The Conspiracy Podcast

Part 3 — The Pearl Harbor FinaleBy the time the smoke cleared, the war was already underway—but the questions were just beginning. How did Pearl Harbor happen, and who was supposed to stop it? In the years that followed, the U.S. launched investigation after investigation, each one promising answers and delivering something closer to discomfort. Blame landed quickly on Admiral Kimmel and General Short, careers ended in silence, while other decisions stayed buried in classified files for decades.This episode walks through what those investigations actually found. Intelligence was intercepted, but not fully shared. Warnings were issued, but they were vague. Messages moved slowly, assumptions moved fast. Pearl Harbor wasn’t one failure—it was dozens of small ones stacked on top of each other. And once the records were declassified, the story didn’t clean itself up. It got messier.Then come the theories that never went away. The Henry Stimson diary. The idea of “maneuvering” Japan into firing first. The broken diplomatic codes that said war was coming but never named Pearl Harbor. Was this deliberate, or did Washington simply believe the attack would land somewhere else? We lay out what’s documented, what’s inferred, and what still lives in the gray.The series closes with what Pearl Harbor left behind: the memorials, the reconciliations, the oil still surfacing from the USS Arizona. A reminder that history doesn’t usually unfold as a plot—it unfolds as a chain reaction. Assumptions. Delays. Missed signals. And consequences that last far longer than the morning that caused them.www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast

Part 2 of our Pearl Harbor series opens in the days after the attack, when a different kind of shockwave rolled across the American mainland—one made of fear, suspicion, and the haunting belief that the next strike might come from within. Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens, many of whom had lived in the U.S. for generations, suddenly became targets of rumor and paranoia. Newspapers printed tales of coded signals flashing from fishing boats, imagined spy rings in farming communities, and sabotage plots that never occurred. In this atmosphere, fear didn’t just spread—it multiplied.That fear soon took legal shape. In February 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—most of them American citizens—to leave their homes and report to inland camps surrounded by barbed wire. Families packed what they could carry and stepped into a world built on suspicion, not evidence.But the heart of this episode lies in the question that refuses to die: did the U.S. government know more about the coming attack than it ever admitted? We step into the murky realm of broken diplomatic codes, delayed warnings, and the infamous Henry Stimson diary entry about “maneuvering Japan into firing the first shot.” We examine the intelligence intercepts that suggested war was imminent, the last-minute messages that reached Hawaii too late, and the political and strategic pressures building inside Washington in 1941.Was it conspiracy? Was it incompetence? Or was it simply the fog and friction of a world sliding toward global war?www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast

Pearl Harbor, the turning point in American history. Long before December 7, 1941, the collision between two Pacific powers had already begun. Manchuria had fallen to Imperial Japan in 1931, marking the start of Japan’s empire push across China. The United States, publicly neutral, watched war spread while trying to stay out of global conflict. But by 1941, diplomacy broke down. After Japan moved into French Indochina, the U.S. answered with crippling oil embargoes that threatened Japan’s military ambitions, leaving its leaders convinced war was the only path to secure resources like those in the Dutch East Indies.On November 26, 1941, a strike fleet built around six carriers under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo slipped into the Pacific Ocean under radio silence, heading toward a target few considered possible: Hawaii. In Washington, leaders knew war was imminent through broken diplomatic codes, but nothing pinpointed the exact time or place. At Pearl Harbor, defenses were relaxed, planes parked tight at airfields, and anti-aircraft crews off rotation—ready for sabotage, not annihilation.At 7:55 a.m., Commander Mitsuo Fuchida signaled the raid with “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, unleashing a two-hour nightmare. Torpedoes smashed hulls, bombs detonated steel, and Battleship Row burned. Pilots attacked at sunrise, one timing mistake putting the rising sun directly in American defenders’ view, and later claims even surfaced that the glare briefly impaired their approach. The result was devastating—and unifying. But decades later, the question remains a ghost story wrapped in cipher smoke: did the U.S. government know more than it said?Tonight, around the digital campfire, we explore the lead-up, the attack, and the theories www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast

Turkey Day, this week the boys dive into the warm, buttery, gravy-covered fever dream known as Thanksgiving—a holiday many people think they understand… until the layers start peeling back. What begins as a friendly harvest feast quickly unravels into one of the strangest webs of mythmaking, political spin, and quiet conspiracies in American history.In this episode, the boys trace Thanksgiving from the lone surviving 1621 eyewitness note all the way to modern turkey-industry lobbying. Along the path, they explore how a simple three-day gathering between starving Pilgrims and wary Wampanoag warriors somehow morphed into the sanitized, picture-book origin story taught in every American classroom. They break down the myths: the invented outfits, the overly friendly narrative, the idea of a peaceful partnership that history doesn’t fully support, and how Victorian artists accidentally created the entire “Pilgrim look.”The journey then shifts into the political arena, as the boys examine the theory that Abraham Lincoln revived Thanksgiving during the Civil War not only for unity but as a psychological tool to stabilize a fractured nation. From there, they go straight into 1939’s “Franksgiving,” when FDR moved the holiday up a week—and half the country flat-out refused to follow. It’s economic manipulation, confusion, and chaos served with cranberry sauce.And because no Thanksgiving deep-dive is complete without the modern oddities, the boys take on Big Turkey, the cranberry cartel, the pumpkin-pie agenda, and the long-running suspicion that Plymouth Rock is just a random stone chosen to sell souvenirs.By the end, Thanksgiving looks less like a timeless tradition and more like a national myth rewritten again and again. Grab a plate—this one gets spicy.www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast

Is airplane mode actually doing anything… or is it just a digital superstition we’ve all agreed to follow? Sean, Jorge, and Eric crack open FAA reports, safety filings, and decades of airline policy to figure out whether your phone has ever truly posed a threat to a Boeing 737.We break down how airplane mode started, why flight crews still insist on it, and what the data actually says about electronic interference in the cockpit. Were early studies flawed? Did airlines exaggerate the risks? Or is there real evidence that your phone’s radio signals can mess with navigation systems at 30,000 feet?The boys compare old myths to modern aircraft technology, explore the behind-the-scenes testing the FAA has done, and reveal what airlines won’t tell you about Wi-Fi in the sky, 5G signals, and why some rules never die even when the science changes.Funny, skeptical, and backed by legit documentation, this episode answers the question every traveler secretly wonders: Does airplane mode matter, or is it the biggest myth in aviation?Originally recorded in 2024 for Patreons Only as Mini episode #5www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast