Transcript/821: Jon Ronson Returns

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Theme Song (00:00:04.000)

Red Alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red Alert knowledge five days. Damn, Jordan I am sweating knowledge party.com It's time to pray. I have great respect for knowledge like knowledge. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys Hsiang me or the bad guy knowledge I'm Dan and Jordan knowledge fight need money Andy and Sandy are stopping Andy and Pam handy in Kansas. Andy in Kansas, you're on the airplane. Huge fan. I love your word. Knowledge by knowledge fight.com

Jordan (00:00:59.000)

Hello, everyone, welcome back to knowledge fights. I am Jordan once again alone without my co host Dan. I am luckily joined, however, by the one and only Jon Ronson, author of many books and staple of NPR is everywhere.

Jon Ronson (00:01:19.000)

How are you doing? What's your bright spot? Ooh, see,

Jordan (00:01:22.000)

now we're now it's fun whenever people actually know who we are. The last few people I've interviewed have had no idea exactly what was going on. So this is a delight. I will tell you that my bright spot is a new video game called Final Fantasy 16. That's my bright spot. And how about you?

Jon Ronson (00:01:42.000)

I'd never planted bright spots. So this few go up but I'm just surprised that they called it Final Fantasy and then they had 16 sequel. Oh,

Jordan (00:01:54.000)

you are? Well one. If we're at 16 I'm going to tell you you're a little bit late to the joke that was there after Final Fantasy two I think

Jon Ronson (00:02:10.000)

I must have a bright spot what could be I was watching silo but it's not so great that I

Jordan (00:02:22.000)

that is a devastating review of silo. Hey, it's not bad, but it's not my bright spot. It's audible.

Jon Ronson (00:02:31.000)

You know, when I was on the treadmill, and I was watching the Bruce Springsteen, no nukes concert for 1979 that just got released. It was that last footage that just released and it's at its its slight sensation or its Springsteen, you know, turning 30 Its 30th birthday. He's at is like, very political. And it's like watching an Olympian like the amount of energy. So that's my blind spot is that well, that's a great brightspot Thank you. It's the Springsteen Madison Square Garden 1979 No nukes concert?

Jordan (00:03:09.000)

Well, then, that is a delightful brightspot. So then I will say that you're here. Are you do you agree to join me? Because you have just released a new podcast slash audio book called The debutante? And before we get into it, very, very deep because I've got notes and notes. Could you just give a rundown of like the the general conspiracy, that theory that led you to make this

Jon Ronson (00:03:40.000)

right Okay, so that's a conspiracy theory that doesn't really come from the right, it comes very much from the mainstream world at all, like NBC and so on. I'd also like academics on the left. So it's an unusual conspiracy theory in that regard. And the theory is that Timothy McVeigh, who obviously blew up the Oklahoma, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in 1995, History says that he was essentially a lone wolf, he, he coerced two old army friends into helping him but essentially, he was a lone wolf. And the theory is that he wasn't a lone wolf. Or in fact, he had help from a mysterious and very odd white supremacy compound in the Ozark Mountains called Elohim. City, and particularly to men their man called Andy the German at a man called Dennis Mohan and the reason why the world knows this is because at Elohiym city was a very unlikely unexpected undercover informant who was a former debutante and high society, young woman named Carol Howell who became a white supremacy spokeswoman before turning and became immune to cover informants out if the world's only listened to her information. Then the Oklahoma City bombings It never have happened.

Jordan (00:05:01.000)

Right? Excellent, perfect summation.

Jon Ronson (00:05:04.000)

It is. It's taken me a while you should have it, you know, whatever, I do a story because you know, you're so in the weeds when you're doing a story. All of my stories take, you know, months or years. And then somebody says, you know, what's it about? The first time you try to explain that to somebody just say, whatever it is, yeah, you sounds terrible. But yeah, cuz cuz you make the show. But then you have to figure out how to explain the show, which is a whole different thing. It's almost like so yeah, so now, okay,

Jordan (00:05:37.000)

you're talking to a guy who does a podcast about Alex Jones. And we've done 830 Odd episodes, the idea of explaining what I do to people gives me nightmares.

Jon Ronson (00:05:48.000)

So anyway, in short, I'm glad that I've managed to tell the story. To summarize the two that pretty clear way.

Jordan (00:05:55.000)

Excellent. So yeah, so then let's tear that whole thing apart.

Jon Ronson (00:06:00.000)

I'm ready. I've been obsessed me for what it obsessed me back in the 90s when I first stumbled on the story. And I did a pretty lackluster documentary about it at the time, in an otherwise very good series called Secret rules of the world. It was the one episode that didn't really work. Oh, that was the same series where I snuck into growth with Alex Jones. Right? You got it? Yes. So all the other episodes were great that one wasn't, it's always sort of bugged me as you know, such an interesting story. And I got nowhere. So just before the pandemic, I decided to give it another shot. And for the last three or four years, on and off, I've been doing just that.

Jordan (00:06:40.000)

Amazing. So then, you start, I think, obviously, at the beginning with her childhood, but what I noticed whenever I was listening to it is that your your interviews about her childhood were sparse at best. Yeah, they stories were not very specific, and, and so on. So did you interview more people than made it onto the show? Or?

Jon Ronson (00:07:05.000)

No, I think we pretty much included everyone we interviewed. I agree with her story kind of comes to life when she is a high school senior. That's where you really start to get to know who she is. And then you massively get to know who she is. A couple of years later when she Marisa first her husband, Greg, who I did a great interview with. But yes, I agree we didn't get people from her school wouldn't talk to us. So if you have learned anything.

Jordan (00:07:38.000)

All right. All right. Fall on. Full disclosure. We were talking before the before we started recording. I've done a significant amount of research for this interview. And on the SPL Zone website, SPLC Zone website is her or at least what was her assumed name in I think 2015 or whenever it was published. It is Amanda, Bryn Collins, and Brynn. Collins is specifically the writer of the toxic parents survivor guide. So as far as her childhood is concerned, I will I will tell you that I assume you weren't able to talk to her parents. I know her mom's dead. Yeah,

Jon Ronson (00:08:24.000)

she suddenly died. I the reason why I didn't approach her father was because we were holding out for an interview with her. And so we thought, well, I can't you know, it seemed right etiquette wise to not approach her father before we got a yes or no from her. And right up until the end, it was a possibility that we would interview her. I want to caveat that by saying that, you know, it's a pain in the ass. And it's unusual, I think for me that I don't get to interview absolutely everyone involved in the story. So this is unusual that I didn't get to talk to her. But I got to talk to so many like extraordinary people involved in the story, including her first husband that is still like a very rich, listen. Yeah.

Jordan (00:09:05.000)

Well, that's the that's the central thing about the story that I find so fascinating, is that everybody was lying to you pretty much all the time. almost constantly, like your your interviews with Greg with Rachel Patterson are non stop lies. It's so fascinating to me.

Jon Ronson (00:09:26.000)

Okay, so I'd want you to tell me everything that you know,

Jordan (00:09:30.000)

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Well, let's just let's just start with her childhood. So you you interviewed one of her childhood friends who was also adopted, and she recalled her from high school, right? Yes.

Jon Ronson (00:09:40.000)

He she passionately wanted to talk to us because she felt that you know, she remembered the nice Carol before it all. Everything told her terrific. And because of her good memories. She felt kind of, you know, morally compelled to talk to us. Yeah, So that's why she spoke to

Jordan (00:10:00.000)

us. Right? And then the next interview is chronologically is with Greg, her first husband, whom she married on a whim on a on a day or practically. So the story there, Could you could you give that kind of clearer for me the picture of how that happened? Because as far as I understand it, it was they were drunk one night, etc.

Jon Ronson (00:10:22.000)

Yes. Okay. So here's the story that Greg told. And I should say everything that Greg told me we much later got ahold of the FBI report that got a forgotten his name. But anyway, the guy who was investigating Carol, when she rejoined, blah, blah, blah, okay. And, and in this report was a contemporaneous interview that he did with Greg, back then Greg's only ever given two interviews once we went to the FBI, and what I will tell you, and the reason why I can't just did Greg, so I'm interested to hear what you got to say. Is that the story he told me the story told the FBI at the time really tally with each other. For instance, we'll get to there how she broke her feet. Oh, of course, of course. I don't want to jump back and forth.

Jordan (00:11:15.000)

To be clear, I don't want to I don't want to say that Greg was lying about like the stories with Carol. I want to say that Greg is like, because you do not get a swastika tattoo. Just because your wife is going oh, let's get a swastika tattoo tonight.

Jon Ronson (00:11:33.000)

Yeah. I have no doubt that that's

Jordan (00:11:39.000)

playing the whole Oh, I'm sure I got a swastika tattoo. A huge one. Yeah, it was a childhood mistake.

Jon Ronson (00:11:48.000)

And a giveaway of that was they just got out loads the first night and he said that he really regretted it the next day, but he still got it all filled in.

Jordan (00:11:59.000)

I didn't know that part. Yeah, that part. So the story is that care? Yep.

Jon Ronson (00:12:05.000)

So yeah, so let me get back a little bit. She leaves High School moves to Colorado for a mysterious year where we think she joins the Colorado chapter of the Temple of psychic youth which people have associate age and people interested in this kind of stuff or No, was a kind of offshoot of the band psychic TV, which was an offshoot of the band Throbbing Gristle this was like British think of like a British

Jordan (00:12:29.000)

Oh 20 jazz greats or whatever. Yeah, name of the album. Yeah, I know who Throbbing Gristle is,

Jon Ronson (00:12:35.000)

right. Okay, so kind of think, you know, thinking this sort of Nine Inch Nails cut genre. But with some suspect beliefs, I'd say. But anyway, so we think the cow joined their fan club, which had all these sort of weird sort of pseudo sex rituals and so on. Then she comes back to Tulsa. And she's at a party Halloween 1993 She said a party catches the eye of this young stoner drifter, Greg, who you can tell just to beat him now. 30 years later, was was dashing young, handsome, charismatic. You can see why she went for it.

Jordan (00:13:18.000)

Oh, sure. He seems very charming in the unit. Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Ronson (00:13:21.000)

Right. Rock on to like I can Yeah, loved it. So anyway.

Jordan (00:13:28.000)

With and it just so happens a giant swastika tattoo on his shoulder,

Jon Ronson (00:13:33.000)

which is disguise now he's having covered over with less

Jordan (00:13:37.000)

clothes slowly. It looks like an effeminate swastika.

Jon Ronson (00:13:41.000)

Yeah, because it's hard to completely disguise this huge plastic. So, yeah, so so that day to date, they they hook up with this Halloween party. They have a whirlwind romance. After three weeks, she says let's get married. So they eloped to Vegas stealing one of her brothers, you know, $1,000 dresses, go to Vegas, they then had to get drunk every night and what she wore movies and of course, car was on the side of the Germans against like, pissed off at the end of every war movie, of course. And then there's an origin moment and the origin moment is this park in Tulsa in Eastern 1994. There's a it's an Easter monument, and they're drunk and playing on it. Are these little kids white by the way, which becomes irrelevant in a minute. Of course, jumping off the Easter monument and cow says I want to do that. And she jumps off and smashes both of her feet. So Greg scoops webtext at a hospital because Carol comes from a fancy family the hospital are just like throwing whatever drugs at them that they want. corsi psychotics, you know what Whatever

Jordan (00:15:00.000)

you want, yeah. Open open book for you.

Jon Ronson (00:15:04.000)

Right? They didn't get the talk that I got when I had kidney stones for Percocet where they said where they said people like you get addicted.

Jordan (00:15:15.000)

You mean writers or?

Jon Ronson (00:15:17.000)

I don't know. I think he meant like, you know, don't think that it's only you know people in Ohio who get into shoes. Sure sure shirts. People with fancy Muscat glasses in New York City get Yeah,

Jordan (00:15:28.000)

people who can afford it get addicted to Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:15:33.000)

So then when cow is convalescing, Greg's out running errands for her ad she is phoning a local telephone answering service called dial a racist. Here's one dispute by the way between Carolyn Greg story later in court cow said that it was Greg who got him into dialer racist. And Greg says that she got into it off her own volition. Yeah. So but she's probably done a racist a database. This is like a pre internet way of getting your daily dose of racism.

Jordan (00:16:05.000)

Yeah, yeah. No, it is. It is very much a podcast. Now. What is so fascinating about it is that it is a you know, you just transpose things. 30 years ago, it's the same it's the same garbage. It's the same shit. You know, that guy is releasing a daily podcast or whatever, in the form of a voicemail.

Jon Ronson (00:16:24.000)

Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? Yeah. And so you know, the international corporations and the Jews control America that destroy the white race. This guy,

Jordan (00:16:34.000)

yada yada yada that whole Oh, sure. The whole they're gonna kill us all but you know how it is.

Jon Ronson (00:16:42.000)

So he turns out to be a man named Dennis Mehan, who really is lie. Even within the genre of American white supremacists is like batshit in a very sort of unique, you know, I tend to because I'm interested in psychology, I tend to quietly try and figure out like, what disorder does this person have? Dennis may had he just, it's all over the place. It's a panoply of disorders.

Jordan (00:17:16.000)

Oh, you play. You play a voicemail that he left for Carol. That is one of the most insane rambling nonsense things just just that No, I wasn't spying on you. I decided to sit down to the tree. And then I sat down and I decided to take a little nap. And yes, I had my eyes open. Sure My eyes were open. But that was because the FBI was planning a raid on you. I was trying to save your life. And yes, it wasn't that, you know, it was it was so disjointed and like, yeah, it was so

Jon Ronson (00:17:44.000)

crazy. Good. One thing that you forgot about message was he also said that you know that I was doing you a favor, because I just wanted to show like, you know, I was hiding behind the tree. And that shows that the ATF Caponord visible later behind the tree and be at your house and pick up everything that you say, tree.

Jordan (00:18:00.000)

Yeah, but that one's true.

Jon Ronson (00:18:05.000)

So yeah, but that's that's jumping ahead a little so. So basically, she's listening to Dennis May. Dennis may have had been a member of the clan. And I'm trying to remember whether it was David Dukes clan or not. But anyway, he left and joined white Aryan resistance, which is obviously much more hard, you know? Oh, of course. Yeah, of course, I'd became that the Tulsa, you know, head of white Aryan resistance. So he's like, broadcasting his messages. And cows like falls in love with the voice. calls about that they start dating. You do feel for cows, parents, like they really hated Greg, you know, they bought a cow to bury a squire for the debutante ball, of course. But so bad. So when when she left, Greg, they must have breathed a sigh of relief and then she ends up marrying someone like so much worse or not back dating said was so much better.

Jordan (00:19:06.000)

And I will I will say this. And here's another important detail that I think goes somewhat unremarked upon, she does get married to Greg on a whim. And it is her being a rich person getting married on a whim to some Popper, if you will, the classic tale, all to piss off her parents. Very, very clearly to piss off her parents.

Jon Ronson (00:19:31.000)

Yeah, right out.

Jordan (00:19:32.000)

And what do they do? They go, Well, I suppose that's what you do. And she receives no consequences for trying to piss off her parents. They just go fine. We'll throw you a wedding just like everything is totally fine. Yeah, okay. That pattern already is in place of she will not receive consequences for anything she does. And if she gets into trouble, she can run home to daddy that's already there. So let's go So there from the beginning,

Jon Ronson (00:20:03.000)

does you know at some time sort of run in a way that others couldn't? Yes, you're absolutely right. Not only did they throw her like a wedding party, they they sent her the buffalo shopping spree. And cow was like, you know, buying like a $3,000 crystal horse's head, telling Greg to buy whatever he wants in the store.

Jordan (00:20:25.000)

So if you're somebody who wanted to piss off your parents, and instead they wanted you to buy a $3,000 glass, or crystal horsehead, we can start to see who this person is.

Jon Ronson (00:20:37.000)

Yeah, they will. Okay. So what I know about her parents is that they were definitely philanthropists, like her mother, who had Ms. Was like, you know, you know, rich charity person, but seemed to like spend her life on nonprofits and charitable foundations and so on. I'd have a father was the head of a fortune 500 energy company called Matt Braille. They adopted two kids, and a boy who I know very little about. So clearly, they were trying to be good philanthropic people.

Jordan (00:21:16.000)

See now what I find fascinating about that. And it's part of what I find so frustrating about the audio book in general, right, is, and I have a unique perspective on this because I absolutely hate rich people with every fiber of my being, regardless of whether or not they come off as some sort of philanthropist. So in the in the audio book, by virtue of calling them philanthropists, you know,

Jon Ronson (00:21:43.000)

you're doing a lot actually, I

Jordan (00:21:45.000)

did do that. Yeah, exactly. You're carrying a lot of water for whether or not they are good people. Now, to give you a little context from being an American, all right. Tulsa is in was one of the most racist and awful places on this fucking planet. Oh, yeah. And it wasn't in spite of people like Carol's dad. It is because of people like Carol's dad. So whenever there's that question of where she became racist, and all of those things, I can tell you that she grew up rich, white, in Tulsa in Reagan's America. Yes, she was born racist. I will tell you this right now.

Jon Ronson (00:22:29.000)

Let me give you though, well, not board.

Jordan (00:22:32.000)

adopted. I was I know I was I was yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:22:36.000)

Okay. Sure, like, sure. But let me give you a bit of sort of counter suggestions here. So her friend Laurie swore that she wasn't racist in high school. And she became, she came back racist from Colorado. So so what we said the story that we tell in the show is that if she joined, we were told by a by a source that she had joined the Temple of psychic youth. And the thing about the Temple of psychic youth is that just like, you know, a lot of bands back then, but I think psychic TV were more hardcore. They were like playing with Nazi imagery and sort of rituals and fascism. And as the guy from the temple of psychic youth said to us, you know, when, when you play act being a Nazi long enough, maybe you actually become one show. So from speaking to her high school friend, from speaking to the guy from the temple of psychic youth, and then obviously speaking to Greg, when she gets back from Colorado for the Temple of psychic youth, the narrative that I put together just based on what I could pick up. Oh, no, of course, yeah. Was that in high school, she didn't display any racism in Colorado, she joined this group with think, which had all these connotations. And then she came back from Colorado as being racist. And the other thing I'd say is, when I met the head of her debutante committee, now lives in a retirement home on the edge of Tulsa, I thought very much well, you know, I think people generally think that if you're the head of a Tulsa debutante committee, you're gonna be some, you know, right wing, you know, etc, etc. And she wasn't even her name's Dixie. rappy. She wasn't she was she was a Democrat, and she got into being the head of the debutante committee because she was like, into theater and she liked the dresses. And so basically, so what I'm saying is like, if there's things that is part of the story that frustrate you know, that do frustrate you, it's because you know, I'm just going by what bits of information that I pick up, but I'm totally used together.

Jordan (00:24:45.000)

Well, that's what I that's again, that's the thing that I am I'm really, really interested in is because that is a context that is absolutely there, whether or not the interview subjects who have a vested interest in not being On a national Jon Ronson story, revealing that they were gigantic racist 30 years ago, I will just say this. Yeah, regardless of whether or not she expressed or showed that racist behavior, if you were a debutante growing up in Tulsa high society, only what, four or five years after segregation in schools, quote, unquote, ended. Wow. Later, okay. Yes, Tulsa is one of the worst places, racism, it's still segregated, in most ways. And so regardless of what they might say, she was told, probably by her teachers in school, in Reagan's America at that time, that black men were crack addled rapists. And that's what she would have been raised thinking. And so that's why whenever we're talking about the story, you know, your origin moment for her and we're gonna, we're about to get right into it, because this is where we kind of transition right into that her origin moment, you know, is is given with this idea that this story comes from her being in Colorado, and then learning the lingo of the far right Nazi world. And then bringing it back. And I will say that in Tulsa society Oh, of black men are predators was an regardless of political party, you can be a Democrat in the late 80s.

Jon Ronson (00:26:35.000)

Sure, yeah. Yeah, yes. Yeah. No, no, I don't dispute that at all. And in fact, I just remembered something or you said was anybody that I interviewed that I didn't put in the show and actually was somebody and it was from that period. And the only reason I didn't include it was because she didn't actually say anything. You know, that was very helpful to the story except for the thing I'm about to tell you. Great. And it's a very small side thing but we left it out just because it would have been too short and interview that she remembered the school chants and that you know, they will go back to Christian Academy which is a fancy school in Tulsa. When when they would like play whatever sports you people play soccer

Jordan (00:27:23.000)

I want that. I want that twice. I want you to get a clean because I've got Jon Ronson saying you people. That one go that's a soundboard.

Jon Ronson (00:27:38.000)

When they play whatever sports you people play the jobs. Were one one of the schools would charge at the other one. We've got money. Yes, we do. We've got money. How about you? And the other school would charge? We've got more soda? Yeah. Yeah. See, the cow grew up good.

Jordan (00:28:02.000)

Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this out there for you. I'm gonna guess that there were not a ton of black people in those schools. Oh, no, no, no. Okay. Now, in that case, if you're going to give me a an eyewitness account of her friend from high school, why would she hear her say racist things? It was just white people around?

Jon Ronson (00:28:23.000)

Well, that's true. No, I'm not disputing any of this. But you know, I suppose what I'm, you know, if there's a difference between the way we would do that part of the story. It's just because my natural thing is to like, interview people get and I know that you know, people

Jordan (00:28:40.000)

Oh, of course, I totally understand that. And I respect it. Believe me. I'm not like trying to attack your your angle. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:28:47.000)

But I'm just I'm sort of thinking about it. It's just like, you know, like, obviously, Greg was more of an artsy back then, of course, but that's so implicit in the way he tells the story that I, you know, I don't know if I felt the need to sort of point it out, because it's kind of obvious.

Jordan (00:29:03.000)

I mean, I understand. Yeah, absolutely. It's totally reasonable. It should be. It should be very obvious. If you get a swastika tattoo, that you're probably lying about how racist you were back then.

Jon Ronson (00:29:16.000)

Yeah, what I do certainly believe these not any more like he's had it all covered over. And as I say, by the time he's interviewed by the FBI a few years later, you know, the stuff he was saying to me now was, well, let's get to the moment of the of the of the Easter monument.

Jordan (00:29:36.000)

Exactly. There we go. Yeah, we're at a passion play. Yeah, there's there's the Christ the the setting is there. It's like in Bruges. You've got you got everybody Irish all over the place. And these kids are jumping off of a statue.

Jon Ronson (00:29:54.000)

Yeah. And she jumps off breaks her feet convalescing phone style racist. Meet Stannis Mei Han and the story that she tells him, which is the same story she tells repeatedly to journalists in court, in court on the witness stand.

Jordan (00:30:12.000)

In one of the in one of the books that I read, they print that story without comment,

Jon Ronson (00:30:17.000)

right? It's the story that I believed when I went into research and the story is, there's no alternative story out there at the story, but at Dixie, okay, here's something so happy the head of the Tulsa debutante committee, she brought that story up and she said to me with some concern, because her story that she told Dennis Mae hadn't told the world. Oh, is that she had been chased by a gang of black men. And they broke her feet. Yeah. And that's what happened. Now Dixie, right, very

Jordan (00:30:46.000)

conveniently fitting into the single most prominent narrative about black men at the time.

Jon Ronson (00:30:52.000)

Absolutely. And in fact, Dixie red P, who was the very first person I interviewed, she was out of Carla's debutante committee said to me, like with concern, I think when the tape was out, you know, when we weren't recording? Yeah, like that part of her story like about her being, you know, beaten up by black men. Like, what are you going to, you know, how are you going to put that in the show? And she was concerned? Like, how am I going to put that in the show without perpetuating racism? So she sure if the story was true. At that point, I believe the story was true, right. There's no alternative version out there. But Greg told me and the FBI at the time, that she jumped off and broke her feet. And but in fact, his cow repeatedly told, told the lie, and it's anti stress. My who NTV later on in the story points out, if you're going to be pushed off a roof, you're not going to land on your feet? No. Yeah. So there you go.

Jordan (00:31:45.000)

I mean, that's, that's one of the things about this story that I think can't go unnoticed. And that's part of why I bring up the Tulsa stuff. Everybody bought that shit. And that is garbage. That's absolute garbage. What the fuck are people doing believing that noise? Okay, it's funny that nobody bought it. And it doesn't matter if you were quote, unquote, left or right at the time. Everybody printed that story? And they didn't even barely, they didn't question it. They were like, Oh, of course. Yeah, naturally. We've all been there. Of course, let's just reprint this story of an implausible group of black men, roving black men just chasing people, you know how it happens? Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:32:26.000)

And nobody thought, you know, what anti stressed by who was a white supremacist like the one person who pointed out the absurdity of this story. Everybody has a vested interest, but you know, to, to, you know, besmirch, you know, coward because of what happened later on in the story. But, you know, he was the one who pointed out, you know, you don't, you don't land on your feet, right, you fold off the roof.

Jordan (00:32:49.000)

Right. Now, here's what I also find interesting there is that, once you do that, to me, right, you are now forever an unreliable narrator. There's no going back. And I mean, for ever, I don't care if she changes, you know, later on. After she becomes a confidential informant as you you said in the in the area. I don't care. She is still an unreliable narrator.

Jon Ronson (00:33:17.000)

Well, this is so interesting, because of who has come to believe Kol story, which I'm sure we'll get to later on. Exactly, right. Because

Jordan (00:33:27.000)

for hours.

Jon Ronson (00:33:32.000)

I sent you the email that I'm the only person who's ever asked Joe Rogan, if I could go now.

Jordan (00:33:38.000)

If I if I bore you as much as him then I'm the one at fault here.

Jon Ronson (00:33:45.000)

So yeah, because that becomes a really important part of the story later on as to who believes Carol and why. Right. But, yeah, so. But I agree with you like after studying her story for four years. I came to believe that she's an unreliable narrator. I think there's parts of her story where she did behave well. I don't dispute I don't doubt the information that she gave when she was an undercover informant. But we should get to that too. Right. So because I think it's good to keep to the chronology.

Jordan (00:34:22.000)

Right. Where we're at now is she's been with Greg for a few years. She's on the dialer racist thing actually just few months, just a few just a few months she's she gets bored with Greg she just up and leaves Greg on a whim. Which, which again, there's so many small things about her character that I feel are add up over time to a picture that I'm going to tell you that I think is 100% accurate. But that is another one of those things. The moment she got bored, she up and left and then went back home to daddy. Yeah, And then

Jon Ronson (00:35:02.000)

well, yeah, okay, so she she starts dating Denis Mehan. She's with him for some months. He told me back then back 30 years ago and in letters he sent me from prison now that she had wanted to commit acts of violence. And he thought that she'd be wasted in the shadows. He wanted to become like an Aryan spokeswoman. Because not many women in the movement, get smarter and charismatic and extremely good looking. He thought he could not get him on Oprah. Which by the way, as we know, I don't know much about Oprah. But you could certainly get white supremacists on mainstream television with very different outlets Pac Man.

Jordan (00:35:49.000)

Hey, you went on Joe Rogan show so

Jon Ronson (00:35:53.000)

twice. White supremacists can

Jordan (00:35:55.000)

get you on their shows too. So there's definitely not.

Jon Ronson (00:36:02.000)

But yeah, so he wanted to get on Oprah. He had to recording databases messages herself, but that didn't work out because her voice was so flat.

Jordan (00:36:09.000)

She's terrible. On mic. You play a little clip. She's absolutely terrible on mic. It's amazing to listen to

Jon Ronson (00:36:17.000)

stop picking up our weapon. Ah, so

Jordan (00:36:21.000)

uninterested in destroying the Jews. She's so bored with destroying the Jews. She didn't have that passion.

Jon Ronson (00:36:30.000)

bored with it, or the board goes, Oh, yeah,

Jordan (00:36:33.000)

I have to be Oh, yes. We have to kill the Jews or whatever. GA's. Why do I have to record these?

Jon Ronson (00:36:40.000)

He did get on TV once. And that was a German documentary that was filming at Elohiym. City now Elohiym City is the next big part of the story. Right? So in the in the Ozark Mountains on the Oklahoma Arkansas border, is this this this place called Elliot city? That looks it's such a it's such a contradictory place? Because I've been there.

Jordan (00:37:07.000)

Yes. Yeah. Could you give me a more kind of visual portrait of what's going on in Elohim? City? Because I don't see it. Do you know what I mean? Like so kind of through through the debutante? I kind of see something similar to a compound or I see like an almost trailer park vibe. I don't know which it is that I'm trying to see. You know

Jon Ronson (00:37:29.000)

what I mean, but not trailer park. It's sort of fancier than that. Because I went there 30 years ago, but I remember it, I remember it very clearly. So it's a long way away from civilization. It's like it's off a road that takes you from Oklahoma to fight Ville, Arkansas. But you go like six miles up a dirt road. And then yes, stop outside the place you don't walk in because they'll shoot you. Shoot, you stop and honk your horn. until someone comes together. We were given very stirred explicit instructions. So the car hunky hard. So that's what we did. And they came to get me. And it's, it looks quite eccentric, the architecture of the place of all these little kind of Hobbit houses. I haven't seen Lord of the Rings, but it looks like I assume the little case. Or the Ewok.

Jordan (00:38:25.000)

Walks. He walks on the moon of

Jon Ronson (00:38:29.000)

Andorra All right. Yeah, that's sort of like the way they live in these little kind of Hobbit homes. There may be trailers that I can't remember, but my main memory is seeing this kind of quite eccentric Hobbit homes. And then there's a big main hall, which is the you know, the meeting place and where they have that church. And it's it's Yawei Christians. A lot of people know is like, the Jews descended from Satan. Sure. People of color, you know, mud people and the white racists blah, blah, blah.

Jordan (00:39:06.000)

Yeah. Yeah. From Mormonism in the 90s completely different, not anything similar to that whatsoever. This is so weird. This is not a mainstream religion in the United States at the time. This is crazy people in LLM city will believe this stuff. Gotcha. Abstract, and that's in 79. People. Yeah. So weird how that happened.

Jon Ronson (00:39:31.000)

So, so I was taken into the main hall, and all these people of the community came in to see what was going on with me. There was a chiropractor there called Dr. Buss and there was a detergent salesman to try to sell them. Sorry,

Jordan (00:39:48.000)

there's a chiropractor named Dr. Buzz Yeah. Okay. I just needed to just needed to get through that. Okay, I've dealt with it. I've dealt with it. Now we can move on.

Jon Ronson (00:39:58.000)

Okay, and then they asked They had older these young men came in, or putting their guns on the gun rack. So there's clearly a kind of gun fetish that they walk about with guns all the time. At the back, you take them off, where do you? Where do you put them in the country? Yeah.

Jordan (00:40:14.000)

Well, I mean, there's women present.

Jon Ronson (00:40:18.000)

The demographic actually is interesting. So, again, this will, I'm sure come up later, that there was a lot of talk about whether to do an armed raid on Elohiym city. And I think one of the main reasons why that way it didn't happen was because if there's a very sketchy figures that I could be wrong, but let's say the 200 people living at Elohim city show only 15 or 20 of them are like, young man have, you know, killer gauge of suits? Sure. Sure. Sure. I still like children are very old people or women. So so you know that lots and lots of children running around. They put on a performance of river dance to welcome me. Sure, sure. Yeah. And then they got me to like,

Jordan (00:41:05.000)

Dr. Buzz was dancing with his feet. Okay. Gotcha. All right.

Jon Ronson (00:41:10.000)

So that's that's one version of ELOHEEM city. The other equally true version of LM city is that the combination code was Oh for 20 birthday. A lot founded

Jordan (00:41:22.000)

by Dr. Reverend Milan or

Jon Ronson (00:41:24.000)

whatever. Was it? Yeah, adn Mennonite. Yeah. And

Jordan (00:41:28.000)

he's, he's one of the more evil people that will appear in this story.

Jon Ronson (00:41:36.000)

was a safe haven for white supremacist who had murdered people. There was a lot of those people. They're the guys who

Jordan (00:41:46.000)

are you disputing me or agreeing with me, but what are you talking about? I almost heard a but there but then. Okay. Okay. We're good. Okay.

Jon Ronson (00:41:57.000)

Yeah, no, I'm agreeing with you. It's a very hardcore, hardcore place. Or let me caveat that the people that are allowed to live there and hide out there, some of them were very, very hardcore people. So there's a connection between Elohim city ad the murder of Alan Berg, the radio DJ and in Denver, I think it was for people who don't know Alan Berg was was like a sort of left wing Jewish. You know, jock who would like mock white supremacists on the air, and a bunch of them murdered him in his driveway. And they hung out, they hid out it lNcc then there's the covenant the sword in the arm of the Lord, which is was another really hardcore group. They hit out there. A guy called Richard Wayne Snell, who murdered who tried to blow up como Building in Oklahoma City, you murdered a black state trooper at a pawn shop owner who economically believed was Jewish. He hid out there. And in fact, when he was finally executed, he's now buried there. So you know, it's a serious hardcore place. Elohim city?

Jordan (00:43:11.000)

Yeah, I find I find snel to be so. So you give Snell one sentence? Well, maybe. Maybe a run on sentence. No, no, I'm just I'm just kidding.

Jon Ronson (00:43:29.000)

I tell this now story, but the reason why I keep it the reason why I keep it contained was really for storytelling reasons. When you're when you're juggling a whole load of balls, you know, the job of this kind of storyteller? Totally. No,

Jordan (00:43:45.000)

no, that's another part that I'm interested in. I'm 100% interested. I'm not I'm not trying to be a

Jon Ronson (00:43:52.000)

VP. Honestly. Say whatever you like, of course, just sort of I'll just sort of try and explain why I made the decisions that I made. So with so with snow I think I tell the whole story. But the thing is, there is no resolution to the story. So here's the Bitcoin snow story. Yeah, so and it is extraordinary and this is for me. If you're gonna believe the cattle how Timothy McVeigh, Elohim city conspiracy theory. This is probably the most you know, this is probably the most sort of potent clue.

Jordan (00:44:24.000)

See, what I find fascinating is that I think this is the clue that is so much better at disproving the whole thing.

Jon Ronson (00:44:32.000)

Oh, so So I would love to hear that because

Jordan (00:44:35.000)

well go ahead and tell the story because I do think that there's something very important here with Snell.

Jon Ronson (00:44:40.000)

Right okay. Yeah. Because I don't believe that I should tell

Jordan (00:44:45.000)

Yeah, sorry. You don't believe the conspiracy theory and you do a very good job of picking apart the the quote unquote evidence that's given in the in the final episode.

Jon Ronson (00:44:55.000)

Yes. But I don't pick apart the story I'm about to tell because I didn't know what make of it so I say this in the show I did want to make this so if you've got something I would love to hear it. So the story is that Snell you know, kills a black state trooper, a pawn shop owner. He's on death row. The date of his execution is set for April the 19th 1995, which is the same day, the two year anniversary of Ruby Ridge. No, so the two year anniversary of Waco and the day, the Timothy McVeigh is going to blow up the mode Building in Oklahoma City. So as he's waiting to be executed, he asks the prison guard if he could turn the TV on, so they turn on the TV, and Robert Mueller Fabella him city who's his spiritual adviser and Snell a sitting on death row watching this footage of things blowing up and out of the building blowing up? And Snell is like the prison guards notes in his logbook. That style is like nodding and smiling. Yeah. And of course, you could you know, if you believe the conspiracy theory, then what you're what you believe, is it Timothy McVeigh is one of the reasons why he blew up the building on that day was in protest of snows execution. Yeah,

Jordan (00:46:14.000)

yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't know, necessarily. I mean, I think it's a complete coincidence. Or it's a weird, fucked up thing that the justice system did to execute Snell on the same day as Waco. That's wild, that those two things happened at the same time. But what I find fascinating about that, is that that suggests that they did know that it was going to happen, and caroled didn't. Do you understand what I mean? It doesn't matter if Carol's because Carol never said shit in her diary in any of the things that Carol doesn't say shit about him. But they did. No. Do you understand? That is very clear to me.

Jon Ronson (00:47:03.000)

Yeah, that's that's a very good point. So I'm gonna second What do you said, but you're you're saying they did know. Are you saying you think beloved, and Snell did no?

Jordan (00:47:12.000)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That. Because Because here's the thing, what I find so interesting about this is the idea that I feel like people in this had been really close to the idea that Carol has anything to do with anything. And that leads them to think that there was an individual person that had anything to do with anything to help with McVeigh. But what the reality is, based on the fact that we've spent, you know, our lives now, in listening to people like this talk in listening to people of this order, is that it's just talking shit. Everywhere, Timothy McVeigh went, he was a gun store. He was a gun show guy, right? So he traveled all around the country, especially the American, southeast, and southwest, right? He goes around to all of these gun shows, everybody's talking about The Turner Diaries. Everybody knows who Snell is. Everybody knows all of these people. They're all in the network. And so Timothy McVeigh didn't need individual help from people. They gave him the target through a million different conversations. Oh, yeah. And it's not it's a social movement, and McVeigh was the person who executed it. So you mind? Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:48:32.000)

Okay. So let me just say you're good. So you're saying that you think that that's now? And Robert Muller didn't know that McVeigh was going to blow up that building that day? But, but as you say, like that didn't need to be a wider conspiracy than that? No, because they will have The Turner Diaries. That's to the divers is enough to

Jordan (00:48:55.000)

you. That's the idea. Yeah, that's the idea of leader. That was the whole thing that they were aiming for. And then they succeeded.

Jon Ronson (00:49:03.000)

Okay, so here's Miko, here's a question. Sure. If that's true, then the implication is that McBay went to Wellington City. And we don't we don't know if that's true.

Jordan (00:49:16.000)

Yeah, no, I mean, we don't necessarily need to have that connection. He doesn't need to speak to any of these people directly. Like he's speaking to people who also speak to them. They're in a network, all of these people. So whoever's in Elohiym city is listening to Robert malarkey talk and then they go to a gun show and and the stress fires there and they're just talking shit. And all of them are talking shit. They're all talking shit. Because they're like, dude, dude, energy and like trying to outdo each other with how revolutionary and cool they are trying to outdo each other with their racism, all of this stuff, just like they did at what was it the forest reserve standoff with the Bundys. I want to say, yeah, yeah. So that idea of them all sitting around a campfire, relating war stories to each other of things.

Jon Ronson (00:50:12.000)

I'm gonna blow this building on the toes. Yeah, I mean, it's plausible that that kind of informal thing was going on without there being any more of a conspiracy than that.

Jordan (00:50:24.000)

And I'll tell you, the main reason is the only person in your story that I believe is not outright exaggerating, falsifying or lying, is Timothy McVeigh. He's the one that makes sense. He said it all. Here's what happened. All right, he went to the Gulf War, notorious for being one of the most one sided, asymmetric wars as far as like technology and shit go, right comes back. He's disappointed, depressed and pissed off, Waco happens. And he watches the same asymmetric warfare happen where a tank is brought to somebody's house, you know, and then he says, there's no consequences for this. No one's doing anything about it. So I'm going to give you consequences. And the reason that the conspiracy theory to me the reason that it's so attractive is because in the conspiracy theory, a heroic act can stop a bombing. And in the reality, it is the sins of our country coming home to fuck us, you know? So that's my, that's my take on on this this story.

Jon Ronson (00:51:41.000)

Yeah. Well, I think that's fascinating. I think I think that's that's a very interesting perspective. See, I was focused on this a particular theory that springs up around Carol, how so? We should explain. So yes,

Jordan (00:51:58.000)

absolutely. Yeah. Sorry for jumping in and giving a whole a whole dialogue there.

Jon Ronson (00:52:03.000)

I think it's fascinating because the smell thing has is definitely a very strange fact.

Jordan (00:52:09.000)

But people are unexplainable fact.

Jon Ronson (00:52:12.000)

Right? Yeah, you can't. It's odd. I mean, Mullah later said, No, he wasn't smiling and nodding. He was devastated. But clearly,

Jordan (00:52:21.000)

I can't believe that Muller would lie to us, especially

Jon Ronson (00:52:25.000)

remembering that Snell actually tried to blow up that building himself. He's not going to spend the last day of his life thinking, Oh, that's terrible. Totally given that, to do this. Exactly. So thanks.

Jordan (00:52:37.000)

Snell has a death that is almost fucking desirable. You know, like his last day is the culmination of everything he's ever dreamt up. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating to

Jon Ronson (00:52:47.000)

me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is fascinating. So. So where cow fits into all of this is the one part of cow's life where I think she behaved. As far as I can tell, she behaved pretty impeccably, was a few months as an undercover informant, because we managed to get ahold of her diary, which I didn't know, tell me if you know, differently. It's apparently really hard to get ahold of.

Jordan (00:53:14.000)

I couldn't find it. I could get it. Yeah. Today, I wanted it.

Jon Ronson (00:53:19.000)

I wanted it. So bad. Kudos to my producer miles, we've at somebody's house. And he had the diary. And Miles was like, oh, you know, we should you know, can we do

Jordan (00:53:29.000)

it? You should steal it. It should be yours. Well, we never looked back.

Jon Ronson (00:53:34.000)

While we were there. We scanned every page, the guy's dead. Now, while we were there we, of course, neither did revert to him. Obviously, the fixed

Jordan (00:53:45.000)

IV IV, that's such a specific thing to throw out in my world. We scan, we scanned this thing that's very difficult to find, and the guy that gave us his dead now, if you're on the wrong show, to have that bit go uncomment it as

Jon Ronson (00:54:01.000)

well, so we scanned every page, and it was only like a couple of years later when we put the show out when we put the debutante out that people were like, how do you counter that data? And I was like, I assumed it was easily available because we got it so easily. But no, this is apparently a real coup, that we've got the Derby and it's definitely legit. You know, the handwriting is exactly the same with letters that we know that Carol wrote and etc, etc. So it's definitely a legit document. And it's like because obviously she couldn't wear a wire. Well, while she was at LM city, we've got tape of her wearing a wire that other Nazi events. Yeah, flew to get dinner party that she held for them outside her house. But we couldn't read. Obviously she couldn't wear a wire tell him city so she was keeping a secret diary and handing pages to our ATF handler. And we grabbed the diary. And it's an extraordinary record. I mean, we we quote pretty substantially from it. Yeah, it's all amazed. Sing just to just to see what life's like at this place. And, and the fact that she has a good turn of phrase. You know, it's just an extraordinary document. So the first thing she writes is that that the elders had a beating on her. And she, and they decided that she was excellent breeding stock, and she'd been approved for residency. And then she says this little character profiles of all the people who lived there, she fingered one of them is John Doe, to at one point, typically, she wrote about him before the fact. A jerk people don't like him slow. And he's the one that she said moderately jumped out to

Jordan (00:55:45.000)

Yeah, I mean, the funny part about that is all the things that you can describe McVeigh as those aren't three, unfortunately.

Jon Ronson (00:55:52.000)

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so so she writes this voluminous diary about life at LM city and all the violent talk and, you know, blowing things up and how Dennis may have wanted to blow up or Beck's could video store and Dennis may have Oh, my God, you know, she tells these stories about how she started as smoking a cigarette and Denis may had walks up to her with a with a cat of gas that's leaking. And she's like, smoking a cigarette, right, Jesus. So she paints us like,

Jordan (00:56:27.000)

he's an interesting guy, even just a guy. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:56:31.000)

So then she gets deactivated as an informant in February 95. Because she's clearly spiraling. She she's she's self harming. And she checked herself into hospital a couple of times. What are the occasions she says it she was attacked by a gang of black people? Oh, that's so crazy. Second time. Second time. She's she's been in open spaces.

Jordan (00:57:02.000)

Mad Max out there. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (00:57:06.000)

So so rightly, the ATF deactivated her in February. But what's wrong? And this is a whole side story. That's probably we don't want to get into but just the cavalier way that the federal government treats this younger indica.

Jordan (00:57:19.000)

Oh, no, I do want to get into that. Yeah, she's she's thoroughly fucked over quite hard. And I think I saw another interview you did recently, where you referenced the throwaways the article. Yeah. So that is, it is stunning to me. That they are allowed to get away with that shit.

Jon Ronson (00:57:44.000)

Unbelievable. So to the main story in the throwaways, which is an excellent New Yorker article by Sarah Stillman. It's about this young woman called Rachel Huffman, who was like a college student, she was caught with a bit of weed and a bit of ecstasy. And they just terrified her, like, you're gonna go to jail for a long time unless you become for but they send to her very first mission is to buy like hand guns and a massive amount of drugs for these two really sketchy guys. So they send her in there with no training. Obviously, there's a tail on her, but she by the tail managed to lose her. And she's murdered. She's murdered on her first mission. And that's sort of, you know, outrageous Cavalier behavior towards young informants forcing them to do things that trained officers would find terrifying. Yeah, you see echoes of that encounter story. The fact is, she was sending back these messages to the ATF saying like that she was like sleeping with white supremacists, you know, to get information out of them. And I haven't seen like any information or any evidence that the ATF was trying to rein her in.

Jordan (00:58:50.000)

Right. Right. So that's, that's the other thing about your story is I find so, so interesting is that there are absolutely no good people in your story. There are none. There are no good people that you're sorry. There's no heroes. There's no one who is even acting rationally. I mean, it is it is a wild story. And I'm talking about everybody from the FBI agents you interviewed for to

Jon Ronson (00:59:18.000)

meet and and prosecutors.

Jordan (00:59:21.000)

They're disgusting human beings. Yeah. disgust me like truly

Jon Ronson (00:59:25.000)

always talking about like her little her little Mary Jane dress like Yeah,

Jordan (00:59:29.000)

yeah, I mean, this is this is only a few years removed from the FBI murdering Fred Hampton. They do not have anything good going on.

Jon Ronson (00:59:37.000)

Right? Yeah, yeah, it's true. That the only good person Yeah. Some of the minor characters like high school, Fred Laurie.

Jordan (00:59:46.000)

Yeah, Laurie seems fine.

Jon Ronson (00:59:50.000)

When would he really get into the meat of the story? There's very few people to root for.

Jordan (00:59:58.000)

Know, which also gets us To the next person who is lying through their teeth to you is you interview I think her name is Rachel Patterson.

Jon Ronson (01:00:08.000)

Okay, so, so right. So let me tell you the backstory, and then tell me what you know about Rachel Patterson. Yeah, we spent ages over three or four years trying to get people from Elohiym city to talk to us now at the time, they let me in and I interviewed Milan, but this is, you know, 30 years ago, but tried to get anybody to talk to us now was just impossible. But Rachel Madison clearly like, enjoys, you know, talking she's kind of gossipy and you know, like to kind of remember those days. So she's she talked to us. So the story she told us was that she didn't trust Carol. Carol, who was about 23, at the time, was dating Rachel son who was seems to be quite a sort of vulnerable 18 year old. And so she was pissed off with Carol for that. And then cow starts dating anti stress. My auntie the German. Rachel was very suspicious of that, because Carl was very good looking and anti stressed. I was sort of gangly with buck teeth. And so, you know, she was suspicious about girl. And that's, you know, by and large. That's, that's the sort of main crux of her memories of cattle.

Jordan (01:01:14.000)

Right, right. But I just find it impossible to believe anything she says to you, not least of which think about this. All right. We know, in your story early on that Elohim city is thoroughly aware of propaganda opportunities to the point where they wanted to turn somebody into a propagandist in your story. Now, if you struggle to find anybody who will talk to you at Elohim city for years, and then the person that you talk to has so many nice things to say about Elohim city. It's so nice. It was really nice. I know, you think that there's so much, far right activity going on there. But it was a holy place. It was about raising children. That's what the place was about. And her suspicions after the fact are so great. She knew from the beginning, she was like, Ah, he was dating my son, this incredibly rich, pretty woman is dating my son, and I'm against it at Elohim. City. To have as many kids as possible as fast as possible. That's

Jon Ronson (01:02:19.000)

very, that's a very good, I have mixed feelings about that last thing that you said everything else that you said, but there's no way that she couldn't have been aware of you know, members of the Order members of the government sort of the armor, the Lord told her like, you know, white supremacist murderers were frequently as LMCC. Back then. That may have changed since since the Oklahoma City bombing. But at the time, no question. So I totally agree with the last part, I'm sort of thinking if you've got a cat look, on the one hand, the ideology of the place, was have as many white children as possible. That's the woman's role in the movement is to flood the world with white baby. So ideologically, yes, Rachel would have really wanted would have wanted Carol to be dating her son. But if she was as a mother, if her son and a son does come over, as you know, isolated and vulnerable, sure. And as a mother, which would she I don't know, I sort of think, you know, is this robot taken advantage of my say, you know, I just think I think I'd have been suspicious of Carol if I was

Jordan (01:03:28.000)

right. I think I think 2023 Her would have been very suspicious of Carol. I disagree about 1990s. I am in Elohim city listening to Robert Mueller's sermons every night, her doing that. So I mean, this is it's like, the reasonable behavior further time is so completely different from what we would expect right now. You know, like that idea of, oh, well, Carol's mom is a philanthropist with Ms. She's She's obviously going around doing good things for people is is also forgetting that the norm, the the baseline is throwing the N word around and not letting people listen to NWA. You know, like, it's the combination of those two things that exists in Tulsa as the context.

Jon Ronson (01:04:18.000)

I mean, sure, but the one fit but when I met the head of the debutante committee and as I said, like in Tulsa society, you would think that the head of the debutante committee is going to be like the most extreme example of that. She wasn't and she wasn't like that. And she wasn't like that, then if she's not like that, now, she was really worried about, you know, whether we would be inadvertently spreading racism by telling the story about the black men Chase, you know, pushing Carol off the bird. So, you know, I entirely hear what you're saying. But at the same time, this sort of absoluteness of what you're saying, I'm not sure about.

Jordan (01:04:53.000)

I believe me, I am a person who says absolute things, only believing 97% of them. So don't Don't Don't be concerned about that. I'm not saying this is a way of like Brooking no argument about it. I'm just saying that if I am going to acknowledge the history of the United States in these stories, that is the context I bring first, because that's the context that has been ignored for the past all of the time. That's why, you know, we have books that will just reprint her story about being chased by black men off of a statue all the time. Yeah, that idea is far more damaging to me. Then, assuming that rich white people in late 80s, Tulsa, Oklahoma are racists.

Jon Ronson (01:05:43.000)

Yeah, no, I hear. I hear. Yeah. But right, so, so getting back to Rachel pass? Yes. I don't know. I just got this instinctual sense that she was worried about a son dating cow or that gave cow suspicions. Abby that gave her suspicions about cow. Sure. You know, maybe I'm wrong. And maybe she's been revisionist. But that certainly, you know, I sort of told

Jordan (01:06:15.000)

her no, I don't speak to her. So I'm more likely to be wrong than you are.

Jon Ronson (01:06:19.000)

Well, I mean, I could be wrong. I could be wrong. But I'm just remembering that moment. And I didn't doubt it. And I think the reason why I didn't doubt it is because I think she says like, you know, he was a naive boy. And you know, so I think yeah, just digging into that moment. Oh, totally.

Jordan (01:06:35.000)

Absolutely. That's again, that's, that's one of the things that I find fascinating is because you and I both know that at the very least she was lying to us some time. Oh, no question, right, you know, this stuff. So So then our conversation is like, how much? Yeah, and that's, that's a conversation that we're never gonna get an answer to, you know, that's that's never going to be correct. So that's why I'm very fascinated by the idea of like, you actually talking to her. And having this point of view and me not and coming away with a different one.

Jon Ronson (01:07:04.000)

Yeah, I'm into, you know, look, I sometimes maybe I veer to, because I always want to enter into stories with curiosity, because I just think curiosity is just better than the judgment. It just takes you to more interesting places. Sure, I can be at fault. I could be at fault there. But it's kind of one or the other. Like, you know, I either went to read the Rachel paths that interview, that kick, you know, there's a famous Jeremy Paxman line who is, you know, British, he used to be a face scabrous interview with politicians. And he said, every time he interviews, politicians, what's constantly going through his mind, whatever they're saying is, why is this bastard lied to me? You know, you could either go and just on a practical level, you could either go into it into a virtual partisan thinking bias, this bastard lying to me, or go in and just think, Okay, I'll go where this takes me. And both versions have have have their positives. And both both of the negatives is

Jordan (01:08:03.000)

Oh, for sure. Oh, no, I understand. I understand. It's, I think I think what I point to though, is the the, by leaving details out about the overarching context of the world at the time, there's a different presentation of who these people are and who they could be and how it is that they behave and why they behave that way. But the idea of the debutante is, is again, like it's so easy for everyone in the story. And this is why I'm kind of trying to embody the story here. Everyone in the story is blown away by this rich white lady. Yes, everyone is blown away by the debutante because of what the image and the superficiality of it carry with them, but promises that they carry,

Jon Ronson (01:08:55.000)

which is very much what the second half of the series unpacks Right. Right. So that would be so just before we move on to that because I think that's really interesting stuff. I don't I would say like I don't think I left anything out about LM city what I was trying to do

Jordan (01:09:12.000)

Sure, sure. No, no, no, I'm not I'm speaking more of just a general situation as opposed to this in specific I apologize for not making that clear.

Jon Ronson (01:09:23.000)

But yes, so but the story so what I love about the the deputy taxes as a storytelling is the first few episodes are digging into the biography of adjust the there's a dark comedy about the terrible life choices that she makes, and if you think she could get any worse than she does and so on. And yeah, you know, we've managed to get this amazing, you know, archive of the no one's ever heard of these messages that are just for messages that Dennis would leave her and when she's wired up and reporting for the ATF, so we get all of this stuff but then And, you know, when the Oklahoma City bombing happens, everything changes and changes in our store return. So, so she's deactivated in February presumably the ATF have got her Elohiym city diary and all the tapes. And then on April the 19th, the bombing happens. So she's called into the FBI on April the 21st. And they said, you know, tell us everything you know about Ella him city. So at the time, she says that maybe the, you know, baby, because that's the sketch of John Doe to go go out to smile. They might have been spotted with it. Yes, at a truck rental place. So she says I'll baby he was at LM city, a guy called Tony. And she says that she doesn't recognize McVeigh. She may have once seen him in a photo in a photo album that she saw at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Yes, yeah. Two days after the bombing. That's the story that she tells the

Jordan (01:11:07.000)

the FBI on our show, we call that weak shit.

Jon Ronson (01:11:12.000)

Well, yeah, but her story then changes like, repeatedly. And people believe her change story. So her story becomes, oh, no, I think I spotted Timothy McVeigh at Elohiym city, walking with Andy the German anti stress Meyer. Yeah. So she starts telling that story. She tells it on Diane Sawyer. I think she tells it in court, Terry Nichols trial, that she tells other people that she was introduced to Timothy McVeigh, and so on. So her story repeatedly changes about Arabic very sightings. Yeah. Which happened to coincide with moments in her life where it would benefit her to be a hero who could have stopped the bombing. So crazy

Jordan (01:12:03.000)

how that worked out. It was like, every time she needed it, her story got better. Yeah, it was it's like it's a story of like, overcoming limitations. You know, she's like the Hoosiers of liars. Now every time she needs to step up her game.

Jon Ronson (01:12:21.000)

Because, again, I should put out for listening to the show. And it's probably better. You'd still like to say this now. It's probably better that people hear the show before they listen to this. Probably yeah. Later that day for that? Yeah, because what happens is, so after the bombing, obviously, Oklahoma is flooded with journalists and amateur sleuths. And people like me, you know, just dicking around the white supremacy. And at the heart of it was this guy called JT cash. Yes. Yeah. So JD cash was a real estate guy who associates? Yeah, on the day of the party, we decided to come in and to become a investigative journalist. So he's for the tidy Bickerton Gazette, in Idabel, Oklahoma. And, sure enough, daddy cash, you know, this completely untrained, you know, guy comes up with all of this stuff, some of which, by the way, was very good. Some of it was true and good, like he got into Elohiym city, and like, forged a relationship with Robert Milan, and so on. So we definitely managed to to do some good stuff as a fledgling journalist, but he also came up with all of this information, which is, which has subsequently haunted the imaginations of vast numbers of people

Jordan (01:13:48.000)

that the one that I think is, is the most or perhaps least convincing thing I think I've ever heard in my entire life is the strip club tape. Right? That's absurd to think that that is meaningful. It is absurd. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (01:14:04.000)

Yeah. What is that the reason why it's insured so much is because like, kind of postulate in the show that, you know, the Oklahoma City bombing was, you know, just infinitely terrible thing. Yeah. And suddenly, in the middle of it, you've got a narrative about mysterious comments made at a strip club. And of course, people are going to gravitate towards that. That's so intriguing.

Jordan (01:14:28.000)

Oh, I know. But it's it is it is like Jesus, if it sounds like a movie, for God's sakes, everybody slow down. Yeah, it's gotta be every time,

Jon Ronson (01:14:39.000)

right? So I'll tell the story. So the story is that JD cash and who's you know, basically an amateur sleuth, and two very reputable journalists, some NBC like Beto and Bob sands. You know, countless Emmys for reporting in Afghanistan like a show rapa. Yes. But they were caught up in the middle of all of this too. And they were just, you know, they thought it was their duty to follow every lead. Sure. Yeah. And, and one of the leads, takes them to this strip club. So this could lead to Godiva. So the story today took up at the strip club. And what they discover is that there's a tape, a CCTV tape, though,

Jordan (01:15:29.000)

of what?

Jon Ronson (01:15:30.000)

Well, it's an hour log I've watched. Basically, there's a strip club in Tulsa called Lady Godiva, and a group of out of town dancers from Arkansas, were like performing it later, Godiva won this particular night, and a big fight breaks out in the dressing room between like, you know, like, West Side Story.

Jordan (01:15:56.000)

Yeah. It's a different type of dance fight. It is a different type of dance fight.

Jon Ronson (01:16:06.000)

A lot more shouting. So this big. This big fight breaks out in the dressing room with the strip club where the Arkansas dad says a screaming at the at the Oklahoma dances and it seems like I don't want to pass judgment. But it seems that the Arkansas dances were the ones that faults they were kind of a little out of control.

Jordan (01:16:26.000)

I Yeah. I mean, I can see that you're clearly slandering the great state of Arkansas. It's notorious in America for being our greatest state. So I think

Jon Ronson (01:16:38.000)

so, and it's all captured on CCTV. So the manager of this strip club is passing this tape around. Now, it's the reason why he's doing it to like over strip clubs in the area.

Jordan (01:16:53.000)

Right, right. Right to warn them about the dancers. He's underground, like Worldstar Hip Hop thing. He's trying to warn people about our kids. Yeah. Of Death

Jon Ronson (01:17:05.000)

of the rap page.

Jordan (01:17:10.000)

It's an 80s movie right there. The stuff

Jon Ronson (01:17:13.000)

you say like To what degree or data if you wanted, the story is lying. What I think was the real reason I don't want to be sluggishness, but it feels like another reason why this tape was being handed around, is because of the sort of visceral sight of these naked women screaming at each other. back room with

Jordan (01:17:34.000)

somebody again, somebody screamed, Worldstar Hip Hop, yes, where we're there.

Jon Ronson (01:17:39.000)

So it's this other. You know, this, this other bouncer from another strip club is watching this tape. And so he watches the fight between the women, but then he decides to watch the rest of the tape. I mean, what are you know, you're right, like,

Jordan (01:17:57.000)

he got high one night. And he's like, Yeah, I don't know. He just left it on. He's not telling you that he's not telling you the truth. He didn't decide to watch the rest of the date.

Jon Ronson (01:18:06.000)

He wants to watch hours, a lot of getting changed in the dressing room. Yeah. So, you know, the tape is full of just women changing clothes and so on. But at one point, a woman comes in. And this really does happen. Yeah, it comes out and she says something a little not intelligible. But basically what she's saying is something weird just happened. Outside I'm sitting with a group of men. And one of them says to be a this is the part that's completely intelligible. Yes, yes. Yes. One of them says you're gonna remember I'm a very smart man. I said you are. And he said, I am a New Yorker. Remember, we are April 1995. Yogurt, remember, be for the rest of your life. And this was 10 days before the Oklahoma City bombing. Yeah. So when NBC and JT cash get ahold of this tape, they go and interview like all the dancers. And this is where things get a little murky. Some of the dancers well, so this story of the strip club for conspiracy theorists is like a huge clue.

Jordan (01:19:16.000)

Because it's fairly close to Elohim. City. Right. So the strip club, as I understand the argument for why it's an excellent clue. It's fairly close to Elohim. City, the men of fighting age at Elohim city are not allowed to drink there. So what they do is they go blow off some steam at the local strip club.

Jon Ronson (01:19:38.000)

Yeah, yes, exactly. So they go back and interview the women at the strip club. And the story that Mike and Bob told me and the story that's kind of, you know, out there in the ether, is that they showed them pictures of Timothy McVeigh. Terry Nichols, and then Men from Allah him city like Andy the German and a couple of others, and they identified them as being the men who were in the bar that night. So there's a sighting of McVeigh bragging about what he's going to do in 10 days time or nine days time while sitting without distress Mar Fabella him city

Jordan (01:20:19.000)

smoking gun you've got

Jon Ronson (01:20:22.000)

not only a smoking gun but it's a smoking gun at a strip club

Jordan (01:20:26.000)

was so so so critical and so everything Oh, it's juicy. So right story. Oh yeah, that's what you want.

Jon Ronson (01:20:38.000)

Right? Well, it's straight out of you know, like straight out if you know Humphrey Bogart goofy, right? Yes, yes. Yes, upstate. So that's, you know why it caught fire so much. But but one of the things and then there's two other pieces of evidence that seem to link McVeigh to Lm city too. So you've got Snell, which we've already discussed. You've got Lady Godiva, and then you've got a couple of other things. So one is that McVeigh very shortly after having the right to truck that he uses for the bombing bones Ella home city and asked to speak to Andy the German. Now I did the German is this guy that coward is you know, spying on she's having an affair with him to spy on him for the for the for the government. And he's like the most you know, according to Rachel Patterson, he's one of the most outspoken people at Elm city. He's the one plotting, you know, say, you know, we need to be more white supremacist, you know, we need to blah blah, blah. And then it turns out that to make matters even murkier, that are distressed my comes from a political family in Germany where his father worked for Helmut Kohl. I was heavily involved in the unification of Eastern West Berlin, you know, after the threat of the Berlin Wall. So fuck What's this guy doing Italians?

Jordan (01:21:59.000)

Oh, I'm going to tell you this in my in my researchers zings i i couldn't verify this. And that's why I don't believe it's true. But I what I believe is that the conspiracy theory has metastasized even further. In your in your debutante? It's a he is a in the conspiracy theories from a wealthy political family with high connections. Maybe he's an informant, maybe he's a spy, maybe he's all of these things. And then later on, you go into it and the surprises, you wind up speaking to Andy, and he tells you that he's it was like a mid level, you know, big deal political family. And then of course, we theory metastasized. Now his grandfather helped set up the Nazi party,

Jon Ronson (01:22:49.000)

right? Yeah. Like, right, I mean, I sort of discounted that. Because you know, if he was a fucking Nazi, and

Jordan (01:23:01.000)

that's a discountable thing. I

Jon Ronson (01:23:07.000)

thought that was a milliner. You'd like you've made cuts that impact the choices that you know to

Jordan (01:23:15.000)

sure that's fair, that's fair. Your grandfather's values were passed down to your father were passed down to you you know, there's definitely a lineage with the the grandfather thing it's not to go completely discounted. That's true. My father's a Nazi that's worse than if your grandfather was not a Nazi.

Jon Ronson (01:23:33.000)

No, that's what I'm what I sent that what I was what I was going for, is that that's not a further clue that stress Mark was actually a deep level political operative. Who was it? Statistically, everybody was a goddamn Nazi. Yeah, it doesn't get any more credence to the idea that he was an undercover agent himself right that the Nazi Yeah, but what did happen was it McVeigh did fell now a him sitting and asked to speak to Andy, Andy the German. And yes, yes. And the other thing, that this is like the other sort of cornerstone of the conspiracy theory is that McVeigh was stopped for a traffic violation. Very close to out to the very remote ELOHEEM city. Yeah. So so then what I do in later episodes of the show is dig into all of those things to try and figure out what you know, can you use your rational minds to try to figure out what to think of those things? Sure. Yeah. And yeah,

Jordan (01:24:30.000)

and the idea is like he's he's caught speeding on i 85.

Jon Ronson (01:24:36.000)

Yeah. It was overtaking in a no overtaking stretch of the road.

Jordan (01:24:43.000)

Upon apologies on me. So he's only he's on the main highway, though, as opposed to being here, the Elohim city it's not like he's on the six mile stretch of Dirt Road. And I know that he's a guy who literally criss crossed the entire area over and over and over and over again. Absolutely. It's not really compelling evidence to say that

Jon Ronson (01:25:12.000)

he was not talking about metastasizing. Yeah, that's that's a real example of that. Because it was a full wasn't just our that even people, you know, even people from the SPLC were saying, you know who don't believe the conspiracy theory? Yeah, we're saying this is odd. Like, you know, like how we're being pushed off the roof by black people. This is something that's pretty much just generally accepted that McVeigh was stopped really close to lNcc it was actually like a 40 minute drive. It was on a main road it wasn't on the dirt road. And it was much earlier it was like 18 months before the bombing. So you know when you dig into that kind of crumbles

Jordan (01:25:57.000)

the most most if not all of the evidence crumble

Jon Ronson (01:26:00.000)

jumbos. Exactly. Which then takes us to another What I think extraordinary thing about the story, which is that despite you when you dig into the evidence, it all crumbles. People are refusing to give it up. People refusing to give it up for lots of different and really interesting reasons. Yes, absolutely. Which I'm sure we'll get onto.

Jordan (01:26:19.000)

No, of course. So yeah, so here's I feel like where we are, we are at just after the OKC bombing, when Carol's story. I I'm hesitant to just say like, let's skip over the OKC bombing. I assume a vast majority of our listeners will be extremely familiar with the OKC bombing. But just to give like a rundown of what's going on is all of a sudden one day Timothy McVeigh blows up the Murrah building with a ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb in a truck. Right. And winds up killing a just 80 people something Oh, no 168 people, 168 people. That's right. No, I got that switched up with a number who died at Waco. Yeah, because those two things are very, very related to

Jon Ronson (01:27:16.000)

each other. Yeah, very dated, including 19 children who just arrived at daycare, it seems pretty likely that McVeigh didn't know that there was a daycare center there. Because it it sort of

Jordan (01:27:32.000)

well, it didn't matter to him, either. Well, he

Jon Ronson (01:27:35.000)

certainly justified it in his mind. Like there's Schilling quote that he gave, which was when his biographer said to him, what about you know, the secretaries? What about you know? And he said, Well, he was a big fan of style Starwars when they blow up the Death Star, lots of innocent people die the death star, but nobody in the cinema audience minds.

Jordan (01:27:56.000)

Do you know what's so funny about that? Is that in the movie clerks, they have that argument only a few years before. So they had a huge long conversation about how we are contextualizing the Deathstar in such a way as to erase the fact that Luke and his team were terrorists who were going around blowing up all of these innocent people on

Jon Ronson (01:28:20.000)

the Deathstar. Wow, so do you think McVeigh was plagiarizing clerks?

Jordan (01:28:25.000)

No, I don't. I just think it's ironic that it's a chilling quote in the context of Timothy McVeigh. Yeah, whenever Kevin Smith, or no, whenever Kevin Smith writes, dialogue about it, it's very funny and light,

Jon Ronson (01:28:37.000)

right? Clicks was before what year was clerks?

Jordan (01:28:41.000)

Oh, boy, I want to say 8688 87 Something like that.

Jon Ronson (01:28:46.000)

You know, I would not put actually, you know,

Jordan (01:28:48.000)

I gotta I gotta look it up. Because people are gonna be very mad at me if

Jon Ronson (01:28:54.000)

if it was before the Oklahoma City bombing,

Jordan (01:28:56.000)

Oh, 9094 94.

Jon Ronson (01:28:59.000)

Okay, so a year earlier? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I put money

Jordan (01:29:07.000)

watch clerks and then gave that quote as oh my god,

Jon Ronson (01:29:11.000)

I think I think he I think, Oh,

Jordan (01:29:14.000)

I am getting to the bottom of these conspiracy theories left and right.

Jon Ronson (01:29:18.000)

Well, you know, you know, his pseudonym was Tim tattoed. He always denied it, but obviously Tuttle is De Niro's character in Brazil. Yeah. And and I wouldn't be at all surprised if McVeigh watched Brazil as well.

Jordan (01:29:31.000)

It's, and I'll tell you this. Here's one of the biggest, easiest ways to to kind of corroborate that is. Everything in this world is about movies. That's the one thing that we've learned over and over and over again through Alex's show. It's just movies. It's over and over and over again. This is what they're doing. It's exactly like in this movie. It's exactly like in this movie. You know, I'm

Jon Ronson (01:29:55.000)

bright when I was writing the minister at goats. That was a real revelation. To me that, that the reason why one of the reasons why all of these special forces people would shatter, like, walk through walls and become invisible and stuff is because they were inspired by movies.

Jordan (01:30:09.000)

Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's it's people who cannot distinguish the difference between fiction and reality. That extremely overpopulate the group, which is again, why Timothy McVeigh is so fascinating. As a parallel to Carol, how, I mean, Carol is lying nonstop Carol lies to everyone. Carol tells everyone what they want to hear. And Carol gets whatever she wants based from these relationships on. McVeigh is the complete opposite. All he does is tell the truth, he doesn't get close to anybody. He keeps going from place to place like a drifter. And then he's a believer and he follows through it is such a fascinating parallel story. And the people who are obsessed with a conspiracy theory are trying to smoosh them together because if you squint real tight, these parallel stories intersect, right? Just don't, they don't so fascinating.

Jon Ronson (01:31:06.000)

Can I say by the way that the amount of thought you've put into this is so kind of admirable about apropos. You know, I'm saying no, I

Jordan (01:31:13.000)

refuse to accept compliments from anybody, let alone you don't just don't casually name drop, I wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats and then be like, Oh, I'm surprised you thought about this? Yeah. Clown. Again.

Jon Ronson (01:31:25.000)

No, I I had no idea about and I really believe I think that's a very strong terms. McClay got that from clerks. Well,

Jordan (01:31:34.000)

I mean, it wouldn't it wouldn't be the first time that a joke turned into a right wing meme that led to

Jon Ronson (01:31:42.000)

Well, yeah, absolutely. You know, yeah. So because then what happens is Carol calve sort of vanishes from history for a while. And then remarkably, you know, we leave Carol Right, right after the bombing. She has gone to the FBI, she's told them what she knows. She's clearly remorseful. She was a good informant, like I'm sure of that. I don't think it's anything that she did as an informant. That's that, that you can criticize her for? She gave good information. So she does so she leaves the story as a kind of hero. And then she vanishes from history, and then reappears in the most unexpected way, like 18 months later, in 97.

Jordan (01:32:23.000)

It's so it's so funny to me, because this was this was one of the biggest moments where I was like, Oh, I know this person. I know exactly who this person is. And what's so funny is so she reappears 18 months later with Thor Thorson news. Not see boyfriend. He's not the real Thor. Come on. And she is Freya.

Jon Ronson (01:32:49.000)

Yeah, he's Freya. So they become so she's rejoined a Nazi group as leader. And now they're recording data races messages themselves, you know, plotting revolution, you know, warning that if the White Revolution doesn't start in the next two weeks, this is for memory, I might be slightly wrong. They're gonna start it and so on. So they have arrested. He is found guilty and sent to jail for three years, but she gets tossed his best lawyer gets off. As you say she goes through life without I wonder why

Jordan (01:33:27.000)

I hate rich people. It's so weird. It's so weird. You know, it's so odd that I would despise rich people. Oh, it's so crazy.

Jon Ronson (01:33:34.000)

Anyway. Yeah. It's so so while she's standing trial for plotting. Oh, you know what, there is one person in the story who I who I trusted and believed and maybe naively I don't know. But her the FBI guy who arrested her, and like discovered this new Nazi troops he was in 18 months later. And I've just drawn a blank on his name annoyingly, but he gave us a bunch of stuff. He gave us like a letter that Carol wrote to her parents and gave us and he

Jordan (01:34:09.000)

the letter is another one of those things. That is such a great I know exactly who this person is Bo. I mean, and I'm going to I'm going to tell you my my understanding of Carol. It comes from the letter. That's what made it all very clear to me who exactly Carol was is because the letter is one of the most self aggrandizing self mythologizing heroic woe is me as fucking I can't believe that I am both a hero and the world is against me letters that I've ever read or ever heard.

Jon Ronson (01:34:47.000)

I don't know when the letter was written is very relevant. Right?

Jordan (01:34:51.000)

Totally. That's a huge part of it. But the one part that I couldn't get out of my head I couldn't get out of my fucking head is when She writes down the exact cost of her guns. That was the thing. That was the thing where I was like, I know who this person is. This is fucking Alex Jones. If he was terrible on Mike, this is an amazing thing because she has a very similar upbringing. She's never received consequences. She doesn't tell the truth to anybody. She has a parasitic social lifestyle. Jon Ronson. I'm going to tell you this right now, I got a copy of the Psychopath Test, just to run Carol through it. And boy howdy.

Jon Ronson (01:35:35.000)

Well, I mean, she definitely has this sort of shallow effect. That's,

Jordan (01:35:40.000)

that's the thing about the at Budds. Is everybody was like, how did she come up there? And to me, it made so much sense. What was she going to get a fucking job?

Jon Ronson (01:35:52.000)

Right. Because the story that she tells in court, which is believed is, um, for me, this is this was the moment like, the longest time, as you know, trying to figure out what do I believe about cow or, you know, what, what should I make of cow? And for me, the moment when it all starts to crumble, was her defense. So yeah, so she's found 18 months later, and her defense was that the FBI, had sloppily revealed her name to the world, which is true, the FBI did do that,

Jordan (01:36:25.000)

right? Again, no good people in this story whatsoever.

Jon Ronson (01:36:30.000)

As a result of that, she had to like get in deeper. And then she comes up with this very sort of convoluted defense, which is that the reason why she set up the new dial a racist was in part because she had to get in deeper, because the FBI had revealed her name, and she's all danger. And be, she was using dollar Estus as a as like a honey trap to attract new racists who then she could report on to the ATF, even though she had been deactivated years earlier. And it had no connection to the ATF whatsoever. But because you had like, a great lawyer, like everybody would agree that like if you were in trouble in Tulsa, and you have this guy get Yeah, Bruce, and he's, he's currently stormy Daniels this lawyer, he's a teacher. So so it was believed she won. She got she got off? And on what seems to me like a really implausible just just a lot. Oh, it's

Jordan (01:37:31.000)

an absurd story. Yeah.

Jon Ronson (01:37:33.000)

It's through rationality. Ridiculous. But there's so many people, and we're not talking about, you know, Infowars audience, we're talking about people from completely different stratas of society, who really believe Carl's story, despite everything that we've just talked about. And some,

Jordan (01:37:53.000)

and I think I think there's a very simple and obvious reason for that. And it's, I'll tell you this, I never looked at a picture of Carol. Not once. So for this entire thing. You when you said that when it's named the debutante whenever it opens with her being an appearance based human being, you know, I thought, well, that is easily the thing that can that tricks, everybody, so just don't do that. Yeah. And I think it's a lot easier to understand what's you don't know what she looks like?

Jon Ronson (01:38:26.000)

Yes. Well, that is a very big part of it, her wealth. She's charismatic, but she may be sort of shallow, have a sort of shallow effect, but shallow,

Jordan (01:38:36.000)

charismatic, bored, easily parasitic lifestyle? How many?

Jon Ronson (01:38:44.000)

Well, yeah, it's funny, like I was still, even though I said that I was trying to think of what disorders people have. I tend not to say them out loud. Because I always think it's not that. But you know, but the people who have said to me comes over, it's like, classic borderline. I don't that's not right. Because, you know, a few people have said that to me, but you know, the big book about Borderline Personality Disorders called I Hate You don't leave me. And Carol isn't a I hate you don't leave me personally.

Jordan (01:39:16.000)

No, no, no. She picks people up and throws them away like nothing. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I'm not diagnosing her because I don't I mean, even your your book about the Psychopath Test is hey, don't do the Psychopath Test. So, believe me, I'm not doing that. But I will say that her her pattern of behavior what I would strongly suspect of her childhood and and everything that she's done in your story, leads you to that point. And I think part of the reason that people look over it is appearance. She's a woman. There's so much misogyny baked into this tale. Oh, that it's wild to see how much of it is just like, oh, yeah, no, that's how it was back then. That's just the way everybody did things, you know?

Jon Ronson (01:40:08.000)

Well, yes. Because the big thing is so you know, so a bunch of like mainstream people just mainstream journalists believe cover story. Victims of the bombing believe Carol's story. She's like a sort of femme fatale for like, everyone for, for for, for the white supremacy guys that she was dating, but also for conspiracy investigators and for victims of the bombing, you know, who want answers and closure? She, as you said, she tells people what they want to hear? Oh, yeah, all the time. And one of the legacies of that is she's also now become a very kind of totemic figure, if that's the right phrase for people. And this is where it gets into slightly more complicated areas. Yeah, no, I'm down. Right. Okay. So for people, as you know, there's a, there's a big move in some sort of academic quarters on the left to say that, that the anti governments right in America are much more white supremacist than we think, and much more unified and collect and connected than we think, as big. And so we have to, you know, they're plotting against us, they're plotting Civil War. So we have to like raid, you know, we have to proactively do stuff about it. Like for instance, writing, Callaghan's essay. So, and cow fits very neatly into that narrative, because if you believe Carol's story, then what you're also believing is that McVeigh had much more specific help from other Nazis, which proves that they're much more unified than they would like us to believe. Right? Yeah. But as you say, and I say, I just I think cow story crumbles when you dig into it. To believe that kind of means that you're believing in a conspiracy theory as far as far as

Jordan (01:42:05.000)

now, let me know it doesn't kind of it does it? Yeah. And here's the thing. Here's what's fascinating about that is you don't get to talk to Carol, despite the fact that she does agree to speak to you. Right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's so much when I got to the end of the story, and she agreed to speak to you, and then she doesn't show up and goes completely dark. I'm like, there's no point. There's no point that she talks to you, she is going to tell you a completely different story. Then she tells the person that she talks to 20 minutes after you then you 20 minutes after the new that person gets it you don't I'm saying? And even if they're the same story, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's for her for her benefit.

Jon Ronson (01:42:47.000)

I gotta say I came to the same conclusion. Like I was, I was disappointed that she wouldn't talk to me. And if she ever changes her mind and wants to talk to me, I'm down. Oh, of course. Of course. You're

Jordan (01:42:57.000)

absolutely absolutely not. I

Jon Ronson (01:42:59.000)

listen to whatever she wants to say. But I did come to that conclusion. Like if you if you start to not believe Carol, then interviewing her is no longer essential. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan (01:43:11.000)

Yeah. No, the person that I want to interview the most desert is her dad. I think I think there's a good I think there's a good chance that her dad is probably the key to understanding her. Far better than anybody on this fucking planet. Yeah, I will say that.

Jon Ronson (01:43:27.000)

Well, maybe I hit that again. Or I think

Jordan (01:43:29.000)

you absolutely should. That's that to me. Everything probably starts there.

Jon Ronson (01:43:34.000)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, she was. Yeah,

Jordan (01:43:39.000)

I mean, her relationship with men is great, though. Well, definitely doesn't gravitate to older.

Jon Ronson (01:43:49.000)

Yet. Dennis has 20 years has seen yet. Greg, I think was roughly the same age. Sure. But

Jordan (01:43:55.000)

to piss off her dad, that was Dad centric.

Jon Ronson (01:43:59.000)

Yeah. Dennis may had me Jesus. I mean, he definitely had some charisma. But my God, is that man insane. I mean, he's now doing 50 years for mail bombing. So he turned out to be just as dangerous as people thought he was. But the one thing I want to add, like the people at the academics and so on who believe Carol's story, they are definitely right about some things. They're right that The Turner Diaries is a unifying thing. Oh, totally. Absolutely. So so. So the far right, are more aligned in some ways, then then history would have us believe I think that's definitely true. But it's a real reach to to then decide that they believe Carol's story, too.

Jordan (01:44:41.000)

Yeah, I mean, I think I think what is so striking to me about the points of view presented is that no one I feel has the the Well, I'll say this, if you want wanted to stop the OKC bombing? I don't think you would have been able to stop somebody from bombing the Murrah Building. But if you wanted to stop Timothy McVeigh from bombing the Murrah Building, then after Waco, you disband the ATF and hold the leadership accountable for it, no amount of rating anyone of any kind of force applied by the law is going to stop, it's only going to increase the likelihood of another OKC bombing. So that's what I find so interesting about your story is that I don't think anybody has any idea what they're talking about, in regards to why shift is taking place, because what they want to believe, is something completely different from reality.

Jon Ronson (01:45:50.000)

Yeah, yeah, it's true. And, of course, that's, that's the thing that makes this story very current, because there's still people out there, you know, who were saying that? I've, you know, it's, I understand why the argument is being heard that, you know, just look at Charlottesville, look at January, the sixth, genuinely scary, dangerous things are happening. So I understand why, then there's like a lot of, you know, fear and anxiety and paranoia that, you know, that, you know, these things aren't disparate things, these are all connected, and we have to do something about it before they get us and stuff, the Civil War. But it's also, you know, it's you have to be really fucking careful, you know, when you because what it leads to is waco said, Well, I

Jordan (01:46:35.000)

mean, it's, it's, it is no coincidence to me, one that Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden come from the same war in terms of why they blew up America. And to that people don't want to believe the people who said, why, you know, Timothy, you said, why Osama said why. And instead, we hear that they hate our freedoms. You know what I mean? So, so to me, a lot of this comes again, straight from this place of, do you know why January 6 happened? Because of the Iraq war, because of the Gulf War because of the Vietnam War? Because we are, I mean, if you want to say that we are a country that is like governing itself, you know, the people are involved in the government, then we also have to accept responsibility for what the government does, right? Or we say that the government is out of fucking control. And they are crazy. And the problem is, both are true. Yeah, that's the problem.

Jon Ronson (01:47:46.000)

Yeah. By the way, the whole Vietnam connection is really interesting to you know, this.

Jordan (01:47:50.000)

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. But But think about that. Think about the Vietnam can I'm sorry, I had to I'm sorry for scraping out Yeah. But, but when you think about this, right, you think about somebody in Vietnam, watching the United States government, burn a village alive, you know, burn those children alive. And they say, No, this is fine, because we're the good guys. And then you come home and you watch the United States Government burn children alive. It I mean, I It's a What are you gonna say, you know, like, there's no good guy here. The problem is that we're not dealing with the reason that these things are happening.

Jon Ronson (01:48:31.000)

And in fact, you could argue quite the opposite. Like I don't know oversell this, because this is slightly going beyond my sphere of knowledge.

Jordan (01:48:39.000)

I'm in speculate. That's my job. I'm a clown. Everything I say is beyond my knowledge. I'm also a professional comedian. And now I talk louder than people.

Jon Ronson (01:48:50.000)

Well, okay, so you get the message of Waco and you know, I was talking to I don't know if you know, Michael Moynihan who presents the fifth column podcast he's okay and he's he's really interesting. And he said this to me and we kind of agreed that basically, after Waco, there was this big documentary waco rules of engagement and it was like nominated for an Oscar and you know, beloved documentary and the message of Waco rules of engagement is we don't want we want to show everything we can to avoid more waco was it was a towering mess. It was a fuckup it was used as like an experimental You know, Jesus the shit they got up to awake. I mean, I read about this in the metastatic goats a little bit totally, you know, that child with these like, you know, exotic torture techniques blasting

Jordan (01:49:37.000)

sounds have died. No, no, no. They wanted to play with their new toys. Yeah, absolutely. And grownups who wanted to play with their new toys. And that is that's one of the reasons that I say like when waco happened and no one was held accountable for it. You guaranteed OKC was going to happen,

Jon Ronson (01:49:54.000)

right? And I think this is where I'm slightly out of my sphere of knowledge, but it feels to me and tell me if I'm wrong, that the message of Waco has kind of changed over the decades. And it's no longer this is a cautionary tale. Let's not do this shit anymore. Let's not have this kind of government overreach to Yeah, maybe we should be doing more waco thinks that things is such a, you know things are it's such fever pitch maybe we need to stop them before they stop us.

Jordan (01:50:22.000)

Yeah, I mean I here's what I'll say about that. So when I read I think the book was oh no I haven't here Oklahoma City what the investigation missed and why it still matters by I got to cite them Andrew Gumbel and Roger G Charles.

Jon Ronson (01:50:42.000)

Right. Yes. So,

Jordan (01:50:43.000)

so Timothy McVeigh's last words before execution worthy. Unfortunately, very apt, Louis Brandeis quotes, the Ark government is the potent the omnipresent teacher, that quote, and it is very much like if you want to, if you want to get to the heart of of where these things are coming from, you have to point at the people with agency. And that is the people in the FBI and the ATF and the government. The law enforcement, like a cab is not specific to cops. It's it's ATF, it's FBI, it's the Border Patrol, all of these people are creating the violence that they pretend to stop. And I think if we didn't have movies, if it weren't so attractive to have an FBI agent and a movie, and we knew what the FBI and ATF and all those people actually do, we would be like, no, no, no, we got to get rid of these assholes as soon as fucking possible. Are you shitting? Me? These are evil people.

Jon Ronson (01:51:52.000)

Right? Yeah, I'm so upset. I'm so glad that you're saying this. Because I think this this viewpoint on the left, is starting to diminish a little, I think, you know, everyone's so nervous about, you know, the idea of like, impending Civil War, and so on that, you know, people are escalating things all over the place. So I'm so pleased that you said all of that, because I agree entirely with that. People should be thinking that frankly,

Jordan (01:52:20.000)

that's, that's fantastic. I mean, I unfortunately, I think people assume that if I am talking about the OKC bombing, I'm gonna wind up on a watch list. So as it's delightful to disappoint.

Jon Ronson (01:52:35.000)

You know, it worries me to see conspiracy theories burgeoning in places where they shouldn't, you know, that's happening. And, you know, we you and I, you know, especially you because of knowledge facts, you know, you spent a lot of time on picking conspiracy theories, that burden on the right. And I just think it's so important to you obviously, agree that these you know, these dysfunctional, you know, difficult thought processes are happening all over the place.

Jordan (01:53:07.000)

Yeah, I mean, it is it is our stated like, we don't have a team. I mean, that's just the reality for the two of us. And so it doesn't, like, if people want to believe something. That's my first like, Oh, your stop it. If something is true, that you want to be true, you really need to dig as deep as you can into whether or not it is because it's probably not. Yeah, the world we live in is garbage sauce.

Jon Ronson (01:53:44.000)

Yeah, well, yeah. And obviously, you know, I think it's a great exciting climax of that it'd be tough for me to come to conclusion that there's no conspiracy, but obviously something

Jordan (01:53:55.000)

I do too. No, no, I totally agree with you. Yeah, I was that's that's what was so interesting to me. The experience of listening to it is because as you're bringing up the evidence throughout it, you know, in that kind of true crime way of like, oh, the people say that the cop fluid and then there was this clue and all that stuff. And it was so much me being like, well, that's bullshit. Well, that's dumb. Well, there's that's nothing. So you must have been pleased with like, fine. Yeah, no, no, no, at the end, whatever. You went through it. I was like, Oh, thank God. I was. I was gonna scream at Jon Ronson for two hours. No, I only screamed at you for two hours.

Jon Ronson (01:54:34.000)

Yeah, and it's so important. And it's so for me, that's so great. You know, so disproof against as much as I possibly can with the evidence that I had. Sure Yes, just became such a kind of important thing. So in the end, I think what the debutante is it starts it's, I think, a really fun way of like telling the story of this of this, you know, really unusual woman. And then it ends with a sort of tribute to the old values of like evidence gathering journalism and ideological journalism. And we're just, yeah.

Jordan (01:55:10.000)

Oh, no, you're talking to, you know, Dan is, Dan has been like the very first from the moment we started, it was assumed nothing. Don't assume that he's a bad guy. Don't assume he's a good guy. Don't assume he's wrong. Don't assume he's right. Take every claim individually and go from there. You know, and now we've come to the conclusion that he's lied about everything. And I feel like again, that's why Carol is so familiar to me is because it is just like that. Cell my sell my Tec nine for $650. That's, that's a person who fucking loves their guns, and is proud of the fact that they own that gun. You know, why would you tell your insanely rich parents to sell your guns for only $650? That guy was an oil baron. The only reason you do that is because you love them. It's so it's so interesting to me.

Jon Ronson (01:56:06.000)

It's so interesting. Oh, good. And by the way, this has been a great, this has been,

Jordan (01:56:13.000)

oh, I'm better than Rogen.

Jon Ronson (01:56:16.000)

Twice the first time I did him

Jordan (01:56:18.000)

was done us twice. So right, this is the second time for us to

Jon Ronson (01:56:22.000)

see who gets the third rubs. The first time I did was like way before, you know, he was the phenomenon that he became like this, maybe the six hundreds, like I was about I don't know what he's up to now. Maybe like 2000 or something. Or knows. Yeah, but and it was, it was interesting, because, you know, it was before any of this stuff happened before he became such a sort of superstar. And I just really noticed it, did these two podcasts at the same time, Rogen. And this show called guys we fucked and which is the sex positive women Shuri. Christian, and, and I just noticed for like, the next year, everywhere I went, I was in like Canberra, and I was all I was in Dubai. And people were like, coming up to me and deciding CUSEC I live to on Joe Rogan. And at all I loved your guys, we've worked so and I remember thinking, oh my god, you know, I had no idea that the reach of this guy. And yeah, and then he subsequently kind of exploded a couple of

Jordan (01:57:29.000)

years. Yeah, that's that's such a funny. I mean, in the context of of this entire conversation, you know, like that. That realization of Joe Rogan's quote, journey, you know, like that idea of he was ostensibly just a stoner guy who didn't care too much to now being a an alt right figurehead, you know, hanging out with Elon Musk and, and convincing people that vaccines are evil, you know, like, that is the same trajectory of somebody with I mean, it's a trajectory of somebody with too much money. Yeah. trajectory of people with money,

Jon Ronson (01:58:11.000)

right. I did an interview quite recently with this British guy, a rapper called scroobius, Pip. And he's who does a podcast called distraction pieces. And he's been on Rogen, too. And during the interview, he kind of asked me like, What do I think of Rogan, you know, post, you know, because he says he feels conflicted now that Rogan's you know, say, well with this sort of fact stuff. And so, so we had a conversation about it. And one thing that, you know, I sort of ruefully pointed out is that, you know, Joe Rogan, broad, you know, does about three hours of audio a day, I do about three hours of audio a year. So a that means a lot less wealthy than he is. Pay, it means that you know, I have a massive amount of time to go home and think about every single thing that I say in the show. Sure. So actually, you know, every split second of my shows or books, whatever they are, have been like thought over, molded over, like a million times. I need I guess the problem with doing three hours of broadcast today. So you don't do that. You just splurge it all out. And that becomes the thing.

Jordan (01:59:18.000)

And then you surround yourself with Yes, men who will just agree with whatever you say. So all of a sudden you think the things that you splurge out are correct. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's trajectory of being rich.

Jon Ronson (01:59:29.000)

Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. It's dispiriting. Yeah,

Jordan (01:59:36.000)

but lovely.

Jon Ronson (01:59:38.000)

But I've really enjoyed this now. And I particularly enjoyed what you said about Snell and Malala. And that there's a world in which Snellen Mullah could have known that this was going to happen that day. But that doesn't mean that the other stuff is true.

Jordan (01:59:55.000)

Yeah, I mean, let me put it I think I think I put it better than this one. All right, they didn't know it was going to happen. They didn't know it was going to happen. Because everybody in that world talk shit nonstop. They knew that this guy Timothy McVeigh was talking shit about doing it on this day. So when they turned the TV on, they had no idea if anything was actually going to happen. And in fact, I would bet $99 million on them thinking, I bet this guy's full of shit, and nothing is going to happen. And then it did. Right. That is, to me the only reasonable explanation that that handles things that make sense of all of the disparate informed facts that we that actually exist.

Jon Ronson (02:00:43.000)

Yeah, because you know, even if McVeigh never went to Oklahoma City and there's no evidence that he did, there's no good evidence that he ever did go to Elm city. Where I know for sure was that he was setting up a gun shows in Tulsa and because of Tulsa, we're full of people who went to LA him city.

Jordan (02:00:59.000)

Totally. Everybody talks shit all the time. Like Alex Alex doesn't actually want to overthrow the government he was at J six telling people hey, we need to calm the fuck down. What are we all doing here? Everybody stop run away. You know that kind of thing? Because he's a shit talker. You know, Carol's a shit talker. These are shit talkers. And and for for their faults, Timothy McVeigh is a believer. And so it is the shit talk universe that catches hold of a believer and then the believer does shit. You know? So to me, whenever people talk about how do you want to stop and okay, see, I don't care about the shit talkers. The shit talkers are everywhere. I mean, the thing about that strip club tape, right? If you got a tape from every strip club in that in this country, from that night, there was at least 20 stories of people going, you're gonna remember me in April 1995. I'm the number one salesman for blah, blah, blah. You know, that is that is a guaranteed truth.

Jon Ronson (02:02:02.000)

Yeah, I should say you know, people listen to the debutante, which they still should even though we've really picked, you know, so much of the story.

Jordan (02:02:09.000)

I think it's great. I really, really enjoyed it. You'll see

Jon Ronson (02:02:13.000)

that, you know, we don't get to meet pub, the the woman who said that, but we but we did find an interview that she gave the FBI at the time where she tells a different story, and a more and more plausible story. Yeah. Um, she says that she didn't actually identify McVeigh or stress my or anyone. I think you said there's nobody in the story that you believe. I agree with you that it feels that McVeigh is telling the truth, but also the FBI agents who arrested Carol, I think he was telling me the truth. And in fact, when I read his report, finally that, you know, he wrote this sort of six or seven page report, where he interviews Carlos, first husband, Greg, and it's funny, I read support right at the end of the process, like he gave it to me, but I didn't read it until I was, you know, almost finished with the show. And what really surprised me and made me sort of smile, roughly, because I'd spent like, so much time trying to figure out what to make of the story. And his report is pretty much identical to how I ended up, I ended up telling my story. And and so I think the journey that he went on at the time in the 90s, to try and figure out Carol and Greg, they had an elephant city, he seems to have come to pretty much exactly the same conclusions that I came to 30. Yeah, yeah. So I think he's somebody so there is one person to believe in.

Jordan (02:03:31.000)

And in fact, I would say that I probably agreed. Almost certainly with your despite my protestations, what are the biggest problems with the ATF and the FBI at this time, has nothing to do with the individual agents who are almost all like, oh, so so frequently, I mean, besides the people who handle the confidential informants being giant pieces of shit, it would be touching to the sun. Most of the people on the ground are giving accurate information, giving good advice, and it is the leadership of like Louis free and those fun squads, who are saying that we want to try out our new toys. And when they didn't receive any, they didn't even receive a reprimand. Everybody was like, Yeah, of course, we murdered those people at Waco. They were evil. You know, that was the point that was the point where it is like, if we do not hold ourselves accountable, then somebody who we sent to a fucking war and taught how to kill people is going to, you know, like, that is that is the fucking crux of the Waco OKC connection. Yeah, and that's it. So many people are like, hey, what we should have done is do more rates. We should be more aggressive with law enforcement boggles my mind.

Jon Ronson (02:04:47.000)

Yeah. Well, it reminds me something I'm making Season Two of things fell apart at the moment and

Jordan (02:04:56.000)

apologies for the joke.

Jon Ronson (02:04:58.000)

That is proven to be just is good I think cuz he I, we found some more great stories but anyway in the research for that, I came across a quote from a conservative New York Times columnist Rostow tat. I don't know if you've ever come across him. I know

Jordan (02:05:15.000)

Ross fucking Yeah.

Jon Ronson (02:05:17.000)

Well, I look okay, but he said this one line, though, which I think which I agree with, and I think you'll agree with because it's based, echoing what we're what we're saying to each other, which is like, you know, people who see conspiracies everywhere have to make sure that in sort of zeal to stamp them out, they're not inadvertently, you know, creating insurrection or those PJSC insurrection everywhere need to make sure that they're not creating the insurrection. Sure, sure.

Jordan (02:05:43.000)

Sure, sure. Yeah. No, that makes sense. You know, we we create the enemies we fear. Yeah, you know, and it is and it's it's so frustrating because to see somebody like Timothy McVeigh, execute a horrific terrorist act, murdering so many people and children and all of this stuff, for the Express reason that the government is doing evil shit. Right? To then in response to that, see the government do nothing but evil shit, right? Kind of makes it difficult to be like, Oh, no, no, we need more law enforcement to solve this problem.

Jon Ronson (02:06:24.000)

Yeah, you know, and it happens over and over again. And we never learned Yeah, steaks. We learned

Jordan (02:06:31.000)

after 911 We need to go to war in Iraq for 20 more years. It makes perfect sense. We're not evil. We're the good guys. We slaughter millions of salute civilians, and then we're shocked when people hate us. Because of our freedoms.

Jon Ronson (02:06:46.000)

Yeah, well, there you go.

Jordan (02:06:51.000)

I suppose I suppose that's where you want to end

Jon Ronson (02:06:53.000)

it. That sounds like I'm trying to read the interview. What I was gonna say what I was gonna say was as always, you know, when I kind of dig into your your stuff, I'm just really impressed by the thought that you put into though you don't like to be praised also of looking at two birds having sex or by Bird table.

Jordan (02:07:15.000)

That's what I like to hear. That's my shit right there. Now you're speaking my language. None of this compliment garbage.

Jon Ronson (02:07:24.000)

Food on production happening out of my wind.

Jordan (02:07:29.000)

Well, you know what life finds a way. I think that's the real lesson from this conversation that we're taking away.

Jon Ronson (02:07:39.000)

Well, good,

Jordan (02:07:40.000)

John, thank you so much for joining me. I think we're at like seven and a half hours now. I apologize for monopolizing your time.

Jon Ronson (02:07:48.000)

No, no, it's extent. It's totally fine. It means I can legitimately like finish work now and just slumped onto the sofa. All right, excellent. Now Jordan, I really enjoyed that. And and I'm looking forward to you know, people hitting it.

Jordan (02:08:03.000)

Wonderful. Thank you so much for for joining me again.

Unknown Speaker (02:08:06.000)

Andy in Kansas. You're on the air. Thanks for holding. So Alex, I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work.