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Robin Arzon (2:13)

You're listening to Today Explained.

Dan Brooks (2:18)

I'm Dan Brooks. I'm a freelance writer. I try to never write about anything important. I mostly write about culture and the experience of culture, what it feels like to read the news and get scared.

Estee Herndon (2:30)

One of the latest things that's been scaring Dan Brooks is how the latest release of the Epstein files is giving new online life to the Pizzagate conspiracy, which is literally from a decade ago.

Dan Brooks (2:41)

Pizza appears in those files close to 900 times. By comparison, the word hamburger appears 100 and sometimes, and the phrase sex with children only appears about 20 times. So the speculation is that pizza is some sort of code word for Jeffrey Epstein's various illegal and immoral activities. And the pizza thing is especially resonant because of the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory,

Jesse Walker (3:15)

a bogus news story suggesting that Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. The hashtag pizzagate was born. And by November 16, people start started showing up at the restaurant to investigate for themselves.

Dan Brooks (3:30)

The original Pizzagate conspiracy was based on emails from John Podesta and other people in the Hillary for America campaign leaked by WikiLeaks. And people pored over those emails and sort of convinced one another that references to pizza and cheese pizza were actually references to children who are being trafficked for sexual by Hillary Clinton and other powerful Democrats.

Robin Arzon (4:00)

The online world, out of whole cloth, make up this story that John Podesta and I are running a child trafficking ring in the basement of the Comet pizza parlor.

Estee Herndon (4:15)

Yeah, I remember Pizzagate as, you know, one of the big kind of conspiracies of the time. And obviously it culminated with a person coming to a pizza shop here in Washington, D.C. and if I remember correctly, like, weapon, gun, right?

Dan Brooks (4:29)

Yeah. He brought a rifle to see the children whom he believed were held in the basement. Comet pizza has no basement. The man fired a couple of shots into a supply closet and then surrendered to police. And the person actually going to Comet pizza and finding no children or was at the time seen as like, a final refutation of this conspiracy theory. And we all laughed at the people who believed it, but we also all kind of took a lesson from that. Like you. You should go with simple explanations of what you know and not spit out

Estee Herndon (5:10)

these wild theories using that kind of premise. Can you walk me through some of these pizza references in the Epstein files?

Dan Brooks (5:18)

Yes. One of the most striking are communications between Epstein and his urologist.

Jesse Walker (5:24)

Hmm.

Dan Brooks (5:25)

One of which is an exchange where they appear to be talking about Epstein's attempts to refill a prescription. Context suggests that it may be a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. And once that is resolved, his urologist texts him. After you take them, wash your hands and let's go get pizza and grape soda.

Estee Herndon (5:48)

Interesting. Yeah.

Dan Brooks (5:50)

So references to pizza and grape soda are like a recurring motif in Jeffrey Epstein's conversations with his urologist. Pizza, Grape soda. Pizza and grape soda. You kind of wonder, like, why do these two guys like this one specific combination of food and talk about it so much?

Estee Herndon (6:09)

Let's put you on the spot. What do you think all this pizza and grape soda and the Epstein fowls mean? You know, are you on the side of the conspiracists, or do you think that the simple explanation might be the right one?

Dan Brooks (6:20)

I think the simple explanation is most likely the right one.

Estee Herndon (6:26)

They just loved pizza and grape soda. Like this.

Dan Brooks (6:28)

I admit that that is weird, particularly the grape soda part, because Epstein's urologist, when he mentions grape soda, will also consistently send the African American judge emoji. Yeah, yeah. So, like, here we get into something that I refer to as niche racism. Like, racism for people who are either, like, from a culture that I don't have access to or just, like, really into racism. And so are collecting, like, obscure stereotypes. But one of these obscure stereotypes is that black people like grape drinks.

Estee Herndon (7:08)

You know, as a black person, I do think I have heard the grape soda, like, trope before. And so it is one that I am not unfamiliar with. But you're right, it's not as if in the classics of racism, that's necessarily at the top of the list.

Dan Brooks (7:25)

Yeah, absolutely. And it also seems like this is like a joke to them. Like, isn't it funny that we also like grape soda? This thing that elderly Jewish men are not associated with.

Estee Herndon (7:36)

I want to ask because Tucker Carlson, who isn't exactly QAnon, but has done his fair share of conspiracy theories spreading, said on a recent episode of his

Jesse Walker (7:44)

podcast, maybe the long debunked conspiracy theory about Pizzagate wasn't actually debunked, and maybe someone should take a closer look at

Estee Herndon (7:54)

this, that the Epstein files has proven that Pizzagate is basically real. I wanted you to respond to that.

Dan Brooks (8:01)

Is it with the respect that Tucker Carlson deserves? He is a liar, and he attained his position by being wealthy and personally connected. I don't think Tucker Carlson is a reliable narrator of what's going on in the news. And I don't think Pizzagate has been proven to be correct. When he made the transition from cable news and legacy media to running his own shop on the Internet, he needed to grow his audience rapidly. And I think that does explain some of his, what I'm going to call his heel turn, his willingness to embrace, like, things that journalists would not accept, behaviors journalists would not accept.

Estee Herndon (8:43)

I mean, I think you're landing on a super important point too here, because it's not just Tucker Carlson who's made that transition from legacy or mainstream media to independent voices. That's been happening in the industry broadly. And it's been many of those voices who have pushed this on our, you know, TikTok timelines and, and digging into it on Instagram. And it's really been those kind of outside the mainstream voices that have kept this story afloat. I wanted to ask, like, how should we think of that? Like, can't you argue that, you know, that group across the board has an incentive to keep, you know, the Epstein conspiracy alive.

Dan Brooks (9:20)

Absolutely. On one end you've got guys on Reddit who are making wild claims that they genuinely believe.

Sponsor/Announcer (9:27)

I believe Epstein's island is a sacrificial site for harvesting blood from innocent victims in sacrifices as an exchange for power.

Dan Brooks (9:36)

And then there are influencers, like people in the Internet space who can tell themselves accurately. I'm not a journalist, I'm an entertainer or an infotainer. And I think that sort of that merger. I think you can do journalism in the absence of ethics, as long as you are willing to accept that you're going to say a lot of stuff that turns out not to be true.

Estee Herndon (9:58)

Can I just post something I'm thinking about as you're talking here, though? Like, because I have seen some people in the way they talk about this make me a little like, factually or journalistically uncomfortable. Like, you know, they'll use terms like, Jeffrey Epstein was a spy. And I'm like, do we know that? Or that people in top levels of government have been blackmailed? And I am like, do we know that? You know, when you hear kind of the ways people are talking about it, at what point do you think it crosses the line into conspiracy? Like, can we call it a cover up, for example? Or do you think that's too far?

Dan Brooks (10:32)

I think I would, I would hesitate. You can hear me hesitating to call it a cover up.

Jesse Walker (10:39)

Why?

Dan Brooks (10:39)

Because a cover up. To me there are two important elements of a cover up. One, conscious intent and two, coordination and perhaps a third element, knowledge of what is being covered up. And I think you could see this as the sum of individual actors who know they're probably going to be in the Epstein files and are calling in whatever favors they can at an individual level without communicating with one another. That to me would be an effect, but not a cover up. I believe that the Epstein story is like a vampire story.

Jesse Walker (11:19)

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make.

Dan Brooks (11:27)

In the same way that Dracula, who lives in a castle, sleeps during the day and is doing stuff at night.

Jesse Walker (11:36)

Your girls that you all love are mine already, and through them you and

Dan Brooks (11:41)

others shall yet be mine, Preys on peasants, particularly women, particularly virgins, and is also exempt from the normal rules that govern human life, for example, death, as well as rules of morality. I think all that stuff is a very robust metaphor for the role of the aristocracy in Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages. They were like a predatory, parasitic class and Dracula was a symbol of them.

Jesse Walker (12:12)

My revenge is just begun.

Dan Brooks (12:16)

Epstein is a similarly robust metaphor for the role of elites in the United states in the 21st century. And I think like conspiracy theories are the same way. They express something that people feel that is real and then attach it to a bunch of facts that are made up. But I think the Epstein story as well as conspiracies based on the Epstein story have caught on in part because they reflect a legitimate concern about the kind of people Epstein knew, wealthy, politically connected and or famous people who are commonly referred to as elites. I don't believe that Epstein changed everyone's perspective on elites, but I do think this story has crystallized a change in ordinary Americans perspectives on the people who rule them.

Estee Herndon (13:25)

Coming up, How American political culture is built on conspiracies.

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Robin Arzon (15:16)

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This is today Explained.

Estee Herndon (17:35)

We're back Conspiracy theories make up so much of our experience of events now online, in the culture, in politics. But as much as this feels era defining to us now, it's been around for a little bit. Jesse Walker wrote a book called the United States of paranoia back in 2013, a time he thought was peak conspiracy theory. And in this book he looked back much further and saw that conspiracies have long been a part of American history.

Jesse Walker (18:02)

It's always a conspiratorial time in the United States. It's just a Matter of what the flavor of the year is. So one thing that's changed since then is that it's not purely something that's reserved for the fringe now, because especially in the age of Trump, it's been something that different members of sort of the ruling circles, the politicians, pundits and so on will kind of hurl at each other much more frequently. It's much more common for, I mean, for one thing, we have, you know, Trump regularly saying conspiracy theories that are in fact called conspiracy theories by his critics. Then Trump and his supporters will throw the phrase conspiracy theories back at during Russiagate, for example. So it's become a more mainstream tag to get. But that's still because people like to use it as a pejorative. That much hasn't changed.

Estee Herndon (18:56)

How long has this stuff been around? Were they conspiracies back in the American Revolution?

Jesse Walker (19:01)

Yes, absolutely. I mean, long before that. It's because human beings are pattern seeking, storytelling creatures who turn everything into narratives because that's how we make sense of the world and because we are afraid of things as we should be. I mean, you shouldn't be afraid of everything, but there are reasons to be fearful. Those two inclinations always keep colliding. You seek patterns, you're fearful. Where there's gaps in the data, sometimes you will fill it in with a cabal or something like that. So, you know, from the beginning of the colonial settlement and no doubt before, we just don't have written records of what the Native Americans believed. There were these, there were conspiracy theories. So yes, in the American Revolution on one side of it, the patriot side, the American side, were fearful not just of, you know, the British abuses that led to the Revolution, but fear that there's a direct quote in the Declaration of Independence, they call it quote, a design, unquote, to bring us under despotism.

Estee Herndon (20:03)

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.

Jesse Walker (20:14)

This is an age old American idea. And on the flip side, the British or many of the British were convinced that, you know, the hidden hand of the French were behind the American revolutionaries. So very prominent Americans, I mean, I could quote every founding father pretty much, but even since then, John Quincy Adams was very fearful of the Masonic freemasons. He joined the anti Masonic movement. And in 1832 he wrote that bringing down the Masons was more important than whether Andrew Jackson or Henry Clay is elected president.

Estee Herndon (20:48)

Yeah, early Illuminati vibes.

Jesse Walker (20:50)

Yeah. Well, actually there was an Illuminati scare in the US in the 1790s. And a lot of people thought, you know, Thomas Jefferson, there was like this whole Jacobin Illuminist, Jeffersonian plot against common decency. And so in one version, they were allegedly. The Illuminati was allegedly going to liberate the slaves of Haiti. They wouldn't have used the word liberate and bring them up to the mainland to burn and loot. So it was. It's always been fearful here.

Estee Herndon (21:22)

Okay, so conspiracies have been with us since the American beginning. How did it find its way into our politics? How did it. Is there a way that these conspiracies just weren't things that individuals believed, but that they acted on in their work?

Jesse Walker (21:38)

Political groups are always afraid of other political groups. Political groups, people in general are often afraid of outsiders. I mean, it's conspiracy theories are always circulating during the lead up to different wars. It's constantly in politics, I guess, in two ways. Both because there are the fears people naturally have that can then be channeled into this. And then there's people deliberately working up fears in order to direct them at whoever their political enemies are. And in the 20th century, certainly, there's just been these alternating red scares and brown scares. Brown scares, like a red scare, but aimed at the right instead of the left, which constantly have repercussions for civil liberties and privacy and things like that.

Estee Herndon (22:21)

Yeah, I mean, you're right that we know of these examples, particularly the Red scare and things like that. But, you know, we kind of think about them as things of the past. Is there any way that the legacy of those things carries with us till now?

Jesse Walker (22:33)

Sure. I mean, there are laws still on the books. I mean, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, you know, at the beginning of the United States when our country was in its cradle with all these fears of subversion and alien influence.

Estee Herndon (22:48)

The Sedition Act, 1798. If any person or persons with intent as aforesaid shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening counsel, advise or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor.

Jesse Walker (23:10)

And part of it was still on the books. Is still on the books. And, you know, Stephen Miller got the idea that they could use this to justify some of the things that were being done during the immigration crackdown last year.

Dan Brooks (23:20)

This is settled law.

Sponsor/Announcer (23:22)

Alien Enemies act has been on the books and has been upheld for over 200 years.

Estee Herndon (23:27)

And by the way the fact that it's a 200 year old law makes it stronger. This was adopted by the founding generation

Jesse Walker (23:34)

of our country and then kind of expanded it past what the law actually said because it wasn't quite enough for him. But that's a relic from age old conspiracy theories. I mean centuries old. It's still on the book.

Estee Herndon (23:49)

So help me understand that. Draw the line for me from 18th century Conspiracy theorists to Stephen Miller and what we see today.

Jesse Walker (23:56)

Well, when Trend Aragua was designated as a, or shortly after it was designated as a foreign terrorist organization, Trend, the White House put out, you know, an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies act to justify, you know, this part of its crackdown and saying that the Alien Enemies act applied to this transnational gang which was allegedly working under the direction or in concert with the Venezuelan government. Of course they expanded it past what even the law said they could do, which led to court battles and so forth. But this basic law was still there on the books dating back to these scares about alien enemies back in John Adams administration.

Estee Herndon (24:41)

Yeah, this conversation makes me think in the same way I think of the JFK assassination as a conspiracy theory. You can argue that. Looking for weapons of mass destruction, narrative of Iraq, weapons of mass destruction. Was that a conspiracy theory too?

Jesse Walker (24:57)

Yeah, it absolutely was. I mean again, even if they had found them, it would have been a conspiracy theory. It just would have been a true one. And beyond that, the idea that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots, which was very influential at the time, that was a false conspiracy theory. And it's one that had a lot of repercussions, very big and bad ones, both here in the United States and in the Middle East.

Estee Herndon (25:21)

Conspiracy theories have shown us how many different realities Americans can live in, even as they live right next to one another. I'm thinking about even recent things like vaccines, COVID 19, people who didn't believe the results of the 2020 election. I mean, I remember talking to people all across the country who seemed like they lived in different worlds. I mean, has this always been true or have recent changes to technology or social media made that more true?

Jesse Walker (25:47)

I think recent technology, recent changes to technology, and in particular the rise of social media has allowed people to see the differences that were there all along.

Estee Herndon (25:58)

Is that the self selection? Because we're all choosing now. What do you think it is?

Jesse Walker (26:02)

I think it's more like you can see things that you previously wouldn't have chosen to see. But you go on Twitter or Facebook and suddenly you're confronted with these other realities that either you didn't see the before. Oh, interesting. But they're being thrust into your face because, I mean, one thing people love to do on Twitter is find the most stupid person on the other side and highlight what they said. But I think, I mean, I've never been one for this idea that America used to have one big common reality and we need to get back to that if we can govern ourselves democratically, which is sort of one of the cliches of when people talk about conspiracy theories. It's, I think, if anything, the history of American democracy is a history of negotiation and conflict and compromise among these different realities. And in the past it might have more to do with religious differences and regional differences and things like that. People with different ethnic backgrounds and different ways of looking at the world. But it's the ultimate nature of it hasn't really changed and we still have to keep muddling through the way we always have.

Estee Herndon (27:13)

It sounds like you're saying less so than we now live in this big conspiracy world. We've kind of always had this conspiracy world. It may just be that the changes in technology and social media are causing those realities to clash or interact with one another in ways they weren't doing before.

Jesse Walker (27:29)

Yeah, I mean, it's almost like the opposite of people would say we all get in our own bubbles. I feel like our bubbles keep crashing into each other and splattering onto each other and we're seeing more of what's out there in the rest of the country and what other, you know, we're in this patchwork of different shared headspaces and what the other parts of the patchwork look like.

Estee Herndon (27:56)

Jesse Walker. His book is called the United States of Paranoia. This episode was Produced by Dustin DeSoto and Peter Balanon Rosen. It was edited by Miranza Kennedy, Fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado and engineered by David Tadashore. I'm Esteed Herndon. This is Today, explained.

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