The Simpsons and Predictive Programming

Some believe that the government plants references to future global atrocities into popular media– subconsciously conditioning the public to never rise up. Their biggest brainwashing weapon? The Simpsons. The cartoon has been said to predict the future, but these “predictions” may really be clues to a bigger master plan by those that control the world. For more Simpsons lore, check out Stupid TV, Be More Funny by Alan Siegel. Help us reach 10k followers on Instagram! @⁠theconspiracypod⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:06Speaker 00

  It’s the evening of December 10th, 2017, and Elon Musk is, well, where else? On Twitter. He announces that if his tunnel-building operation, The Boring Company, sells 50,000 baseball hats, it will also start selling flamethrowers. It starts as a joke, but being the richest man in the world has its benefits. One of those is being able to turn a silly idea into reality. And quickly, in January 2018, Boring starts taking pre-orders for flamethrowers. Each one costs $500. A video even surfaces of Elon trying out the expensive new toy,

• 0:49Speaker 00

  which looks like an airsoft gun that shoots a plume of fire. He goes on to sell 20,000 flamethrowers. He also imagines another product he calls “a snow thrower.” This is how The Guardian describes it: “Another weapon out of the fantasy villain’s playbook.” Which brings me back to the clip of Elon blasting a flamethrower. The first time I watch it, it feels familiar. Almost like I’d seen it before. The truth is, I had. On the long-running animated series The Simpsons. Back in 1996, Homer Simpson takes a new job.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  His new boss’s name is Hank Scorpio. He’s also a tech billionaire who has a flamethrower. And the similarities between Hank Scorpio and Elon Musk, don’t stop there. Both are boyish, often hilarious, intentionally and unintentionally. Oh, and they both seem determined to take over the world. It's not surprising that The Simpsons predicted the idea of Elon Musk years before most of us had ever heard of him. Because in the eyes of many of its fans, the show is a soothsayer. We've all seen headlines. 10 Ways The Simpsons Predicted The Future.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  The 15 Most Unexpected Simpsons Predictions That Came True. 34 Predictions From The Simpsons That Actually Happened. The further down Google you go, the bigger the number gets. The highest we could find is 1,224. According to the internet, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and even Baby Maggie have joined together to become the modern day Nostradamus. Collecting all those moments is fun. But listicles might be underselling The Simpsons predictive powers. According to one theory, the show might not even be predicting anything at all.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  It could be intentionally preparing us, the public, for the future, showing us what's to come. Which is a sobering thought, since no TV show has been better at showing us exactly where the world is headed. To an absurd and dark place. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or check us out on Instagram, at The Conspiracy Pod. This episode contains discussions of death.

• 3:41Speaker 00

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• 5:48Speaker 00

  The Simpsons has been on the air since 1989, almost 40 years. Over 800 episodes and counting, and that's not including the animated shorts from The Tracy Ullman Show before they spun off on their own. In that time, the show has predicted everything from smartwatches to civilians in space to not one, not two, but three Super Bowl winners. Perhaps the most famous prediction, that Donald Trump would become president. In an episode titled Bart to the Future, a fortune teller reveals that Bart will grow up to become a struggling musician, while straight A student Lisa, his little sister, ends up in the White House.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And since this fortune teller is extremely detailed, we learn that Lisa is elected president immediately following the tenure of Donald Trump. The episode airs in March of 2000, 16 and a half years before President Trump wins his first election. 16 and a half years! The Apprentice isn't even in production yet! Okay, well, maybe that could be a lucky guess. Okay, but how about the time Homer predicts the mass of the Higgs boson, aka the god particle? In the 1998 episode, The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Homer becomes an inventor.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  In one shot, he's hard at work writing out an equation on a blackboard, as all inventors do, right? Now, if you look at the blackboard, there's, well, there's pi, some exponentials, I'm pretty sure that figure there is om, but the equation goes by in a flash, and it mostly goes over everyone's head. Well, 14 years later, physicists at CERN make a groundbreaking discovery.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Today's results suggest the existence of the Higgs boson, but they are by no means conclusive. The reason there's such a buzz in this room is that the Higgs is so fundamental to physicists' understanding of the universe, that even a hint of its existence is a scientific milestone.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  CERN later confirms they have indeed found the Higgs boson, a particle that had been proposed back in 1964 but never proven to exist until now. But unless you count Homer's blackboard. According to science author Dr. Simon Sain, "The equation Homer writes out in that 1998 episode comes extremely close to the mass of the Higgs boson." Well, suddenly, the lucky guess theory sounds a little less plausible. The list of Simpsons predictions that end up coming true goes on and on. A three-eyed fish found near a nuclear plant in Argentina. Nobel Prize recipients. Fox selling to Disney.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  We have to wonder, are these really predictions? Because some of the family's exploits just get things a little too right. In fact, The Simpsons has been so prescient for so long that people believe it doesn't just predict what's going to happen. This show actually knows what's coming. Because they've been told by the people who make our future a reality. Okay, now stay with me here. We're about to dive into a theory known as predictive programming. Despite the name, predictive programming isn't exactly a psychic prediction. It's more like exposure therapy.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  According to author Alan Watts, Hollywood and, well, the entire world is controlled by an elite group. They go by many names, depending on who you ask. The Illuminati, the New World Order, lizard people, etc. For simplicity's sake, we're just going to call them the elite. According to the theory, ever since ancient Greece, each major world and societal change has been planned out far in advance. From the advent of using DNA in police investigations, to 9/11, to COVID, they were all meticulously calculated by the elite.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Including when to introduce these events to the public. The concept of predictive programming is that the elite can't just spring these things on us. They have to prepare us, get us used to the idea that the entire world can change in an instant before they unleash their plans. Otherwise, we would riot. This is when the media comes in, or so the theory goes. The elite supposedly plant seeds of an idea or even a tragedy into popular movies and TV shows to get the public familiar with it. Take COVID-19, for example.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  It happened in 2020, but in 2011, there was the film "Contagion", which was eerily similar to how COVID wreaked havoc on the world, almost like a roadmap for the public on how to navigate a global pandemic in quarantine. Okay, you may be wondering, "Carter, were you here in 2020? The public went into a frenzy about COVID." Well, theorists would likely say that if we weren't subject to predictive programming, it would have been even worse: complete civil unrest, wars, explosions in the streets, total end-of-the-world behavior.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  But instead of all that, we more or less listen to the government's orders: stay home and keep your distance. The Simpsons also had a plotline that seemed to nod to a life during a pandemic. In 2007's "The Simpsons Movie," the entire town of Springfield is quarantined in a giant dome. Now, if the elite did plan COVID, they probably wanted the world to blindly follow their quarantine guidelines. Homer and the rest of the family managed to escape their dome, so it's not a perfect one-to-one comparison, but there are people who believe "The Simpsons," specifically, has primed us for major world events.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  To show you what I mean, let's go back to April 19, 2024.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Inside a Manhattan courthouse, jury selection is underway for President Trump's trial for falsifying a payment to Stormy Daniels. Reporting live just outside is CNN anchor Laura Coats. Then, the live report is interrupted by a commotion. Mere feet away, a man named Max Ozzarello has set himself on fire. Police officers huddle around Max to put out the flames, which have spread out into the park around him. He's taken alive to Cornell's burn unit, but he left something at the park: pamphlets, which he

• 12:59Speaker 00

  threw into the air before setting himself ablaze. The pamphlets lead to Max's Substack, where he labels his self-immolation as an act of protest. According to him, "We're all part of a totalitarian con." He writes, "Our own government, along with many of their allies, is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup." Max also believes that Americans have been brainwashed into accepting our doom by none other than a beloved TV family, The Simpsons. While his theory may not use the words predictive

• 13:40Speaker 00

  programming, it basically outlines the same concept. According to Max, cryptocurrency was intentionally made by the government to trigger an economic doomsday. And on the government's payroll is Harvard University. Max says that the institution is "an organized crime front that churns out billionaires and, also, of course, Simpsons writers." And, yes, the Simpsons writers' room is famously well-stocked with Harvard graduates. Well, Max believes these grads come to The Simpsons to fulfill their brainwashing duty:

• 14:18Speaker 00

  "We, the public, are all Homer, a quote, 'worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire.'" Max's Substack mentions an episode where Homer's boss, Mr. Burns, gives him a sign that says, "Don't forget, you're here forever." By the end of the episode, Homer covers portions of the sign with pictures of his baby daughter Maggie. Now the sign reads, "Do it for her."

• 14:48Speaker 00

  It's a heartwarming moment that reminds us why we work so hard to provide for our families. Max, however, doesn't think it's that sweet. To him, it's actually a message from the government. They're telling us that we, quote, "have no choice but to work for evil billionaires for the rest of our lives." This all propels Max to fight back in the form of protest. Shortly afterward, he dies from his resulting injuries. So it seems that predictive programming isn't just fodder for clickbait listicles. It's something people really believe.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  And The Simpsons is an easy target for that theory because they've covered just about every topic and they've happened to get it right a shocking number of times. Edward Snowden wasn't the first to reveal that the NSA is listening in on our conversations. The Simpsons movie was. And don't forget about the 2014 Ebola outbreak. They predicted that, too. And there's the infamous shot of Lisa holding a magazine advertising trips to New York. It's from a 1997 episode, and the magazine has a big 9 on it next to the silhouette of the World Trade Center, looking like the number 11.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  Some believe this was a subliminal message preparing us for 9/11. Now, longtime Simpsons showrunner Al Jean calls that one "an insane coincidence," not "brainwashing." I mean, it's not like the government has officially been rewriting movie and TV scripts for decades.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Except for the fact that they have.

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• 17:39Speaker 00

  Looking back on almost 40 seasons of The Simpsons, viewers have noticed strange similarities between decades-old jokes and current events. Which has led some to theorize that The Simpsons is priming us for a future that's all planned out by an elite global cohort. Under the theory of predictive programming. These elite rulers naturally include the US government. Now, we've claimed that the government has done a lot of shady things on this show, but what I'm about to say next is proven. They have been not-so-secrety controlling Hollywood since, essentially, the birth of cinema.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  Think of your typical war film, or even a Marvel movie. You know those scenes featuring military helicopters, tanks, or Navy ships? They're not always CGI, nor are they vehicles that a production assistant picked up before the shoot. Oftentimes, they're on loan straight from the US government. In exchange, Uncle Sam asks the movie studios for one teeny-tiny favor. "You can use our vehicles, but we get to read your script and change whatever we want. Specifically, how we're portrayed." Is Iron Man going to reference soldier suicides? Well, not if you want to use our tanks. Take that line out.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  The Hulk is going to reference Vietnam? James Bond is to? Uh-uh. No, that won't make us look good. Uh, rewrite! These are real examples, by the way. When it comes to Hollywood, the government wants to look like heroes. Initially, they didn't want their influence to be too obvious. That's why they helped out on anti-war films too. Like 1925's The Big Parade and 1941's Dive Bomber.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  But once the Cold War kicks off in 1945, the government goes all in on making Hollywood a pro-America machine. A whirlwind of propaganda emerges in those years, from both sides, the US and the Soviets. They each have to show their citizens why the other world power is the bad guy. One way the Soviets do this is by highlighting America's blatant racism towards African-Americans. The CIA can't let that stand, so in the 1950s, they team up with Paramount Studios. They instruct the studio to cast well-dressed African-Americans in their movies, and they make sure that they will refer to themselves as "free men."

• 20:18Speaker 00

  The CIA isn't the only organization doing this. From the 1930s into the 60s, the FBI rewrites movie scripts that have their agents performing wiretaps on communists. All those scenes have to go. Now, it's possible the FBI does this for legitimate reasons. What if a communist sees this movie and realizes that we're wiretapping them? It's a security risk. But the Bureau also has movie producers delete scenes where their agents drink alcohol or rest their feet on tables. They need the FBI to be heroes, not drunks with no table manners.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  You may be wondering why the studios allow the government to do this. What happened to freedom of speech? What happened to art?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Well, for one thing, the producers want to play with the government's toys. You know, big guns and helicopters. But also, the producers want to get their movies made and make their money back. Some of them are probably just choosing the path of least resistance.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  With their Hollywood dreams and jobs on the line, producers comply with the government's demands. This involvement really comes to a head in the 1990s when the CIA starts their Public Entertainment Liaison Office. The star of this division is former CIA operative Chase Brandon. He consults on movies and TV shows to make sure they are accurately portraying the CIA and, of course, making the agency look cool. He tells The Guardian that the CIA has “always been portrayed erroneously as evil and Machiavellian. It took us a long time to support projects that portray us in a light we want to be

• 22:16Speaker 00

  seen in.” Chase starts to work on high-profile intellectual property such as the 1990s Jack Ryan film franchise. The titular character, played by A-list stars like Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck, is a CIA analyst and eventual deputy director. He gets into shootouts, rappels off helicopters into submarines—yeah, that is a pretty badass scene—and is essentially America's James Bond, protecting our country. It is A-plus propaganda. If you're a fan of this show, you're probably not surprised to hear that the government does whatever they can to look good.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  But what does this have to do with predictive programming? Well, let's move past the 90s and into the wake of 9/11. According to an article in The Atlantic by journalist Nicholas Scow, the CIA really embeds themselves into Hollywood after the attack on the World Trade Center. At the time, the US is understandably in a panic about terrorist threats, and the CIA seemingly uses that to their advantage. After 9/11, some Americans likely turned to entertainment to see us beat the terrorists. But some of the TV and movies they're watching shows the US winning in an alarming way.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Torture. Now, torture is a hotly debated topic amongst US citizens. Some are against it, some think it's an unfortunate but necessary tactic. But perhaps, perhaps, the CIA sees how devastated Americans are after September 2001 and gets an idea. Enter Jack Bauer, the main character on Fox's 24, which aired its first episode on November 6, 2001. Jack is a counter terrorist agent played by Kiefer Sutherland. He protects the nation by any means necessary, including torture.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  The hit TV show airs two months after 9/11, so the timeline is already a little suspect. In addition to the timing is the show's content. Imagine if the elite wanted torture to be more widely accepted. A popular show that glorifies the acts might be a stealthy way to pull that off. By the way, after the first few seasons of 24 in 2005, a bombshell hits the news. It's revealed that post 9/11, the Bush administration did officially torture terrorists. Now, if you're a 24 fan, maybe the news doesn't surprise you. You may say, "Well, of course they torture terrorists. Don't you watch 24?"

• 25:12Speaker 00

  And if you do, then maybe predictive programming did its job. And 24 isn't the only CIA-backed piece of media to feature torture. Around 2012, the filmmakers behind Zero Dark Thirty have seemingly unprecedented access to the CIA. The movie is about the real-life SEAL Team Six mission to capture Osama bin Laden. And to make the most accurate film possible, the agency gives the production team insider knowledge. Right down to replicating the floor plan at CIA headquarters in Langley. The agency even helps write the script and edit the final cut of the film.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  And in doing so, they make torture seem instrumental in capturing Bin Laden. Now officially, torture wasn't used in the real-life SEAL Team Six mission. But if that's true, then why does Zero Dark Thirty feature it so heavily? Well, this is just conjecture, but Osama Bin Laden was America's number-one enemy after 9/11. If the public saw that waterboarding helped capture him, then maybe they'd support its use. No one would be up in arms. After the film is released, however, Zero Dark Thirty's torture scenes are the subject of much controversy.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  The movie gets called out as blatant torture propaganda. And according to some accounts, a third of the entire film is one terrorist getting tortured and waterboarded. That is a nearly hour-long sequence. It probably made viewers uncomfortable. But what would happen if those scenes were in The Simpsons? If the CIA had Homer and the guys from Moe's torture a terrorist, it would likely be hilarious, or filled with hijinks and with Homer probably getting hurt more than the bad guy. It'd be a farce. America would be laughing at torture. Don't believe me?

• 27:20Speaker 00

  One of Homer's longest-running gags, a trademark of the show, was him strangling Bart. Now, to The Simpsons' credit, Homer hasn't actually done this since the show's 31st season. As Homer says in a later episode, "Times have changed." Let's pause here. Yeah, the CIA's involvement with Hollywood is sketchy, but, I mean, come on. They can't really brainwash us, can they? I mean, especially through a cartoon?

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Well, researchers at Princeton University beg to differ. You may remember this study from our subliminal messaging episode. In 2002, researchers have two groups watch an episode of The Simpsons. Only it's been altered. The control group has at least 12 new frames added to the episode. It seems these are just plain white flashes on the screen. The test subjects, however, have a shot of a Coca-Cola can inserted into 12 frames of the episode. Another 12 frames have the word thirsty. This group, who don't know that the soda messaging was added, reports that they were actually thirstier once the episode was over.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  About 27% more so than when it started. And the control group was less thirsty. So what does this mean? That if The Simpsons did have secret messages, then we would be influenced by them? Maybe. But the subjects of this study likely didn't go running for a Coke when it was over. They may have been thirstier, but they weren't soda-loving zombies dating their fix. Just like how a Simpson fans aren't robotically saying, "Yes, Mr. Burns." Like some Manchurian candidate whenever our boss emails us. Subliminal messaging in general has been proven to not really work.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  It may influence us slightly, but that influence won't be long-lasting, let alone permanent. It's kind of a wrinkle on the whole predictive programming theory. Speaking of, there's one more inconsistency in the predictive programming idea that we haven't covered yet. The elite choosing The Simpsons as their brainwashing tool may not make sense. Especially when you consider that the US government and The Simpsons were once at war with each other.

• 29:53Speaker 02

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• 30:54Speaker 00

  Nowadays, The Simpsons is loved by families all over the world. If the elite's goal is to program as many people as possible, then The Simpsons is a perfect show to use. But when it first aired, there was one very famous couple who despised them: the first family. Around September 1990, First Lady Barbara Bush tells People Magazine that The Simpsons, "was the dumbest thing I had ever seen." The article results in a letter from Marge Simpson herself. Well, it was actually written by the Simpsons writers' room, but the letter from Marge was published by the press.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  In it, Marge tells Barbara that she tries to teach her kids to be kind, which is hard when the First Lady of the United States calls them stupid. Barbara, mortified, sends her own letter to the press. She thanks Marge for speaking her mind, which Barbara says she didn't know Marge had, since Marge is an animated character. It wasn't the last time the Bush family went after The Simpsons. On January 27th, 1992, President George Bush Senior speaks to a crowd in Washington DC. He talks about "the decline of the American family", and he says, "The next value I speak of must be forever cast in stone.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  I speak of decency, the moral courage to say what is right and condemn what is wrong, and we need a nation closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons, an America that rejects the incivility, the tide of incivility, and the tide of intolerance." For the unfamiliar, The Waltons is a 1970's TV drama about the aftermath of the Great Depression. It follows a conservative wholesome family in Virginia. George thinks his comparison is a mic drop moment. However, many Americans feel that he missed the mark. As Jay Leno puts it in an interview,

• 33:03Speaker 00

  "The trouble with America is that we have too many families like The Waltons. They've got no jobs. They live in broken down shacks with no healthcare. At least Homer has a job and his own home." The hit ratings show that middle-class America loves The Simpsons. They remind everyone of their own families. In short, the Bush quote likely doesn't win him any votes. It may even be partly why he loses the presidency to Bill Clinton. And the feud between the Bush family and The Simpsons also shows The Simpsons writers that they are doing what they set out to do: Lampoon those in charge.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  It's a quality about The Simpsons that predictive programming believers may not realize. The Simpsons goes after the US government whenever they have a chance. And not just them, but anyone in power. The police in Springfield are numbskulls. Bart's principal is a laughingstock mama's boy. And don't get them started on their network, Fox. The writers love throwing jabs at them. At their core, they're anti-authoritarian. So would the elite of America, which Bart at one point calls Bonerland, really choose them as their world brainwashing agent? Well, according to Alan Watt, The Simpsons may not even know they're part of the machine.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  Alan theorizes that the bigger directors and producers in Hollywood are the ones who get instructions from the elite. What he's saying is, it's possible that someone at the top is the only one who knows the predictive programming agenda. The writers have no clue. They think they're sticking it to the man, but the man is really calling the shots. As with any conspiracy theory, we can say it's all a part of the master plan until the cows come home, but what does real science say? According to some researchers, predictive programming could all be something called hindsight bias, also referred to as the "I knew it all along" phenomenon.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  It's particularly common after something goes wrong. Basically, before we know the outcome, we may entertain other scenarios, but once we know what happened, we believe that the ending was obvious all along. If a plan falls apart, you suddenly know it was flawed from the beginning. Your favorite football team loses a big game, you can pinpoint exactly where they veered off course. I knew they were going to choke. Did I, though? So, maybe The Simpsons isn't predicting the future. We're just watching the old episodes with the benefit of hindsight and making connections.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Even if the show has gotten it right by one University of Albany professor's calculations 1,224 times, because if you ask the Simpsons writers to explain it, they'll tell you it's just a game of odds. According to Simpsons writer Jake Hogan, "If you make fun of everything and make impossibly silly jokes about everything, it turns out 30 years later, some of them turn out to be true." He's got a point. It's a satirical show written by a whole team of smart people. They don't just pull plotlines and jokes from out of nowhere. It's all based on the world around them.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Even when they predicted Trump's presidency. I mentioned earlier that in Bart to the Future, an older Lisa Simpson becomes president, and she says that she inherited a budget crunch from President Trump. As it turns out, this line was written basically like a Mad Lib. According to the writers, the joke began as "a budget crunch from President Blank." Around that time, in real life, Trump was already mentioning that he may run for president. So the writers chose Trump. They didn't know they were making a prediction. They were just trying to make their script as funny and as topical as possible.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  As for Homer getting shockingly close to predicting the mass of the Higgs boson, Dr. Simon Singh points out that many of the show's writers are mathematicians, and they've been hiding math jokes in the show for as long as it's been on the air. Dr. Singh even wrote an entire book on the subject. This may be a key point to how some shows seem like they have access to a crystal ball. Fiction writers try to reflect real life. Sometimes, they even get help. For instance, the original Star Trek may seem like the ultimate predictive programming machine in terms of technology.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  airing in the late 60s, with movies released as early as the 70s, the show's communicator devices all look like precursors to modern-day smartphones and watches. But that's probably because the writers consulted with someone from RAND. Now, RAND is a research facility focusing on policy changes and technological advances. This consultant helps the Star Trek writers brainstorm futuristic technology, basing it on actual research. So the show may have cellphone-like communicators because the consultant, along with the writers, made an informed hypothesis about where communication tech was going.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  And, in fact, the creator of the first mobile phone credits Star Trek as inspiration.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Art imitates life and life imitates art. To be transparent, we should note that Rand is funded by the US government, but the Rand Star Trek consultant officially worked on the show as a private citizen and not as a Rand agent. Or that could also just be what they want you to think. You'll be shocked to learn that many years later, The Simpsons made fun of the peculiar nature of the company. In a 1994 episode, there's a joke about the Rand Corporation in conjunction with saucer people and reverse vampires controlling Springfield's adults.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  The thing is, art and life are so connected that every plotline, every joke, every sci-fi moment could be perceived as predictive programming. So is The Simpsons priming us for some kind of master plan? We don't know, but when the next tragedy pandemic, or just cool piece of tech, comes along, The Simpsons, at 37 seasons and counting, will probably be there. And they'll help us process everything with some much-needed laughs. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include Stupid TV, Be More Funny by Alan Siegel, and the Listening Post episode titled "Covert Operations: How the CIA Works With Hollywood." Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written by Brandon Rizzuto, edited by Alan Siegel, Miki Taylor and Justin

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  Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video-edited and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

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