Knowledge Fight - #887: Jon Ronson Returns

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

In this installment, Jordan welcomes back to the show author and podcaster Jon Ronson to discuss his show Things Fell Apart, which has a new season out now.  Tune in to hear about bad doctors and Jon's thoughts about Friday Night Lights.

I Ready Not knowledge fight Damn and Jordan I am sweating Knowledge fight, it's time to pray. I have great respect for knowledge, mate. Knowledge, mate. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys. Shang-ni are the bad guys. Knowledge, fight.

Dan and Jordan, knowledge, fight. N-need money, please. N-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy and Andy Just time to pray Andy and And the answer sure on the earth thanks for holding So Alex from a Christmas holiday with your fans. I love your world knowledge fight No, no Jordan unfortunately without my co-host Dan But today we are joined by John Ronson Who is inexplicably agreed to come back on the show. Thank you very much, John It's always a delight to be with you and or Dan

How you doing? What's your bright spot? Oh, that is delightful that you would ask Well, hope my bright spot was going to be that Rafa Nadal is back playing tennis And I woke up at 4 a.m. To watch his match this morning But unfortunately he lost and might be injured again, so well Not my bright spot, but how about yours? My bright spot is I'm watching for the first time Friday night lights, and I'm about to find out whether or not coach Taylor could get East Dylan up to snuff enough that they could compete in state. I mean, I will admit, I've never seen it. I've never seen it, but I say clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose, and variations of that all the time.

Absolutely, and what I just told you really summarizes it. And, you know, actually, I've got to say, I kind of like it. I've been living in America for nearly 12 years. And, you know, I think I'm ready to understand and appreciate small town Texas life. I, you know, I don't know if anybody is. I watched varsity blues when I was way too young and I just quit after that.

I mean, they're supposed to be 17 and they look like they're 40 going to strip clubs. I don't understand the world anymore. Yeah. They're 40 going to strip clubs. I don't understand the world anymore. Yeah, well, I'm thoroughly enjoying it with Finch again. To accept the season two, which goes completely off the rails. I don't need unlikely effect that anybody listening to this is now inspired to watch Friday Night Lights. Sure. Skip season two.

I can tell you, you really don't need to watch season two. All the terrible, narrative, bad decisions they make in season two are never mentioned again in subsequent seasons. That's fascinating. You're not missing anything. Yeah, it was just this kind of dark, secret season two throughout the night. Let's just skip it.

What is the best thing from season two that makes it impossible to or like makes it pointless to watch. There's a murder. There's a high school. Yeah, this is a small show about football. That's what's great about it. And there's a murder. And also there's a murder in self-defense that they then try and cover up. And this is Texas, where if you kill someone, if you kill someone in self-defense in Texas, they give you prizes. So this whole narrative, this whole narrative of like covering up this self-defense killer

is just absurd. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I played high school football in the Midwest, so admittedly it wasn't quite set in the same area But every Friday we did not murder somebody Right, it was a terrible miscalculation. What's so wonderful about that show is the smallness of it So to bring in something huge was just a ridiculous mistake. Yeah, I think that's probably why I never watched it It's because I lived too much of that high school experience and I just wanted to add or need it again. I don't like football, I don't like high school.

And my wife's a high school teacher. I don't need it. I got plenty of my life. Right. You know who else is wife's a high school teacher? Coach James? I knew it. I knew you were going to get me with that. I knew it. I knew you were gonna get me with that Ronson Yes, well I suppose I suppose it's time to get into why you've I've trapped you here

You have by the time this has come out your new season of things fell apart will be out Will it be the whole season or just the first episode? The whole season, I'm happy to say, they're going to be playing a week by week on BBC Radio 4, but they're also putting the entire thing out all at once on Tuesday, January the 9th, which is in the past, as we speak. Yes. Yeah, so I'm so pleased. I've, you know, the weird thing, for some reason with me, every time I've done a podcast, it's always been released in a slightly complicated way,

which is always slightly frustrating for me. So I'm so pleased that this is just being released in a kind of bingey. What do they call it? Like, what do they put everything out at once? There's a word, I forgot it. Anyway, it's being released in that way. It's in German, I said that's why you can't remember it.

Yeah, yeah, Liebenschum. And so I'm very pleased it's being released in such an easy way. Everybody could listen to all of it, all at once. Come Tuesday. Yeah, that's, and they really should, because I'll let people know. I pitched you this, that we would do three interviews, because you graciously gave me an advanced copy, which makes me feel real special,

and I'm an actual member of the media instead of a clown. Well, I'm very pleased, I'm just funny because you helped. There was one episode where we helped. Okay, that helped. There was one episode that needed a little bit of kind of deep cut Alex Jones information. So yeah, you were done with a count to provide it. So you were contractually obligated to come back on the show? I got you.

Is that a copyright thing in Britain? It's a principle of reciprocity. Well, the thing is, as I was listening to all of them, I realized that we can do a kind of, we could do a quick little promotional interview where we say, oh, it's great and all the stories are interesting. And did you know that America's weird? We could do that. Or we could really, really kind of dig into it and there's eight episodes, which means,

I mean, considering that the last time we talked, there was about three hours of content and our interview was about three hours. Yes. hours of content and our interview was about three hours. I know it does give me pause and it takes me a year to do what like you and Dan or Joe Roker, nothing I can do in the scale, could do it like a day. So yeah, I wish it was a little different. And well, I should say as a fan, as a fan of you and various other podcasts, and as a fan and a subscriber, you know, I want constant content. I want the feed to be updated twice a week

or whatever. So, but I can't do that myself. I'm all about the minutia. I'm all about, you know, polishing and polishing and polishing. So, you know, I fear that my way of telling stories is slightly disappointing to people who want constant content. Oh, I mean, imagine how I feel. I have to continually remind myself, like, so I put out a book in 2020, and I've been working, and right now,

I've finally gotten to the draft process of the second one, right? And I have to working and right now I've finally gotten to the draft process of the second one right and I have to keep Reminding myself it's okay people often take years between books because surrounding that is Dan churning out a Novel every two days. So it's tough. It's tough. I get yeah I mean these are you know like like work that takes a long time to get right. It's like our children, you know, you want to, you know, these are, these are hopefully the things that will live on after, after we're dead. And so you do want to put the hours into, to make it as good as possible.

So I don't regret it. But in the end, we're slaves to our brains, right? Sure. We can only do what our brains allow us to do. And for me, my brain operates, that I want to tell a story and kind of intricate detail. Whereas, you know, three hours of, it's just hard for me, it's hard.

Oh, I understand. Yeah, you're really good at it. Other people are really good at it. I'm not. I'm good at the smoke. I'm good at the banishia. Well, I find that fascinating, especially because you managed to put so much minutia into what relatively is a

small amount of time. We cram a lot of minutia, but still into two hours. I feel like after listening to a half hour of one of these episodes, there's a lot inside of it that is not even necessarily explicit. But by having done all of this detail work, you can put a little bit in there that implies all of the rest of it without having to go too hard. Leaving things that are sad, that is such an important part of storytelling, of non-fiction storytelling.

You've got me onto one of my favorite subjects here. I think one of the bad things that have gotten into the... Not writing, the c- Right. Exactly, not writing. Not my words on your paper. Right. You know, one of the negatives, I don't know if I can all, you know, all idiots,

but you know, one of the things that kind of changed a little bit in the culture around 2013, 2014, I think, was there was much more of an impetus for people to say exactly what they mean, lest they be misunderstood and they get into trouble for being misunderstood. But I've always been a really big fan of leaving things unsaid. Because if you leave things unsaid, then the storytelling process becomes like a kind of partnership between the author and the reader. And I've always loved that. I love shows that don't spell everything out, it's an all-bus, or musicians, or whatever. So yes, that's exactly what I tried to,

and I've tried to do in this series, like everything I did. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of always funny to me that people don't often share the same definition of words. And yet somehow people assume that cramming more of them into the same space will make it easier for people to understand. If you are confused about the same definition of one word, imagine 40 of them in the whole mess.

Totally. To me, it's sort of, there's nothing about this process that's more kind of joyful to me. They're going back to a sentence and realizing you could say it in fewer words. And the more words you take out, the more it becomes like that partnership between writer and reader. It's my favorite. It really is. I've told the story, but before I, like my final product of my book was about 50,000 words, and I had 100,000 that I took scissors to and like my red pen was bleeding at the end of it You know, I got tore it to shreds and that was my favorite part of the process, you know, the writing it that was hard Yeah, I'd go as fast as that's the only part of the process I enjoy

It's the rest of it's a nightmare But taking take it out superfluous words is just, could be more pleasant. Yeah, I would say sometimes it comes out again, and you just keep chasing that feeling, you know, where you go, oh, oh my God, look at all that that I put down. And then you never see that much again. Yeah.

Well, so what I wanted to talk to you about, in a way, respecting exactly what you described, you know, this is something that you put in a lot of work on. These are your kids. So let's get into them and treat them like that instead of just being like, hey, listen on your own. So I wanted to talk about the first two episodes as kind of a dip tech to begin. Totally.

Can I say that, you know that we're going to be giving away like everything, right? In this interview, all the twists and turns. Yeah, probably. In which case, I don't know so much if we're, like, because here's part of what I want to do, is a lot of my questions really aren't necessarily about the content so much as they are.

I think if you compare these two stories together, there's a lot of weird things that kind of pop up on the side. Right. Well, let me ask you in that case, Jordan, do you think it would be better for people to pause and listen to the episodes and then come back to this, or do you think it'd be okay for them to listen to this without having to add the episodes? I think it'll be okay for them to listen to this because a lot of this also is going to be content that our listeners are going to be,

if not like, intimately familiar with, this will all be in the realm of stuff that we've covered too in a way, not the same way, and not in that kind of narrative, nonfiction sort of way. So it's a lot of times far more enjoyable. Right. Especially episode two, right?

Which really feeds into kind of stuff that you do. Absolutely. And yeah, so, um, but the, the two things that make, or no, the thing that makes episode one and two tied together for me so closely is that I think at the heart of both stories is a doctor, is that I think at the heart of both stories is a doctor, a lie, and how much trust we put into the word doctor. Yes, I think that's really, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, so the first story, the first episode, I would say, begins, you know, in the 80ss with a killer and then is compounded by another one.

Yes. Although we don't know at first that it's a killer, basically in the 80s in Miami, 32 women are found dead in mysterious circumstances. They are all black sex workers, which is probably the reason why this story is way less well known than, you know, than it ought to be. They had a couple of things in common as well as that. They were all found naked from the waist down in exactly the same position. The detective, Fag Waslowski said to me that you could superimpose their bodies on top of each other, and they all had low levels of cocaine in their systems. So that's the beginning of the mystery, like what happened. Because nobody could figure out the cause of death, there was no gunshots, no stabbing, nothing, no blood.

It was just a mystery. The detective, in fact, was asked to you, said at the time that it was the most mysterious case he had ever come across. So then entered into this story, Miami-Dade County's deputy chief medical examiner, a mad named Dr. Charles Wettley. Ah, yeah, the second murderer

that we're about to get into discuss. Have you, by the way, had you heard of Dr. Wettley or this Miami story? I had not heard of this Miami story. And I think what's fun, again, what's fun about being from ourot and then listening this is you brought that doctor that name up and I immediately went this guys, that guy's trouble and then I've been and then I went off on a whole thing and now I'm going

to and now there's information that I'm going to share with you then you probably don't know. Totally yeah, I mean I went far down a rabbit hole, but I didn't go all the way. I'm sure this thing's about to talk to Wettley. I don't know, I'm sure there are. So, that's one. That's one.

So, Dr. Wettley examined the women's bodies and announced that he had determined to the cause of death. He said, the women had all spontaneously dropped dead as a result of a combination of cocaine and sex. When I said this to a friend of mine, by the way, she said, she said, well, how come I'm not dead? So, there's a part of me that, you know, when they say, oh, they found small amounts of cocaine in their body

I would be like, well, it's the 80s. I defy you to find Less than some of that in 50% of the American population at that point in time, you know, like that doesn't matter. Especially Miami. Yeah, right. Miami was cocaine central in the 80s. I know for Miami-Fice. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so he gave this diagnosis a name. He said it was called Excited Delirium. And but then there was some other things happened. Firstly, another body showed up of a 14-year-old girl called

Adtenette Burns, who wasn't a sex worker, and she hadn't taken any cocaine. But she was found in exactly the same position as all of the others. So this was the first cake in the theory, no cocaine in her sister but all. And then another woman showed up who was a live and said that she was a sex worker and she was you know with a guy and he went for big gentleman and to a damn maniac and started to choke her. And so they got a description of the guy and they did some more investigative and his name was Charlie Williams and it turned out of course that it wasn't excited to lay a bit with the serial killer. No.

It might as I mean, yeah, I read the two words excited to lay a and that is where it was like in the back of my mind, I'm just hearing Copaganda and then it's like it might as well. He might as well have said, oh, they died of a broken heart. You know, like, you're so full of shit. What are you talking about? They all, they, you know, they had too much fun. So then naturally you go, how is it possible that this guy can get away with saying,

oh, all of these women had too much fun to death? Right. There was undoubtedly a misogynistic element to this, but there was also a racist element. Maybe not least because he was promoting a corresponding theory of male deaths from excited to live. He said, women die in relation to sex, whereas men just go berserk. They run through traffic, they rip their clothes off, and then they spontaneously drop dead, off excited to live after taking cocaine.

And, that's cool. I read that in the 1919 World's Fair, they released a thing about, yeah. Like, everybody. Sorry, That one was fair enough. Okay. So, at one point, Dr. Wettley addressed the fact that most cocaine users were white, whereas 70% of the men who died in police custody, out with then diagnosed as having excited to Lerium were black. And his answer wasn't,

maybe this was racism, maybe this was police brutality. His answer was, maybe black people are just more prone to spontaneously dropping dead of excited to Lerium. Maybe it's genetic. Whatcha gonna do? Hey, it's not me, I'm not a racist.

The Lord just made black people have too much fun I had to die Red the Bible that is kind of the message I think So yeah, so you would think after the I'm not sure what at what point to stop this story whether you want to go all the way to the end or whether you think It's worth stopping on a cliffhanger and like people listen to the episode. See I think that is the part where we should switch over to the second episode. Okay, let me just say one thing is that what I do in the rest of the episode is

we're gonna get back to it but I want to say that because we go from, we go from there to the future. You know, we skip, so we've stayed in this 1980s era situation where there is a doctor who is allowed to say these things, not just because he's a doctor, but because everyone around him is just like, oh, the passive racism that's there. That says, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, black sex workers, they're just going to die from having some cocaine. And who really cares? So, yeah. And very little media about it, almost none. Fox did something in 1989, ABC did something I think in 1984. And I, for what I could tell, that was basically the only contemporaneous media about the mysterious deaths

that murders of 32 women in Miami. Kind of extraordinary. Yeah, yeah. And putting that into the context of medicine at the time, you know, with, as our next kind of character that pops up is going to be involved with around this time, with the AIDS epidemic, with all of these people, and the medical establishment at that time, could not have been more white men are the only people that matter, right? Right. There's just no other way to describe it. White male Christians are straight. Yeah.

I mean, when you look at kind of the cliché about true crime podcasting today, you said it's white women. That's the idea of the damsel in distress. And obviously, people have, many people before me, have pointed out that all the most popular true crime podcasting tends to be about white women, not black women. Everybody likes a white lady in trouble. Yeah. That goes back to a fucking night and shit.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Anyway, I dragged away from the second story. No. Yes, so around at this same time, we have, we've got the second story, which is about Dr. Judy Micovitz, including conversations with her, of course, plannedemic Judy Micovitz. And I would say you have covered on knowledge, right? Because you asked. We've talked about her quite a bit

and and her her buddy her co-author on Play what what is it? Play of corruption? Okay, I could perhaps say yes Kevin or something He's the he's the co-author of the great American Awakening or what are with Alex? So that is back up. Yeah. Right, okay, I didn't know that. The episode eight of Things, Fella Parts is about Mickey Willis, who is the man who interviewed you to back of its fifth plannedemic.

So we returned to plannedemic at the end of the series. But no, I don't know anything much about her co-author of Play of Corruption. Wow, that's just a nice little fun fact. It is easy in our world, too. How is that? So what I find interesting here is that in one case we have the respected, this is just a medical examiner.

This is a doctor. We just take this guy's opinion and how that spirals out into a professional career for him that lasts a good long while. And then we have Dr. Judy Bikovitz, who has her, I would say almost similar origin story and then follow up career, right? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting power

that was to be honest, I never really thought of. I mean, the connection of... That's why you come on our show, baby! That's what you do! At the connection of the consequences of untruth, that's happening in like every episode this season. Yes, sure. Somebody tells a lie or something that isn't quite true

and the Ripple was a kind of extraordinary. But yeah, there's kind of doctor connection, I didn't really think of until just now. For me, Judy Macavertz is really the reason why I wanted to make Things Fella Part right from the beginning of season one, because I'm really interested in this phenomenon of why so many people are just falling down rapid-hose that they can't get out of. And so many of them are smart people. Judy Macavitz is a very smart person. And that's always been at the forefront of why I wanted to make things fell apart because I've got friends who it's happened to. I think everyone by now has got friends who it's happened to.

That between this tweet and that tweet a week later, they've gone insane. So I've been fascinated by that. So finding Stumbling on Jew to Mac of its story was perfect, because this is a perfect story about somebody who tumbles down a rabbit hole. And as a consequence, I think, you know, influences many, many people to t put down their own rapid holes. Yeah, I think that's something that I find really fascinating about her and the way that these two stories kind of do, or weave together, is that how is it that people can trust her? That kind of how is it possible? And yet in the first story, my question is how is it that people don't go

into a rabbit hole on Dr. Wheatley? How is it possible that people will accept Dr. Wheatley saying, it's just this without going into a rabbit hole? But Dr. Wheatley saying, ugh, it's just this, without going into a rabbit hole. But Dr. Judy will say nonsense, and then people will go. I find it so fascinating. That's interesting. Well, of course, back in wetly, by the way, we've said Wheatley, but it's my apologies.

Oh, my apologies. That's okay. But back then, of course, it wasn't the internet. I mean, this was the late 80s, early 90s. So he managed to escape the scandal in Miami and start going to forensic pathology conferences around America, promoting his theory of excited delirium and nobody knew about the scandal in Miami because it just hadn't, there was no media, there was no internet, it just stayed in Miami. To this day,

I mean the Miami connection toiter Delirium is still totally unknown. I interviewed this woman called Julia Sherwin, who's a civil rights lawyer, and she said that she gave a talk and a forensic pathology conference in 2020 where she talked about the Miami murders and the junk science origins of Exciter Delirium, and she said they still didn't know, even in 2020, a room full of forensic pathologists. So it's an extraordinarily unknown story. Yeah, well, and that's one of the things

that I think you probably don't know is because, at the end, you are very clear that excited delirium is no longer accepted medical science and all that stuff. But in about 15 to 20 minutes, I've got studies from 2011 all the way up until one in 2016. Well, he's saying that excited delirium is the cause. Right. Yeah.

And you know what? I gave a talk in Belgium at a podcast festival in Austin, Belgium in November, and I told a little bit of the Excited Delirium story on stage. And afterwards, a woman from DeStandard, which is the big paper in Belgium, came up to me and said there was two cases of people having died in police custody that were ongoing, that are ongoing now in Belgium. An excited to live. It was listed as a cause of death in both of them. So even though, you know, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association don't recognize excited to live.

And there are places in the world where it's still being used. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and if it's not excited to live in the United States now, it's some other propaganda term to get away with. I'd just hate it, Delirium. Some people have started to call it. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

By the way, can I just say one thing? Like, there might be some people listening to this thing, OK, I've seen videos of some guy in Florida who's clearly on drugs, making up his clothes, and running down the street. Like, is that not excited to live? I mean, I had that thought too, so I put that to forensic pathologist Joy Carter, and her answer was, it could be all sorts of things. It could be diabetes, melatists. It could be an overdose. It could be intoxication. It could be these spice drugs that confirmation,

and have point, was that putting it all in the same box and calling it excited to live in, with all of the implications that this is like a thing that happens to black men, because they have superhuman strength that they're impervious to pain. That's where the problems start. Yeah, I mean, for me,

at any bipolar type one person, we'll just look at that. Sure. Yeah, I mean, for me, any bipolar type one person, we'll just look at that and go, yeah, I mean, yeah, that can happen. Right. Well, all of you were weird for thinking that that's just crazy instead of being, I could happen any couple of weeks now. Right. That's just how it is.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the other thing that I come back to with these two stories is there are people still publishing obviously bogus studies about how excited Delirium is the cause that are commissioned by either law enforcement or taser, the companies that make those, specifically for the purpose of obfuscating and lying about police murder and allowing it to continue. Right?

It's happened, yeah, it's happened hundreds of times that somebody has died and police custody after being tased. Now, you know, the one thing I would give tays is that you can't say most often, you can't pinpoint exactly why the person died because when somebody's been tased, they've also often been beaten up by several police officers and so on. But on I think 276 occasions, in recent times, I'm not going back to the 90s, I'm going back to like the 2000s. Somebody has died in police custody after being tased and excited to live in was listed as a cause of death.

Yeah, my personal feeling on that is with so many laws like People are being put into jail for life for being in the same car as somebody who shot somebody later and yeah We're still like splitting hairs on well the cops also beat him to death. It wasn't just taser like I don't care I don't give a shit about disambiguating whether or not it was exactly tasers fault The whole purpose of taser is to facilitate shit like that. Right? Yes. You know when I was writing the Berristeric goats they offered to taste me at one point and I was like, maybe I should because they all said, oh we all will taste each other as part of the trade. Of course. Do you want to get taste? Yeah. And I did. I almost said yes and I've got to say I'm very glad that I said though I I find it so fascinating how often if you just sniff out dude behavior

You should just shut something down like if you hear a bunch of dudes being like yeah, we taste each other to be strong You're like okay shut down the whole project. These idiots got to go This is stupid. What do we do right here? Right? So we've got So we've got this, we've got this story of people trusting this guy and people not knowing anything about it without the internet. Then we have Judy Micovitz and she is publishing her study in Science Magazine. And this is all the way back in 2007 or I think it is? It's around that. I can't remember the exact... Somewhere between like 2007 and 2009, I can't

totally remember, but somewhere around there. Yeah, she... I'd said for Lotha's scientist too, I think there were 50 authors on the paper, but she was the lead author. Announced that they had determined the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, and it was a little known mouse virus called XMRV and science published this and it became like an enormous thing because

her point was not only was XMRV found in the samples of all of these people with chronic fatigue syndrome, it was also found in a large proportion of asymptomatic people walking around. So the point she was making was that, you know, huge numbers of people, millions and millions of Americans were walking around with an infectious disease asymptomatically, which was a mouse virus called X-Abarvi. Did you know, look, did you see that? I did see that. Is there a demon? What just happened? This happens sometimes to tab. I make some sort of move and a thumbs up speech problem appears in my zoom and whenever I've tried to replicate it,

it's never happened. So I have no idea how it happens. All right. It's happened to four or five times in the last couple of months. If you have a person in your life who thinks it would be hilarious to slowly drive you and say, and they are the person doing that to you right now, remotely, it can thumbs up on your face. That's what's going on. It's so weird. It doesn't make you think, oh my god, am I being like haps in two by playful people. Yeah, so anyway, so yeah, science published this paper and then it was huge. The government spent millions trying to replicate the study because this was like a big deal because you know

and nobody could replicate Judy's findings and Judy doubled down and refused to retract the paper and then things went crazy. I think people who know a lot about Judy Maccabits know what happened with her ending up being a fugitive from justice and hiding out on a boat and science on the phone, you know, saying, retract, you've got to retract. She's like, no, I'm not going to retract. And she's hiding and she's, you know, all these charges, you know, fugitive from justice. And then she ends up going to prison. prison. I think if you kind of acknowledge,

if I listen to you really in the weeds about this stuff, you may know this, but I think most people don't know this story. Yeah, yeah. I would say most people are somewhat familiar with Judy Mike of it's is general. Like, but in Alex's term, they would rather hear it from you because you'll be telling as far as you know the truth.

Whereas Alex's version is, she was chapped by the FBI after they got a fraudulent warrant and then there's blood, you know, it's a whole thing. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah what happened. Sure. And you know, bad things happen to Judy. She was arguably treated unfairly, I would say, at this moment, because, you know, so after she refused to retract the paper, then she's hiding out on a boat,

and she's charged with, because what happened was, you know, she gets into a terrible conflict with her employers. a'r f in the blood samples and not the cellulite, but she was refusing to hand it over. Yeah. And in a very angry way, from what I could tell. So she was fired, and then a colleague of hers, I think one of her interns or co-workers, took her notebooks from the lab. And the quote from your story just because I appreciated this one from a Judy and

lying thief. Max is a quote resourceful young man. So I think it's very clear that he broke into the building and stole all the crap back, right? Yeah, basically got us stuff back. She said she wanted it back because she was worried that people would like tamper with her notebooks and she wanted to preserve them. But she got her notebooks back from the lab. And now she was being, you know, charged or whatever. But basically she was being accused of theft because she was stealing her notebooks, which belonged to the lab. Sure. Because if you're writing your notebooks,

it's the lab's property. Sure. And a fugitive for justice, because she was hiding out on a boat. So then she ends up, come over, she turned to self-in or she ended up anyway, getting going to prison for five days.

And I've got to say, going to prison for five days for taking your own notebook for the lab is pretty rough. You know, that's what we've talked about that. And that was something, we've talked about that on our show. And that was something that I was, I listened to again, and I was still like, well, first of all, it's easy to kind of overlook that, Well, first of all, it's easy to kind of overlook that. Or at least overlook looking into it too deeper beyond saying, well, yeah, the cops are fucking awful. That's the type of shit they do to people. And we're all just gonna live with it until we die. But the more I looked into it, the more I thought,

why did this happen? That seems so strange to me that there would even be this scenario for stealing notes, right? Like people steal way more stuff with way less consequences all the time. You can steal a car in Chicago and have fun. It's great. So I looked into it and I was trying to find, uh, okay, well, where did all of this stuff come from? And it said the warrant came from the university police, uh, the university police. Yeah, well, that's what one place said. And I, and then I followed up and then I kind of looked at that. I don't even know if they can do that.

Can, are, are, are rent a cop's able to issue war? It's no idea. Yeah, and then there's some people that, then it says that it's from the district attorney of Waohau or Waohau County. But that seems even crazier, right? Why would the district attorney specifically do that? Right. It does seem odd. I've got to say that's aspect of things

about how employers in Net and Harvey, Whitomore were, you know, were, were big parts of society like people. Okay, so were they wealthy connected people who might know the district attorney? Well, they were certainly wealthy people, and they were certainly connected, whether or not, like I'm not at all alleged that they sort of tried to pull strings or anything. But I do know that they were wealthy and they were connected.

But I've got no idea how she ended up being treated in such a tricodian way. Right. And that seems, and that's one of those things. Like, again, I think that is part of our story here is that we could look over that because we're so enured to the cops being the worst human beings on the planet. I'm so annoyed with what Tuesday did next. Yeah, absolutely. So that's, that seems something that is

so crazy to me that we're with that, that not fully understood that I feel like should be something that's fully understood is how she got to five days in prison in the first place. Yeah, I agree with you. It's it's you know, as an outsider to America has been living here for 12 years like I do really notice how sometimes the American law enforcement can be fangs. Sometimes. It's you right. Hey, who about eggs come out. I've written it's far from perfect, but you do seem to be very prison happy in this country. Love them. Yeah.

Can't stand people walking around. Put them in a box. Right. So yeah, so on that experience, you know, wounded her deeply, clearly, irreparably perhaps or certainly profoundly wounded her. Now, if your narcissistically minded, and I think this is a really important thing about all, you know, everything that you do and knowledge fight, I think narcissism plays an enormous part in all of this, like why does Alex, at the way he did, why did, you know, so many people, and I think one of the, you know, one of the sort of symptoms of narcissism

is if you're wounded. I'm not saying this is true in Alex's case, I really don't know, but I think one of the symptoms of narcissism is if you're wounded. I'm not saying this is true in Alex's case, I really don't know, but I think in other cases undoubtedly, if you're narcissistically inclined and then you're wounded, it's really hard for you to get over it. You lash out and lash out and lash out in a sort of tireless way. And I think Judy was so wounded by that whole experience. Understandably, I don't think she should have gone to jail for five years for having to go out in notebooks stolen. Absolutely. That's that's that is that is

the one part of this that is like, I can't get I can't get over why we all don't know more about that. That seems, I mean, because I mean, I'm assuming it's true, right? I'm sure it's true. We didn't co-load the fact check again, didn't find anything to the country. Sure. So assuming that is true, then there are people involved who we can talk to. And nobody's talking to them? Like, I feel like I want to talk to the district attorney Yeah, and that Whittamore didn't want to talk to us. You know obviously we put it in tune But yeah, so she was wounded and it was a wound

You know, Nemi Cloud talks about this in doppelgagger that when somebody's ejected from the community Yeah, they don't just vanish. They're just dissolve And then Miclad talks about this in doppelgagger that when somebody's ejected from the community, they don't just vanish, they just dissolve. They joined a different community where, you know, frequently they're more popular, more successful. Wow. Yeah, obviously. No, I mean, I'm looking at the timeline here and her meteoric rise includes words from people seeming like she seemed like a savior,

that kind of thing. And if you are even slightly narcissistically inclined, the moment someone calls you a savior, you're gone for good. Yeah, you're not coming back from that. Because that's the other part of this, people with chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, rightly, you know, disillusioned by the mainstream medical establishment because they've been told for years that it's all in their heads. Of course. That, well, and I mean, that's where we get back to Dr. Wettley.

You know, it is asking myself over and over and over again. We, or all too often often the narrative is like, oh, how do these people go over to the other side? How is this possible? And in your first two episodes, I feel like you've definitively proven a conspiracy between the government, big weapons, and a captive medical establishment to maintain the process by which they murder American citizens often. And in your second episode, you've proven all too much.

The reason behind all of this stuff is not like, oh, why do people believe outland of stuff? It is like, well, we believe the wrong stuff in every direction. People shouldn't have believed Dr. Wesley for a second. That's insane. They had too much fun. What?

I know, it's insane. I'm so racist, you know, because we mentioned this sort of impasse, but the fact is, you know, Dr. Wettley and other exponents have excited to live, you know, say that, you know, these primarily black men, because even though excitedly we've started with women, it's pretty much entirely about men now. It's almost like the male, sometimes I think it's almost like the like the male version of hysteria. It's totally different. I wrote down like hysteria and physiognomy,

both on my nose right here. I've got those on my bingo card. Just to put that there. Because yeah, it's taking these male traits, these sort of cliched male traits. And especially the kind of racist black male traits of superhuman strength and purveousness to pain. And then they say these are symptoms of excited

delirium. So you have to restrain them, you have to treat them harder than you otherwise might have done. And so on. What isn't justified when you're fighting the Hulk? Right. Yeah. Literally the Hulk is used as in the slideshows of, you know, police training slideshows, a picture of the Hulk. Great job everybody. Right, a picture of Jack Nicholson and the Shining as well. Great. Yeah, good stuff. You know, and that was, that was another thing about excited Delirium that I was interested in in your in your piece. One of the lines you have I believe is you know excited delirium is not recognized by the DSM or the AMA or anything

these things. And I'd be interested to know what it matter if it was. What the DSM is, I think, I mean, this is why I missed the starting point for my book, The Psychopath Test. Sure, yeah. The DSM is so hill-layered. It's hilarious, we're useless. It's useless to the point of ridiculousness. Yeah, you know, I diagnosed myself immediately, like 12, that's what the sword is, from reading it, including parent-child relational problems, which by the

way, I'd blame my parents for. So I know, right? So you get no something laughs from me, sir. But the fact is there was 374 mental disorders, if I remember rightly or over 886 pages of DSM4 and excited to liveums not in it. So that made you know they don't shy away from well actually I interviewed Robert Spitzer who was the the architect of you know the expansion of the DSM and I said to him were there any proposed mental disorders that you rejected? And he named two. See if I can, this is a long time ago, see if I can remember this. One of them was massacistic personality disorder, which was women who stayed in abusive relationships. And he said,

I got into terrible trouble with the feminist, so we put that one in the appendix. And the other one, that's a great answer to that problem. Wow. And he said the... What is the evil trust in the medical establishment, John? Right. I think they changed the name to self-defeating person, I'll show you to some of them. She's surprised.

And the other one, which really made really very loved was a typical child syndrome. And I said so what would like the common characteristics of a typical child syndrome. And he said, well, that's very hard to say because the children were very atypical. So that one got rejected too. So it's not nothing that excited to leave him doesn't make it into the DSM. That is so much the long dark tea time of the soul. I think there's a moment where Kate Shecter

is going through a mental hospital. And it is, yeah, I mean, it is so much like these people are so buddhist in their absolute nonsense things. Like, well, they might be able to see the future. But who knows? We'll find out next tomorrow. Like, yeah, I don't know. Absolutely.

Absolutely. But, yes. Oh, no, no, go for it. Now, all I was going to say is the way that DSM, I come up with this DSM three or DSM four, but with one of them, the way, because DSM wanted DSM two were tiny, 4, but with one of them, the way, because DSM 1 and DSM 2 were tiny, they were like pamphlets, there was almost no mental disorders in the 50s and 60s, and

then it just grew and grew and grew. That's true, I heard, they didn't have mental disorders back then. I mean, of course, well, this goes into a whole other thing about, you know, the, the when it's, when a diagnosis is good and why when a diagnosis is not good and that's something that I look at a lot in the psychopath test and in my live show Psychopath Night which I'm doing next October, November in Britain, Ireland and Australia. Next October it's 2024 now so do you mean this October? Yes, you know, because obviously it goes without saying that there's an awful lot of new diagnoses that came along, which has been nothing but good, like nothing but beneficial,

but then there's other occasions where you could argue not so good. But yeah, the way that a lot of these new diagnoses happened was that Spitzer rented out a room at Columbia and all these people were like yelling, you know, all these different psychologists with a special interest were like yelling and the person New York's talk exchange. Yeah, like yes, like the New York secretary to Spitzer's in the middle with this little typewriter and that's how ADHD, you know, came to be named and not all of these other I mean, I think it's created there by being so nuts Is that the person Exercise and infected the world like in Scientology No, no, no, no, but the way it was described to me was that it was like a noisy free-for-all and the people with the loudest voices Got listened to the most and out of this kind of cacophony all of these new mental disorders emerged

Yeah, these new mental disorders emerged. Yeah. These new definitions. Yeah, I was, I spent too much time reading about all of the therapy and psychology gurus of the 60s and 70s to trust anybody for a long time. Right. It's faster, I mean, honestly, if there's any particular subject that I'm more interested in than any, it's this. It's, it's, it's there's any particular subject that I'm more interested in than Annie, it's this.

It's, you know, when dementia health diagnoses, when are they good? When are they not good? You know, how do they come to be? Except for, except for... Oh, I mean, yeah, I've been fascinated since I, I mean, I, I diagnosed myself as bipolar type one when I was 16. I was pretty sure for a long time, but I couldn't go to a doctor because my parents were so super religious, I wasn't going to get an accurate or even close to accurate diagnosis, right? But did you subsequently get a diagnosis? So, because things went great, seven years later. I went to a psychiatrist, the appropriate amount of time between when you know something.

And it was something that has kind of informed this conversation. And it's kind of what I've gone back to a lot while thinking about this, is that at first I put a lot of trust in the idea of the doctor, you know, Dr. Knows. And it is through the the experiences that I've had with psychiatry and with this type of medicine and the economy built around it. That makes me question so much of like, well, I get why people don't believe you. Because we put a lot of people to put too much trust in a doctor's expertise.

Not every doctor is an A plus student, you know Totally and you've got some doctors who have like a special interest them interested in one particular disorder Or illness and they're much more likely that I guess to diagnose everyone with it Yeah, well in my Confirmation bias and so on totally and my my first experience first experience, and this is not something that I want to like say, is everybody's experience or is a, um, often experience, but it's a common one. And it was my first, which was the doctor prescribed a drug that was rep, the rep was there last week who bought everybody lunch and who told them about this brand new super exciting drug And yes, it's not covered and sure it's not generic and sure all this stuff

But I guarantee you give this to your patients. You're gonna get good results that kind of thing And I trusted that guy because he trusted the rep not because he went to school for good stuff, you know. Yeah, yeah. And what happened to the drug was. I mean, within two weeks I had spent, you know, hours paralyzed. I lost some vision, you know, it was just an absolute disaster. And it had to be for a long time me kind of like growing out of that trust and just saying I'm going to direct this and we're going to work together as two people and not as a doctor and an authority figure and not an authority figure. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, totally. By the way,

Robert Spitz had a with veered away from things fell apart here, but I mean, I've had an interesting conversation with that. I think mental illness is right on board with things fell apart. Well, I think that's that is true. But Robert Spitz was very unambiguous about this. He said to me, when somebody says to me, I couldn't control my child, ruined my life, ruined it my child's life, then we put the bond

medication and it was night and day. That's good news for a DSM person. So Robert Spitzer was like unambiguously linking the DSM with with the pharmaceutical industry. Like it wasn't ambiguous. And for good to anfere, like I'm not gonna be like, you know, all bloody scientists about this, like, you know. Oh no, I take, I take meds, I've worked it out, but that's kind of what I'm saying with the, and this is what gets us back to things fell apart,

is we've got doctors, we've got authority figures, and people just assume so much about them. Even while they're looking up other stuff, you know, like all of this stuff about Judy. Yeah, well, I mean, you've got something happened to me. And this is a diversion again, but actually something happened to me, which haven't really told anyone, but that was the perfect time to say it. Perfect time. So, okay, so midway through making things fell apart, I needed to have

surgery for this condition called diverticulitis. Oh yeah? So I talked a couple of days. Oh, it was horrible. But now I'm completely better. Oh, that's great. Like the surgery, yeah, the surgery I had for this was like American healthcare and it's best. Like they chopped out a foot of my colon and now I'm better. So that was a good news story. But in the process of it, I had all of these other tests and I'm not going to be all, I'm going to, you know, I don't want to be a cliffhaggery about this. They falsely told me that they thought I had prostate cancer, which meant that I then had to go and have like a biopsy, which was an invasive thing, you know, shoving

a whole bunch of fucking needles into my prostate. And I didn't have prostate cancer. Now I'm not saying that people shouldn't believe doctors when they say you need to have a biopsy. However, I don't think I should have had the biopsy. And I think all of the doctors were like, you know, you've probably got it, you've got to go and have the biopsy. And I think this was an occasion of like over testing

and over medicalization. And I won't go into the weeds of it, but basically I never thought I had it and I shouldn't have had the biopsy. That's an example of over-metacalization. I think everybody, I mean, reasonable people look at this and go, yeah, and it doesn't get more complex and ridiculous than the human body. And anybody who's got a, you know, if you're a C plus doctor,

that means three out of four times you're doing a good job. Right. Right. Who can really expect better than that when you're dealing with all kinds of blood and guts everywhere, right? That doesn't make sense. Yeah.

Yeah. And let me say again, by the way, because the last thing I want to do is say that and somebody listening decides not to have a biopsy and then the next thing, I know they die of prostate cancer. Like, don't take my story as any sort of guidance for what you should or shouldn't do. But that is what happened to me,

and it was a real thing. It is the type of story that people, it's the type of anecdotal story, you know, that is so notable. You tell it. The story where everything went fine and you didn't have, like, not only did nothing happen, but nothing really notable happened is so common.

But, you know, I forgot about it. I can't remember the last time I had an unnotable thing. Well, if I was still in Britain, I think the chance of be having, the chance of be having the surgery for diverticulitis wouldn't have happened. The waiting list on the NHS would have been so long and so would a people have to suffer in silence more in Britain. So there's a lot to be said for American healthcare too.

No, no, I'm, I'm, the problem that I have with so many conversations about healthcare has nothing to do with region and everything to do with. If you want, you know, like, if you want to bake an apple pie, you have to create the universe, you know what I'm saying? Like, if you want to fix healthcare, you have to start from no borders. You know, you have to start away so far back that, yeah, good luck. I don't know what to do with it. Anyway, that was a big long diversion. But it's true that episodes 1 and episodes 2 are about when you can't trust doctors

and scientists, so I suppose it wasn't like a massive diversion. Well, no, and that's, but that's, that's kind of the thing is you've, you've just explained Dr. Judy, Mike of it. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Unfortunately, I don't mean like you are the cause or, or anything along those lines. And the way you have reacted to this stimulus is like a reasonable person where you say, shouldn't the fuck it happen, what are you gonna do?

It's better than I found out that I don't, than if I died tomorrow, right? Like at the end of the day, that's kind of the answer. Yeah, I guess it has to be the answer. Right. Yeah, totally. But if you reacted like this, like the hospital wanted an extra blank, blank thousand dollars

from... And as you know, like... And as a result, we can't trust the medical establishment at all. They lied to us about COVID, and they lied to us about lockdown, etc., etc., which is clearly what's, you know, what happened. I mean, the reason I first knew about pandemic, actually, a Judy Mykovitz was a favorite upstate New Yorker, a friend of mine who lives in a,

you know, Fab House, some mile that way. Said to me, like six weeks into lockdown, like have you heard about pandemic? There's this really eminent scientist called Judy Mykikevitz. And she's telling us that everything we're living through is a lie, and he was completely lie into it. And that's how I first heard about it,

from a smart, good friend of mine, up here in the New York countryside. And so yeah, and millions, tens of millions of people watch the pandemic. And a huge numbers of them believed what Judy Maccuffitz was saying. Now, you know, but what the episode of Things Feller part, you know, looks at his whether or not she was doing this to get revenge on a medical community that, you know,

that wounded her. Was that at the roots, you know, that personality time? You know, I will say this in looking this up. So, I don't know if you saw this weirdly enough, but there was an episode of Nevada Newsmakers. In 2007, I'm a huge Nevada newsmakers fan. I got all the, but here's something a clip from that in the show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go on, go on, sorry. No, and the thing that I find so interesting about it is at one point she says, they were telling me about stuff and I said, I knew it was a virus and then I went to Nevada. Right. And I finally had that fascinating because that suggests to me that I don't think she even did the study at all

Right, yeah, like not even not even the fake one That's I think that's the real reason she's got giving the samples Is there's not even a fake virus in there? There's not even anything. Oh, well. Well, the figures are live. The figures, it wasn't just Judy Markovitz on that XMRV paper that got published in science. There were people from the Cleveland Clinic, there were people from the National Cancer Institute. So there were definitely legitimate the National Council of Institute. So there were definitely legitimate scientists involved in that study. Right. But that's the next part of this. If

those people were involved, why is it that she's the only one who has a sample? I don't know how they wrote their paper. Like, I don't know the answer to that. Like, I don't know whether or not all of the testing was done within the Wittemore Peterson Institute. And then the paper version of it was then sent out to the Cleveland Clinic. I mean, maybe, or maybe not, like I honestly don't know. Well, that's, but see, that's the, that's where I keep coming back to, why was she in jail for five days? This is the, this is stuff that it's like, there are these little assumptions that I feel like are being made that are like lies that are covered up by the

surface lies, if that makes sense, you know, so much so that you don't even ask the question, like there's no way, there's no way that she would just make up the whole thing, right? Oh no, and and nobody's accusing her or even, you know, Martin Ensign who's the guy at science who was, you know, heavily involved in debunking her studies. He doesn't think she made it up. He thinks it was a genuine mistake. I disagree. I am the one person that is telling you, I believe wholeheartedly, she made it up from the jump. I think she was scamming these people from the jump.

That's my theory on this. I don't... Yeah go go go. I'm just I'm not sure that I agree with you there. It's a big, hugely. It's a huge thing. Yeah, I didn't see any evidence to support that theory. You know, basically, you know, the conclusion I came to was the the exomorphy, you know, this mouse virus ended up contaminating the materials that she was using in her experiments, and that's why she mistakenly thought that the exomorphy was in the blood samples. Right. That makes sense. That sounds like a reasonable series of events that would

take place that would happen to a reasonable person that leads to stuff happening right that's to me that sounds crazy you're telling me that the person who is in planned-demick who's lied about her biography over and over and over again who's lied over and over and over and over and over and over again. Who's lied over and over and over and over and over again? Is it somehow telling the truth about one thing? I mean, I also don't know what her life was like when she worked at the National Council of Institute in Virginia.

Like, I don't know that she could have been unimpeachable there for a while. Totally. Well, and I've looked know that she could have been unimpeachable there for a while. Totally. Well, and I've looked into it and it says she has this thing in her biography where she thinks she's fought against bovine growth hormone stuff, you know? Like, yes, there's something about her kind of overselling the AIDS research. I mean, obviously now, she says all of this stuff about Anthony Fauci, that's all, you know, sort of, you know, extreme.

But I'm talking like back then, back in the early 2000s. Yeah. I mean, yeah, okay. So counter to, you know, let me counter what you just said. Please, no, that's the whole idea. Okay, I've got a friend, former friend. We really don't get on anymore at all. Who's a brilliant comedy writer,

Graham Linnerhan. Graham has become subsequently famous for being an extreme gender-critical activist. He basically goes on Twitter every day and goes on for, you know, for, you know, hundreds of thousands. You know, he's tweeted about me thousands of times. Oh, I know, because I love black books. Now, too, that's the worst part. I love black books. Well, that's where I'm going with this, right? I've known Graham since we were practically,

certainly in our 20s. We've been friends for decades. I was in the audience for his first show Paris. I was in the audience for a second show Paris. I was in the audience for a second show, Father Ted, his third show, The IT Cloud. Graham, you know, for much of his life was a genius, a comedy genius. Now, I think he had some difficult personality traits back then. I remember one time he got really angry with me. Actually, I wrote something in Time Out magazine that he took offense to about him and he got very angry with me and I had to

apologize to him over the phone. So we definitely had that easily wounded sight of him all the time. But now, his behaviour on Twitter now doesn't mean that he wasn't brilliant for most of his life. He was. Sure. And, you know, so could you not say the same thing about Judy Mackey? It's like I'm not saying it's the truth, but I'm saying it's a possibility. Oh, no, no, absolutely. That's, I mean, obviously, I'm me, so I'm very stridently and confidently saying something

that I'm only about 40% sure of. But there is something to me listening to that Nevada news makers. About the news makers interview. What is so fascinating about that is that she's a liar. She's lying in that interview. She's doing a lot of lying in that interview. And it reminds me so much of when we go back to 2004, Alex, we have been told this narrative our entire, you know, from the jump like Alex was different back then. Alex wasn't this. Alex wasn't this. Alex wasn't this back then. And I think the reality is he absolutely was. We were the different people back then. Or maybe it manifested like with Graham getting really obsessed if he got like a

bad review. Sure. For instance, maybe it just manifested in less obviously the various ways. Well, I mean, I've watched his comedy shows. His attitudes towards women were not the specialist kind of, even then, you know. Right, yeah, I'm thinking about what you're saying about kind of the 2004 Alex because I've been guilty of that. Like I've said many times, the Alex I knew in 1999 is a different Alex to the Alex of today. But then I did that story for this American life, which looked at how Alex was in middle school and high school before I knew him, where he exactly was the Alex of tough to type. So yeah, maybe it just sometimes,

maybe it lies dormant or manifests itself in more likeable ways, or as you say, maybe we're different, we've changed. It's super interesting though. Yeah, I mean, well, that's, just find I keep I keep finding her so interesting because I feel like the first two episodes of your show are almost so closely interconnected in a way like it is and our my last interview was with Brandy Collins Dexter and you know what we talked about is so

many conspiracy theories. We all go back to, well, there is a kernel of truth to these conspiracy theories, but usually that kernel is the United States government killing black people. And this is that kind of situation in the 80s in Miami. And I understand that we, that cops in the government are disambiguated somehow now, but they are not, in my head. The government is killing black women and covering it up. You know, like that is what is going on.

And then we get to Dr. Judy, Mike of it. I see so much of, we're not going to be able to talk about her until somebody deals with what happened in the 80s, you know? Or maybe what happened in the 2000s. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like it started before we met her. If that makes sense. Yeah, undoubtedly. Yes, I mean, the fact is the way she describes that conflict that she has when she's refusing to hand over the cell line Like you know what I listened to her tell that I'm on the Whittermore side like hand over the cell line

That just hand over the fucking cell line. So so yes, so she was clearly You know she was clearly difficult so so but I mean that's such that's such a big question. Why? If the ever if everybody's worked on this paper, are you saying that nobody else has a copy of this cell line? And if nobody else has a copy of this cell line, that's as some scary things to me. That is a really interesting point you raised there, Jordan. Like there were 15 authors to this study. And I'll say I don't know how, you know, I don't know how that study came to be written, like I don't know who was involved in the experiments, who just checked the paperwork. I think you make a very good point. I'm not, I mean, I'm not trying to, I'm just, I just find it so fascinating these little things that are, are connected to the past.

You know, like we're, we're not, you know, like, and that's why I really, really enjoy the series and I'm looking forward to, we're already at an hour and blah, blah, blah. I'm looking forward to, uh, So we're gonna do this again with subsequent. If you, if you don't mind, we can not do it again do it again if this has been awful for you that's totally fine no it's been fun I'm happy to do it again um uh yeah that'd be that'd be amazing um but I find it so fascinating because it is like your premise or your your framing starts as this is the culture war is exploding in lockdown and I see so much of like if you look at this thing that happened what you're looking at happened 30 years ago you're just seeing it like a star exploded 30 light years away

you're just seeing light right now. And now you're seeing it. Yeah, absolutely. That's something I love about things fellow parties. You go back to these. And I love also working for the BBC because they allow me to do these experiments with narrative. That 80% of some of these episodes have got nothing to do

with lockdown, nothing to do with the cultural wars. It's only at the end that you understand the significance of the relevance of the story that you've just heard, which I love, you know, is the storyteller. So, yeah. No, absolutely. And I don't know how much you want to spoil any more from your first two episodes. I think we've covered quite a bit. Yeah, I think I've spoiled enough. I think people should go listen to the storytelling. That's kind of where I figured we'd, that's kind of why I figured now

is be a great time to kind of let this one be. If you haven't stopped your recorder and listened to the first two episodes, the moment we said, hi, go do it now. John. Definitely. This is a little cut together again in like a couple of weeks and doing it again. Perfect. This is... I will get together again in like a couple of weeks and do it again.

Perfect. This is always a delight. I'm still shocked that you submit yourself to so much screaming in such a short period of time. Oh no, so much fun. It was a Elizabeth Williamson from the New York Times, who first told me about you and Dan, and was just raving about you. Like, you've got to hear these guys are so funny. They've dedicated their life to such a strange yet noble pursuit, but I'm putting words into her mouth, which you probably

didn't say in your last words. But I'm so glad she did, because yeah, I've had so much fun listening to, to the last fight. You know the one I really actually loved, was very, I've had so much fun listening to to love you know the one I really actually loved Was there I've completely forgot about this episode eight is of all about Mickey Willis and oh No, I'm gonna get confused. Have you ever ever done an episode that's all about Mickey Willis? Um, I we've done an episode. I would assume I know I don't know. I don't know. You may not have, you know, I'm getting the episodes in my memories notoriously the worst. Right.

Well, what I was listening to that I really, really loved was the one about Glenn Greenwald, and I think he was dissecting the speech that Glenn Greenwald gave when he was introducing Alex. And I don't know, there was something about that particular episode, which I just thought, God, you know, you guys are so like on point, you know, you're so, you know, you know, you know, you're area so well that you can stop the tape.

Yeah. My, my, my contention is and always has been, there's just, it's just, there's nothing sexier than Dan when he's angry. When he's really taking somebody to task, whoa, people get, people get riled. There is riled and going on. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Okay, so there you go. I'm very happy to, very happy to come back. Thank you so much, and I can't wait to do this again. Yay, bye. Andy and Kansas, you're on this again. Yay. Bye. Andy and Kansas, you're on the Earth. Thanks for holding. So Alex, I'm the first time I've called him. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.