Ross and Spencer compare Scotland’s cultural absorption of American media—like Jay-Z’s stumped response to a QAnon-inspired caller questioning pedophilia—to Canada’s similar struggles, where conspiracy theories like QAnon adapt globally (e.g., replacing Biden with Trudeau). They highlight Scotland’s "UFO triangle" near Bonny Bridge, dismissed as misidentified planes despite evidence, and Billy Buchanan’s alien-friend claims, mirroring Area 51 myths. The episode reveals how foreign influence reshapes local narratives, often through absurd reinterpretations of shared symbols like bagpipes or political figures, exposing the fluidity—and fragility—of cultural conspiracy frameworks. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that is creating and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
I'm Spencer, your host, and I have a special guest today.
Go ahead, introduce yourself.
I'm Ross.
Some of you might know me from Twitter, where I specialize in mocking, well, what seems to be what passes for reality with some people.
And Spencer and I have known each other for maybe about too long from there.
So that's how I come to be here with all you, with you and your lovely listeners.
No one measures time anymore.
No, absolutely.
Every year is 10 years now.
It's fine.
Definitely.
Yeah, so we're here to, we're going to talk about American influence on Scottish culture from a non-professional perspective.
We're not anthropologists.
We're not sociologists.
We're fine.
Unless you are.
In which case, you don't need to say, I don't know.
I don't know what you do, Ross.
No.
But yeah, we're just two dudes chatting.
I think that podcast name was taken is why I don't name it that.
I used to use the tagline of the podcast that I was.
It was a podcast that had a name.
What do they say?
It was a podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
It was much more clever than my current one.
The current one works.
I kind of wanted one that was more describing what we were doing, what I was actually doing here.
But yeah, after the pandemic, everyone started a podcast during the time they had off, and many of them had two episodes only, and then they stopped.
But all the names were taken, it seemed, and I was like stuck.
Yeah.
Well enough.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see if I will.
And the end, at the end of days, they'll have determined that.
So cultural influence across borders is a thing that's been on people's minds more lately, especially in Canada.
Americans who have an unspoken idea, a sort of unspoken idea that if everyone, if people in another nation act like they do, like Americans do, then that nation might as well just be America, right?
And why do we have this border between our countries when you're acting just the way we're acting?
And the only reason to have a border is so that you can act differently than we act, which is a strange.
Well, I see the look on your face.
It's a strange.
But to average ordinary people, some of them anyway, this is a thing that's across their minds, especially lately since we have experienced a person who's started to say words that were previously only a joke, which are 51st state, right?
So this is why it's generated a lot more conversations in Canada about this.
But there are similarities between Scotland and Canada, and I think we should start there.
We are both nations that share a border with more populous and economically powerful nations that Do culturally affect us and have been militarily belligerent to us in the past.
Yes, I would agree.
To different respects, right?
To different degrees, right?
But those are very direct similarities.
I think a lot of people don't think about Scotland even from here.
A lot of people don't even think of Scotland as a separate country than England.
But it is.
It has its own parliament.
It has its own leader.
By the way, I didn't bother to look up who that leader is and all that stuff.
Currently, it's still the Scottish National Party.
And I believe it's John Swinney as the current First Minister, but that might all change next year when we have another election.
The thing I love about the parliament system that we inherited from the British is it, yeah, there's someone in charge, usually a guy.
So I say a guy in charge.
But yes, someone's in charge.
But if they weren't in charge, it'd be someone else.
And there would be immediately someone else.
It wouldn't be any hesitation going, oh no.
Suddenly look around.
Who's going to be in charge?
No.
It's that old classic of nature abhors a vacuum, I think.
And it's not even like in the U.S., they have this system where they have like two people.
Yeah, yeah, we know exactly who's in charge.
The next guy's in charge.
But there's still a bunch of lag and this guy, you know, but there's, you know, we have, I don't know, Canada, 300 and some odd, you know, ministers.
They would all be in charge one after the other on down the line.
And if you were really going to try to take them all out, you know what I mean?
Like.
Yeah, it's the sort of thing.
They would just hand the conch off one to the other to the, yeah.
Yeah, in my experience, it's the sort of sort of thing where, you know, like those ideas only came up in Tom Clancy novels.
Well, okay, those ideas have roots in people who make obscenely long lists of how far down the chain you are on like things like monarchy lists and this sort of thing, right?
Which used to get much more complicated.
I think they're the few monarchies left in Europe are less related than they used to be.
Yeah.
But how complicated were those lists when you looked at, okay, in England, the monarchy has this list, and then in, you know, Spain, the monarchy has this list, and that many of the same people in both lists, but on different positions because of their, you know, and then in wherever.
I don't know, Sweden, also a list, and it's got many of the same people again, but in a different order.
Yeah.
So it's like, oh, I'm fourth on the monarchy list for England, but I'm ninth in Sweden and I'm 16th in Spain.
Like, at some point, you realize they're all inbred.
And no one's allowed to say it because they're the people in charge.
Yeah, you're not allowed to state the obvious.
This was the seed for the idea that we should have these obscenely long lists for who's in charge as to know who's next if there's a thing, right?
Yeah.
If all those people die all at once, we'll never know who's in charge.
Like, come on, man.
Someone's going to step up and be in charge.
Like, relax.
Yeah, because then, like, inside of that is you get that John Goodman film, King Ralph.
Yeah, I never did see that.
Long lost cousin who lives in the United States.
Yeah, it's like, oh, nobody else left.
The light of success would be this guy.
Yeah.
King Ralph.
Yeah, so we have these similarities between our countries.
By the way, we also have, I believe, still all under the same king, right?
We're both Commonwealth nations, as it were.
Both with a king that claims ownership of us.
I believe he's more absentee here than there.
Yeah.
I think the now, if I remember rightly, obviously you guys have been sort of similar, but they're now constitutional only.
So all they do is sign off parliamentary decrees into law.
Right.
So is there, like, we have a similar thing here, except that we have someone who's appointed to that position, a governor general.
And that's all they do is just sign it at the very end.
They check it to make sure there's no spelling mistakes, I guess.
Probably, I assume.
And then, you know, I think I heard somewhere there's a rumor that they're obligated to not allow war with other Commonwealth nations, but that's only a rumor.
No one's ever tried it, right?
I can't find it written anywhere.
And of course, the Governor General used to be in Canada, used to be someone from England.
This used to be a position that was appointed given to high-ranking people until this became, I think it actually stopped in the 50s.
This became a thing where Canada went, no, screw off.
We're going to have our own governor general.
We'll get to that.
You'll appoint them.
You'll appoint who we say you appoint.
How about that?
You don't have to pay any attention to us.
Yeah, but that's better.
It makes you guys should be more in charge of your own stuff because it still took years before we could make our own laws according to our own thing because we didn't have our own constitution.
That's a strange thing.
Well, it's a strange country, but we're not here to talk about all Canadian history.
We're tired to talk about this.
But the king actually signs off?
He doesn't have a governor general that is appointed.
No, no, it's the that's what the two houses of parliament act as so the head.
Yeah, yeah, we have the two houses.
Yeah, so it's pretty much, I believe it's your guy's system similar to our system.
Yeah, yeah, we essentially just copied the British system.
Yeah.
I think lots of people did, or we exported it to them by force, which was yeah, yeah.
Well, it was given to us without a choice, right?
The same with Australia, and I believe the same thing is true for New Zealand.
I haven't looked in there, I'm pretty sure.
A couple other African nations, I'm sure, do the exact same thing for that same reason.
I didn't bother to look up who.
Yeah, I think it's one of those ones.
If it's not immediately a pressing thing on you, you maybe don't forget.
Yeah, this system works good enough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like we don't go into the flaws with it because that will take too long.
And then we're too picky.
So it's like, yeah, it works.
Yeah, if it works.
Yeah.
And it works.
Yeah.
And nothing particularly oppressing about the system unless they guarantee that their influence is pushed through the system, which it doesn't really allow for that.
No, I think that's one of the sort of bits that they like to claim their independence and things like that.
Yeah.
They try to say like, oh, no, they can't do X and Y.
We don't do it here the same way they do it there and other such.
Yeah, there's differences.
I think Australia, they vote in their senators, the upper house, as it were.
Our senators are appointed for life, which is, I think, similar.
I believe this is the analog of what's in England called the House of Lords.
Yes.
Which was essentially a compromise that had to be made when they first made this system.
They're like, okay, we're going to have representation from the people, but the Lords have got to have some power here, right?
Like, where are these guys fitting in?
We can't just tell these guys to go retire.
So, okay, well, you can just review it and sign off.
Like, okay, don't cause a lot of fuss.
And then in Canada, we're like, we don't have any lords.
Who are we going to have sit in this extra house?
And no one went, no one needs that.
Like, okay, okay.
Well, we'll just appoint them the way they appoint them there and just, I don't know.
Yeah.
But I think that's that's a good thing because I know it is something that we've been trying to reform for years because if they're not appointed, the other side is it's inherited.
Yeah, yeah, that's just that's another conversation inheriting political positions is something we try to get away from.
Yeah, yeah, because that's never worked out badly.
No, no, as many flaws as democracy has, it's still not locked to a potentially insane family line.
Yeah, yeah, and having looked at some of the other alternatives, no, I'm good, thanks.
Yeah, we've seen a lot of the alternatives already.
Yeah, yeah, well, we'll muddle through.
Tell you what, it's a lot of work, but we'll muddle through.
Yeah, it's not, it's not broken, so we don't need to fix it.
It's not perfect, and you know what?
It's fine, it doesn't need to be perfect.
Yeah, we're not these crazy people now who are talking about going back to monarchies and whatever.
Yeah, particularly we're not doing that.
That's not happening.
No.
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
Especially when you were founded as being anti-that.
No, I don't think that's going to work, guys.
Sorry.
Hate to be, you know, the put in the party pooper.
So back to our topic now that we've meandered off significantly.
We have a situation where, you know, you've had a culture in Scotland, your own culture for a very long time, and you have it is much older than Canada's nation and culture, if you don't count all the Indigenous people.
Right.
So in Canada, we have this situation where some people are trying to give actual, you know, full set of recognition to Indigenous people.
Other people are trying to just claim the length of time they were here as some kind of cultural rights to it lasting for tens of thousands of years.
And other people are just trying to ignore the idea that they're here at all or ever were.
And it's this complicated situation we deal with.
You are the Indigenous people of your nation.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
There was, you weren't, I mean, someone could almost say that England tried to colonize you at various points, but it's not exactly, and also maybe that the Scandinavians tried to colonize you at various points.
And the Irish were another one that tried that as well.
Well, they didn't do so with military force, right?
They just kind of showed up, didn't they?
I think there were more Vikings in disguise at one point.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Part of Irish history I need to read more about.
And then I seem to, the other bit I seem to remember is obvious that like various bits in history have caused a lot of them because obviously there was that bond to well yeah when they had to leave for famine and this sort of thing they were like they were like well we we don't we can't afford to go very far well where's that leave us well glasgow was a lot closer than boston and i'm no geographer yeah they're like they're like ain't no way i'm living in bristol let's Let's go to Glasgow.
Yeah.
We've more in common with them.
They like drinking just as much.
So let's do this.
Yeah, yeah.
We both hate the British.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Common ground already.
Yeah.
Cousin.
Absolutely.
It's a great foundation on which to build.
Yeah.
Hatred of another group.
That's common bond.
Kind of similar to what we did when a lot of our people obviously then came and brought you guys, you know, when we weren't fighting with the French and the Indigenous and other such conflicts.
Well, that's another thing we should talk about is that we have a province that, I mean, I'm from the West generally.
I've lived my whole life in Western Canada.
Canada is a very, very large nation.
I'm almost further from Nova Scotia than Nova Scotia is from you.
Yeah.
And Nova Scotia named specifically as New Scotia, they have very strong ties to Scottish culture.
So when I say some things about how far removed my view is from Scotland, people from Nova Scotia might definitely have a different view.
We don't have to have anyone from Nova Scotia here today, so they'll have to start their own podcast where they talk about this.
They'll call you up.
I'll give them your number.
They'll call you.
Fair enough.
Right.
You might have a whole slew of them.
Every province might want to have its say.
We'll see where this goes.
Yeah, it might finally be in demand.
Hey, whatever.
But when we view, when people from around my parts of Canada anyway, when we view a place like Scotland, we picture like two things and maybe like a mishmash of two things.
So it's either Braveheart or just America with an accent.
Like we picture that every place is just like it is in every other place like here and also the United States.
You know, like Edinburgh probably looks a lot like, I don't know, Minneapolis or something, right?
Like pick any Midwest city, right?
It's cold in the winter.
It's fairly wet.
It's the buildings are tall downtown, right?
And they're not as tall everywhere else.
Yeah, right.
I mean, one of the things that I, because there's a, like, one of the links that where I am live close to has is, obviously, as we were saying about exporting people from us to you.
One of the towns was the ancestral homeland of somebody that you might know from Western Canada's history, a man by the name of Tommy Douglas.
Other people might know.
Tommy motherfucking Douglas was in 20 years ago, we had a very big, the CBC had a very big poll as to who was the greatest Canadian ever.
And my vote for Greatest Canadian made it number two behind Tommy Douglas.
Someday we're coming for you for number one, Tommy Douglas.
I'm in the Terry Fox camp.
We're starting a campaign.
The next time in 80 years comes around, we'll vote it in and no one better than Terry Fox or Tommy Douglas is ever coming around.
I think maybe we just need to wait until the grandson is not an issue for the greatest.
Peter Sutherland?
Yes.
It's a very short case.
Canadians are very proud of the fact that Tommy Douglas's grandson became famous.
Understandable.
Donald Sutherland, not a son of Tommy Douglas, a son-in-law of Tommy Douglas.
Just want to clarify that in case anyone's confused about the family tree that we eventually make of the royal line of Tommy Douglas.
We're not about to become the Habsburgs.
Don't worry, folks.
No, no.
You can marry into the Tommy Douglas bloodline.
Julie Roberts missed her chance.
Sorry, Julia.
You ran away from that wedding altar.
Sorry, you had your chance.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, she didn't do too badly.
Yeah, yeah, she made out.
So, yeah, now that we've got all the other jokes out of the way, let's get back to our real topic here.
This is fun, though.
This is fun.
Well, it's just two people shooting the shit.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's good.
And you almost made it sound like you say that all the time.
That's great.
That's really, yeah.
Frequently, yeah.
So we have Tommy Douglas.
You brought that up and then I ranted with it.
Where were you going with Tommy Douglas?
Well, he is from a town that's near where I was born and brought up and I still live.
So because it used to be back when a lot of these were sort of like minor mining towns or foundries.
And he was obviously, so we actually even have, and there's a local landmark nearby that has a bust of Tommy Douglas because obviously they want to keep that kind of link going.
And obviously, you know, they're proud of some exports.
So be proud of the ones you should be proud of.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're not proud of Jordan Peterson.
At least I'm not.
That's perfectly fair.
I mean, Kermit the Frog's a much better Muppet.
But Keanu Reeves, yeah, we'll accept him.
Yeah.
Yeah, that works perfectly.
And for that matter, you know what?
I don't care what anyone says.
I'm proud of Pamela Anderson.
She left.
She did her thing.
She came back.
She has a gardening show here now.
It's a big jump up from home improvement.
But again, maybe I'm showing my age.
Well, she was never on home improvement.
No, she was.
She was Lisa, one of the tool type girls on home improvement.
Was she?
Oh, my God.
I never.
Oh, I have to cruise that.
Granted, it was like, you know, the mid-90s.
So I can understand why you don't remember.
But yeah.
Well, because many people from Western Canada anyway, who care more about this, we proudly have told the tale for decades of our beautiful young lady who gets discovered and gets in a Budweiser commercial and then from there goes on to be in the one of the biggest shows on television in which people are seen in bikinis.
And she's among the ones who are in showing in bikinis.
She's the number one of them by many standards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, yeah, that was a thing that when I was younger in the 90s and whatnot, that was the thing people talked about.
Hey, hey, she's from just down the road.
Like, she's big, big time, you know, like little Canada that points out their celebrities.
No, no, no.
That one, that one right there.
No, no, not that one.
That other one right there.
Yeah.
I mean, again, if we if we have to claim, you know, obviously all the people that have gone bad, then technically we have to claim, you know, him that we will not name, i.e. the man who's creating a lot of 51st state-based problems.
He wasn't born there.
No, but his mother was.
Well, okay, okay.
Then you're getting down the family tree some more.
All right.
Well, you know, does the soil that you're born on matter?
According to them, it does.
So then it absolves you of any responsibility.
To the point that we've made our feelings very clear, and I think we continue to make them clear every time he comes back to visit one of his men.
Yeah, his golf course.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's one of these things.
It reminds me of it's a small world and we're all human.
So we're all, yeah, any one of us could become terrible or angelic based on our decisions.
So make good decisions.
That's the key.
Yeah, definitely.
I would agree with that.
So when we, when everyone just thinks that you're, I mean, would you, do you think of yourselves as being as being influenced by cultures of these places, you know what I mean?
Like, is that part of a conversation that you have?
Do you have parts of your conversation where, you know, we need to, we need to hold on to our own culture.
Yeah.
I think it's definitely a thing that we can do because obviously we guys export a lot of it, but we also spin in the same culture, a lot of hotels and a lot of other in the world because obviously, you know, your neighbor to the south exports so much of it.
And it eventually gets over here.
Or in some cases, you know, you guys or we do it first and then they just import it and copy it.
So it's all ways.
Yeah.
So we have this sitcom conundrum, right?
Where you have, you'll have sitcoms, you'll have TV shows.
You probably have TV shows from the United States, right?
And also England.
Yeah.
And then you probably have some of your own.
Yeah.
And then, you know, maybe many of your own don't make it past your own border.
They're just shown to you.
Yeah.
Sometimes no one else knows them.
I think that's maybe one of the wonders of the internet now is that obviously people can look up a lot of these things and discover them for themselves.
But yeah, when you maybe explain to them what it's like, they just sort of look at you like, no, we never got that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Obviously, you know, through the miracles of video sharing platforms like YouTube, for example, you can just then look it up and go, right.
At some point, there'll be, in some cases, come out, go, oh, yeah, I remember that.
I used to be on the TV like really late at night in, you know, like where I grew up.
And you're like, see, we are more connected closer than we might think.
Yeah.
Canada has in the past at times looked at this close association with America as at least from an entertainment perspective as an opportunity.
Like we look at the musical acts, the bands or whatever, and the TV shows that have made it big elsewhere as being ones that are somehow elevated, even though they're in some ways no better than the other ones that didn't make it.
It seems to be a grab bag as to which ones become, you know, make it past that seemingly thin barrier, but to some influences, it is an insurmountable barrier.
They're unable to, I don't know, get the right representation or get the right thugs to beat up radio DJs to get their songs played or however it works down there.
We don't really know.
I mean, I think of some of the, like, some things that are, that start off British, I mean, like, if you're familiar with space, that's like one of the examples that always sticks in my brain is how we made it here.
It was a very cult thing.
And then I believe it was exported to the US where they made, they tried to obviously like Americanize it and it fell flat in its face.
And it's like good because there's nothing wrong with the original, which gave us lots of careers.
Like, for example, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Jessica Stevenson, who were three of the main stars, writers, producers, and directors behind it.
So it's like sometimes things go and fall and fail.
And it's like, yeah, that's a good thing in some of these cases.
It's possible that they don't like your accent.
That is possible.
I mean, Sean Connery can only do so much for one small nation of, you know, nearly six million people in the world.
Yeah.
And I think we've done a lot, you know, in the past, we've done a lot of damage, you know, under other flags, shall we say.
So it's maybe better that we just say nothing in some cases.
Yeah.
Well, and I, you indicated to me, I'll let people know, you indicated to me before we hit the record button that you were worried that your accent would be difficult.
To my ear, it's not.
I'll let you know.
Maybe, maybe some people are like, oh, I, you know, skip or whatever.
I don't know.
But there are some accents, some people who speak from Scotland that I see in TikTok or whatever that I can't understand.
Yeah, it's the beauty of subtitles.
But again, it's one of the things that I've always found is that anybody, wherever you are in the world, seems to be able to understand the Sean Connery voice.
And it's one of the bits I always find is, you know, where there's an S, add an H, and you've got an Connery.
Yeah.
So, and then you can be whatever you want, as we were talking about beforehand.
So, you know, you could even be, you know, an ancient Egyptian slash Spaniard in medieval Scotland.
But enough about Highlander.
Yeah, well, you know, Highlander, Highlander was a way to, you know, it's a vehicle from which we understood some things about Scotland and in the past.
That is a major system.
We could hear all about the bagpipes and the kilt, but to actually see them used on the screen for us really brought it home to a lot of people, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's like, oh, right.
So that's what, oh, okay.
So that's how they used to use them.
But again, that's, I think that's one of our bits is like when you get into the whole bagpipes discussion, it turns out that they have history even further afield in other places around the world.
Like I think one of the ones I remember reading was like India or something like that has a connection to them.
And you're just like, okay.
India has a connection to the guitar too.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, the first electric guitar was definitely in America.
So fuck it, I guess.
I don't know.
They improved it.
What do you want?
I don't know.
So it's like if they improve it, they can claim it as their own.
In that way, instruments are then memes, right?
You take them, you improve them, and then you push them on.
Yeah, definitely.
Maybe like the original sort of form of the meme.
Yeah, yeah.
But I love it.
I wouldn't reverse history to get rid of the electric guitar for anything.
No.
No, absolutely not.
Because then nothing like about.
We would never have the who.
Yeah.
And that's, you know, I couldn't imagine a world without that.
You know, for starters, obviously, all those great, you know, albums of music.
Then, you know, like Simpsons episodes where they appear and things like that.
So, you know, do it for the Simpsons.
Yeah, I mean, I might be slightly less brain poisoned as a result, but we're going to have to suffer through that.
We're going to, we're going to, that's just, that's just part of it.
That's just part of it.
Yeah, that's just, that's just the soup that, you know, that goes through.
We're in the stew.
That's just part of the stew, man.
Yeah, absolutely.
So speaking of part of the stew, a big reason why I want to do these influences of America on other countries is to talk about conspiracy ideas in other countries.
Like one, one thing that's kind of, you know, this, this whole idea, I meant to do many of these.
So far, this is only the second of these that I've done.
So I have big dreams.
Someday I might get there.
But it occurred to me that among people who try to push conspiracies, conspiracy ideas about Canada, they're not unique.
No.
They're just exact carbon copies of conspiracies from south of the border that sometimes they substitute other names for.
And that's the only difference.
It's just a form of a conspiracy.
And you just, instead of filling in Joseph Biden, you put in Justin Trudeau at the top.
It's infinitely customizable.
Yeah.
And that's all it is.
It's the exact same thing, but with Joe Biden scratched out and Justin Trudeau written over top.
And then that was what I was seeing.
And then I was like, well, that's exactly like what a lot of Canadian sitcoms were was like an American sitcom, but with like, you know, it happens in Toronto instead of in New York or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like that's, so it's just, it's the same idea just done here instead of there.
So I mean, I think like that would be one of the main ones is you and I sort of both know is how obviously QAnon's an American thing.
Yes.
So popular outside of America and all these countries.
Yeah, which makes it super weird.
And you're just gives a super weird sense of like, how does that make sense?
But I think some of that maybe ties back to Scotland to a degree in, and this will be one that you might recognize.
Freemasonry?
There's various names throughout.
Yeah, well, that's much older, right?
The stigma about Freemasons has started.
I mean, it also was present in London, England, many years ago, probably exported from there.
Pretty much, wherever British people go, Freemasonry tends to go with them.
And thus, as a result, the conspiracism.
I don't even, I don't want to, like, I, because I don't know the true history.
Like, maybe Freemasonry began in Europe somewhere outside England too.
I don't even know, right?
It's supposed to be this kind of like a on the outside anyway, like a brotherhood of people that want to, you know, get together to do good for their communities and whatever.
And I'm like, oh, great.
Okay.
My understanding, although limited, is it's kind of like an early form of trade union advocacy.
Yeah.
You know, like all the builders.
Which in the age where people were trying to push back against unions, this would explain why they had some level of secrecy involved.
And then that secrecy in turn is a thing that other people later say, you know, why do they got to be so secret?
Yeah, totally.
What are they building in there?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Anything that you don't understand, it seems rather.
Anything that's behind the curtain is like anything could be behind that curtain.
They could have an elephant back there.
We have no idea.
Bring the elephant out here for me to see.
Yeah, and then it's like, oh, there is no elephant.
It's like, yeah, yeah.
No, you're lying.
There's definitely children in the basement right now.
You're lying.
We have no basement, sir.
Yes.
I know there's a basement.
Bring me to save the children.
I did this so that I could save the children.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
And yet, he'll because that's obviously one of the ones that's quite strange just now is obviously watching a lot of the Epstein stuff and how they, you know, how a lot of these people who came up, you know, like who started off with this whole like save the children sort of angle complete 180s and are now like ah, yeah, look, we've got other things.
You know, like that was yesterday's news.
The very uh, well, okay, I don't want to time stamp this too much, but a fairly recent episode of this podcast that I did was one in which I played a clip of someone.
Do you know who Dean Withers is?
He's an American younger guy, does a lot of debates against right-wingers.
The name rings a bell.
He's known for being kind of like a babyface and having a memory that can reel off facts for huge human things, right?
The Jay-Z.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he does kind of like a essentially like a call-in show, but he kind of puts clips on TikTok and whatever.
And where he encourages people who are pro-Trumpers to call in and then he'll live debunk them kind of thing, right?
And it's just, it's a show, you know.
But someone called in and they legit just said, is pedophilia even wrong?
Like, tell me why it's wrong.
And he was like, you know, like he prepares for all the political stuff, but he wasn't prepared for that.
He was stumped.
Like, he caught flat footed.
I shouldn't say he was stumped.
He was caught flat-footed.
He was like, what do you even mean?
Like, he was, and it was this moment of like, what's happening for him?
And you could see it on his face.
Like, what is this even?
Yeah.
And, and this was so, you know, I did an episode where I we showed it, we explained the thing, and then we said, gave all the reasons.
Yeah, totally.
This is the reason.
And there might even be more than this.
Yeah.
But like, at least these, whatever, six reasons.
Like, yeah, this is wrong.
Don't do this.
Don't, this is not a thing you should encourage people to do by this soft measure of, is it even wrong?
Like, how dangerous is that?
But this is weird that they come to this point where they were in this to save the children.
And now we have some of them saying, well, what would you know?
Essentially, that would lead to what would we be saving them from?
Yeah, totally.
Which is like, what, what?
Why?
And I think if you're not in that mindset or that headspace, you just can't get your head around, you know, like the different logical flips and like, you know, the gymnastics that they'll have to do for that.
Then you're just like, yeah, this is.
Yeah, if you don't understand how it is that they can get there, what is their true guiding stone, right?
I mean, I consider QAnon, I describe it as a system of continual reinterpretation of events.
Yeah.
So, so that around a fixed set of principles.
And we might be told at first, like on the surface, that that set of principles is about, like you say, saving children, but that's not at all its fixed set of principles.
Its fixed set of principles is about elevating Donald Trump.
Yeah.
Essentially, that the man can do no wrong ever, which this turn fits in with that because if they have to approach and accept the reality that he did do some terrible things, then they have to say it's not terrible.
And that perfectly fits in with a continual reinterpretation of events around that fixed set of principles.
Yeah.
Which is, it's not like people think it's hypocritical, but it's not hypocritical because you just have the wrong measure of what is important to them.
Yeah, totally.
I mean, the whole like the religiosity around, you know, like the, you know, the initial, you know, like the 2016 sort of election of him when all of his previous, you know, like the things that don't make him or any normal person would go, he's not religious.
Yet so many of them were able to go, oh no, he was chosen by God.
It's like, he's so religious.
He's so religious.
Yeah.
That we're on a track and he's so far ahead of you on the track that it looks like he's behind you because he's lapping you.
He's so religious.
Yeah, totally.
That's the, you're just, it's just a confusion of the situation and it's your confusion, not mine.
And we know because we know and we know and that's that's all we need.
But then it's that hidden knowledge that, you know, like it's so fundamental to conspiracy conspiracism that they're like, yeah, there's unknown things and I know the unknown things and you don't.
And that explains why you think a thing that I don't think and everything's fine.
Yeah.
Completely.
And you're just like, ah, this is making my head hurt.
Okay.
Yeah.
Just, you know, like exist in your own little bubble and or your own little reality and everything will be fine.
So does Scotland have, like, are there any like Scottish conspiracy notions?
Is there any that have come up that are like, no, this could only happen in Scotland or whatever?
I think if I think on that, it's not, it's not something that I've really thought about before because obviously as we've said, a lot of them are, you know, like a salad bowl.
Direct imports from.
Yeah.
But I mean, obviously one of the ones that we have got or that we've had in various sort of stages is a unidentified aerial phenomenon or UA or UAP.
Yeah.
Right.
So we had a thing in the, I think it was maybe like the mid to late 90s where, again, a lot of one of the towns nearby, a lot of people thought that it was a haven for UFOs.
And it was just one of these ones where it was like, you know, so no matter how much you try to say to them, well, look, there's private airports nearby.
So, you know, they'll get flights in and out, you know, at maybe all times of the day and night.
And, you know, like, it was one of those kind of things that the ever-shifting set of goalposts.
So whatever you then tried to use to challenge these people go for these are not UFOs.
They would just move it on.
And so, I mean, like my sort of classic one would be lifting slightly from like Bill Hicks has a bit about how UFOs travel, you know, like unlimited distances across the galaxy and they end up in, you know, like places like, say, Fife, Alabama was one of Bill's books.
Yeah.
You like to pick on Alabama a lot.
Yeah.
And obviously I'm guessing he spent a lot of time there.
But that's similar to like what we have.
He might have just not liked Hicks.
Bill Hicks, I think, hated Hicks.
But that was a thing for him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've written a lot of his stuff and I think that's a general theme.
Oh, hold on.
So apologies for technical difficulties.
Yeah, yeah.
We had a little break there, figured it out, came back.
But you were just explaining about uh, there was a town with the ups and people saying they see, saw stuff yeah yeah, so the town of Bonny Bridge is is near where I am and that was the center of the of the Scotland's?
U Central Scotland's Ufo triangle um, and a lot of.
From what I remember, a lot of the stories seemed to begin with, oh, it was, it was late friday night and I was just coming out of the pub when and then they had obviously so they've obviously been sourced looked up, seen maybe like a plane or a police helicopter or something like that with the lights and thought oh, it's a ufo.
And it got to the point that one of the guys, the guy who was the local counsellor, used to talk about having an alien friend and he actually recorded.
Uh, he recorded like a single and like this guy's like, quite famous in the local area or infamous is maybe a better word, but yeah, like and like the single was called.
So the guy the, the boy's name, the guy's name is Billy Buchanan.
Oh wow, I might have even heard of that name, quite possibly, and I think it was.
Uh, but he came out with a cd single called Billy and the Little Green Men, and he talked about how he had like a sort of an alien friend, slash guardian angel.
And my parents have got a copy of this cd single somewhere in the house because they were friends with him.
He used to.
He was quite active in the local sort of like fitness and running scene, as were my parents, so it's what it's worth.
So i'll need to get it and like listen to it at some point, maybe like see if I can upload it onto the internet.
You essentially have like a like a would-be influencer looking for some level of fame stardom, latching himself onto a local urban legend type of thing.
Yeah, but the scary thing boosts it to a much bigger level.
Scary thing was like this guy didn't this was obviously pre-influencer, didn't need to be an influencer because he was like a local politician no, but he did want his star to be bigger than it was.
Yeah, definitely wanted to, like you know, be bigger, bigger than his like allege in his own tea time.
But it was just like okay, but that was the time when obviously, like all that stuff was blown up, people were really into it.
It was Pre-rex Files and stuff like that.
You were just like and looking back on it now, like it's even got, it's got an entry on rational WIKI about it yeah, like about the Bonny Bridge Triangle, and you're just like yeah yeah, all right, fair enough, lads, but yeah, I mean, it ties in with the whole, like as we're saying, like that whole Bill Hex bit.
But you know, like alien, come all this way to visit small town in Alabama yeah, or or small town in Scotland, and they go nah, they're not ready for us, we'll just go back.
Yeah okay, fair enough.
But yeah, it's it.
And I think yes, so it's a strange thing, but it just goes to show you like you know how tied in a lot of it was with you know, like all these cultural phenomenon, like from Area 51.
It was like, all right yeah, we want a slice of that.
And you're just like, yeah, yeah, how this is a like a layer of culture now that gets brought across along with clothing, style of building, music, all the rest.
This is one of the video games or whatever you want to have.
Yeah, you could just take it from localize it.
And you're just like, yeah, just a new coat of paint.
It's our thing.
These were aliens in kilts, man.
What do you want?
Yeah, totally.
You're just like, okay.
Yeah, guys.
I don't have the energy to argue this with you.
So, yeah, okay.
If that's what makes you happy, go for it.
Yeah.
So to the best of my knowledge, you don't have like media that you push.
You just have a Twitter account.
Yes.
I am dangerous enough with Twitter and Blue Sky, to be honest.
Although Twitter is mostly for reposting these days.
Well, you want to, just as we're wrapping up here, give us what those are.
If anybody wants to find me, they can find me on Twitter.
I refuse to call it X at an all lowercase a restless native.
So that's obviously just as it's spelt.
And on Blue Sky, it's pretty much the same handle, but with.bsky.social at the end of that.
And it's mostly attempts at jokes and sarcasm and just like me trying to make sense of the planet.
Well, we don't use the expression here much, but I have come to understand that it is an expression there that you're very often taking the piss.
Yeah.
Just a pad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not in this case, not with you.
No, no, but on social media when you're there.
Yeah, yeah.
Usually, whenever there's the smirking emoji at the end of a remark, that's me taking the piss, or that's me making a joke.
And that's quite commonly used.
Yeah.
So on Twitter, again, not going to call it anything else.
I'm Spencer G. Watson there.
Spencer Watson on Blue Sky with all the other things that go on the end there.
Dodd P Sky, whatever.
I don't even know.
And if anyone has any questions, comments, complaints, concerns about anything they hear on this podcast, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.