants to make gold for you. Yeah, which we have a couple of ideas. Oh, love it. Yeah.
29:24Mia Sato:It could be like a mega sponsorship level where it's like.
29:27Tim Heidecker:Yeah, as long as I get a cut. Yeah.
29:31Mia Sato:I want to make sure that we like really explicitly talk about the harm that the show caused. And, you know, for listeners who are not aware, Alex Jones has lied for years about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. 26 people were killed. 20 were kids. And the families have been harassed and threatened. Some said they've received letters from people saying, we're going to desecrate your child's grave. Families have had to go into hiding, move. And several years ago, Alex Jones was ordered to pay something like$1.5 billion to the families in two defamation suits. Have those families gotten anything?
30:14Mia Sato:Have they gotten a sense of justice or money or anything?
30:17Tim Heidecker:No. I mean, I think, I'm not sure if this was announced. When we launched this, we launched a whole line of merch, shirts and bags and all that kind of stuff. And a portion of that is going to the families. And it's quite a bit because we sold a lot of Infowars merch. This is the prime motivator for this is to set up a – to make InfoWars valuable again and start generating money that can go to them, that can start paying them back. Yeah, he's been very successful in evading that. And part of this is keeping that pressure on in the courts and in the press and reminding people. I think we forget about that.
31:04Tim Heidecker:And people don't know the details of what he was doing to those families. And we should be, it should be a never forget situation because there should be justice for the decisions he made. There should be consequences for them. And to try to tamper it from happening again, from that feeling like it's an okay thing to do. Like, there's a documentary anyone could watch on HBO called The Truth vs. Alex Jones that goes very much into the details of what he did. It's a horrifying experience to watch that because the first 20 minutes of that movie is about what happened to those kids. And not something that anyone wants to go and revisit because it is truly horrible, like as horrible as you can get.
31:49Tim Heidecker:And then stacked on top of that is almost immediately, you know, one of the fathers comes out to talk to the press because he doesn't, somebody has to. Somebody has to speak for these people. And the cameras are rolling and he's never done this before. The guy's a NCIU nurse, you know, it's like a normal guy. And he's uncomfortable. And what do we do often when we're uncomfortable? Laugh. Yes. We smile. We go, this is weird, you know, something. He does that. And that is the ground zero point of those ghouls saying, look at that. He's an actor. Nobody wants to smile like that. And that just, that's the big bang of the insane conspiracy theory that ruined that person's life for many years.
32:37Tim Heidecker:And then, so that was, you can watch the clips of him, Alex Jones being glib and just purely disgusting. Yeah. In the way he talked about these freshly wounded families, you know, in a way that just makes you want to put your hands through the TV screen and, you know, wring his neck. And so we're kind of doing that in a more artistic way, I suppose. I love the idea that it's like, oh, that was 2012. Like, dude, that was fucking yesterday.
33:08Mia Sato:Yeah.
33:08Tim Heidecker:You know, in my mind, in a way. So, like, no, you don't get to just, like, keep doing your shit. Or maybe you will, but we're not going to, like, stop telling people what you did and try to do it in an entertaining, artistic way, I guess.
33:25Mia Sato:Yeah, and to the bitter end, he was saying lies about the family.
33:28Tim Heidecker:Oh, yeah, except when he's under oath and he goes, wow, it was a joke. I was a kid. Come on. It's a comedy show or, you know, whatever he said. It's entertainment. You know. Yeah, well, it's too late.
33:41Mia Sato:Yeah. Was it a process to get the families on board with the vision?
33:46Tim Heidecker:I talked to Ben about that because that happened a little before I came on board. But they were, you know, they had to take a minute to think about what you're talking about. Like, what? And then they came back and said, yeah, this sounds cool. I mean, good luck and let us know what we can do. And then after we had been doing it for a while, after I had put out a couple things, we did a big Zoom with everybody. and they were like, go for it, go harder. Like do, you know, really don't worry about us. Like we think this is hilarious and are happy to see him getting dragged through the mud like he is right now.
34:23Tim Heidecker:And like people are not forgetting about this and just more like, you know, thank you basically was what their message was, which was pretty intense. Yeah, for sure.
34:31Mia Sato:I was curious if they had any like creative input. Did they have ideas for what to do?
34:36Tim Heidecker:The only thing one of them said was like, I can't, he was watching one of my clips of me doing the impression. And he's like, my wife gets really mad because she thinks I'm listening to Alex Jones in the room. He said, turn that guy off. But it was just me, which was a nice, that's his way of being. Blessing and a curse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:52Mia Sato:The legal process has obviously been through some ups and downs and speed bumps. And it's been a whole thing. The last I heard was that The Onion had put forth a plan in which you'd basically license the InfoWars IP on like a monthly basis. and that also a judge was trying to stop. So what is, is it still kind of in limbo, Infowars?
35:13Tim Heidecker:I think it is like, yeah, there's the Texas State Court of Appeals has said, put a stay on that at the last minute, literally like the day before we were about to get the keys, which was very upsetting for everybody. We got a call from Ben. He's like, remember I told you there were like three things that could happen. This is the fourth thing that we didn't think was going to happen. But every other court in Texas, and I think a federal court has said, like, stop it. Stop holding this up. This is bananas.
35:52Tim Heidecker:And so limbo is the right word for it because he certainly doesn't have any ownership over that anymore. The receiver does. but they're apparently too scared to do anything about it.
36:06Mia Sato:What are they scared of?
36:07Tim Heidecker:I mean, there's some wackos out there. Sure.
36:09Mia Sato:Oh, okay.
36:10Tim Heidecker:You know, that could be it. I don't know. I think some people are just a little more tender about this stuff. Nervous. I haven't spoken to the person, but I wish I could because I would say, give it to me now.
36:22Mia Sato:Give me the keys right now.
36:24Tim Heidecker:Give me the fucking password. You know, like what is the, can I guess it? Yeah, right. That's all we're talking about here at the root of getting the site itself. So the message that we all gathered and said that we are – this is going to eventually happen. Like we'll eventually come to our – he will have to do it eventually. The pressure – we will keep the pressure on. But in the meantime, we're just going to go and do it anyway. And no one's going to really – no one's going to have anything to say to stop us. Our legal side is very confident that we can proceed. The only thing we just don't have is the website itself.
37:01Tim Heidecker:But, you know, we're going to have real InfoWars, Instagram, real InfoWars, Facebook, all that stuff. Theonion.info is where the site will be. And then, you know, hopefully by the end of the year or something. But, you know, who goes to websites anymore anyways, right?
37:18Mia Sato:Actually, a lot of Verge readers love going to theverge.com.
37:22Tim Heidecker:I have a funny thing to say. My tech guy.
37:24Mia Sato:Who's the tech guy?
37:25Tim Heidecker:Well, he's got Wes who does, who's like technically, he's like the technical director on Office Hours. Okay, got it. And he knows everything about computers and the internet and everything. He's always talking about microchips and stuff. And I was like, I got to go to New York. I got to do this present. I got to do the, what the hell is the Verge? I don't want to go down and do the Verge. And I already did Wired, I said.
37:47Mia Sato:How can there be two?
37:48Tim Heidecker:And he goes, oh, no, no. The Verge is the one to do. Really? The Verge is the hot spot right now.
37:55Mia Sato:Oh, my God. Well, now you know what The Verge is. And you can report back to him. I'm on the verge of knowing. There was another interview that you did where you kind of described your early work, you know, turning a mirror to, like, American culture and consumerism from sort of, like, in a cynical way. But the InfoWars venture feels incredibly hopeful to me. And it feels like a refusal to let Alex Jones have the final say and have the last word. So what keeps you hopeful?
38:25Tim Heidecker:My children, I suppose. That would be two people that keep me hopeful. I mean, just knowing that there are, there's a ton of funny, creative, young, diverse people out there that I think are pushing the boundaries of what you can do in comedy and what's funny and how you use the tools of technology to make interesting things. I mean, just the amount of creativity out there, the amount of ingenuity, it's endless. And we're all freaked out about AI. And one of the people we are talking to is this guy, Husk, who a lot of people, he's blown up on Instagram. But he just has a series of him talking to his AI and makes fun of and shows you how stupid it is.
39:17Tim Heidecker:And it's funny, but it's also, for me at least, it like calms my nerves about the whole, oh, no, we're going to have AI overlords. When in fact, I think it's pretty clunky and pretty bad. You know, it sucks. And it's a con job that these billionaires have, you know, been selling snake oil, I think. I think that's what it is. And he's one of the people just through his little videos where the AI can't spell strawberry, you know, or it won't count to 100 or something. That's like he's making fun of the way I would make fun of maybe Trump four years ago or something, you know, like there's just there's people that I'm hopeful will, you know, add by adding their point of view to the world.
40:08Tim Heidecker:will, you know, entertain us and make us think about things differently.
40:11Mia Sato:And it sounds like maybe InfoWars could be, new InfoWars could be a calming presence if you're afraid of AI making you the part of the permanent underclass or whatever. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. Goodbye, Tim Heidecker. Now you know what The Verge is. Thank you, Mia. Thanks to Tim Heidecker and thanks to you for listening. Send your questions and comments to vergecast at theverge.com or call 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Cajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, Aaron Lacasio, and Andrew Marino. If you want to support what we do here at The Verge and get ad-free podcasts, go to theverge.com slash subscribe.
40:49Mia Sato:David will be back tomorrow, if I let him. Bye!
40:56Mia Sato:When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if a tween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance.
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From the publisher
The Onion's takeover of conspiracy show InfoWars isn't officially complete — but comedian Tim Heidecker, who's serving as creative director, won't let that stop him from building out a slate of comedy programming. Before the new InfoWars launches July 2, The Verge's Mia Sato interviews Tim about what drew him to the project, how long he can (or wants to) maintain an Alex Jones parody, and whether it's worth doing an interview with The Verge when you've already done one with Wired.
Further reading:
The Onion’s rebooted InfoWars is coming July 2nd
The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars was blocked by a judge
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