Fever Dreams

Hope you didn’t get too rowdy on Independence Day — the Large Hadron Collider is about to zap us into another dimension, and July 4th partygoers will be left in the old universe. So goes the thinking in a new TikTok conspiracy theory. On this week’s Fever Dreams, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell discuss what they’re expecting to get from the new dimension, and whether the Mandela effect is at play. Also on the podcast: MAGA supporters declare July to be “America Month,” and a Michigan secretary of state candidate gets into sexual demonology. 2020 election deniers build up their local infrastructure. Also: Reporter Baynard Woods joins to talk about his new book, “Inheritance,” an investigation of his family’s history in white supremacy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q of QAnon infamy has returned! Hosts Will Sommer and Sam Brodey talk about Q’s new posts after a nearly two year hiatus, and QAnon conspiracy theorists’ excitement about them. Sam gives an update on the pardon-crazed January 6th committee, and Will talks about the right’s obsession with a possibly fake pro-abortion rights group promising a “Night of Rage.” In this week’s Fresh Hell, QAnon believers are duped into buying bogus cryptocurrencies and lose a ton of money.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Sommer and Sam Brodey chat with Jessica Huseman, editorial director for Votebeat, about how folks who actively tried to subvert the 2020 election are now vying to get on ballots for positions that could allow them to influence the next presidential race. Elsewhere on the podcast, the hosts discuss the “kerfuffle at the GOP convention in Houston over the weekend” in which a “YouTube prankster” staged a dramatic confrontation with Congressman Dan Crenshaw, and wonder how many British documentarians are going to come out of the woodwork at the January 6 committee hearings. And finally, the hosts note how a drag queen named Barbara Seville busted apart Kari Lake’s anti-LGBTQ hypocrisy, and discuss how Texas Republicans are terrified that the woke are now coming for the Alamo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Proud Boys are at the center of the January 6 committee hearings — but who are they? HuffPost editor Andy Campbell, the author of an upcoming book on the Proud Boys, joins Fever Dreams host Will Sommer and guest host Sam Brodey to give.  from their cereal-themed beat-in rituals and their varying self-love regiments. Sam, a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast, weighs in on the committee hearings. In other extremist news, Will and Sam discuss a botched appearance from Patriot Front white supremacists at an Idaho gay pride parade. And finally, Will takes us to a lower depth of “Fresh Hell” that was previously believed possible, exploring the right-wing manosphere’s belief that receipts somehow steal their masculinity.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the newest development in the Capitol riot investigations, with Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy indictments, to Kevin McCarthy’s war with MAGA hardcore believers, Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo break down the state of the political right in this week’s episode of the Fever Dreams podcast. As for the guest this week, the duo was joined by documentary filmmaker Brian Knappenberger who is behind the upcoming Nextix docuseries Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet. (Watch the trailer here.)  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In another wild week for right-wing Fever Dreams, Ted Cruz is all about door control now, Dinesh D’Souza has new competition from the MyPillow guy in the fight for the craziest documentary about what Democrats supposedly did to steal the 2020 election, and much more as host Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo help navigate the madness, with an assist from “Unholy” author and Christian nationalism expert Sarah Posner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who’s the most goated pro-Trump rapper alive? Perhaps it’s Forgiato Blow, the trash-talking, Hooters-addicted “Mayor of Magaville.” Vice News reporter Tess Owen joins Will Sommer and guest host Zachary Petrizzo to talk about her recent profile of Blow. Plus: the wheels come off the trucker convoy, and Zach and Will break down the latest failed stunt from Jacob Wohl.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Pennsylvania Senate primary results are in, and the hosts discuss how insurgent right-winger Kathy Barnette’s rise was an indication of how fringe figures are now outflanking even the former president and his favored candidates. Michael Hayden from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joins the podcast to discuss the mass shooting in Buffalo and the accused killer’s obsession with the bogus ‘great replacement’ lie. The podcast hosts also discuss a recent New York Times expose on how QAnon factions within evangelical churches are driving out conservative pastors who give “any sort of nod to any kind of social justice, any kind of nod to Black Lives Matter or treating the poor well”—and how neo-Nazis in Idaho are driving out more moderate Republicans by entrenching themselves in local politics and running vicious harassment campaigns against their enemies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 A newly nominated Republican congressional candidate in Ohio claims he’s not a QAnon guy, despite appearing to own an extensive wardrobe of QAnon merchandise. This week on Fever Dreams, we revisit J.R. Majewski, the next likely candidate to join Congress’s growing Q wing. Elsewhere, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill discuss a falling-out among the white nationalist America First movement, which entered a bitter feud after its former treasurer got a girlfriend (a faux pas with the movement’s celibate leader). While that racist youth movement flounders, another is quietly amassing influence. Reporter James Pogue joins us to discuss the New Right movement, an anti-liberal alliance whose star candidate J.D. Vance just won his GOP nomination for Congress. Finally, we visit a more longshot candidate, who, if elected, pledges to blow up a Georgia monument that she believes is Satanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The right has achieved a decades-long goal by successfully overturning Roe v. Wade, but all they want to talk about is finding out who leaked the opinion breaking the news. Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill talk about the right’s leak-hunt and insistence that, somehow, the leaker is a terrorist. Meanwhile, Alex Jones gets some hefty bitcoin donations. Plus: this potential future congressman has bars! Will and Kelly discuss J.R. Majewski, the Ohio congressional candidate poised to become Congress’s third QAnon support — and its first rapper. Raw Story’s Jordan Green joins to talk about Jan. 6, and Will reviews “2,000 Mules,” pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s latest stab at proving the election was stolen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.