Brian Simpson

The episode opens by promoting an older stand-up special recorded live at the Mothership, now also on YouTube. The discussion mentions roughly 300,000 views and a goal of a million, and one participant singles out a bit called "Wop" as a favorite because of its detailed arc and the way it "comes back around."

From there the talk turns to the craft of taping specials. The central argument is that a recording loses part of the live experience because the viewer is at home, not in the audience. Performers are also tense knowing cameras are running and the set has to be nailed.

even a great special is like 60 to 70% of what it feels like to be there.

The proposed fix is redundancy. One participant says, "I always like to film four if possible," because once a usable take is "in the can," the remaining shows feel like regular shows. Bill Hicks' Relentless, recorded in London, comes up as an example of a great special that still feels tight: "It feels like he's very aware he's being filmed." The speakers believe it was a single taping and say one-show tapings were the norm back then.

Two approaches are set side by side. One is filming two shows over two days despite the added cost, because it is "better that have peace of mind." The other is a fully live special, which one participant calls frightening and the other describes as thrilling and as feeling "like a total regular show." A practical reason for going live is also given: "I hate editing."

Editing is described as painful but useful, since watching yourself is how you spot and fix problems. Examples of delay come up: a final cut handed in about four months late, and a special that Duncan filmed long ago and still hasn't done anything with. The longer you wait, the speakers say, the more you judge the footage as a different person. You notice your voice, your mistakes, your hand movements, and above all the tags you thought of after taping.

It's almost like the moment you film, you have to abandon it.

After a short exchange about the room temperature, the conversation moves to a study described as coming from the CTE Foundation. As first summarized from memory, it covered NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021, about 800 of them. Roughly a quarter of their families agreed to donate the brains, and more than 90% of the donated brains reportedly had CTE. The speakers explain why that gives a floor, not an estimate: if every non-donated brain were CTE-free, about a quarter of all the players would still have had it.

So the best they can say for sure is that about a quarter of all those NFL players have CTE.

A news report is then read aloud, said to be from ESPN about a study in the British Medical Journal. The figures it gives are 878 players who played at least one NFL game and died within a six-year period, and a finding that at least 25% had CTE. The study drew on samples donated between 2008 and 2020; the share diagnosed in that sample is garbled in the transcript. The researchers then narrowed the sample based on when donations were highest. The lead author, transcribed as Dr. Daniel Denechever, is quoted as calling 25% the low end, with a maximum possible prevalence of around 97% and the true rate "somewhere in the middle." The speakers joke that the remaining 3% must be the kickers.

Several related claims follow without any cited source. One is that players are now being diagnosed while still alive. Another is that a former player, whom the speakers identify uncertainly as Chris Johnson, has ALS; the speakers first guess MS before landing on ALS, and they also claim a high prevalence of ALS among players. The speakers also argue that blows below the concussion threshold matter: "sub-concussive head trauma is just as bad." Damage can build up while a player believes they are fine because no concussion was diagnosed. Soccer players heading the ball are offered as a further example of CTE risk.

The speakers note how acceptable it has become to mock CTE, calling it "the new R word." Their explanation is that the victims are seen as brutish men, and "nobody feels bad for brutish" men. They extend this into a claim about gendered sympathy. They point to a woman who killed her children and say public reaction framed her as needing help, then argue that a father who did the same would get no such sympathy.

One participant describes a joke tried on stage the day before, built on case details as they understood them. The woman strangled her three children, then tried to kill herself by cutting her throat and wrist and jumping out a window, and ended up paralyzed. The joke turns on her "problem solving skills." The participant says they do not follow this news closely.

The tone then turns serious. One participant says she chased her son down to strangle him and calls the "free Lindsay" supporters "out of their fucking mind." The argument is that anyone who has seen what a parent would do to protect a child cannot excuse killing them. The claim about chasing the son is offered with some uncertainty: "Make sure that's true" is followed by "I'm pretty sure it's true." The speakers also mention online theories blaming the husband despite her admission, and remark that there are conspiracies about everything.

A joke about always having the right take leads into the COVID vaccine. One participant says they got it "a few times." The other says they still accept vaccines in general but not this one, claiming it neither prevented transmission nor infection and "opened you up to a host of different problems." The first participant jokes about wanting another pandemic so they can stay home, which the other compares to Fauci being willing to sacrifice the world for his own benefit.

That one didn't do a goddamn thing.

A string of accusations against Fauci follows. The speakers say he looked fearful while testifying and pleading the Fifth. They claim he funded gain-of-function research while it was banned after Obama halted it, by routing money through EcoHealth Alliance, which "backdoored it." They describe the research as making viruses more transmissible and dangerous. Asked what the purpose is, the reply is "Who knows?" They add that many people believe it is biological weapons research.

As an example of past weapons research, the conversation cites experiments on Plum Island that infected insects with diseases for possible release over enemy populations. The speakers link this to the theory that Lyme disease began nearby in Lyme, Connecticut, and present it as "the suspicion where Lyme disease came from," not as established fact. They also argue that gain-of-function research never delivered the cures used to justify it, and that when COVID arrived, "they had no fucking idea what to do."

the whole thing was a mass fuck up either on purpose or by accident

The most specific accusation concerns pregnancy. The speakers say a text message from Fauci noted a signal of higher miscarriage risk linked to a cytokine storm in the first trimester, yet months later he said on TV that the vaccine was safe for pregnant women. When asked what a cytokine storm is, the explanation is that it is "a reaction to the vaccine. And I don't know the specifics." The supporting evidence offered is personal: "I know five women that had miscarriages" after vaccination. The speakers also say he lied about transmission, about the risk to children and about whether children needed the vaccine. No documents are presented during this stretch.

The speakers then turn to Biden's pardon, which they describe as covering possible crimes from 2014 to 2024. They contrast it with ordinary pardons for convicted people and say Biden also pardoned family members who had not been convicted or accused. They tie the 2014 start date to Obama's moratorium on gain-of-function research. They then lay out a sequence: work continued through EcoHealth Alliance, and Trump's administration later approved the research amid the chaos of 2016. That sequence is immediately qualified with "I don't know exactly if that happened." What one participant says they are sure of is narrower: Obama imposed a moratorium in 2014, and Fauci "is accused of" funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute through EcoHealth Alliance.

Moving back to the AIDS era, the speakers say Fauci oversaw the use of AZT. They describe it as a chemotherapy drug that had been dropped because it killed patients faster than their cancer, but which was already approved and so was used for AIDS to avoid a long FDA process. Their sharpest claim is that it was given to HIV-positive people without symptoms.

They gave them AZT, and they were dead in six months.

After a sponsor read for DraftKings, which includes its own offer terms and gambling-problem helpline disclaimers, the conversation turns to a Berkeley biology professor whose name is transcribed as Peter Dewsberg and who, the speakers say, died earlier this year in January. One participant regrets not having him back after an earlier appearance that angered listeners. The speakers say his tenure protected his job, but he lost his research grants.

His position is relayed with an explicit disclaimer. He argued that many of the gay men with AIDS were also heavy party-drug users, naming amyl nitrate and crystal meth, which damaged their immune systems. In his view HIV was a weak virus that appeared in people who were already compromised, not the cause of AIDS. The same reasoning is applied to AIDS in Africa, where the speakers say malnutrition and starvation are the real drivers.

and I don't know if this is true, I'm sure a lot of people disagree, but I'm just saying what he believed.

The speakers say he published these views in the 1980s, in articles and books, possibly including coverage in Spin Magazine. They also say he was branded homophobic, though they report him insisting the issue had nothing to do with sexuality. In their account, the result was that "He was, he was a pariah because of his position."

The speakers return to Fauci and repeat the earlier charges in summary: that he lied about gain-of-function research, transmission, the vaccine's ability to stop infection, the danger to children and the death rate. One participant asserts there was "proof of all of this," but none is presented in this section.

He's a proven liar.

One participant recalls being sent RFK Jr.'s book The Real Anthony Fauci during or after the pandemic and admits never reading it, saying "I just don't think he's that interesting." The reply is a new claim: that an experimental AIDS vaccine was tested on foster children in New York and killed them. The speakers argue that no one has pursued Fauci for this, and that foster children were targeted because they had no parents to object, would not be believed, and probably already had health problems. The book is called "fucking horrifying."

The main evidence offered for the book is that no one has sued: "if it's not true, why hasn't anybody sued him?" The other participant calls this "a good point." The speakers note that RFK Jr. now heads HHS. One describes having once thought he was "a kook" and an anti-vaccine, anti-science figure while living in California as a self-described liberal, and now believes the book is "very well researched." The other admits to sharing the old view and accepts the reply "Because you don't pay attention to what he says," adding that his voice makes him hard to listen to and suggesting the audiobook, which someone else narrates.

The case for RFK Jr.'s credibility rests on his record as an environmental attorney. The speakers credit him with taking polluters to court and with being responsible for cleaning up the East River in New York City. They also tell the story of how he came to the vaccine issue: women at his pollution talks kept urging him to look at mercury in vaccines. He first dismissed them, until one woman refused to leave unless he read her material.