Robert Evans and Jamie Elizabeth Thompson Jefferson Loftus expose pandemic grifters, contrasting 1918 snake oil salesmen with modern frauds like Jim Baker's $125 nano-silver spray and Alex Jones's falsely cited Pentagon studies. They condemn Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop for selling ineffective wellness balls during financial hardship and criticize Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler for profiting millions from travel stocks after private virus briefings while publicly reassuring the public, revealing a pattern of betrayal that prioritizes greed over public safety. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Shouting Syphilis for Solidarity00:04:21
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Mode.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Goespiece and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
Syphilis!
I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that is introduced as badly as this podcast is and also talks about terrible people.
I didn't know what else to say.
Horrible intro.
Wait, did you just say syphilis?
Was that syphilis?
Yeah, I shouted syphilis loud enough to unsettle my neighbors.
There used to be a law that that's the only way you could get that diagnosed.
You can't have it diagnosed because it's speaking volume.
You gotta shout syphilis.
Look, this is a time of illness and disease, so how better to express solidarity with everyone than shouting the word syphilis as loud as I can.
I think that that is the only way we can really show that we care right now.
We're all in this together.
We're all in this together and high school musical style.
A hero.
Jamie.
Robert, have you seen High School Musical?
I saw the parody of it that was done by...
Oh, wait, no, that was a parody of Glee that they did on Community.
No, I have no idea what High School Musical is other than what the title tells me.
Well, honestly, that's more than I expected.
I mean, I feel like we're going to introduce our guest, Robert, just a thought.
Do you want to just introduce our guests?
Yes, our guest today is Jamie Elizabeth Thompson Jefferson Loftus.
Yes.
Thank you.
Co-host.
It's true.
Destroyer of Mensa.
Yeah, I have to be introduced completely.
What is the dragon lady's name?
What's her name?
Oh, Damiri.
I had Jamie of the House Loftus first of her.
Breaker of Mensa.
Vicks Vaporub Flu Scare Tactics00:15:21
Yeah.
That's a frequent podcast guest, feminist icon.
And my really good friend, I love you so much.
So we're all stuck in our individual homes right now, as is everyone listening to this, pretty much.
Robert ate his survival cheese.
I did.
I had a breakfast of a spoonful of dried and powdered survival cheese this morning, and it actually kind of ruled.
I don't, I don't.
I don't know.
I don't like that.
Normally, when you eat a spoonful of a powder, it's like tough to choke down, but the survival cheese instantly turns into like a mushy cheese-was like substance in your mouth.
So it's not, it's pretty good, actually.
I don't, I don't.
Mushy, I don't, I don't.
Well, I, you know.
You know, we're all doing our, I, some have survival cheese, some have three boxes of Francia just to shit.
You are drinking at 2 p.m. as we record this podcast.
Okay, like we all haven't been drinking at 2 p.m.
You're right.
You're right.
As someone on Twitter put it, everyone's drinking is now on airport rules.
So anything goes.
There's no more Mike's heart at the 7-Eleven, but we did find a case of White Claw.
And so, you know, we're making it work.
We're making it work here.
So everyone right now is making sacrifices and changes to deal with this situation, whether it's differences in drinking, eating powdered cheeses, recording podcasts remotely.
We've all had to change our lives.
But there's a special select elite group of people in this country who didn't just see this looming disaster and change their own lives.
They saw it as an opportunity to make a shitload of money by lying to the entire country.
And today, we're going to do a timely episode about the grifters of the great coronavirus pandemic.
Wow.
Oh, what a privilege.
Yeah, yeah.
I collected as many as I had time to collect.
Sophie has whipped out her machete.
It's as one does.
Everybody hold their weapon of choice right now.
I want to get a pick.
Robert, the knife you gave me is in the other room.
But I have it.
I opened a box with it.
Good.
See?
I opened a violin box with it.
Well, that box isn't going to be hurting you anymore.
This is wonderful.
Thank you, everyone.
Jamie, it wouldn't be a hellishly destructive and nigh-apocalyptic pandemic if there weren't a fuckload of grifters sailing in to profit from the mass destruction of human lives and livelihoods.
In 1918, as the Spanish flu burned its way through tens of millions of souls, smooth-talking conmen offered up salvation to the dying and the frightened.
On June 28th, 1918, a public notice appeared in British newspapers purporting to lay out the symptoms of this deadly flu.
But this public notice was in reality an ad for formamints, a vitamin tablet and mint sold as a remedy for influenza.
These mints were claimed to be the best means of preventing infectious processes.
Everyone, especially vulnerable children, was advised to suck a tablet whenever you enter a crowded, germ-laden place.
That's way better than fucking social distancing.
Suck a tablet, you'll be good.
I wonder what the what our equivalent of like what if we if we do have descendants, what they'll be like.
Can you fucking believe in 2020 they were just telling you to like live stream Red Dead Redemption and then you'd live?
You know, shit like that.
Or can you believe in 2020 they had electricity?
Oh, my sweet hazmat descendants.
In the U.S., snake oil salesmen billed the Spanish flu as an exaggerated form of the grip, which is a funny thing that people used to call. kind of any like cold or flu type sickness.
It's like a Grandpa Simpson way of referring to an illness.
They've got the grip.
Grip.
Yeah.
You love to hear it.
Yeah.
So one of the treatments for the grip that killed tens of thousands of Americans during the 1918 epidemic was the laxative bromoquinine taken in enormous quantities as a preventative measure.
Now, quinine was known to protect against malaria, so people figured, why wouldn't it help against the flu?
And interestingly enough, this is one of the remedies to the Spanish flu that also popped right back up again for the coronavirus in the mouth of the president of the United States.
So we'll be talking about that in a little bit.
Oh, hell yeah.
Yeah, that's good and cool, right?
Another popular Spanish flu remedy was beaver oil, which I don't know what it was, but I also don't know.
Because do you just ring out a beaver?
Yeah.
You ring out a beaver and whatever drips out.
Maybe you get like a beaver press and you really just sort of like, oh, like a, oh, that's so growthy.
Yeah, you just ring out a beaver.
Like, oh, like the toothpaste tube thing.
You just do that to a beaver and whatever comes out of their mouth, that's beaver oil.
Or maybe up in, you know, you know how the French, when they make their wine, they all, they put all their grapes in a bucket and then they stomp on the grapes.
Maybe up in Canada, they do that with beavers and Canadian feet.
Canadians, sound off in the comments.
Yeah.
No, don't.
I assume that is head canon.
That is this podcast canon for Canada.
So if you are a Canadian and a fan of this show, you just have to accept that.
All right.
Yep.
Now, perhaps the most successful influenza grift, though, was a product that we all know.
And I don't know, love's probably too strong a word, but we all know it.
It was an invention of the Vicks Family Remedy Company, Vicks Vaporub.
Yeah, Vicks Vaporub.
Yeah, it was a fucking drink.
That tingly shit.
Yeah.
It was a bullshit treatment for the fucking the Spanish flu.
Now, it had no curative or preventative effect, but the Vicks company was smart enough to focus on drumming up fears that their medication was about to sell out instead of spending a bunch of time lying about its medicinal properties.
So they would just sort of allude to the fact that it was a treatment for the flu and then would try to scare people that they were going to run out of it so that folks would buy up as much Vicks Vaporub as they could possibly get.
Okay.
Well, I mean, Vicks Vaporub, that's like the tingly stuff, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like your grandma has it, but it can also make you horny.
Wait, what?
Huh?
No, you know what?
Let's move on.
I think it's more like icy hot for your lungs.
You know, it's like your grandma has it, but also it can make you horny.
That is not at all my experience with Vicks Vapor.
Okay.
Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Never mind.
It smells really bad, too.
Just a thought.
Franzi and Jamie is revealing a lot to us.
Sorry.
Getting fast and loose.
Yeah.
VIX filled, in order to scare people into mass buying up and stockpiling vapor rub, VIX filled drugstores with advertisements like this.
Druggists!
Exclamation point, exclamation point.
Please note, VIX Vapor Rub oversold due to present epidemic.
Geez, all right.
I think we've been looking for a thing that doesn't work is oversold.
Oh no.
Yeah, it's oversold, so you got to buy some of it.
People wouldn't be buying all this shit up if it wasn't oversold.
It's not dumb.
Not a dumb call.
So obviously, Formimants didn't treat the influenza, and Vicks Vaporub didn't either.
But it is still a popular product, so go figure.
And as a new pandemic has settled down upon our world, the descendants of these snake oil treatments and the salesmen behind them have started to spread through the fertile soil of the internet.
On March 19th, Forbes published an article about a series of mass text messages pushing a link to a fake Fox News article that purported to prove CBD oil treated the novel coronavirus.
And there's a little clip of the Fox News article with the wonderful title, While the World is Waiting for a Vaccine, One Mom Has Found a Solution to Fight Back Against the Coronavirus Outbreak.
Oh, man, Fox News bringing moms into this.
They always do.
Like, that's like the...
I don't know.
For whatever reason, years ago, scammers found out that claiming a mom had come up with something was a solution to hacking 20% of the country's brain.
They're lying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I will never understand it because my mom doesn't know how to cure anything.
No, my mom, I don't know.
I'm just trying to get my mom to watch less MSNBC, but whatever.
We're all trying to get our parents to stop watching television.
My parents are being good kids now.
They listen to me this week.
Last week they were like, uh-huh, kid.
This week they're like, yes, wise one.
Yes, we shall wash our hands.
Yes, we shall not go outside.
Yes, oh, wise one.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
So I sent my dad, I sent my dad a link to this podcast.
I'll update you if he starts listening.
My mom thinks that the panic is overblown by the media to try to make the economy look bad.
And this is a liberal conspiracy.
Don't know what that is.
Whatever's going to happen to her is going to happen to her.
Yeah, there's nothing else to do at this point.
Dope.
I love it.
I love it.
Love a world on fire.
And that is why I adopted you and made you my full-time son.
Thank you.
Now, whoever is behind this particular grift trying to sell CBD oil as a treatment for the coronavirus is ambitious.
I'll give him some points for that.
But they have fuck all on our first real grifter of this episode, a fellow named Jim Baker, host of the Jim Baker show.
Now, Jim is like a Christian preacher grifter kind of guy, and he is a convicted felon as a result of illegal fundraising activities on his previous show, The Praise the Lord Club, which put him in prison for like five years.
He's also star of some of the best Vic Berger videos of all time.
The best one.
Oh, my God.
That's some of the best.
Are you familiar with Vic Berger, Robert?
Oh, yeah, he's got some great Baker content.
And he sells survival foods, baker buckets, which are just like really overpriced dried food.
He's a cool dude.
Now, hundreds of thousands and probably millions, if I'm like really honest, but I'm trying to be optimistic for the sake of my soul right now.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians still trust Jim Baker for reasons I can only describe as very dumb.
And as a reward for their faith and forgiveness, Jim is selling them a magical silver spray that he claims will protect them from the virus.
The specific product he was hawking on his show is Silver Solution, a $125 tube of nonsense infused with nano-silver.
Yeah, baby.
You guys like nano silver?
What can you do about that?
What is nano-silver?
Well, it's tiny, tiny trace amounts of silver that you just shove in whatever else you're already selling.
The idea is that silver does have antimicrobial properties.
Like back before antibiotics, it was used a lot in wound dressings.
There's some burn dressings.
Like I have some burn dressings in my emergency kit that have some silver in them.
Absolutely, you do.
It has some uses, but people have taken, okay, there are actual medical applications of silver in certain contexts and used that as a justification for what if we put an amount of silver too small to do anything in every product and then lie to people and say that it will cure their illnesses.
That's the biz.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
I love the biz.
I love it.
The biz is cool.
Okay.
So the silver solution Jim Baker was selling was about $125 for a tube roughly the size of a tube of toothpaste.
And yeah, the silver solution he was selling was a product hawked by a woman named Cheryl Selman.
And on the February 12th episode of Baker's show, he had Miss Selman on as a guest.
She didn't quite say her product would cure the coronavirus, but she edged right up to making that claim, saying, quote, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours.
You know, I love a girl boss.
And this is just scratching that itch.
I hope that there was like an article about her that was like, this female entrepreneur is changing the narrative on what cures corona.
Not with her, but we do have, I will be reading extended segments from an article about another lady grifter a little later on.
So don't you worry.
Thank you, God.
Okay, good.
No, this is a very gender non-discriminatory episode of Full of Grifters.
Although I do think they're all white.
So I think that just says a lot about who becomes a grifter in America.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So a few days after this episode of the Jim Baker show aired, Lisa Landau, the chief of New York State Attorney General's Healthcare Bureau, sent a cease and desist letter to Baker demanding that he pull the ads or face enormous fines.
It was like $5,000 per violation.
And there's a lot of violations when you're advertising to hundreds of thousands of people.
So Baker pulled the product, and that's great.
But I didn't, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that Cheryl Selman has been hawking her nonsense silver on shows like Baker's for years now.
And the only reason why it's almost the same name, right?
It's wild.
No, it's freaking me.
Yeah.
Same bitch, same vibe.
Same vibe.
And the only reason that her silver nonsense tube drew like federal anger now is that the coronavirus forced elements of our governments to briefly care about the sale of snake oil.
And I want to play for you a video of Cheryl on the Faith Shopping Network in 2018, singing the praises of her various silver-filled gels and oils alongside a fake doctor who bears a striking resemblance to the unit character from Game of Thrones.
If my little booger gets a little bump or a bruise, he's like, Paw Paw.
He's like, put the gel on me.
That's right.
Like, he tells me he knows exactly what he needs.
And he'll come to me because he sees us doing it.
And to me, you know, that's changing a generation.
It's changing a generation.
Well, it's crazy a healthy generation.
Absolutely.
And so this silver gel is so versatile.
Again, same thing as, you know, like in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, side of the beds.
Does it matter?
I mean, you don't want to get up out of bed?
Feel a little tickle in your throat?
Just pop the tube open, squirt some on your tongue, swallow it down.
And it actually goes down slower than the liquid.
So it'll actually coat over that soreness, helps to kill those viruses, those bacteria.
By the time you wake up in the morning, you're feeling better.
It's amazing.
Nano Silver Kills Viruses00:10:00
Absolutely.
Well, this is for everyone.
Yikes.
Just pop the tube open, squirt some on your tongue.
Pop the tube open.
All it's viscous, so it'll just drip down the back of your throat and cure that.
You know, I'm making a come reference because our audio engineer Daniel is wearing a shirt that says come in large letters, and also they're talking about squirting viscous liquids down the back of their throat.
So that's just where we are.
They're so calm.
It is like dystopian QVC, is how I like to view Jim Baker.
Yeah, it's it feels like that's the faith shopping network, and it feels like the end of the world watching that video.
Like it feels like it, it feels like this would be the video that opens a Paul Verhoven movie.
Um, yeah, like this little clip from it would be like part of a run of ads.
Uh, it's just so it's just so apocalyptic.
Yeah, that's like the emotion behind this video, and it's from 2018.
So it's good that Jim Baker is getting some pushback from the state now, um, but it takes him a while to deal with this sort of shit.
Now, Cheryl and Jim are not the only people to try and sell nonsense silver bullshit products as a way to cure the coronavirus.
And in fact, my research into the different nonsense cures spreading around the internet suggests that silver-based cures are probably tied for the most common nonsense cure alongside huge doses of vitamin C.
So, yeah, that's interesting.
But probably a hero's dose of VC.
Oh, yeah.
Nothing like eating a fuckload of oranges to keep you safe from the plague.
So it's not just Jim and Cheryl.
Our old pal Alex Jones also received a cease and assist from the state of New York for a silver-based product he's been chilling as a surefire way to kill the coronavirus.
And here's the ad for his super blue silver-infused toothpaste, which I have to warn you, given his history, is very likely infused with lead.
Now, before we play this, there's a couple things that are interesting to me.
So he repeatedly cites this Army study about how this product of his can prevent the coronavirus.
And the actual study is talking about like a silver-infused wound gel that can stop like viral infect or that has shown a preventative effect on viral infections.
He's claiming that means that if you just shoot some of his toothpaste down your throat, it'll protect you from the coronavirus.
There's no evidence to suggest this.
It's pure nonsense.
It's pure, very stupid nonsense.
But here is an ad for Alex Jones' toothpaste that will kill the coronavirus.
Side note, if you haven't looked up his latest arrest photo, look it up.
Have a look.
Oh, his DOI photo?
Yeah.
Y'all.
Come right back with your calls, I promise.
877-789-2539 on this Tuesday Global Transmission.
I'm not going to belabor this.
I'm just going to tell you that for just your daily life and your gums and your teeth and for regular viruses and bacteria, the patented nano silver we have, the Pentagon has come out and documented in Homeland Security and said this stuff kills the whole SARS corona family at point blank range.
Well, of course it does.
It kills every virus.
But it's the founder.
This is 13 years ago.
And the Pentagon uses the product we have.
And the product we have in private label is about to be in Walmart coming up.
They just ordered a massive crap ton of not the one they have, but this even better one that we have.
So I'm just saying we're always cutting edge.
Thank to God.
I just go with the research, go with the spirit.
And we always have it.
The nano silver toothpaste in the super blue with the tea tree and the iodine.
That's the super blue is amazing.
And then we have the whitening toothpaste that has the nano silver and a lot more as well.
Those are both X13M4warshore.com.
They're still discounted despite all the hell-breaking loose.
Side note, has he gotten more like bloaty?
Yeah, no, because he's been back on drinking heavily.
During CPAC, he held his own event and he had like a bunch of speakers doing a night of free speech.
And by the end of the event, he was so drunk that he like passed out and someone else had to end it for him.
Jesus.
Yeah, no, he actually has a serious problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I do think that if you put Billy Wayne Davis and Chris Crofton in a blender, they could sound exactly like Alex Jones does in that.
Holy shit.
I keep trying to do that and they keep saying, no, you can't put us in a blender.
Why can't we put our friends in a blender?
It's all about the solid question.
Why can't we put our friends in a blender?
Also, why is Alex Jones saying, of course, no, it doesn't, dude.
Shut the bread.
No, it stops.
It does not.
Don't buy it from Walmart.
Don't buy it anywhere.
Jesus.
Well, and you fucking see it.
Well, actually, you can't.
It was like the coronavirus.
It's from Amazon.com right now.
Yeah, it's on.
The InfoWars Life Super Blue Toothpaste is available on Amazon.com for $11.95, even though the state of New York Attorney General's office has sent a cease and desist to Jones for selling it.
So that's cool.
Amazon, good work for you guys.
But also don't.
But also don't.
And also maybe from our advertisers.
Sophie.
Sophie.
Sir.
Kills all viruses.
You know what also kills all viruses, Robert?
Our t-shirts because they're impregnated with silver.
That's right.
Robert.
That's right.
You're not getting the hint that it's time for ads, and it's really hurting my heart.
I thought I raised you better.
Well, buy these products, assuming there are still advertisements.
Yay!
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Oespi and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Infowars Pandemic Lifesaver00:15:01
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back.
Assuming there were advertisements.
We were, there's advertise.
You know, now more than ever, I love to get a podcast advertisement being like, hey, will you advertise a dangerous pharmaceutical in this, the end of the world?
And then I say no.
And then they say, well, Robert says yes.
And then I say no.
And then they say, why?
I will advertise.
You know what?
One of the things I love is we had an opportunity to do some ads for Carnival Cruise right as the coronavirus outbreak was starting and very wisely looked around each other and said, no.
You know what, though?
Caitlin and I got that same email and we were like begging for it.
Oh, yeah, you guys wanted that free cruise?
We wanted the free cruise so bad and they and still they ghosted us.
If if I wonder why I wonder why in February of 2020, Carnival would suddenly stop advertising.
We couldn't get a current, we couldn't even get a free Corona cruise.
That's a bummer.
It's too bad.
It's too bad.
It really is.
So, yeah.
InfoWars.
Great stuff.
InfoWars.
So I know what you're thinking, which is that surely selling silver impregnated toothpaste that kills the coronavirus by slathering it all over your face or whatever the fuck Alex is suggesting there.
Yeah, sure.
Too faces pregnant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Surely that's his only coronavirus grift, but of course it's not.
Of course it's not.
No.
Yeah.
Selling toothpaste as a COVID-19 cure is not even his main coronavirus grift.
This pandemic has actually been something of a lifesaver for Infowars.
In the weeks leading up to the virus has spread throughout Wuhan, China.
Jones and Infowars racked up a series of fines as a result of legal malpractice.
Between massy platforming and the legal bills for Infowars' many, many lawsuits, things were looking very, very grim.
But then came the coronavirus.
Jones and his cronies lost no time in drumming up terror over the virus as soon as they could, primarily so that they could scare people into buying their emergency survival food.
Now, much of this fear-mongering was done by InfoWars' chief health correspondent and former bastard pod subject, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
No, no, no.
This is the Health Ranger, baby.
And I guess I should just play this one.
Go over it.
So this is from January 24th, and it's from Infowars health correspondent Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
And this gives you an idea of back in January how Alex Jones and his crew were sort of setting up the coronavirus outbreak.
Okay.
Because the truth is so nightmarish.
It's so excuse me again.
It's so horrific.
It's such a nightmare.
What can we do as a human race?
I'm here to tell you it's over for humanity.
There will only be lone survivors.
The strategy must now shift.
You can be a survivor.
We can help you survive.
The information here at InfoWars and what I do can help you survive.
I'll give you some practical things in the next segment.
But maybe it's an astonishing statement to hear from me, the Health Ranger, but it's over for humanity as a whole.
The masses will be slaughtered.
Dope.
So that's the Health Ranger.
That's the Health Ranger.
He's giving you good health advice.
Now, obviously, he says that he's going to come back and give people some practical advice for survival.
And that practical advice turned out to mostly be buying Infowars bulk food packages.
Oh, Gofinger.
Yeah, and the price of these increased every company selling these doubled and tripled their prices.
But even like by kind of the standards of the industry, Jones started jacking his prices up early and to outrageous levels, while repeatedly claiming that other sellers were sold out and that his storable foods were the only affordable option for families looking to stock up because his whole thing is lying to his audience.
Infowars jacked up their prices at the same time as they sought to convince their audience that society was on the verge of collapse because that's just good business.
And I'm going to quote from a Media Matters write-up now.
Since December, the InfoWars store has more than doubled the price of its largest package, InfoWars Life Select, one year.
On December 21st, the package was being sold for $1,443.50.
The price increased to $1,594 by January 23rd.
By January 30th, the price had increased to almost $3,000, and the page was displaying emergency survival foods, coronavirus clearance sale.
So that's ethical and good, right?
We're all, I think that that shows a lot of concern and kindness towards your fellow man.
Well, it's over for humanity.
So, I mean, the health, it so saith from the health ranger's mouth.
I couldn't come up with a better name for a fake health professional than the health ranger.
Like, they really, I can't outdo that.
That's brilliant.
Yeah, I mean, there's no one more trustworthy than a ranger when it comes to health.
Then a ranger.
Maybe the health sheriff would be the only, like, the only more fucking sinister way of saying that.
Yeah, it's awesome.
So it rules.
It does rule, Jamie.
Thank you for agreeing with me.
So, coronavirus has been a near-constant topic of discussion on InfoWars' various broadcasts.
According to a search of InfoWars' online streaming platform, banned.video, at least 145 videos have been posted since January 22nd that reference the outbreak in their titles.
Of these, 127 were published after InfoWars released its emergency survival foods, coronavirus clearance sale ad for bulk food on January 27th.
Now, in one February 12th video, Alex was bold enough to actually merge his two key coronavirus grifts, claiming that the natural components in certain quality foodstuffs and other Infowars products can, quote, easily be used to combat viral infection.
Then he attempted to sell his audience more dried food, saying, I am very sad about this virus and very sad about the bioweapons and things that are going on, but it is an opportunity for people to take advantage of the products we have.
We got food, we got guts, we got red blood.
We'll kick your ass if you attack us.
With me, it's religious not to screw you over.
Hell yeah.
Wow.
Fucking out.
Wow.
This is a grifting masterclass.
He's not bad at grifting.
No, he's really good at it.
Yeah, he's really good at it.
He's done the Malcolm Gladwell approach to being an evil grifter.
He's put in the $10,000.
What's impressive about that is that Malcolm Gladwell has also done the Malcolm Gladwell approach to me.
I mean, how do you think he figured it out?
How do you think he figured it out?
I got to get a grift going.
I'm just telling people to buy dried beans and go foraging, and there's no profit in that.
We need to find out.
There's not a lot of money in exposing grifts.
You really have to establish your own.
We need to get like a branding deal going on with, I don't know.
Get on the, I have faith that Lacey Mosley is going to find a good grift in all of this.
She'll figure it out.
Yeah, that's a good option.
I was considering just starting a militia and charging dues.
Can we, Sophie, can we start a militia?
Is that allowed?
Do you think corporate's going to be cool with a militia?
No comment.
Okay.
Well, send me $5 and you will be a member of my militia.
And that will improve your survival odds.
Sorry, can Corber make $5 off of starting a militia?
If so, they'll happily start a militia.
If every listener of this podcast just sent me $5, I could fund a militia.
Oh, for sure.
You could go fund me a militia at any point in time.
I could buy two tanks for Alex Jones as one, and we could really bear down on this.
Let's go for it, people.
Do you know, is Jim Beaker?
Jim Beaker, Jim Baker's still selling those.
Is he still selling those buckets of slop?
Yeah, he sure is.
Baker buckets.
Well, I'm sure they're sold out now.
So freaky.
Yeah.
No, and they're bad.
Both, like, again, this is something I am a nerd about.
Both Alex Jones's and Jim Baker's survival foods are renowned within survival nut jobs as being some of the worst quality products.
Like they're just, they cost as much as Mountain House, and Mountain House actually tastes good.
It's terrible.
It's terrible products.
Don't buy them.
Don't buy any of them right now.
No, don't buy this.
Make your own slop bucket.
Have some components in your slop bucket.
Everyone listening right now is more than capable of making their own slop bucket.
They don't need to.
The only real survival food you need is to chew up all of the food currently in your fridge, spit it into a bucket, and freeze it, and then you're good to go.
You can just baby bird it back into your mouth.
That's survival.
That's the empowerment that I need.
I can be my own mommy bird, chew up my food, then eat it back later.
That's just as it falls.
Yeah, you're only a bitch.
Self-care has been telling you about it.
That is the only goop is about to come into this, Jamie.
Really?
Oh, good.
So, yeah, we can talk more about Alex Jones, but there's way too much grifter ground to cover here.
So let's mosey on over to Amazon.com, which has itself become a hub of coronavirus grifting, so expansive it puts even InfoWars to shame.
See, the Kindle Direct Publishing Service gives sellers the ability to publish any e-book they want and even paperback books for free in less than five minutes.
This system services so many authors that there's simply no time for any human monitoring.
Books are printed on demand and the whole process is as automated as can be.
Now, that's not an issue for all of the people who want to self-publish the erotic novellas and fan fiction epics that they're writing, you know, during their quarantine.
And in fact, it's great to...
Can't use Saddam Hussein's ghost.
Hey, Saddam Hussein's Ghost and I have a really cool Google Doc open.
We're working on it with Bernie Sanders and it is horny as fuck.
Hey.
Hey.
So this is not, yeah, so it's fine for a lot of people.
But the fact that this is completely automated does create an issue when paired with an unspeakably contagious viral epidemic that threatens to shatter the economy forever.
I'm going to quote now from a write-up on the website undark.org, who kind of revealed this underground industry that just sprung up around coronavirus.
Quote, since late January, hundreds of titles related to COVID-19, as the disease caused by the virus is known, have come up for sale online, many of which appear to be written under false or misleading names.
One series of books, which includes Coronavirus 101, Everything You Should Know to Avoid Illness and Protect Yourself from the Wuhan 2020 Outbreak, and Coronavirus and Face Masks, The Truth, claim to be co-authored by Dr. Zoe Gottlieb.
Another two books, which were available Wednesday but have since been removed, listed their author as Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is said to hold a medical degree along with multiple master's degrees.
The biographical details did not match those of CNN's chief medical correspondent by the same name.
Yet another publication titled Coronavirus Disease Gupta.
Sanjay Gupta.
Leave him alone.
He's my coronavirus man Coach Monday.
This is bullshit.
That's kind of brilliant, though, to get a decoy Sanjay Gupta in the middle of the day.
Fake Gupta.
Yeah, that's pretty great.
It's not dumb.
Yet another publication titled Coronavirus Disease, a Practical Guide for Preparation and Protection, listed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, as its lead author and a non-existent agency, the U.S. Department of Health, as a co-author.
It has also been removed by Amazon, but remains available to order from Barnes Noble.
Representatives of HHS did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment regarding the book.
So that's cool.
This is a cool industry, right?
That's a neat little thing.
This is very cool.
I like that.
Cool and good.
Yeah.
Now, this Undark write-up notes that similar self-publishing services exist with Barnes Noble, Walmart, and a number of other companies.
In fact, Barnes Noble promises to have your self-published work available for sale in less than 20 minutes.
So that's good, too.
One particularly egregious example on their site is the totally credible book, Coronavirus, Colon, Wuhan Coronavirus, Colon, All Secrets Revelliad.
They misspelled Revealed.
Oh my God.
Wait, that's good.
I think that this is good.
This is good.
I think that, you know, fast forward a little bit in the future, this will all be very fun once everything is Revelliad in the future.
Yeah, it will be Revelliad soon and we'll realize how credible this book was.
For just $8.95, this title will provide you with, quote, the history and ways to combat it, spread, and prevent another epidemic.
So that's good.
And these viral pandemic tie-in works get a lot weirder too.
Sure.
Outside of these big hitters we've named, there's also equine coronavirus, everything a horse lover needs to know, and canine coronavirus, everything a dog lover needs to know.
Okay, honestly, I am not disinterested in canine coronavirus.
Well, you should be because these books are written by a nonsense person.
The author is claimed to be Malik Hill PhD, who no one can find any real evidence or information about.
But he also has books on how to protect your fish and rabbits from coronavirus.
In addition to this, he's the author of the critical work, How to Buy a House for Literally $0, which, given the rent crisis we're hitting, you know, maybe people should look into.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Holy shit.
Selling Fake Coronavirus Cures00:11:58
Literally $0.
That's a deal.
You know, that is a good deal.
I mean, I know, I mean, there's been some people reclaiming empty houses, but I have a feeling it's not the same thing.
No, no, because they got to spend money to like drive there, gasoline, you know, bolt cutters.
All these things cost money.
Literally $0.
I mean, why don't they send us $2,000 and bolt cutters?
The government just mails expensive bolt cutters to people.
If they're a stimulus package, burn them all.
Good fucking luck.
Here's a check and some bolt cutters.
See you in hell.
Like, I would respect that more than what's going on.
We can't pass a meaningful stimulus, so we're sending bolt cutters and a nine millimeter to everyone.
Figure it out.
Fantastic.
Oh, feels good to laugh.
It does.
It does.
So this is all great.
Also great is the recent work of beauty influencer Michelle Fon, our next grifter.
Now, Michelle is a 32-year-old entrepreneur with a net worth of around $50 million.
She has 8.9 million YouTube subscribers and 2 million Instagram followers.
So that's great.
Yeah, I feel like I've heard of this person.
I've never watched their videos.
Now, the beauty industry entered a significant contraction at the start of this year, cosmetics and all that stuff.
Like the industry started to kind of peel back a bit.
This is even before the outbreak really reached its peak.
And Fan recognized that early and decided to pivot to a new business.
Earlier this year, she announced her plan to create a podcast called Baby Steps.
Quote from Michelle.
It's essentially to help people take steps into adulthood.
Buying Bitcoin, how to store it, what to do with it.
You know, the key things about adulthood.
Now my viewers...
She became a bunker survivalist.
She pivoted from YouTube beauty to being a bunker survivalist.
No, just Bitcoin.
Oh, just a big.
Oh, so she's just a winkle boss.
Now my viewers are hungry for more than makeup and skincare.
They want to know how to protect their purchasing power.
Today I made an Instagram post telling my followers to buy the Bitcoin dip and then hold.
In mid-March, as the panic over coronavirus began to crest here in the United States, Fan posted a picture of her essential oil diffuser with the caption, If you are burning antiviral essential oils around you, this will kill all of the virus before it enters your system.
There's no such thing as antiviral essential oils.
This will not work.
Don't do this.
Which a lot of people told Fan.
There was an enormous backlash.
And to her credit, Michelle Fan eventually responded by sheepishly claiming she had not intended to mislead anyone.
And this is not a great response, but it makes her by far the most honest and decent person we're going to cover in today's episode by a wide margin.
And this brings me.
Oh, yeah, Jamie?
Well, I just, Beauty YouTube is exclusively grifters.
I think of like Bootube.
Yeah, they're exclusively grifter.
I feel like Maggie Mae Fish has done a lot of good work on like documenting like what the extent of those grift those grifts are.
But this is the first Corona Grift I've heard.
This is a treat.
Yeah, and she was clearly just dipping her toes into the Corona grift.
And I think her followers are kind of mainstream enough that it backfired on her.
And she hopefully has peeled back from this.
But you know who else did the same thing even more sketchily?
Whom?
Well, you brought her up a little earlier.
Our old friend, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Or as I call her, the fifth hound of the apocalypse.
Now, on March 13th, Gwynpath, is that what people call her?
Gwynpath.
No one calls her any.
We try not to call her anything if we can avoid it.
We dare not speak her name.
We'll call her 666 the beast.
On March 13th, she posted a now-deleted picture to the Goop Instagram page.
And it was pretty innocuous on the surface.
Gwyneth herself in a white shirt, a khaki skirt, and sneakers with the caption, most days you'll find GP wearing G label with a pair of sneakers, which is one reason we make it an annual tradition to put together a fresh sneaker guide each year.
Get ready to cover some serious ground.
Run, don't walk.
First off, just editing note, you don't have to say that it's an annual tradition you do each year.
Not necessary.
It's a bit redundant.
Yeah.
Second note, no one is going to call her GP.
And if they do, that is who is a society we should blame for the coronavirus epidemic is people who refer to Gwyneth Paltrow as GP.
I'm always okay with that.
I'm just calling her 666 the Hound.
Or the beast.
That's way better.
The fifth hound of the apocalypse.
Sure, the beast.
All of these are fair terms for Gwyneth Paltrow.
But okay, but that other than the, you know, the errors in grammar, that's a pretty unproblematic Instagram post, especially considering the kind of products Goop has sold.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to sell people a khaki shirt and sneakers.
But it turns out that skirt cost $450 and those sneakers were $425.
And since this was posted as cities around the U.S. began to contemplate radical quarantine procedures and millions found themselves instantly out of work, people got kind of pissed at Gwyneth Paltrow for selling $900 worth of skirt and shoes, even though this is what she always does.
It just was suddenly grosser, right?
Right.
So even goop fans got angry at her.
One response on her Instagram read, I think it's irresponsible to post this as a worldwide pandemic is going on.
You have a great platform around health.
Now would be the time to expand on that.
Which is an incredible post and an incredible snapshot of where we are in America because he's simultaneously right.
He should be angry at this soulless ghoul hawking $900 skirt shoes combos while a quarter of the country finds itself edging towards breadlines.
But it's also baffling that his anger is that she's not doing more to promote health products because it's just amazing.
Never really.
I mean, it kind of a bit of a bummer too because you're just like, oh, that is like what her followers feel is like that health and wellness, like she will have their best interests at heart.
Like it's, uh, it's a bummer.
I was honestly shocked and appalled that Gwyneth was not in the imagine video.
Side issue.
Jamie, check your Instagram DMs for Goop's latest posting from the last two hours.
I'd love for you to describe that to Robert Evans before we go to an ad break.
Oh, God.
Imaginal possessions.
I wonder if you can.
Okay, here's a post.
Oh, God.
I don't like the visual.
The visual is a really like oversaturated picture of someone putting pressure on another person's hand with their hand.
Oh, no.
And it says the following.
Anyone can benefit from acupressure and anyone can do it, says acupuncturist Mary Jane Newman, who gave us the best breakdown on acupressure points and how to best activate them at home.
So it's just, it's something that has nothing to do with anything.
Meanwhile, millions of people are locked in their home and there's an acupuncturist who's like, hey, ever heard of me?
Is that basically it, Sophie?
Like, she's basically, her advice is basically like, hey, you want to be really good advice right now?
How about you touch another person's hands?
Yeah, literally.
Apply pressure.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm going, I'm licking a lot of doorknobs these days.
Is that, am I not supposed to be doing that?
Robert, we talked about it.
I think you're probably not.
If you're eating survival cheese, you can lick a doorknob.
I think that that's the going exchange.
But that's my hobby.
Listen, we all have to make sacrifices.
Do you want to know what you should make your hobby doing this ad break?
Just a thought.
Robert, are there more products?
There are always more products and maybe even a new service.
Wow.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come.
Look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired.
City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
This is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Gwyneth Paltrow Wellness Fraud00:04:14
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chambers ducks.
A shocking public murder.
They scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
We're back.
And we are talking about Goop.
So I read one post from the Goop Instagram.
Here's another.
Come on, Goop.
When you said GP, I thought at first you were referring to Doctor.
Please use your platform in a more sensitive way.
I don't think it's the time to think about buying trainers when people are struggling to buy day-to-day supplies.
We don't want doom and gloom, but maybe a post on boosting your immune system, staying healthy, etc.
It's amazing what they get angry at and also what they want from Gwyneth.
And unfortunately, Gwyneth Paltrow was only too happy to do this.
And I'm going to quote now from New York Magazine.
No.
Yeah.
Goop is known for yoni eggs and the promotion of potentially dangerous treatments like colonic irrigation.
Also addresses COVID-19 on its website.
Some of its advice is perfectly legitimate.
Wash your hands, disinfect your filthy phone, get vaccinated, which prevents other potential illnesses, if not COVID-19.
But this being goop, the page also highlights entries on the flu prevention properties of elderberry chew.
Scientifically, there are none.
And an interview with a holistic practitioner about what to do to prevent colds and flus.
Among her recommendations, the goop wellness balls in the air vitamin regimen, which at best offers no medical.
You don't want to take what drop some wellness balls down your throat?
I unfortunately know what the wellness balls are.
What are the wellness balls?
Because I imagine the wellness balls shoot out that silver goop that coats the back of your throat in a sticky viscous drips real slow down it.
So I have a dark past history where I used to be on a series that tried out Goop stuff to see if it actually worked.
So, I've tried a fair amount of this stuff.
I've done the yoni egg a number of times.
Uh, I've done the colonic irrigation.
That hurts.
Uh, I've done, I mean, I've done a ton of goop stuff.
None of it has like, I don't know, like it's it, it all is very uncomfortable, and none of it has resulted in anything positive.
And if I had actually had to pay for it, I would be very angry.
Uh, and the wellness ball, it falls right into that, uh, that category.
So, I mean, I at this point, it's like hacked to have to be like, don't do goop shit, but there is still such a big audience for it.
It's like, it sucks, and it's like nice people that are getting grifted into a ball full of like, I mean, literal goop that costs, you know, whatever, seven bucks to manufacture.
And then, how much are they charging for it?
Uh, I'm gonna guess what some people spend on a car payment, right?
Like, it's it's yeah, it's yeah, it's infuriating and terrible.
Uh, and in a sane society, it would be criminal.
Um, but it's not, and so Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be fine throughout all this, she's going to handle this great.
Um, and speaking of Gwyneth, she has a lot to do with the story of our next grifter.
And Jamie, I'm going to need you to batten down your hatches and strap in to hear this person's name.
Amanda Chantal Bacon Grift00:09:48
Because I get a visceral reaction from just reading this name.
Okay, Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of Moon Juice.
I hate moon juice.
Can we start again?
Can we start again?
And then you just like pause after every name just to give people a real chance to take it in.
Amanda Chantal.
Okay.
Bacon.
Oh, there it is.
There's the founder of Moon Juice.
Yeah.
Disgusting.
I live two blocks away from the original Moon Juice, and I'm thrilled to announce that I did burn it to the ground right before this recording.
Comrade Loftus, making the revolution happen.
So just a few days ago, Amanda Chantal Bacon posted this list to her Instagram, clearly inspired by the coronavirus panic.
And it's Moon Juice branded.
Their logo is right up on the top of this list.
The 10 things I'm doing for immunity right now.
In the morning, dry brushing to stimulate lymph flow and then getting a cold shower.
Two, taking Super U TM daily to keep calm.
Elevated cortisol directly affects the immune system.
Frequently.
Is that moon juice?
Yeah, it's one of the products that she sells.
Okay.
One of the juices or powders or whatever.
Three, frequently washing my hands and my children's hands.
Four, keeping the air in my home clean with a HEPA air filter.
This has been a game changer for my respiratory system.
Five.
Taking vitamin C three times a day.
Six, adding power dust and spirit dust to my morning tonics.
These adaptogenic blends are particularly supportive of the immune system.
Seven, leaving clothes at the front door after school work travel and hopping right in the shower.
So just strip naked right at the enter to your house.
Go right into the shipper.
Then take some, get some of that dust in you.
Eight.
Oh, yes.
If you're not, if you don't think that the girl bosses are riding in on the apocalypse, you have to wake the fuck up.
No, that is what they've been waiting to do their whole girl boss lives.
Yes.
Eight, drinking green juice, our elderberry defense tonic and lots of water.
Nine, prioritizing sleep and taking Magnesio, which is another one of her products.
You know, I think we can all see how that's spelled.
Yeah, so it's it's it's great.
Love Amanda Chantal Bacon, who I do not love.
Not at all.
No, I mean, as someone who literally burned her building to the ground this morning, it's safe to say I also don't love her.
That's so, I mean, morning tonics, not enough said.
Yeah, tonics that you're selling, like that would have not felt people taking spirit dust tonics to ward off the flu would have sounded normal if I had brought it up as part of the 1918 pandemic grift, but this is happening right now.
I mean, honestly, bringing like the word tonics into the mix at all feels kind of short-sighted.
I mean, I feel like even for the person newest to the snake oil realm, the word tonic just seems to be one to avoid across the board.
The only acceptable use of the word tonic is if you are from New England and you enjoy a moxie tonic.
That is not acceptable to be from New England.
Oh, well, I mean, I was canceled years ago, so it's fine.
I was specifically talking about you, Jamie.
Yeah.
So I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you had to find out this way.
Spirit dust and power dust are two of Bacon's most popular products in her plant-based alchemy line.
Both include a variety of ingredients like chaga and rishi and maca that have absolutely no proven or even vaguely suggested benefits against COVID-19.
But there is no law against claiming your products help immunity, and a lot of very dumb rich people will spend $39 in a small cylinder of spirit dust in order to feel like they're doing something, anything to protect themselves.
These people will be glad to know that Moon Juice is still open for pickups and deliveries during the California lockdown.
Very happy to let everyone know that.
Well, not anymore.
Just so you know.
They are still open to be burnt to the ground.
That's right.
There is.
Unfortunately, there was an employee that I had to get out when I was burning it down.
And she's still out in the front.
And I'm in solidarity with workers.
So I'm like, okay, I'm going to burn the building down.
You can continue to work.
Yeah.
Thank you for supporting workers while you burn down their workplaces in order to stop the spread of disinformation, Jamie.
You think that Moonjuice is going to stop just because their building burned down?
You got another thing coming.
Okay.
So now, if you know me, my dear listeners, you know, there's no way I could hear a name like Amanda Chantal Bacon and learn this person is selling power dust and not want to know more about her.
And this is going to get a little bit off the coronavirus topic, but this is just going to make you so angry, Jamie, that I have to read you some selections of this article.
See, I found a New York Times article written by Molly Young that's a profile on Amanda Chantal Bacon, published back in 2017.
And it's absolutely fascinating.
Molly's recollection of her first visit to a moon juice store in Brooklyn is really worth reading.
Quote, I spotted a glass jar labeled brain dust.
It had this kind of packaging that signals discrete luxury.
Minimalist matte label, custom type, the word organic.
A 2.2 ounce jar cost $55.
This adaptogenic potion lights up your brain and increases mental flow, the label said.
Neuron velocity and vision are fine-tuned by toning the brain waves and particularly the alpha waves that connect to creativity.
No.
No.
Oh, it's so good.
It's so good.
Yeah.
So she finds out that this is sold by Moonjuice, and so she winds up looking into Moonjuice and the company gets on their newsletter.
And so she receives an ad for the Moon Juice cookbook, which included a biography of Amanda Chantal Bacon, who it described as a powerful influencer in the wellness space.
Now, this ad mentioned that Moon Juice has come to prominence when it had been featured on Goop and Bacon had made something called Sex Bark in a video with Gwyneth Paltrow herself.
Sick.
I also appreciate the way that you said it.
Sex bark.
Sex bark?
You can't say it any other way.
It's illegal.
You know, sex bark is new to me.
I don't know what sex bark is.
And I'm intrigued.
Isn't it?
Is it tree bark that makes you horny?
Yeah, I think so, Jamie.
That's the only thing it could possibly be.
That's true.
Which we know we can narrow down that it's not birch, which is by far the least sexy kind of tree.
Hey, sex bark is the new Vigs Vapor Up in that your grandma might have it and it'll make you horny.
Thank you for that baffling line, Jamie.
All of this was enough to convince Molly Young that an article needed to be written about Amanda Chantal Bacon.
So she went to meet her.
Quote: Growing up in New York City, she was a sickly child, bronchial stuff, whose parents took her to doctors.
I got pumped through the Western medicine chain without satisfactory results.
Of course, nothing helped.
One day, she went shopping with her family at a downtown health food store, where, the story goes, an Ayurvedic doctor visiting from India overheard Bacon coughing.
The doctor came over and posed some questions, very typical Ayurvedic ones, like, how often do you poop? and took the child's pulse.
After examining Bacon's tongue, the man provided her mother with a list of forbidden foods, cow's milk, wheat, and white sugar, among others.
Bacon stopped eating gluten at age four and became a vegetarian at around seven.
She's aware that these biographical details invite ridicule, but Bacon doesn't care if people make fun of her.
She's used to it.
And anyway, hers was a challenging childhood.
I was told growing up that I had learning disabilities and mental illness.
That was all the rage in the 90s.
She reflected on her past calmly.
I came from a family that was like, yes, whatever the doctor says is right.
Just take the pills.
Bacon's in parentheses.
Bacon's mother was the CEO of the fashion company Betsy Johnson, and her father was a musician.
Oh, God.
I love it.
This is like a level of nepotism.
It's a very gentle level because you have all this one-to-one nepotism.
You have all these dynasties in certain industries.
But the CEO of Betsy Johnson to the founder of Moon Juice is a very gentle form of adjacent nepotism that I really just appreciate.
Yeah, you can't not respect is the wrong word, but it's cool and good.
Of course, your Betsy Johnson mom is going to support your endeavor to start the worst business ever.
Of course.
Yeah, that's what her job is, is your Betsy Johnson.
That's the irony of her vegetarianism being named Bacon.
It's like a great dad joke in there.
Yeah, there is a great dad joke in there.
Take it away.
Take it away, dads.
So Amanda Chantal Bacon is great.
And I am so happy that I found out about her.
And all of these grifters are very entertaining, Jamie.
But I would be remiss if I did not point out at the end of this that the greatest grifters are not the people selling silver toothpaste that'll cure your coronavirus or silver goop that'll cure your coronavirus or buckets of food or antiviral essential oils or moon dust or whatever the hell Paltrow was trying to push.
Politicians Stock Market Conflicts00:08:12
No, the greatest grifters in the coronavirus epidemic are our own Congress people.
Ooh, I was wondering.
Okay.
So this is not going to be a comprehensive overview of what's going on because this story is like breaking as we're talking about it.
Like more stuff came out today.
So, and more stuff will have come out by the time you hear this episode.
But the information started to come out the night that I wrote this, actually, which was the Friday or Thursday, the 19th of March, that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican senator from North Carolina, had unloaded his holdings in dozens of stocks that lost a huge amount of their value.
And he did it right before the start of the coronavirus panic.
He and his wife sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks on February 13th and bought no new positions.
So they just straight up cashed out.
Most of the companies he cashed out on were major corporations that were hit hard by the collapse of the stock market.
And reporting from OpenSecrets.org and ProPublica and a number of other organizations has revealed that at the same time as he was selling off all this stock, he was publicly expressing confidence to the American people of the U.S. government's ability to fight the coronavirus and stop it from turning into a pandemic stateside.
It's literally like a scene from Veep just like getting off stage from reassuring people and then like calling and be like, dump the stocks.
Like, yeah.
Yeah, it's unbelievably gross.
And while he was telling the American people in public that things were going to be fine, he was privately warning in closed-door meetings with other lawmakers and major funders of senatorial and congressional campaigns that this virus was, quote, much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history.
And this is in late February when he's still very publicly being like, we got this.
So that's super cool and good.
Yeah.
For like an example of the kind of stuff Burr was putting out while he was selling off all of his assets.
On February 7th, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox News with Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, that the U.S. is better prepared than ever before to deal with a health crisis.
So that's great.
Okay, well, as long as our public officials are still fucking up, how bad could things possibly be?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So on February 27th, when the U.S. had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and President Trump said it's going to disappear like a miracle very soon, Burr attended a luncheon at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club, and he delivered this message, quote, there's one thing I can tell you about this.
It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we've seen in recent history.
It's probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.
So that's great.
13 days before the State Department began to warning its travel to Europe and 15 days before the Trump administration banned European visitors, Burr warned people in the room at this meeting that they should be cognizant that they were going to have to alter their lives very soon.
Again, he was not making these kind of warnings publicly.
He was very much trying to calm people down publicly.
And it's also worth noting that these were like these sales were the largest that he has ever made in his history as a stockholder, and he did not reinvest any of them.
This is pure cashing out.
Now, ProPublica or NPR asked for a comment on the senator's stock sales, and Burr's spokesperson or a spokesperson for the campaign responded simply, LOL.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wait, was it an in-real life LOL or was it like a text?
It was, I think, a text over email or something.
Yeah.
It does make a difference.
That is, that, I mean, not shocking at all, but that is just some end days shit.
It reminds me of, to put it in another stupid Jamie analog, it's like the scene in Titanic where Kate Winslet asked the owner of the architect of the ship, like, hey, what's going on?
He's like, oh, we're all going to fucking die, but don't tell anybody.
Just try to save yourself.
And yeah, we're fucked.
We're McFucked, you know?
Speaking of people who are morally identical to that Titanic engineer, Senator Carrie Leffler, a Republican from Georgia and the newest member of the Senate, sold off seven figures worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that helped to collapse the economy a couple of weeks later.
So, yeah, it's awesome.
At the time, she tweeted, Appreciate today's briefing from the president's top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak.
And then she started selling off stock like fucking gangbusters while not, you know, well, for example, on February 28th, after she had had this meeting and after she had started selling off her socks, which she did on February 16th, she tweeted this 12 days after selling off her stocks.
Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on coronavirus readiness.
Here's the truth: Donald Trump and his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy and safe.
On March 10th, she tweeted, Concerned about coronavirus?
Remember this: the consumer is strong, the economy is strong, and jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle COVID-19 and keep America safe.
Now, another data point that's worth talking about is that Leffler had not made a single stock transition during the three weeks she served in office prior to this one.
This was her first, the day that she got the coronavirus briefing, is the first stock transaction she made during her time in the Senate.
Now, both she and Burr claim that all of their stocks are basically in a blind trust.
They don't have any control over where they get invested.
And I'm sure that's completely true and something that will hold up in the subsequent investigations into their behavior.
And there's no chance that they informed anyone about what they were hearing in these meetings.
No chance.
No, no.
I don't think that any of this is going to be tampered with before it has to be examined or anything like that.
I think it's totally fine.
We're fine.
It's fine.
Now, as of right now, and again, this story is still breaking, so the list may be larger by the time you get it.
Senators who are confirmed to have made significant sell-offs of stock in the wake of that meeting are Richard Burr, who we talked about, Jim Imhoff from Oklahoma, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and of course, Kelly Leffler.
Now, there were also some sales by Dianne Feinstein.
And I have no desire to defend Dianne Feinstein because I hate her.
But it's not quite the same.
I'm going to quote Keith Boykin from CNN here.
The Diane Feinstein sale doesn't quite fit the pattern.
Her husband sold the biotech stock on January 31st when it reached a low price of 2172.
After the sale, the stock actually rose to 28.25 on March 4th.
It's currently trading at 2029.
So there was no real, this isn't something that was really affected.
I don't know.
Maybe there was something shady there.
It's hard to say.
But like this isn't a, in the other cases, you're looking at people who sold off stock in like, in Burr's case, he was selling off stock in like hotels and cruise lines and whatnot.
There's never a bad time to say fuck Dianne Feinstein.
Never a bad time.
I support digging into what her stock sales have been to see if it does, if she did do something shady.
But this biotech company just doesn't kind of fit the pattern because it really wasn't affected in the same way.
We'll see, though.
We should look into every Republican and Democratic member of Congress and see what they've been doing with their stocks and when they were briefed on how bad things were actually going to be and what they said in public about how bad things were actually going to be.
Look into every one of them.
Hang the people who committed treason.
Leave no stone unturned.
Yeah.
Yeah, we could call this treason, right?
Like, if this is an act of war, we're on a war footing.
These people are lying to the American public when they know how bad it's going to be and profiting off it.
That feels treasony.
Hang Treasonous Congress Members00:10:26
I mean, we're already calling himself a wartime president.
Yeah.
We're already asked deep in old-timey language because this is an old-timey situation.
Yeah, it's so dumb to call himself.
When has he not been a wartime president?
Right?
When has any president in our lifetimes since fucking Clinton not been a wartime president?
Yeah.
There has not been not a wartime president, I don't think, in my entire lifetime.
Yeah, they're all wartime presidents.
It's like bragging about, I don't know.
I don't know what it's like bragging about.
It's a nothing.
I don't know.
Fuck all this shit.
Fuck all of these people.
Yeah.
Jamie, how you feeling today?
You know, I'm feeling, I don't usually get frenzied at the record.
So this has actually been, this has been a nice medicinal one.
No, I feel okay.
I like, you know, it's just the weird shit going on.
How are you feeling?
You're hunting pigeons.
What are you doing?
I'm definitely going to.
I'm actually looking.
I'm going to go out this weekend or maybe a little bit next week and do some squirrel and rabbit hunting.
Maybe try to bag some nutria, get a stew going, do some braising and frying and see how the different game foods work.
A friend of mine's going to take us out and do some foraging.
So getting ready to do all the kind of like depressions, Great Depression stews that I'll need to cook using vermin.
My main plan is I'm going to become a professional ballerina and I'm going to, I don't know.
I think that that's my only plan.
I'm going to become a professional ballerina and I'm going to die before I'm 30.
Those are my two plans.
Yeah.
Wait, you're not 30 yet?
Oh, Jamie.
Oh, that.
Yeah, it's true.
Oh, and I'm going to read me comments about me on the internet.
That's the other thing I've been doing today.
Well, I'm going to hope we hang in for your 30th birthday.
We got what you realized.
You know what I realized?
It is our 27th year.
It is our 27th year.
Here we go.
Oh, shit.
Doesn't it?
It's just like Cobain.
If Corona gets us, we were geniuses after all.
That's the relief.
Is if it gets me, I was a genius.
But in all seriousness, Jamie and Robert have been, and Daniel have all been extremely healthful in this first week of being home alone.
So, you know, say thank you to your friends, talk to each other, communicate, you know, wave machetes from afar.
Yeah.
Everyone has been great.
I mean, yeah, we've all been checking in on each other all week.
It's nice.
It feels good.
It feels nice.
Hunt squirrels and pigeons, learn how to make mulligan stew.
Pick up an air rifle or a 22.
Mulligan stew is what hobos would eat during the Great Depression.
And it's basically just whatever you have.
If you boil anything, even rancid meat for four or five hours, it will be, it will not kill you because nothing deadly can survive four or five hours of boiling.
That's the whole basis of Cajun food.
It's like old-timey stuff.
Old-timey language really is fun, except when it's used to be very racist, in which case it's not fun.
Anderson's fun.
Anderson's sworn enemy is this squirrel that I named Edward.
And I'm sending you guys a picture of Edward currently this week.
This lady is still giving him so much unbelievable dry food that I'm like pissed.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, so he's still thriving.
I mean, I know I have a machete and I can do something with it, but also, I don't know.
But I'm pissed that he has all these fucking seeds.
Like, come on.
That is, that's not okay.
Mostly because he's my dog's sworn enemy, but there it is.
Not that.
Yeah.
Look at all those seeds, guys.
Sonny's just been gloating about Biden's recent wins.
It fucking sucks.
Ugh.
Imagine being locked in the house with a Biden supporter right now.
Just everyone, send your thoughts and prayers.
I did see my first Biden, my first Biden, whatchamacallit.
You know, the things that...
No, no, ghost.
The things you put on lawns.
Signs.
So if you listen to Worst You're Ever, you'll remember like a month or two ago, I said that I saw my first Amy for America sign.
Well, I drove by that exact same house, and now they have an Amy for America sign and a Joe Biden sign.
So it's the logical conclusion.
It's the logical conclusion.
They also said they want to adopt Sonny, just so you know.
Oh, good.
Well, I mean, I'm honestly trying to offload Sonny, and it's hard right now.
So, man, I mean, worst case, I'll use, you know, I'll turn him into a rug.
Oh, I was going to say a stew, Jamie.
I've just been talking about how to eat it.
There's a solid couple of pounds of meat on him, and then we'll turn the rest into a rug.
Got to use every part of your beloved.
You got to use every part of your very regressive, politically dog.
Yeah.
Your politically regressive dog.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyways, this has been a very long ending to this episode.
Jamie, do you have anything you want to plug?
You want to tell people where they can find you and what they can listen to?
Sure.
Yeah.
You can find me on Twitter at Jamie Loftus Help, on Instagram at JamieChrist Superstar.
I'm doing some remote comedy shows.
You can listen to the Bechtel cast, and you should find what your local mutual aid fund is and give some money and supplies to it.
And that's all I have to say.
And also remember that mutual aid is fundamentally about building resiliency outside of the state and not just a stopgap way to deal with the loss of state services, but a new way of looking at the relationship of human beings to one another in society without trust in a soulless government that doesn't care about you.
Anyway.
Fucking yeah.
Heads up.
Yep.
Is it my turn to plug your pluggables, Robert?
Yeah, please.
Please do.
You can follow Robert at iWriteOK on Twitter.
You can follow this podcast at BastardsPod.
You can also hear Robert on Worst Year Ever and our newest show, The Women's War, which has episode one on March 25th.
Look out for that.
You can follow Dan on Dan, what is your Twitch thing?
Dan?
Dan?
Dan, what is your Twitch thing?
Say it one more time.
Yeah, I know.
I want to say, yeah, yeah, I want to say it.
So you can watch Dan play cool video games at, I'm going to fuck this up.
I know it.
Can you type it to me?
No, just type it to me.
God damn it.
I'm a hack and a fraud.
I want it.
I don't want to fuck this up.
No, no.
No.
Sorry, Chris.
Okay, you can watch Dan play video games at twitch.tv slash okay, twitch.tv slash.
I fucked.
I can't do it.
I'm hiving under my table at this point.
I can't.
I can't do it.
I'm going to go look at his Twitter and see.
It's probably listed on there.
I'm so sorry, Chris.
I just wanted to plug Dan's good life.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, fuck yeah.
Okay.
You can follow.
You can watch.
Okay.
And if you want to watch somebody who's really awesome play video games, you can follow Daniel on twitch.tv at DJ underscore Daniel.
That's DJ underscore D A N L on twitch.tv.
Fucking did that shit.
Um woo.
Anyways, Robert, you want to end your own podcast?
No.
Oh, okay.
So this is the end of the podcast.
Thanks so much for listening.
Wash your hands.
Or done.
Wash your damn hands.
And burn down a moon juice.
Burn down a moon juice.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot in life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Rancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Internet Detectives Expose Hoax00:00:37
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.