“Jaw Clench Study Takes Tax Dollars,” United Press International cautioned in 1975. “‘Shrimp On A Treadmill’: Rand Paul Mocks National Science Foundation Studies,” Forbes reported in 2021. “Gov't waste report finds $400K spent to give lonely rats cocaine: 'Absurd',” Fox News told viewers in 2024. 

According to these headlines, a wasteful, woke liberal government has been squandering taxpayer money on something wholly undeserving: frivolous scientific studies. Tens of thousands to millions of dollars, we’re told, are being handed out like candy so scientists can sit around watching monkeys clench their jaws, putting shrimp on treadmills, and give cocaine to rats. And who gets to choose which studies are funded? Wasteful ultra woke organizations like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Health and Human Services. 

It’s true that some research doesn’t end up having much practical relevance––indeed this is the nature of scientific inquiry! There are sometimes cul-de-sacs and wrong paths. But the majority of the time, studies that are trivialized in media and on the Senate floor aren’t superfluous at all. 

While soundbites like “shrimp on a treadmill” might paint a ridiculous picture, they’re also taken out of context, obscuring the scientific merit and moral import of the research and researchers, who work for years on often obscure, tedious lines of inquiry only to have their lives’ work reduced to a cheap punchline by bad-faith demagogues playing to the public’s ignorance and lizard brain impulses. 

So, why is this media and political punchline so popular? And what’s the agenda of the lawmakers and media organizations that denigrate and misrepresent research and science more broadly, and the larger current of conspicuous anti-intellectualism that has always been present in American political culture, but in the last ten years has entirely taken over the modern American Right? 

On this episode, we discuss the decades-old, anti-intellectual gambit of mocking and attacking the “frivolous study,” examining how it warps and devalues science and international cooperation in a broader effort to defund public institutions, both scientific and otherwise.

Our guest is Brenda Ekwurzel, Senior Director of Scientific Excellence at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Ep 221: Anti-Science Mugging on the Right and the Ascent of American Anti-Intellectualism

“Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won,” states The New York Times' Ezra Klein Show. “Democratic strategist issues ‘hard truth’ to party members after losing election,” CNN tells viewers. “This Is Why Kamala Harris Really Lost,” writes Eric Levitz for Vox.

Since the 2024 presidential election, elite Democrats and the pundits in their orbits have taken to newspapers, podcasts, and cable channels to attempt to explain why Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won. Chief among the explanations is this one: Democrats became controlled and overtaken by the "Wokes," becoming overly concerned with pronouns and political correctness, too soft on immigration and crime, while the electorate drifted to the right and that, to win the future, Democrats have to––alas, and with the putative heavy heart––go right with them.

Instead of contending with how the Democratic Party has abandoned a working class composed of all races and gender identities, chased big money and been overtaken by venal PR flacks and lawyers, Democratic party officials, big donor funded “pollsters,” “strategists,” and elite media have done what they’ve always done whenever there's an alleged “soul searching” in the Democratic party: scapegoated vulnerable people, insisted on a fixed, intrinsically conservative voting base and repackaging what is simply a newer version of corporate-friendly status quo liberalism.

On this episode, part one of a two-part series we’re calling "The Empire Strikes First,” we examine how party elites sought, before the election was even called on the night of November 5, 2024: to control the narrative and maintain their status and power within the party, blaming everyone but themselves, relying on tortured data and transparently self-serving conclusions which permit them to continue their longstanding process of justifying elite-serving, center-right policy, feigning Deep Concern for the preferences of Joe Six Pack, all while making sure their “consultant” gravy train chugs along unabated.

Our guest is UC-Berkeley professor Jake Grumbach.

The Empire Strikes First Part I: Party Elites Who Lost to Trump (Twice) Blame Everyone But Themselves

In this public News Brief, we break down the selling of an unpopular, disastrous war in record speed. 

News Brief: Pundits Speed-run 15 months of Iraq War Propaganda for Iran in Five Days

In this News Brief, we are joined by Ashley Bohrer and Ben Teller of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago to discuss media indifference to the US and Israel-imposed starvation of Palestinians, how sectarianism is central to the ADL's strategy, and why six JVP activists have decided to hunger strike to draw more attention to the Israeli and US-made famine in Gaza.

News Brief: Natural Disaster-izing the Deliberate US-Israeli Starvation Campaign in Gaza

We talk to investigative journalist Jack Poulson (https://jackpoulson.substack.com/) about the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's roots in private equity, mercenary firms, private intelligence outfits, and intelligence agents in the US & Israel.

Hit the tip line: (646) 801-1129 | tips@trueanon.com

Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com

Episode 475: GHF

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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We talk through the curious revelations from the Wall Street Journal’s expose on Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, how it’s tearing MAGA apart, and the omni-lurking lady Loomer. Plus: Jerome Powell, Pulte, and Trump’s war on the dollar. 

Hit the tip line: (646) 801-1129 | tips@trueanon.com

Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com


Episode 476: Wonderful Secrets (trailer)

Episode 225: How US Media Frames Democracy that Actually Helps People as "Buying Votes"

There isn’t yet a tariff on conspiracist narratives. So former Daily Wire podcaster Candace Owens imported one from France. Which is why she now finds herself the subject of a serious lawsuit filed by the French President Emmanuel Macron and the First Lady Brigitte Macron. 

Owens used Instagram influencer aesthetics to recycle a 2021 theory for American audiences that was originally promoted by a French spiritual medium and spread through “Yellow Vest” and antivax networks. For some reason, Owens wasn’t satisfied with the genuinely odd history of the Macrons’ relationship (they met when Brigitte was married with children and Emmanuel was just 14, despite most American sources claiming they met when he was 15.) Instead she picked up the convoluted conspiracy theory that Brigitte is really her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux who became a trans woman and proceeded to assist with turning Emmanuel into an MKULTRA-controlled “Manchurian Candidate.” In Owen’s ludicrous tale, the Macrons then killed anyone who started asking questions about Brigitte’s past, Clinton-body-count style. But since this nonsense is powered by crude bigotry rather than any investigatory impulse, the evidence is unsurprisingly weak. Owens’ method of argumentation involves ignoring the fact that Jean-Michel Trogneux is clearly alive and a separate person, looking at real photos and declaring them fake, and birthday numerology. 

Travis, Jake, and Julian unpack Owens’ past, the history of the conspiracy theory, how she promoted it through the 8-part series “Becoming Brigitte,” and the lawsuit that now threatens her independent media empire.


Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/qaa


Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

https://qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

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We’ve launched a new podcast miniseries network: Cursed Media. The very first Cursed Media miniseries is Science in Transition. 

Science in Transition is an investigation into the intellectual origins of the contemporary right wing backlash against transgender acceptance. Through six deeply-researched episodes, hosts Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows unearth a bizarre coalition of well-meaning clinicians, aristocratic sexologists, militant feminists, right-wing culture warriors, headline-chasing journalists, and conservative politicians.

Binge all six episodes of Science In Transition by subscribing through this link.

www.cursedmedia.net/

Subscribers to Cursed Media get access to three new podcast series per year, plus every episode of QAA’s existing mini-series (properly organized!)

////


Becoming Candace (E335)

Journalist and author Seth Harp returns to the pod to talk about his horrifying and expansive new book The Fort Bragg Cartel. We talk with Seth about America’s forever-war machine and the global drug empire it empowers, with a special focus on the case of Delta Force officer William Lavigne, who killed his best friend before turning up dead near Fort Bragg in a still-unsolved murder. We also discuss the rise of JSOC, the third Iraq War and its ongoing ramifications, the US military’s ties with the brutal Los Zetas cartel, and the eternal shadow war waged in the name of empire.

Buy Seth’s book here (and give it 5 stars on Amazon!): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/ 
And follow him on X at @sethharpesq


961 - The Dogs of War feat. Seth Harp (8/18/25)

Chapo Senior Foreign Policy correspondent Derek Davison is back once again to talk about the escalating possibility of war in Venezuela. We discuss the recent strike on a Venezuelan boat by Trump and his newly-Christened Department of War, a botched raid into North Korea, our collapsing relationship with India, China’s SCO summit with Russia, and conflict on the Thai-Cambodia border. Plus: a Matt Christman prediction comes true…

Find all of Derek’s foreign policy coverage at:
www.foreignexchanges.news
www.americanprestigepod.com

967 - Whitehat feat. Derek Davison (9/8/25)

Will Sommer of The Bulwark returns to Chapo to talk about the right’s reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk as well as his funeral proceedings in Arizona. We recap the Groyper War that preceded the assassination and the pressure it put on Kirk to move right, as well as the conspiracies surrounding his shooting. Was Israel involved? Why was there no exit wound? Did Charlie have a late-in-life conversion to Catholicism? And which faction of the right will be able to define the man’s legacy?

Follow Will Sommer on Twitter/X: https://x.com/willsommer 

971 - The Years of Whatever feat. Will Sommer (9/22/25)

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

The Empire Strikes First Part I: Party Elites Who Lost to Trump (Twice) Blame Everyone But Themselves

Citations Needed Podcast