Fever Dreams

With the Arizona audit in chaos after confirming Biden won, the boys are joined by Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy to talk through the aftermath — and the audit-enthusiast civil war. Kelly Weill joins to talk about the new book bans. Plus: the rise of “vigilante medicine” urging COVID patients to stay out of the hospital, and a consideration of rising Gen Z Republicans Gunnar Thorderson and Morgonn.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ron Watkins, the alleged mastermind behind QAnon, is getting in on the NFT game by selling Trump retweets. And Tiffany Trump and the Krassenstein Brothers aren't far behind...Meanwhile, Eric Trump is headlining an anti-vaxxer conference that also features the Q. yoga crystals lady—so, sounds prestigious. And Fever Dreams hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer chat with director Joe Carnahan about his latest movie, Copshop—including the post-production drama that led Frank Grillo to slam the film's editors.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A former InfoWars reporter is pushing a hot new gadget on the right-wing electronics market: the Qux… Yes, it’s pronounced “cucks.” No, no one knows what it does. But for $99, it promises to free Donald Trump’s supporters from the tyranny of Big Tech! Elsewhere on the pod, Fever Dreams hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome on filmmaker and horror-comedy auteur Josh Ruben, director of “Werewolves Within” and “Scare Me.” Ruben dishes on his as-of-yet unproduced horror-movie script—inspired by a true story of a woman enraptured by the cult of Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over $8 trillion spent, and almost a million dead bodies. The U.S.-led war on terror absolutely devastating over the last two decades. The wars also led to Donald Trump’s rise to power, irreparably degraded our culture, and made our far-right conspiracy theorists somehow even dumber. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng bring on national-security reporter and ‘REIGN OF TERROR’ author Spencer Ackerman to break down how, thanks to the War on Terror, “[what’s] QAnon today,” is likely “going to be the Republican Party on Capitol Hill in however many years.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conservative talk radio hosts keep dying of COVID-19, after voicing skepticism about vaccines. Meanwhile, at the top of the conservative news food chain, Fox News hosts face backlash if they’re even perceived to promote vaccination. Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters joins Fever Dreams to discuss how right-wing media is falling prey to its own COVID talking points. Later, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill discuss the GOP’s new thirst for invading Afghanistan, the wannabe-Rambos invading school board meetings, and the disappearance of a lawyer tied to a number of conservative causes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is something wrong when your local police department warns you about marauding ‘Antifa buses’ coming to your town to hurt your grandmother. It’s even worse when the police dispatch a helicopter to hunt down the imaginary bus of Antifa soldiers. On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill welcome NBC News reporter (and Daily Beast alum) Ben Collins to explain what happens when police departments across the U.S. start “falling down these rabbit holes.” Elsewhere on this episode, Weill and Suebsaeng dive in on how the horse paste and “sheep drench” craze among anti-vaccine COVID truthers—and to a certain extent, on Fox News—is getting so out of hand… that the FDA had to spend part of its weekend telling people to knock it off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

*** CONTENT WARNING - On this weeks episode after the ad break at 27 minutes we start an interview that has a graphic description of a child being murdered by a Q-Anon follower. If you wish to skip this content we give warning after the ad break and you can skip to the 33 minute mark in the podcast if you would like to avoid it. ****Hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Kelly Weill and guests David Roth and Jared Holt discuss Mike Lindell’s hilariously chaotic Stop-the-Steal conference, a QAnon murder, and why the MAGA crowd thinks ‘woke generals’ are to blame for the disastrous Afghanistan exit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Remember when hydroxychloroquine was the "it girl of the conspiracy verse"—a supposed COVID miracle pill touted by Donald Trump and the Demon Sperm Doc? Those days are over and there's a new drug blowing up the unhinged corners of Facebook and the internet. As our Fever Dream host Asawin Suebsaeng, and guest hosts and Daily Beast reporters Kelly Weill and Adam Rawnsley, explain, the drug—called ivermectin—is sometimes used by humans for parasites and fungal infections. Elsewhere on the podcast, Rawnsley discusses how Russian trolls—not the GRU guys, kind of a clumsier, knockoff version—are trying and failing to make Americans and Europeans believe that the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines will turn us into chimpanzees. Weill walks us through the latest audit clown showdown in Virginia, where State Senator Amanda Chase really hopes you'll give her $$$$ to retally her state's not-even-close election. And guest Cameron Joseph, a senior political reporter at Vice News, breaks down the simmering cold war between Mitch McConnell and Trump for control of the Republican party and its candidates during the midterms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Trump tried to subvert American democracy, he told DOJ officials that they were not “following the internet the way I do.” He was referring in part to ultra-rightwing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit—run by the so-called “dumbest man on the internet.” This week’s episode of Fever Dreams goes inside how the habitually wrong website so influenced the president that he carried print-outs of its articles around the West Wing as he pushed the Justice Department to declare a fraudulent election. (One official says he threw the printouts in the trash. Or maybe recycled them.) Hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng also break down how new restrictions on anti-vaxxers are convincing some of them to finally get the jab, and how ISIS militants have infiltrated the alt-right’s new social media network Gettr. Elsewhere on the episode, Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill talks about how all those conspiracies about Trump retaking power in August are now imploding, and reporter Steven Monacelli breaks down how a flyer purportedly from Black Lives Matter groups making the rounds in Texas—which asked white parents to pledge to not send their kids to Ivy League schools—was in fact the work of a conservative PR firm and was amplified by the right-wing media ecosystem.. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’ve ever wished the kids’ books you read your small children included more references to the “cabal” at Jeffrey Epstein’s island, then we have some news for you! On this episode of FEVER DREAMS, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng delve into the wild and bafflingly lurid world of a new series of conservative children’s books, which include adorable foxes teaching your kids not to embrace communist ice cream. Elsewhere on the episode our hosts interview ‘New Republic’ staff writer Alex Pareene on why Democrats suck at “propaganda,” as compared to their Republican opponents, and how the future of the mainstream GOP was accurately (and depressingly) spelled out for us—among the marchers in Charlottesville in 2017. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.