Your conspiracy families

When Grant talked to his friend whose dad had become a Holocaust denier, we got a huge response from folks who had family members with other… interesting ideas. Today, we’re answering some of your questions. Like: what do you do when you have your own kids and had counted on your (now conspiracy-pilled) parents to help care for them? What about when you question your own reality due to those close to you losing touch with theirs? And how much of all this is untreated medical disorders versus mental disorder caused by media? Ryan & Grant discuss. Listeners, thank you for telling us your stories — we hope this helps you feel a bit less alone, because clearly, we’re all going through it. If you have specific questions or want to share concerns about something your friends or family members are talking about, we’d still love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Paradoxical question for you, Ryan Broderick. Do you think our listeners are disproportionately suffering from conspiracy family members? Or do you think that because they listen to Panic World? That has led them to be better adjusted and made them more comfortable talking about their conspiracy family members because they're now in a healthier place because of us?

• 0:54Ryan Broderick?

  I just think at this point, everyone has at least one. Like, I think everyone in the world might actually just have one.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  I'm Grant Irving. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. And maybe we should add to the tagline and how it fucks up everyone's families. Joining me, a guy with a relatively normal and healthy relationship with his dad, Ryan Broderick. Welcome.

• 1:38Ryan Broderick?

  Hello. Thank you for having me on my show.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  How does it feel to be the one who like, like comparatively has like the good dad?

• 1:46Ryan Broderick?

  Well, you know, it's funny. I'm actually working on a project about my dad's radicalization for this event that I'm doing in Tbilisi, Georgia in June. And it was fascinating to like, sit down and kind of write it all out. And my takeaway, and I'm still kind of working on this, but my takeaway so far is that Basically, constant arguing and communication and sort of refusing to let, you know, the radicalized person self-isolate. It doesn't, it doesn't like de-radicalize them, but it may like stop the more profoundly uncomfortable effects from happening. Like, that's not an option for everybody, but like for me and my dad, we have sort of,

• 2:30Ryan Broderick?

  we've reached a point where like, it's functioning, you know, we can, we can communicate. And then often I'll just have to tap out and be like, okay, like, we can't, I can't listen to you say the tariffs are good. Like, that's just not possible. Like, that's not, that's not anything. But, yeah.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  I do think that there's like, uh, the death drive in all of this, where it's like, yeah, but what is, what's it like when it's all torn down?

• 2:52Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, that was my favorite. That was my favorite post of the terrorist fiasco, which was someone who just wrote like, aren't you curious, Anon? And it's like, yeah, a little, I guess.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I, I think that's, I think that's in a lot of these. And, um, so this is a, basically a sequel to my friend's dad is a Holocaust denier episode, because we got tons of voicemails and emails from you guys sharing your relationship with conspiratorial loved ones. Uh, it is like, uh, I, I have trouble modulating my voice to sounding sincere, but I, I mean this. It is very touching that you guys shared this with us. I learned a lot.

• 3:32Ryan Broderick?

  It's really tough to do an earnest podcast episode with a guy from Pennsylvania and a guy from Massachusetts. Like, our voices don't really work with, I kept trying to be really earnest to a friend the other day, and she was like, every time you say that, it sounds like you're being a giant asshole. Stop doing that, because I have resting sarcasm.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, yeah, 100. We're gonna try to power through that. I couldn't include everyone, uh, so I tried to condense things for overlapping themes, but we really, really do appreciate all of you. We will see whether or not Ryan thinks that, uh, his method with his dad in all of these is sustainable for any of you. Um, and just one last note before we dive in. Some people wanted to be anonymous. Some people are fine with using their names. I thought that was just gonna be too complicated, so I've made everyone anonymous just for ease. So you can just assume that everyone has a fake name here, and now we can get into it.

• 4:24Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, is it fake names or no names? Because that's a pet peeve of mine.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Fake names.

• 4:28Ryan Broderick?

  If it's a fake name, it's pseudonymous, Grant.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That's your, aim those at me.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I know you'll need to get the sarcasm and the being pedantic out. So just direct that towards my hosting.

• 4:43Ryan Broderick?

  As long as I don't say "animize" again, we won't get fucking a flurry of comments.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  You know, we're starting to make it when people start to make fun of and berate you for miss saying things.

• 4:56Ryan Broderick?

  I understand why like every podcast I listen to has like a five minute bit where they just rant and rave about their own listeners for a while.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  So to start, conspiracy thinking has no bounds. It's ideological and maybe psychological, but it is not knowledge based. Sarah describes her mom as an anesthesiologist who was extremely high up in the FDA before she retired, but was always a Rush Limbaugh kind of conservative and always needed to be going with the party line. And even though she was literally in the FDA, she believes that they are holding back some secrets. So now I'm going to play you this first bit of tape.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  It's not that she thinks that the FDA has changed and is now captured by the deep state or whatever. The impression that I got was that people at the FDA somehow knew all along about this and like haven't released that information for some reason.

• 5:57Ryan Broderick?

  I think her mom's right, right? Like she has the inside knowledge here.

• 6:04Ryan Broderick?

  That's fascinating.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Imagine arguing with your dad if he actually had held a position of power.

• 6:11Ryan Broderick?

  Hold on, wait. There's another thing here, which is kind of more interesting to me, which is that everyone who works at large institutions kind of feels like that large institution has like shady shit going on. So it's like kind of endearing to think that like that's also happening at like the highest levels of government that like they're also like, yeah, our bosses like knew that, you know, they knew the layoffs are coming like six months ago and they were doing, they were pulling the snacks out of the canteen because they knew. Like it's the same sort of thought process, I think, in a way.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  You're giving this way too much credit.

• 6:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I do that.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  I'm not allowed to bring things up that are controversial to her. And the list is ever-expanding because as you know, like, the right-wing worldview is like constant culture war. Everything suddenly will become like a problem that wasn't before. So now, you know, she needs to interrogate whether or not the story hour at the library near my house is run by drag queens. Like, why is that even something that is on her mind? But that's like the kind of thing that she's suddenly worried about. So now I can't talk to her about like the activities I take my son to.

• 7:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's fascinating how quickly this stuff starts to eat the rest of their worldview. Yeah. And it doesn't really make sense. I mean, at the top, you said it's not knowledge-based, but I actually don't totally think that's true. It's more like they're receiving

• 7:35Ryan Broderick?

  information, but they don't have the context for it. So Interesting. You know, like if you, if you're an older person and you're watching some scare segment on Fox News about drag queens,

• 7:49Ryan Broderick?

  you don't like have the context for what that would mean. So like, I don't know where this person lives or whatever, but like, let's assume it's like, you know, kind of a smaller town or not a major city. You would just immediately think like, oh yeah, there's drag queens outside like running the local bar or whatever. So it, it, it can't really work if you're still maintaining an active social life. And this is, I think particularly bad for boomers because so much of boomer life was based around your work. And they kind of lose like a purpose in their life and they fill that void with just like insane garbage that they're seeing on TV or on the internet. And I think that is a massive thing here. And the fact that like her mom, let's say, started feeling more conspiratorial, even if she was a Rush Limbaugh fan, which honestly, it's kind of a memory hole, but like Rush

• 8:34Ryan Broderick?

  Limbaugh was a giant sack of shit who's now burning in hell with John Lennon and everyone else that's in hell. I just want to make it clear that John Lennon's in hell. Those aren't your two? It's Margaret Thatcher and John Lennon. They're both in hell. And Rush. But he was like adhering to FCC standards. Like it was a terrestrial radio show. It was not like Alex Jones. It was bad. It was really bad, but it was not on the same level as something like Alex Jones. So the fact that this woman's mom starts to feel conspiratorial after she retires from the FDA, and I'm just pulling from what we've heard. And then that conspiratorial worldview sort of like starts to encompass the community around her that I would have to assume that she's Removing herself from to some degree because like I said, if she wasn't, she would know that some of these things aren't true. And I think that is linked.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  So she said that her mom just always had to go along with the party line.

• 9:25Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  This was the club that she was a part of. But what, what I think, what we, another thing we didn't get into in the last episode that I saw a big trend on, and I want to focus the first act on this, these relationships having fissures once kids aren't involved. Once the boomers are

• 9:41Ryan Broderick?

  grandchildren, yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  It's, and it like, so that, so that this was a big trend we saw where people were like, I was kind of able to navigate this before I had my kids. And now they're bringing up, you know, drag queen story hour, what I'm just trying to like, you know, like, we all have this like, idealized version of what it's going to be like with our parents, once we are parents.

• 10:09Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  One listener wrote about how his dad is a gun nut during the Uvalde shooting. His grandson was next to him on the bed and his, while his grandfather was just watching more like gun YouTube videos.

• 10:24Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Tried to maintain a relationship, still try to maintain a relationship, but he's like, that is unforgivable. Like, there's these like, points that you just aren't in otherwise with your parents. Another listener, Devin, I'm gonna read a bit from this email, but she said, both of her parents were in Medfields. They're now anti-vax and she relies on them for babysitting.

• 10:44Ryan Broderick?

  Medical field.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Medical.

• 10:45Ryan Broderick?

  They were in medical fields. Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Uh, so she writes, I've, do you want to read this? Let's have you read it.

• 10:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, sure.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  So the chat is just on the side. If you, uh,

• 10:56Speaker 01

  if you just go over here, you can navigate to it and you're going to click on Studio Chat.

• 11:02Ryan Broderick?

  I have two young kids, one and three years old, and my mom provides a lot of childcare help for us. One of the biggest moments that cemented for me that they are not the same people they once were was a few days after my second son was born. Something seemed off with him. He wasn't eating, was lethargic, etc. And we had my parents come over to watch our older son so we could take the baby to the ER. My parents questioned what vaccines he had had in the hospital, suggesting that he was having some sort of vaccine reaction. Two days later, he was admitted to the NICU with a serious infection that had absolutely nothing to do with a vaccine. Sure. I mean, this is actually becoming a thing with my dad, and I've I've traced a lot of it back. Like, I mean, obviously, anti-vax stuff is all over the internet now. It's totally leaked out, and there's no sort of way to

• 11:47Ryan Broderick?

  contain it anymore. But I've noticed that Facebook Reels is a massive, massive vector. Like, there's a bunch of banned influencers that previously banned influencers that are now back. It's gotten much worse, I think, since RFK sort of entered the public spotlight. Because for a lot of baby boomers, he is he is similar to Trump in, like, Trump is like an avatar of their worst capitalistic impulses, and in a lot of ways, RFK is like an avatar of their worst post-sexual-revolution woo-woo, you know, like, like, late-stage hippie impulses. And I think they're feeling extremely bold now. I do wonder how

• 12:31Ryan Broderick?

  they felt about this stuff 10, 20 years ago.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 12:34Ryan Broderick?

  Like, if this was always a kind of in the back of their heads, and how they feel like they can vocalize it, or if it's like genuinely older people are becoming anti-vax, it might just be a split of the two, but I, this is becoming much worse, like, now.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I mean, just imagine being in her position, where like, you're like,

• 12:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a safety thing. You can't, like, be around your, your, you can't be around your parents. Like, you can't do it.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Just to closely, for those who care, Ryan, the baby was fine.

• 13:01Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, I totally forgot we were talking about baby. I got so sucked into talking about misinformation on the internet that I abstracted all of it into some sort of larger question.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 13:08Ryan Broderick?

  I'm happy the baby, I'm happy, I'm happy the baby's fine.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  The, uh, shockingly, it had nothing to do with a vaccine reaction. Um, and

• 13:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, because that's not, like, that's not like a real thing.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yes. For us who don't have kids, where like you can opt in and out, like it like it's one thing. And for parents, we're like, she's like, I'm dependent on my parents for childhood. I owe or for childcare. I always imagined raising my kids with the help of my parents. Like, it was like, when my father-in-law was diagnosed with with cancer, like, the first conversation we had was like, do we want to have a kid now? So that like, he gets time with her? Like, it's a thing that everyone imagines. Now, these things are unavoidable. And she like, she she answered email, where, you know, one little bit for the correspondence I want to share is like, sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my normal mom, and then I'll see like, an anti-vaccine book on her bedside table. You can't avoid sex and politics.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, like, impolite conversation when it's like, seeps in from every angle.

• 14:06Ryan Broderick?

  If anyone listening to this wants to follow, like, a reporter who covers this stuff really, really well, I highly recommend Brandy Zadronski at NBC News. She's been covering this beat for years and years and years and years. The other thing with anti-vax right now, that I have to wonder, is how tied it is to sort of institutional distrust that older people aren't realizing is stemming from Trumpism? Like, if you are, let's say, pro-Trump, or even like mildly conservative, or just older, and you're not really following what's going on, you might feel in the back of your head that institutions are crumbling, because they are. And you might feel that things are weirdly worse. And for baby boomers,

• 14:50Ryan Broderick?

  that's really strange, because like, my dad talks about this all the time, where it's like, in his life, everything got better all the time, always. We landed on the moon.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  The cities are chaos. They're so unsafe everywhere. The subways, they're dangerous.

• 15:08Ryan Broderick?

  I live next to Brooklyn Chinatown, and I'm pretty sure I heard a 4th of July firework cache go off by accident yesterday. And then it's just been fire trucks all over this place all week. Okay, wait. So, like, maybe in the back of your head, you're feeling like, okay, institutions are worse, things are worse, I'm scared. And my entire life, things have been getting better and better and better. If you lived in a world without McDonald's, and then suddenly McDonald's existed, like, for them, that's like, that's like, new technology, right? So, to bring it back to the anti-vax stuff.

• 15:41Ryan Broderick?

  If you are distrustful of institutions and you are used to a world where everything should be getting better, and you voted for Trump, you don't totally understand why things feel worse. And you, you, they also have like no media literacy. So it's, it's kind of like the perfect storm for these people in a lot of ways. Just some sort of explanation. And people have been freaked out about the concept of a vaccine since they existed because like, it is kind of scary. It's kind of scary. Like you inject a disease into your body. Wait, are we anti-vax now? Are we doing it? Are we gonna, are we gonna go full? We'd make so much fucking money.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  No more shots unless it's testosterone.

• 16:15Ryan Broderick?

  If we just did this show as normal, but then we were just like, oh, by the way, we're also anti-vax. Like every episode, we make so much goddamn money on Patreon.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  A little, uh, behind the scenes. I just want you to know that every podcast you listen to, the thing everyone talks about, like off mic, is how much money they could make if they did the worst version of their show. That's like the only thing all of us talk about. I, I had a, I had a personal takeaway from this. I'd like to share to bring things back down.

• 16:44Ryan Broderick?

  Keep it, keep it short though. But yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I will. So I mentioned, I don't talk to some family. And what I learned from this is it's never a thing you stop turning over in your mind. You know, I go back and forth on like, is this the right decision? Is this not the right decision? There's the grief that comes along with it. And from doing this little exercise with, with, with our listeners, what I've seen is that

• 17:16Speaker 01

  it has never settled matter in anyone's head, like where they're falling on the, the line at any time. And that is actually very alleviating for me because you're just mad at your brain for constantly returning to this thing. But what I see now is that there's never like, you're never going to be like, well, this is my answer. And I, I'm proceeding this way and now it doesn't need to take up brain space. So what I've learned here, I, I felt that that was like a personal failing. And now I see that that is just a thing we're all afflicted with, with how to deal with these things.

• 17:48Ryan Broderick?

  You're valid, Grant.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Do you have something else you want to say? Or is that? We're all like, why can't I just come to a conclusion?

• 17:57Ryan Broderick?

  About your parents or about your family members that you've cut off?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Or the ones that are difficult that you're like, should I keep doing this? And I think just accepting that like, none of us can figure out a conclusion is helpful for everyone to know.

• 18:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, there was like a massive wave, I feel like in the early 2010s of like, especially young millennials. Sort of like, you saw this a lot in progressive spaces of like, cutting off your family members. And it was talked about particularly on Twitter as like a very simple process. And then it became kind of like a morality thing around the Trump election the first time where it was like, it's simple. If you have a Trump supporter in your family, you got to cut them off. And that's just not reality. That's just not how like, that's just not how people feel. That's not how, that's not how like, human beings understand a family structure. That's just, that's not, that's, that's an internet meme that doesn't make any sense. Spread by misanthropes, like it's not, yeah, of course it's painful. Of course it's complicated.

• 18:53Ryan Broderick?

  It's painful and complicated in the same way continuing to speak to your family is painful and complicated as they get older. It is a process and, and not talking to them is ironically a very similar process. It is a choice that you have to continue to make as long as they're around.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  The only solution is murder. And on that note, we'd like to go to a break from our new sponsor.

• 19:15Ryan Broderick?

  Gold? Tell your parents to buy gold.

• 19:22Speaker 00

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• 20:23Speaker 01

  That was the like, what do you do when you have kids? Segment, which is like a dimension that-

• 20:32Ryan Broderick?

  Both of us being experts in childcare and all that. We are perfect to sort of give advice there. Absolutely.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the advice is, boy, that's hard.

• 20:42Ryan Broderick?

  Two childless men living in Brooklyn with a podcast. I think we're absolutely perfect for this.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Now I want to get into the next thematic segment is like, the people who have started to question their own reality. Or are dealing with people who are questioning their own reality in a way that like then makes the relationships trickier. Okay. So Jane's husband was raised in an Alex Jones household. And it seems like most of their extended family by some sort of conspiracy, something or other.

• 21:20Ryan Broderick?

  I bet their parties are lit, though.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Her husband has grown up being like, I don't know what's real. I don't believe this shit. But like now who's to say what's going on? So when Jane is upset about the dystopia we live in, he does not react the way that she thinks is appropriate. This was an email. I put some of it in the chat.

• 21:43Ryan Broderick?

  All right, here we go. "To this day, it's difficult for my husband to have serious conversations with me. I feel like I'm tiptoeing around landmines. And certain current events that make me angry or concerned that trigger me to have a heated reaction. In his mind, I resemble his dad. Which means he thinks I'm the one who's off- Oh, he thinks I'm the one who's off my rocker. Trump's efforts to steal the election, the coup attempt and the riots at the Capitol, exaggerated in his mind." So if I understand this correctly. The, the husband grew up in an Alex Jones household.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:18Ryan Broderick?

  And because of that, he doesn't believe things, but not in the way where he does believe things. It's like it broke his barometer for reality. And so when his wife is upset at genuine political developments in America, he believes that she's just as hysterical as his family is when they talk about politics.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they're yelling about turning the frogs gay.

• 22:43Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  And she's yelling about they're arresting judges.

• 22:47Ryan Broderick?

  I see.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And he's like, well, you sound like my dad right now is like how she feels he's responding.

• 22:52Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, I understand now. This is so fascinating.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  It's so understandable, but it's like, what the fuck do you do with that?

• 23:00Ryan Broderick?

  Well, it's like a total breakdown. I mean, in, in many ways, you know, we, we don't, I don't talk about like Russian disinformation a lot on this show because I think it's sort of overstated in a way. But it is, what, what this is describing is, is fascinating because it is kind of what the end goal of something like the Internet Research Agency in, in Russia was trying to accomplish in democracies, which was if you flood the zone with so much shit, as Steve Bannon would say, that you can-

• 23:26Speaker 01

  God, you love Steve Bannon. It's crazy how much you love Steve Bannon.

• 23:29Ryan Broderick?

  I just think he's a really cool guy and we should have him on the show.

• 23:33Ryan Broderick?

  That, that I would do a live taping for, um, honestly, uh, me, me versus Steve Bannon on a stage. It would be a nightmare for everyone involved.

• 23:42Ryan Broderick?

  I would also have to have somebody in my ear, like giving me like up to the minute fact checking, just so I don't get like lost in his eyes. Um, he has like weird fucking Doberman eyes. Um,

• 23:52Ryan Broderick?

  so this is though the end goal of projects like that. Like if you're talking about like state sponsored disinfo campaigns, that's what the, this husband is who they're trying to create in electorates. They want to create someone who doesn't necessarily believe anything anymore. And this was, I mean, this goes back to even like sort of like Soviet style, um, like disinfo stuff where you wanted to create someone who just like couldn't really engage that way to sort of, um, what do you call it? Like you, you wanted to create someone who couldn't engage to sort of neutralize the population. So this husband is like completely been neutralized in this really fascinating way. If we're talking about like how you deal with this, I mean, first, if I'm going to put on my sort of like-

• 24:38Ryan Broderick?

  Like, relationship hat here, relationship counselor hat. I do think if you find yourself tiptoeing around your partner or walking on eggshells, as they would say, that's no way to live. I'm not advocating for this couple to break up, but I'm just saying you should question how much of your life is spent walking on eggshells around your partner, and then think about if that's the life you want to live. My next thing I would say-

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Hold on, I want to stop you there, because I do think it's like-

• 25:03Ryan Broderick?

  You think it's okay to be in some sort of cycle of abuse?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  I mean, I have to, when I ask ChatGPT if I think that's okay. Um, there's been this sort of like, like, back when we were civil, breaking up over political differences, that's just, that's just so petty. The worst things get, like, you can't help but be upset about, like, they factor into all aspects of your life. They are your life. Like, the political reality of America now can't be separated from your kitchen table.

• 25:34Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, hold on. I want to remove the politics here for a second, because I actually think it clarifies things. If you are a kind of person who has reactions to things, whatever they may be, like, if you were a sports fan, and you loved sports-

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Ryan can't think of a single sport.

• 25:54Ryan Broderick?

  The Knicks are, the Knicks are, are doing well. The Mets, okay, like, you love the Mets-

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Keep going.

• 26:00Ryan Broderick?

  And your partner is so aggressively anti-sports, or your reaction to sports, that you have to walk on eggshells and diminish yourself, that is worth reflecting on, okay? And I do think in a lot of these conversations, if you take politics out of it, and you replace it with anything else, it can help you clarify the dynamics at play here.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  That was a very good point. I do, I do think that-

• 26:24Ryan Broderick?

  Right? Like, I think that's just something to think about. And, and, and this is, this is something you can kind of do, anyone listening here, if, if you are finding yourself in a situation with the politics, or the disinfo, or the misinformation, the conspiracy theories, whatever, with family members or loved ones, just like, replace it with something else, and just be like, is this how I want to spend my time on earth? Right?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  You should see how condescendingly babied my partner's texts are to me when the Eagles lose. "Hey bud, you okay? Can I come home yet?" And honestly-

• 26:58Speaker 01

  That's why we're gonna be together forever.

• 27:00Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, replace that with alcohol, Grant. Replace that with, hey bud, is your bender over yet? Can I come home now? You know, you're making them walk on eggshells. You should think about that. You should think about that next time.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  No, they're being, they're being, they're giving, they are, they're supporting me in my passion.

• 27:16Ryan Broderick?

  Next time you punch a wall in the, next time you punch a hole in the drywall when the, when the birds lose.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I only, I only yell when we're doing well. Like I yell, I yell victoriously.

• 27:29Ryan Broderick?

  That's a healthy relationship.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  I only get loud and I like stomp when we do well. I just get sullen and quiet when we're doing bad. I don't, I don't exercise that. I think that's bad.

• 27:40Ryan Broderick?

  When my dad would watch the Phillies lose, that house was like a tomb. Silent as a crypt.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that's how it should be.

• 27:47Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So if we're gonna talk about like what we do with someone like this, who has completely been neutralized by disinformation to the point where they can't, they can't really engage in society anymore. I think one of the easiest ways you can deal with this, let, let's assume like you don't want to live this way anymore. Let's assume like this is a partner, they're in your life, you love them, you want to be able to express how you feel. Now, part of me says like, I do truly believe this, and I will, I will believe this until we are literally in a gulag somewhere. That like it is healthy to maybe not have the news dictate your emotional state constantly. So I will say that for the wife, it is worth thinking about.

• 28:27Ryan Broderick?

  But if you are like, okay, this, this shit matters to me. I want my husband to be able to like take me seriously when I want to be taken seriously. And you want to figure out how to do that. One thing that, one thing that I think would be really easy is just take him to like some kind of protest. Make it real. If he lived in an Alex Jones household where like all politics has been like flattened into WWE style entertainment that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fit into reality. Find small ways to make it fit into reality. Like, I don't know if they're, you know, the community they're in has mutual aid groups or, or volunteering or just, anything that can make politics feel slightly realer for him. And then just do a boiling frog situation, a boiling gay frog situation. You just sort of turn the heat up, but you make sure to find moments where you can be like,

• 29:12Ryan Broderick?

  "Hey, this is real. It's happening." Don't get super extreme, like, don't pull on the balaclava and like, throw piss at cops unless you want to. But, like, take the moments to make it real. Because I think that, it sounds like to me, from my very limited exposure to this story, that this guy just has a really tough time understanding that politics can be real, after spending so much time inside, like, the fucking, the fucking Alex Jones hypercube. So like, figure, you know, find, find little ways.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I think that is very, very sound advice. Let's see if you have a solution for this next one. Jess had grown up expecting her mom to be an extremist Christian. But one day, her mom caught her off guard.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  So, a couple of years ago, she took me out to brunch for my birthday, and she mentioned aliens. And I was like, "What the fuck?" Like, um, Christians aren't supposed to believe in aliens. My entire life, we grew up believing that, or being taught that, uh...

• 30:09Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, pause it. Hold on. Christians are allowed to believe in aliens. The Catholic Church has an entire department to study how to turn aliens Catholic when they finally get here. I just want that known for the record. Continue.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  They're evangelical, Ryan? They're not part of your...

• 30:23Ryan Broderick?

  Well, then they should fuck...

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Okay, hold on.

• 30:26Ryan Broderick?

  ...people. We're cutting that.

• 30:30Ryan Broderick?

  You can't call... I mean, they are, obviously, but, you can't, yeah. Okay, continue. Continue, continue.

• 30:35Speaker 05

  God put us here on Earth specially, and that we're his special creation, and so that aliens technically went against the doctrine. Did some research, so she started following this guy on YouTube called Kevin Zadeh, who's a preacher. She actually went to his, like, school in Texas and Florida, and like, or did an online schooling program, and then went to Texas and Florida to get, like, degrees from him. Spent like $2,500 of her husband's money.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  So you had a look of recognition upon the name Kevin Zadeh?

• 31:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. This is a cult situation. This is, this is beyond what we've talked about so far. This guy is genuinely very dangerous. His tagline is "Training Christians to operate in two realms, the natural and the supernatural." The last line there, where this mom has traveled to meet him, that's a real dangerous moment here. We're getting into, like, Wild Wall Country territory at this point.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  We're raising the temperature on the gay frogs in extremity this episode.

• 31:34Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Basically, from what I can ascertain, aliens are demons from a different realm, and that demons are constantly around us trying to essentially infect us with the blood of the Nephilim, essentially to prevent us from being taken back with Jesus when he comes back, like, in less than 30 years, you know, like, he's always about to come back. They're here to infect us with that Nephilim DNA through essentially like the vaccines, and they're working with the governments. So, Ryan, what would you do?

• 32:09Ryan Broderick?

  You know, you gotta volunteer, gotta do mutual hate protests. So first, I should say, like, I am not an expert in cult deprogramming, right? That is, that is a field that exists. Obviously, my work has taken me into those worlds before, but I, I need to say, like, I am not an expert there. So barring any kind of FBI raid on this guy's fucking warehouse or whatever, this is one where you have to, I think, tread really, really lightly, because obviously you don't want to get sucked into any sort of cults activity. And I assume the

• 32:50Ryan Broderick?

  woman, the nice lady who sent us this tape, doesn't want to build some kind of improvised weapon and then go and kill him like the guy in Japan did when his mom got sucked into a religious cult. But that is the kind of seriousness that you have to kind of take this stuff, because this is much more serious, I think. And the last thing I'll say here is, the reason you have to tread lightly, if you want your mom to stay in your life, is if you go about this wrong, you can lose that kind of person much faster, I think. I think when you're talking about cultish activity, the, the gravitational pull is much stronger, and the risk of isolation and the risk of sort of further indoctrination

• 33:33Ryan Broderick?

  because of that isolation is much higher. So you, you really have to be careful. And and, and, and this is like, I think I'm gonna just keep saying across this episode with all this stuff, which is like, is helping this person, is staying connected to this person worth the time in your life that you want to spend doing it, right?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  So the amount of empathy and and care she expressed towards her mom, she talks regularly about like that her mom had a very difficult life and that like this is like was her path to recovery and that she'd like tries to keep that in mind. But like, they live 45 minutes away, they hardly see each other. It's very difficult. She doesn't engage with anything that is not evangelical, this cult related. She says the last movie that she's she's seen was Sound of Freedom. And that like she brought up that like it really resonated with her during like, the episode with Matt, where like, you can't even talk about like, anodyne things like food, because you can see it, trigger it. And so I want to play you this clip.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  I'll try to assert myself and try to be an adult and be like, you know, Mom, I actually really like Beyonce. You know, that's what she's probably my favorite artist. Like, the most inconsequential thing you could possibly say in the year of our Lord 2025 is I like Beyonce. And I can hear her on the other end of the phone, like straining not to be like, well, you know, you know, the the relationship has changed because she is so implicated and so isolated.

• 35:00Ryan Broderick?

  It's sad.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  And it, yeah, and it's a it's a no win and it and it just feels so so little. I'm gonna say this in as sincere of a tone as possible, because I mean it. You're not alone in this. Like, this is this is all of us now. It's more severe for you than most. But like, I think that that's a hard thing to keep in mind, that we're all coming to terms with.

• 35:24Ryan Broderick?

  Tell me if this is overblown or stretching, and we can delete it from the episode. But like, to me, it almost feels like dealing with someone with dementia or Alzheimer's.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's right.

• 35:34Ryan Broderick?

  Like, early, when there's like moments of lucidity, and they're like, they're back. And then it's like, the conspiratorial thinking, sort of snaps back into place, and they go into like their hyper fixation. And it like, you're dealing with someone who is is deteriorating. Because you there are moments when it's great. And it's like, okay, they're back. And you know, sometimes, in my experience, I have never met anyone who's completely deradicalized a loved one. And I wanted to wait till we got deeper into this episode to say that. Like, I actually don't know very many success stories. There are some. But at a, but at a certain point, you, you, you kind of have to accept that this is part of them and accept the moments of lucidity you get.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  There was this listener, Audrey, who, um, I want to end this act on this because I think she kind of really summed up a lot of like, a lot of what you're saying really well. She writes, uh, so she is like a Mahah mom.

• 36:34Ryan Broderick?

  Make America Healthy Again, by the way.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Sure. Um, she, my mom, uh, doesn't like that I take antidepressants, doesn't like that I have an IUD, is convinced that I'm essentially poisoning myself because I'm overweight, etc. I've been treated for OCD, for OCD for several years, and the process has revealed a lot of internal dysfunction. I know I get from her. In short, the sickness in her is the sickness in me, the moral equivalency of wellness to goodness. It feels very connected to the desire to control one's body as the ultimate thing you can control in a chaotic environment. She goes on to say, I don't know how to have an open conversation with her about most of it because she is correct that institutions fail us, that there have been bad actors in the world, that if it weren't for food safety regulation, companies

• 37:21Speaker 01

  would start putting sawdust in Rice Krispies tomorrow. I think we're witnessing this kind of hyper self-control on a mass scale. And I can't help but feel sorry for my mom and everyone who's deep in it, as they don't recognize they're holding on to barbed wire because they're too scared, uh, because they're too scared what will happen if they let go.

• 37:38Ryan Broderick?

  That's really, that's a really beautiful, beautiful piece. It's so personal. Like, this stuff is so, it's such a bizarre mix of macro and micro. It's such a bizarre mix of like systemic and systematic and personal, where you are trying to essentially like work through your own complex dynamic with your parents, let's say, amid this like institutional chaos.

• 38:07Ryan Broderick?

  And I wonder if it was always like this. I have to assume it was. We just like didn't know. Did I do it? Did I do the thing where we're going into the next act and I just said that what's next on the, I did the thing our guests do? Okay.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  You want to know if this has always been the case?

• 38:21Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  When we come back from break.

• 38:22Ryan Broderick?

  God damn it.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  We're gonna talk, we're gonna talk to a guy whose dad moved them to a compound before Y2K.

• 38:30Ryan Broderick?

  And before that, a word from our sponsors, MyPillow.

• 38:39Speaker 00

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• 39:41Speaker 01

  So what you're just getting at is that uh, it gets us to like the unanswerable question.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  That I think gnaws at all of this. How much is untreated mental disorders and how much is mental disorder through media? And obvious and like you can never extract the two in reality, but it's always, it's always present in this.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And now it's on a mass scale, but like this has been here with us.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  For all of time and um iron it's probably irony is probably the wrong word. But that um Y2K was supposed to end civilization, but it was like kind of the the coronation of a thing that did of of like us all coming online and that would eventually devastate the world.

• 40:35Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's funny. Yeah, I've been thinking about this ever since we tried to do a now scrapped Y2K episode. I was thinking about it because you know you had those you had um what was it like a centennial cults or whatever like you know at the at the turn of the 1900s that believed that the world was going to end like it has been a thing forever. You know, I mean, you could argue there's like a whole section of the Bible dedicated to the world ending very soon. Um, it's a thing that we've always kind of dreamed of. Y2K is fascinating though, because not only is it arriving sort of at the buildup

• 41:14Ryan Broderick?

  of a massive amount of like post World War II Cold War bombs are dropping kind of mentality. You know, you're dealing with a bunch of generations of people that lived under the threat of nuclear war. Now they're hitting the 2000s and it's like the world's gonna end. I kind of understand the hysteria there. But then also you have you basically have like a doomsday cult happening at peak mass media. That has to make people go real goofy because like it's just there's a lot of moving parts there for sure.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now this next generation's dealing with the consequences. Um, let's get back to Zach and what it was like for him as a kid, though. Do you remember when your dad told you his his Y2K plan?

• 41:59Speaker 07

  I do. It was so I'm 38. I think I was in eighth grade. Um, it was early. It was in the spring of 99.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  So his dad.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Was gonna make some big moves ahead of Y2K.

• 42:15Speaker 07

  So he just sat me and my brother down. My brother's like a year and a half younger than me. And just matter of fact was like, the world's gonna end. We're gonna move. I found a community of like like minded, good Christian people. We're gonna go visit next week. We're taking all our money out of the banks. We're taking all your money out of your college fund. We're buying gold, food and guns.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Have you talked to any of these guys before, Ryan?

• 42:37Ryan Broderick?

  Why'd you guys specifically?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:39Ryan Broderick?

  No, but I've talked to people who have done similar things. I mean, the pattern is always the same, which is gold and guns and

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:46Ryan Broderick?

  A compound and like minded Christians. It's always that.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  So Zach did not have that at the time and he was young enough to where you go, you just believe what your parents are telling you. And so, uh, out to the compound they went.

• 43:00Speaker 07

  He brought facts and, and, and information to the conversation. You know, none of it, none of it true or relevant, but as you know, somebody, you know, that young, it all seemed really, really credible. And I don't know, it just kind of seemed like an adventure. We were moving up to the country. We lived in the suburbs and, and Texas. So we're moving out to East Texas, down a bunch of dirt roads and like, we're gonna learn how to shoot guns and hunt and, and all this stuff that we hadn't really done.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  At the root of all of these things,

• 43:31Speaker 01

  is sort of this like boy childhood adventure story. I think that is like part of the like the core appeal.

• 43:38Ryan Broderick?

  For the son or for the dad?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Like it was definitely present for Zach, but I think it's like present for all these people who are like, tomorrow's society will stop and suddenly like life is gonna be exciting and meaningful in this, in this like profound way.

• 43:54Ryan Broderick?

  Well, yes, it's trying to make you feel like the hero. It's trying to make you feel like the main character and it's promising you a world in which that's possible. We see it in like finance bro circles now, like every kind of.

• 44:12Ryan Broderick?

  Type of person you can imagine has their own version of these sorts of pipelines and rabbit holes. And at the heart of almost all of them is this promise that the world will reset. And when it resets, you're on top and that you have hidden knowledge of how the world's going to reset. And it is the heart of Trumpism. It is, I think, in many ways, the fundamental sickness of the 21st century. And I think Y2K is the flashpoint for a lot of this stuff. Because I think for a lot of people, it is the first time they maybe understood how abstracted and delocalized the global sort of order had become. And now it's sort of the promise that it's going to end and it's like, perfect.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  It's so interesting being 25 years beyond that. But 25 years ago, we had this moment where we saw it was a uniting of all these people who all felt the impulse of like, yeah, I can't wait for the like day zero. One of the things that would from the, from the Y2K episode that was never to be that we discovered was someone was having like, I think it was a teenager was having a baby and they believed the world was going to end at Y2 during Y2K. And they put their baby up for adoption in like Y2K chat rooms.

• 45:34Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And of course, we don't need

• 45:37Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  paperwork to make this adoption legal because the world's about to end.

• 45:43Ryan Broderick?

  At the heart of it is not only like I am the main character and the world's going to reset, but the world's going to reset because it's so complicated and confusing right now that I'm, I'm alienated by it. Like it's a, it's a, it's a social alienation and that can't really be fixed.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  An intrinsic part that's going to factor into our story here that, that keeps that working in this perpetual loop is that you have the people who are exhausted and looking for a way out. And, and you will immediately have grifters who are there to, to.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Perpetuate that you that there's no that you don't make any progress or see any perspective, which is exactly what happened to Zach's family.

• 46:31Speaker 07

  First meeting, the guy, I think his name was Jim, who had bought all the land and you know, I'm 13 or whatever, and he walks up and he shakes my hand and I shake his hand back and he's like, "Oh, good firm handshake. You can tell a lot about a man by how his handshake is and you've got a good handshake." And I was just like, "Oh, wow, a real man." Like, like, this is, and I mean, looking back now, like, obviously, that's one of those things that like people who are full of shit say, like, you know, these canned, like, platitudes and cliches to make people trust them.

• 47:09Speaker 07

  But I loved it up there at first. It's sinking pretty quick that, you know, I wasn't going to be able to play basketball or play baseball or it took 45 minutes to drive to the nearest, like, the nearest city with more than one stoplight.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  So this guy got bought all this cheap land in like middle of nowhere, Texas, and got these families to like help build roads and like a real reinforced fence?

• 47:34Ryan Broderick?

  Right, of course.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  So Ryan, what question are you asking yourself that I-

• 47:40Ryan Broderick?

  What happened when the world didn't end?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Okay, I had one question before then.

• 47:45Ryan Broderick?

  Oh.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Which was, how racist?

• 47:49Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, I wasn't even gonna ask that. I just assumed like this was an insanely racist, like, you know, hyper-conservative-

• 47:57Speaker 01

  So I did ask, how racist was this?

• 48:00Speaker 07

  If I'd gone through and now is, you know, somebody in their late 30s and I could probably listen in on those conversations, there's about a million red flags that I would pick up. But you know, I was an isolated homeschool kid and raised a very fundamentalist Christian. So everything tracked. I think the one thing that I remember- That strikes me as weird is one of our neighbors had some some kids who I think they were in their like late teens. So I looked up to them and they were, you know, outdoorsy. And I remember they talked about Hitler a lot. Uh oh. You don't say. Yeah, like it, uh, it, uh, not like Hitler was a great guy, but in like, uh, yeah, my dad has a lot of World War Two memorabilia. Yep.

• 48:45Speaker 07

  You know, it wasn't ever like, you know, hey, this is how we feel about the Jews, but it was very much like, hey, we, you know, we're historically interested in this part of history that is, you know, such a major red flag now that back then I was like, oh, cool. I like history, too. Sure. I'm more interested in like, you know, other parts of history that aren't Nazi Germany, but you do you. Right. Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. So, so that's, that's the baseline. Uh, let's jump to the week of Y2K.

• 49:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. It was less prepping than you would think it would be because everybody spent so much time prepping. But like, we were totally self sufficient. We had a generator that ran off a natural, natural gas line and diesel. Natural gas was like tied to a well right off our property. We could have lived out there without outside interference for like literally years. So it was less prepping, but a lot of spending time on the internet and kind of convincing themselves that this is going to happen. I remember my dad being on the computer with like our dial up internet all the time.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  It strikes me that like, they brought the internet, they brought their message board to a physical location, but still the impulse was to be online. I find, I find kind of fascinating. You know, like, you could just talk to your, like, all your neighbors are now that message board.

• 50:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, you would think that, but you'd have to know my dad. He.

• 50:13Speaker 07

  He has like a really strong anti authoritarian streak and I think that was that comes from, being raised in a part of Texas where him and his family were the only Asian family. Watching my dad interact with all these white, blue collar survivalists. It was almost like he resented them a little bit, even though he was part of the community because, you know, he was still having to play a part. He was still having to assimilate, you know, these guys have been shooting guns their whole lives. My dad had fired a gun once before he bought a bunch of assault rifles in 99.

• 50:47Ryan Broderick?

  That you buried the lead there, Grant. I do think that is important. That is fascinating. That is, so they are now on a compound surrounded by effectively white nationalists to some degree.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  This soup of conspiracy is made up of different people and it needs these, all of the factors of the conspiracy. It needs the online worker who's drawn in and it needs the people who like, moving to this compound probably just wasn't actually that different from their normal life. They just like, they just got more land because it was cheaper.

• 51:22Ryan Broderick?

  And in most of the stories we've heard today, like there's like a fundamental insecurity at the center of the person who gets brainwashed that you kind of can't do anything about. Like, that is their thing. And I think it's important to say that, you know, like the person who falls for like a Y2K power fantasy, the mom who travels to meet a pastor who believes in aliens, like,

• 51:48Ryan Broderick?

  there's something that's missing there in that person and you can't really ever help them get it. And that's what makes it so hard, I think, to deprogram or de-radicalize in these situations. I mean, this one's impossible. Like, there's nothing he could have done.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  You say there's nothing you can do except for when the apocalypse doesn't happen. So let's get to the day out.

• 52:08Ryan Broderick?

  You get to the moment of failed cataclysm. Yep, exactly.

• 52:11Speaker 07

  The, the time change starts very, very, very early in the morning. So everybody got up really early and we went to a, a neighbor's house with this really, really big house. I mean, looking back, this like, this guy definitely didn't think that the apocalypse was happening. He just saw a place to buy cheap land.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  So they all get to his house. They're having a potluck. Everyone's bringing their favorite meals. He's got a big

• 52:33Ryan Broderick?

  Hell yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Screen nineties TV that they're all like, ready to watch the apocalypse on. Zach being a kid, the guy had made a pond out in the middle of Texas. So he was like fishing in the guy's pond and they're all ready to bring in doomsday.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  But then as the time change started happening and the world didn't end,

• 52:55Speaker 07

  it started at like 10 a.m. I think. And as it got later and later, you could see people get more and more upset. The conversations got quieter. And then there was a lot of like, well, you know, it, it hasn't hit the East Coast yet. That's where all the data centers are. That's where all the computers are. A lot of kind of justifying why things weren't going wrong. Why, why planes weren't falling out of the sky? And I don't even think we stayed till midnight.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Needless to say, this changed the family forever and their dad's reality collapse. Zach was a kid, but looking back now, he's, he sees this as like, the position that every one who has a family member, who has a conspiracy member in it, really wants.

• 53:40Speaker 07

  The desire for a conspiracy theorist, as somebody who like is a member of their family is to like, show them the truth, like force them to look at like a, like a fact that is impossible to refute, that disproves their entire narrative. And that's really hard to do because you really can't prove a negative. But like Y2K was this thing that was gonna happen and it didn't happen. He sat in a chair in the living room and I don't remember how long, but it felt like for like three months and didn't speak. And we tried to avoid him at all costs because he was just in the darkest mood that I've ever seen.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  I can relate to like, you have the question in your head that you know is dangerous as a kid and you're like mostly worried about your parents well being. Um, but did it's

• 54:25Speaker 07

  In my family, in my family, you worried about your own well being. You didn't ask my dad questions. He had a, he had a real, serious anger problem throughout my entire life.

• 54:33Ryan Broderick?

  One thing I will say, which I think this is a useful example of is that a lot of people, I'm sure, listening to this, going through these sorts of things. Dream of the moment where it all comes crashing down and you're like QAnon's not real. Or Donald Trump gets arrested or whatever, right?

• 55:01Ryan Broderick?

  There is like no proof I've ever seen that that kind of moment is gonna change someone or even feel gratifying for you. What actually ends up happening is like much more devastating and weird and strange, which is that they don't really ever want to talk about it again. And it's, it's, it doesn't feel good is what I would say.

• 55:25Speaker 07

  That was certainly Zach's experience. Let's listen.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  But like internally, I would imagine this was probably one, if not the first time you're like, he's wrong. And like, what do I do with that?

• 55:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it was, it changed my entire worldview. It changed my entire way that I view my parents. I didn't, you know, you couldn't trust what he was saying anymore. Clearly he doesn't understand. And I think it actually probably changed the course of my entire life because I, I gotta think that if I hadn't had that, that direct point of watching somebody who was telling you.

• 56:01Speaker 07

  These conspiracy theories are true. This is the way the world works. I might not, I might be a conspiracy theorist myself today.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  His dad had to go and get a job, you know, to return to the world. Eventually they moved to like more of a suburbs. And his dad was in a deep, deep depression until.

• 56:18Speaker 07

  Uh oh. I can tell you exactly for how long my dad didn't talk about conspiracy theories.

• 56:25Speaker 07

  Cause he didn't talk about conspiracy theories for one year and nine months.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:29Speaker 07

  Until the universe gave him a great gift and that's nine 11. You know, the twin towers fall and overnight Alex Jones is getting super popular. Message boards are springing up all over the place, talking about why and explaining how this happened. And all of a sudden he's in the know again. You know, he's already had the inroads of these communities. He already knew who he was listening to. So all of a sudden bam, he's right back into the conspiracy theories. Now it's this thing that is no solid date. It's not gonna, it's not one day. Everybody's gonna see that you're wrong. It's constantly changing and evolving.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  So once, you know, they, they leave, they leave the compound and they move to the suburbs and nine 11 happens. Then his dad starts puffing out his chest and, and talking about the stuff with people again, and you know, like snapped to a different reality.

• 57:23Speaker 07

  And my dad's thing is like, who goes outside and be like, clouds look funny today. Chemtrails. I didn't see as many contrails when I was a kid. What do you guys think about that? You know, and instead, you know, the mask is off with me. He's like, there's angels and demons breeding with kids. Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Zach went to college. His dad got worse, bought more guns and silver, moved back to the compound. And um, probably because of some of those decisions, Zach had trouble affording college. And so he, uh, joined the military and he ended up in Afghanistan, which was a real breaking point with him and his dad.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  He was telling me things about. About the war in Afghanistan. And I would say, Dad, I'm, I'm literally in Afghanistan right now. Like I'm, I did three deployments. What you're telling me is not true. They don't have animal, human hybrids fighting for the military. They don't have, you know, robot soldiers out here. They're not genetically modifying us or, or any number of, of things. And I would just tell them that and it just never broke through.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  And that has defined the relationship for Zach's adult life. His dad didn't call and check in on him on January 6th and he lives in DC. But his dad did call to talk about 5G stuff when Biden was about to take office.

• 58:48Ryan Broderick?

  That is the heart of it, which is that if it's not one thing, it'll be the other because it's a personality type.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:55Ryan Broderick?

  A lot of the stories that I've kind of covered over the years or people have talked to you, there's usually some sort of trauma in there, maybe, or something really bad happens to you and you sort of start to, you start to isolate, you start to go online or whatever. But to try not to be a massive bummer at the end of this. The question for anyone listening who's going through something similar, I think would just be like, what do you need in this situation? And what do you want out of it? And how do you get that? As imperfect as it may be. It's not your job at the end of the day, right? To like, figure out someone else's shit, I think.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Zach goes to Herculean lengths to keep up any kind of relationship.

• 59:38Speaker 07

  Twice a year I'll call my dad, I'll call him on Father's Day and I'll call him on his birthday and I let him talk about whatever he wants to me. And the rest of the year, I, I put a boundary around it. You know, I just, I feel sorry for him. I'm as old as he was when he had, he had me, when he started having kids. And at this point in my life, you know, I've, I've lived all over the world. I, I travel all the time.

• 1:00:03Speaker 07

  And he doesn't leave Texas and he just sits there and he experiences the world and he experiences everything through Alex Jones and through much further right wing conspiracy theorists than Alex Jones. It's such a scary and horrible world that they paint. So he won't visit because he won't fly because he doesn't trust the body scanners, doesn't trust the airplanes.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  How often do you go home?

• 1:00:28Speaker 07

  It's been a long time.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  He like keeps tabs on everything that's going on in Alex Jones related worlds so that he can have conversations where he can see his dad's like tactics. He puts in hours of work to be able to have short phone calls to maintain some kind of contact. Which I find both beautiful and sad. Um, shit. I wish I had something more fun to end this episode on.

• 1:00:56Ryan Broderick?

  I can end this episode on a fun note, which is that, so we've talked a bit about my dad over the last couple of episodes. I don't want to talk about him anymore. I'm bored of it now. I interviewed him recently for a project I'm working on, as I said at the top of the episode. And at the end of our interview, I asked him, what has he learned from me? Enjoy the Boston accent.

• 1:01:18Speaker 08

  You have softened me so that I'm not, you know, one of the proud boys or whatever. I didn't go down to Washington because of you, but we are definitely different because I don't feel the sky is gonna fall. And I think we're in for an incredible ride, positive.

• 1:01:40Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ryan, you're a hero. You know, I don't want to give you the last word. I have one more fun one. So I'm just gonna, we're gonna go in cold and I'm gonna play the first clip.

• 1:01:52Speaker 09

  My father was obsessed with the show Ancient Aliens, but it totally radicalized him. He would watch it for hours.

• 1:02:00Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so I did not bring this up before. I was also radicalized by Ancient Aliens. I spent like a summer in college watching nothing but the History Channel. I became totally convinced that Ancient Aliens were real.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  I am not at all surprised. You needed a friend like this guy.

• 1:02:20Speaker 09

  So I found this great feature on DirecTV. I was clicking around one day and it says parental controls. And I thought that seems like an appropriate name for this. So I went and I blocked the History Channel. And a few hours later, you know, he's, he's trying to watch Ancient Aliens and, and it says like, "Channel is blocked" and he's confused. He doesn't know what happened. Uh, I just tell him, "Yeah, sorry. This show is rotting your brain. I'm doing this for the good of you. No more Ancient Aliens."

• 1:02:48Ryan Broderick?

  It was a pretty good plan, uh, until he needed to use his dad's car to pick up his girlfriend at the time.

• 1:02:55Speaker 09

  So I basically point out, "Your keys are right there. I could just take them and go pick her up. What are you gonna do?" And he says, "If you do that, if you take my car, I'm gonna call the police on you and say, 'Someone has stolen my car.'"

• 1:03:08Ryan Broderick?

  I really can't think of anything more boomer coded than threatening to call the cops because somebody blocked your access to the History Channel. Like, I really, that's just like, that's the whole thing right there. That's the whole generation in a nutshell. That's incredible.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  He caves, he unblocks the Ancient Aliens channel, but there's a catch.

• 1:03:26Speaker 09

  I see there's this feature like temporarily unblock for like 30 minutes. I'm like, "Oh, that's even better."

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  So he picks his girlfriend up. All is calm and good, but then the channel's blocked again.

• 1:03:37Speaker 09

  I think at the time I was kinda like showing, uh, this girlfriend, uh, my childhood backyard and he basically locked me out of the house. I kind of thought that he wouldn't possibly do this embarrassing behavior in front of a stranger, basically, but I underestimated, uh, my dad's willingness to be embarrassed or maybe, um, lack of...

• 1:03:59Speaker 09

  Understanding embarrassment, what that even is?

• 1:04:01Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, that sounds totally right.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Ryan, thank you. Listeners, thank you so much.

• 1:04:06Ryan Broderick?

  These were really great.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  I hope this all made you feel a little less alone with problems that are largely unsolvable. But we're all in it together.

• 1:04:15Ryan Broderick?

  If you were listening to this and you wanted us to address specific things or answer certain questions, let us know. If you come across stuff that your loved ones or friends or whatever are seeing and that you don't understand, like, we can definitely help there, too. I mean, the other day I was digging through, like, a hell of a misinfo thing about putting onions on your feet, and I think I figured out where it came from. Like, if you want that kind of stuff, we can do that as well.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  [email protected]. Send those our way. [email protected].

• 1:04:50Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude@multitude-production/adz. For any other way you would like to give us money, or work with us, or promote us, or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece of advice from me to you: chill

• 1:05:33Ryan Broderick?

  out, touch grass while you still can.

• 1:05:41Speaker 07

  I don't listen to Alex Jones, but I listen to podcasts about Alex Jones. I listen to Panic World.

• 1:05:50Speaker 07

  And so I think I

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Which one's your favorite podcast?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  That keeps coming, sorry.

• 1:05:57Speaker 07

  Recently Panic World because Knowledge Fight has just gotten way too dark for me lately.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  That's the first time everyone's been like, you're the fun one.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Good to hear, I guess.

• 1:06:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 10

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