nonymous big impact! Elevate your music now! 🚀🎤 -  insclife

A murderous "witch doctor" from South Africa and the ritual killing of teenagers and children. Basically the perfect script for Italian Americans to write. Jake, Julian and Liv tackle a listener submission: 2023's The Ritual Killer. The film has an inexplicably stacked cast: Morgan Freeman, Cole Hauser, Vernon Davis, Peter Stormare... and guess what? It's a masterpiece. No idea why it bombed.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

Liv Agar: http://livagar.com / http://linktr.ee/livagar

Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Premium Episode 229: The Ritual Killer (2023) Movie Night (Sample)

There are many reasons why Gatorade became the king of sports drinks. It had a compelling origin story. Its partnership with the NFL led to the iconic “Gatorade Dunk,” where celebrating athletes would pour a giant container of Gatorade over their coach. There was the hugely successful “Be Like Mike” advertising campaign, which featured Michael Jordan sipping Gatorade. But one of the reasons is the belief that Gatorade is a science-backed product. To secure this belief, Gatorade’s owners helped establish the Gatorade Sports Science Institute.

On these two episodes of Trickle Down, we’ll explore how Gatorade influenced the science of hydration on the way to becoming a multi-billion dollar brand.


Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAA

Theme by Nick Sena (https://nicksenamusic.com). Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

https://qanonanonymous.com



REFERENCES

Wikipedia: Elixir of Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_of_life

Fitzgerlad, Mattt. Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of Us (2014)

Rovell, Darren. First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon (2005)
Noakes, Timothy. Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports (2012)

Noakes, Timothy.  THE HYPONATREMIA OF EXERCISE
https://www.crossfit.com/essentials/the-hyponatremia-of-exercise-part-1

Cleveland Clinic: Electrolytes 
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/21790-electrolytes

Trickle Down Episode 11: The Elixir of Life Part 1 (Sample)

Dating! In an app! What could go wrong? We check in with listeners, Liv, and Jake to answer that question. Our guest is comedian and author Jamie Loftus!

For access to the full episode (+ all miniseries + all premium QAA episodes) go to patreon.com/qaa and subscribe for just $5 a month.

This series was brought to you by the QAA podcast. Thanks for supporting us on patreon!

Jamie Loftus: https://twitter.com/jamieloftusHELP
The Bechdel Cast: https://linktr.ee/bechdelcast
Raw Dog (The Book): https://read.macmillan.com/lp/raw-dog-by-jamie-loftus/

Liv Agar: https://linktr.ee/livagar

Theme by Nick Sena, additional music by NAP. Editing by Corey Clotz.

PERVERTS Episode 3: Dating Apps feat Jamie Loftus (Sample)

The origins of foot fetish website Wikifeet, the thriving community inhabiting it, and a very special reading of the first recorded foot fetish material — poems by Greek Poet Philostratus the Elder. Our guest is Hesse Deni of the Seeking Derangements and Movie Mindset podcasts.

For access to the full episode (+ all miniseries + all premium QAA episodes) go to patreon.com/qaa and subscribe for just $5 a month.

Hesse Deni: https://twitter.com/ZeroSuitCamus
Seeking Derangements Podcast: https://twitter.com/SSDERANGEMENTSS / https://www.patreon.com/seekingderangements
Movie Mindset Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

Liv Agar: https://linktr.ee/livagar

Theme by Nick Sena, additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Clotz.

PERVERTS Episode 5: Wikifeet feat Hesse Deni of the Seeking Derangements Podcast (Sample)

Thomas Midgley Jr. invented two things that were used all over the world. Firstly, he invented leaded gasoline. This helped car engines operate more efficiently, but at the cost of spewing poisonous gas everywhere. The second invention is Chlorofluorocarbons or "CFCs." These substances, which were sold under the brand name Freon, had widespread applications in refrigerators and aerosols. But it was eventually discovered that these CFCs were eating away at the ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere. Ozone depletion allows more UV radiation to reach the Earth's surface, which can lead to skin cancer, cataracts, and weakened immune systems.



The fact that a single individual invented both leaded gasoline and CFCs  led Environmental historian J. R. McNeill to say that Midgley  "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."



Before Thomas Midgley died in 1944, he didn’t see himself as destructive.  The scientific community showered him with praise and prizes and accolades during his lifetime. And he didn’t even have reason to think he was doing anything bad.  Government regulators who were tasked with protecting the American public gave his inventions a pass.



This story represents a complete failure of tech entrepreneurs to consider the adverse impacts that their inventions might have, a failure of the scientific community to check one of their own, and a failure of supposed protectors of the public interest to do their jobs. And all of these failures  meant that the generation after Midgley was forced to clean up his mess.

REFERENCES

McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001.

Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. “Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution.” Vol. 6. Univ of California Press, 2013.

Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer."  1993.

Tylecote, Ronald F. "Roman lead working in Britain." The British Journal for the History of Science 2, no. 1 (1964): 25-43.

Kovarik, William. "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster." International journal of occupational and environmental health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384-397.

Kovarik, Bill. "Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead In the Context of Technological Alternatives", presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers Fuels & 

Lubricants Conference, Baltimore, Maryland., 1994
Kitman, Jamie Lincoln. "The secret history of lead." NATION-NEW YORK- 270, no. 11 (2000): 11-11.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/

Trickle Down Episode 15: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 1 (Sample)

Leaded gasoline could not have become a universally-used commercial product without an enforcer. Someone who was dedicated to protecting the status quo position that leaded gasoline was safe to use and not a threat to the general public. And that enforcer was named  Dr. Robert Kehoe. In 1925 he was appointed chief medical consultant of the Ethyl Corporation and remained in the post until his retirement in 1958. Though he continued to fight for leaded gasoline after that and he lived until the 1990s.

Thomas Midgley, Jr. might be the one responsible for inventing leaded gasoline. But Robert Kehoe is the one responsible for protecting industry from uncomfortable questions about lead so that it could be used as long and widely as it was. Until the 1960s, the only studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were funded by the lead, gas, and car industries and carried out by Robert Kehoe.


REFERENCES

Brown, Oliver W. "Kettering Lab Hailed as Pioneer" Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), April 2, 1964.

Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead wars: the politics of science and the fate of America's children. Vol. 24. Univ of California Press, 2014.

Ross, Benjamin, and Steven Amter. The polluters: the making of our chemically altered environment. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Keating, Peter. "The Secret History of the War on Cancer." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 3 (2008): 757-758.

Nriagu, Jerome O. "Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe's paradigm of “show me the data” on environmental lead poisoning." Environmental research 78, no. 2 (1998): 71-78.

Loeb, Alan P. "Birth of the Kettering doctrine: fordism, sloanism and the discovery of tetraethyl lead." Business and Economic History (1995): 72-87.

Reilly, Lucas. "The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of." Mental Floss 17 (2017).
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it

Rosner, David, and Gerald E. Markowitz, eds. Dying for work: Workers' safety and health in twentieth-century America. Indiana University Press, 1987

McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001.

Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. “Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution.” Vol. 6. Univ of California Press, 2013.

Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer."  1993.

Kovarik, William. "Ethyl-leaded gasoline: how a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster." International journal of occupational and environmental health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384-397.

Kitman, Jamie Lincoln. "The secret history of lead." NATION-NEW YORK- 270, no. 11 (2000): 11-11.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/

Patterson, Clair C. "Contaminated and natural lead environments of man." Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal 11, no. 3 (1965): 344-360.

Trickle Down Episode 16: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 2 (Sample)

Just a couple years after Thomas Midgley, Jr. invented leaded gas in the 20s, he followed up that achievement by inventing chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, which were sold by Du Pont under the brand name of Freon. The crown jewel of his work was the creation of Dichlorodifluoromethane, or CFC-12. This substance allowed for more people to experience the wonders of electric food refrigeration as well as indoor air conditioning. 

For over 40 years everyone assumed the Freon was perfectly safe, and in fact safer than other chemicals used in refrigeration. It wasn’t until the 1970s, years after Midgley had died, that the horrible truth was discovered: CFCs were eating away at the Earth’s ozone layer. The ozone layer is a region in the stratosphere that absorbs 97 to 99 percent of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light, which otherwise would potentially damage life. The deterioration of this protective layer threatened all life on earth with increased risk of cancer and other ecological problems. People realized the extent of the damage in 1985 when it was discovered that there was a massive hole in the Ozone layer above the Antarctic. This emergency situation led in 1987 to the creation of an international treaty called The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Because of this agreement, which was signed by all of the members of the United Nations and has an extremely high compliance rate, climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2040 and 2066. One possible apocalypse averted because of global cooperation.

This is the story of one guy who just wanted to make money for himself and the companies he worked for (specifically Frigidaire, General Motors, and DuPont), and how his second big invention eventually forced the entire world to pull off a massive effort to avoid global ecological disaster. 


Christie, Maureen. The ozone layer: A philosophy of science perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. "Between earth and sky: how CFCs changed our world and endangered the ozone layer."  1993.

McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World.” Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, 2001.

Wilson, Eric Dean. After cooling: On freon, global warming, and the terrible cost of comfort. Simon and Schuster, 2021.

Cox, Stan. Losing our cool: Uncomfortable truths about our air-conditioned world (and finding new ways to get through the summer). The New Press, 2010.

Molina, Mario J., and F. Sherwood Rowland. "Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes: chlorine atom-catalysed destruction of ozone." Nature 249, no. 5460 (1974): 810-812.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.

Trickle Down Episode 17: Earth's Most Destructive Organism Part 3 (Sample)

In the 1940s and 50s there was the great American comic book scare. Many serious adults warned that comic books were turning young people into illiterate, criminally violent, sexually deviant political extremists.

There were several editorials in newspapers that argued as much. There were groups who organized literal comic book burnings. Local jurisdictions passed laws to limit the sale of comic books. There was even a televised congressional hearing on comic books by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

This was a widespread phenomena that can’t be laid at the feet of any one person. But there is one person who did more than anyone to legitimize this panic: Dr. Fredric Wertham. He was a well-credentialed German-American psychiatrist best known for his anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth.

The scientific worthlessness of Wertham’s theories has been clear to historians of comic books and even some of his contemporaries. However, it wasn’t until 2012, three decades after his death, that the full extent of the worthlessness of his anti-comic book work was revealed.  After a historian was able to read his raw clinical notes for the first time, it was discovered that many claims in his book Seduction of the Innocent were wholly fabricated. His anti-comic book claims weren’t merely the product of sloppy science, but lies and distortions.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, and The Spectral Voyager:

www.patreon.com/qanonanonymous

Theme by Nick Sena (nicksenamusic.com). Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

www.qanonanonymous.com

Trickle Down Episode 19: Graphic Corruption (Sample)

The last episode of this season of Trickle Down. So we’re going to do a self-indulgent one. In this episode we discuss common criticisms of “anti-disinformation” reporting, the topics Travis wound up passing on, and listener stories. You had a lot to say about the Thomas Midgley Jr. series. 


Theme by Nick Sena (https://nicksenamusic.com). 

Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, and The Spectral Voyager:

www.patreon.com/qanonanonymous

Trickle Down Episode 20: Retrospective (Sample)

What if there was a videogame so indistinguishable from the real world that anyone who played it began to wonder if their entire life was nothing more than a game?  What if there was a movie that, in depicting this, stumbled upon the unnerving truth of our present relationship to the internet?  What if that movie came out one month after The Matrix and totally bombed while the Matrix would go on to release three sequels and establish the language of conspiracy theory culture?  Get your bio-port fitted, lube up your game-hole and jack into this week’s QAA movie night, “eXistenZ.” 

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAA

Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

https://qanonanonymous.com

Premium Episode 237: eXistenZ Movie Night (Sample)

So-called “Constitutional Sheriffs” fancy themselves as the real life version of Judge Dredd: the ultimate arbiters of the law according to their interpretation of the Constitution. Recently the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) held a conference in Las Vegas. Among the speakers were regular features of the podcast disgraced former General Michael Flynn, convicted former County Clerk Tina Peters, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Our guest WIRED reporter David Gilbert attended the conference, and he told us all about what he saw at this gathering of conspiracists and pseudolaw enthusiasts. 

REFERENCES

WIRED: Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Voters
 https://www.wired.com/story/constitutional-sheriffs-election-deniers-immigrants-voting/

WIRED: No, a Shadowy Figure Is Not Buying Tents for Columbia Student Protesters
https://www.wired.com/story/conspiracy-tents-student-protests-gaza/

David Gilbert on Twitter
https://twitter.com/daithaigilbert

NBC News: A sheriff, a felon and a conspiracy theorist walk into a hotel. They're there for the same conference.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/constitutional-sheriffs-las-vegas-conference-rcna147487

MassLive: Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson calls cancellation of ICE contract a ‘politically motivated attack’
https://www.masslive.com/politics/2021/06/bristol-county-sheriff-thomas-hodgson-calls-cancellation-of-ice-contract-a-politically-motivated-attack.html

Politico: The Troubling Sheriffs’ Movement That Joe Arpaio Supports
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/joe-arpaio-pardon-sheriffs-movement-215566/

American Oversight: The Constitutional Sheriffs Movement and Its Threat to Democracy
https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-constitutional-sheriffs-movement-and-its-threat-to-democracy

NBC News: Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to home detention and community service in obstruction case
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-colorado-county-clerk-tina-peters-sentenced-home-detention-comm-rcna79085

CBS News: Mike Lindell's MyPillow evicted from Minnesota warehouse after lawsuit claimed it was $200K behind on rent
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/lawsuit-mypillow-eviction-mike-lindell-minnesota/

Fear And Sheriffs In Las Vegas feat. David Gilbert (E276)

Conspiracy theories, melted online communities and cursed media — we pry open the cracks in consensus reality and journey into the hidden worlds below. The QAA Podcast is a mix of reporting, comedy, and history hosted by Jake Rockatansky, Travis View, and Julian Feeld along with co-hosts Annie Kelly, Liv Agar and Brad Abrahams. Formerly known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Premium Episode 237: eXistenZ Movie Night (Sample)

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