Cold Open: 2019 - the perfect year to talk about the moon landing. It’s the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing! IF we landed there at all. Duh duh DUH! A lot of skeptics think that we did not. That we still have not. And I like skeptics! Skepticism is good… to a point. As the cliche goes, it’s great to have an open mind, as long as it’s not SO open that your brain falls out. For this episode of The Suck, we are going to look at a lot of anti-moon landing skepticism and then you can decide if moon landing denial is reasonable skepticism, or, if wackadoodle brains have indeed fallen out of wackadoodle skulls. I get why people question the moon landing. I really do. I think the disbelief is less about the moon and more about not trusting the government in general. And, the government has for sure lied to us from time to time. And - the circumstances surrounding the Moon landing further fuel a faked landing scenario. The United States was in the middle of the cold war space race with the USSR and had everything to gain from getting to the moon first. Getting their first meant winning an important national morale race that had been ongoing for over a decade. The United States had INCENTIVE to fake a landing. A lot of it. We were EXTREMELY concerned with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The Cold War and the Big Red Scare was very much a part of US national culture. The Russians making it to the moon first would’ve stabbed US national pride right in the middle of its red, white, and blue heart. If democracy really was superior to communism, if the US really was superior to the Soviet Union - then why did they make it to the moon when we couldn’t? Are they better than us? It might sound a little silly now but the cultural stakes were high. And - is it really past the limits of decency for some politicians to come up with some fake space fucker-y? How about Richard Nixon and his crew? Nixon was president when the landing went down and he turned out to be a proven liar in a way that was exceptional even for politicians. That dude is the only US president to ever resign and he resigned because he was about to be kicked the fuck out of the Oval Office for that whole Watergate scandal which involved a lot of big lies. Then, also fueling moon landing conspiracies, is the fact that we haven’t sent another astronaut to the moon since 1972. That was a LONG TIME ago. Technology has come A LONG way since 1972. VHS tapes didn’t even come out until 1976. Now a base model cell phone can take and play better video than the most advanced video technology of 1976. The first mobile phone call happened in 1973. Now almost every twelve-year-old in America has a cell phone that doubles as a computer WAY more powerful than any computer that existed in 1972. So why hasn’t space technology evolved in the same way? If we really did land men on the moon between 1969 and 1972, why don’t we have bases on the moon now? Why don’t we have colonies and malls and Starbucks and rush hour traffic on the moon? Not going back in so long is another reason that a faked moon landing is one of the most popular conspiracies around today. A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6% of Americans believed the moon landing was faked. That’s millions of people who don’t believe we actually landed on the moon. Millions of people in just this country. Over 16 million if the percentage still holds. That’s more people than the population of New York City. That’s more than thirty-three of fourty-four countries. That’s a lot of potentional wackadoodle. https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx We’ll see if we can change that percentage a bit as we take a hard look at how NASA claims it made it to the moon. We’ll examine the Space Race between the Soviet Union and America that resulted in the controversial moon landing. And we’ll look at a variety of theories regarding how and why the landing was faked, today, on another conspiratorial edition of Timesuck! PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome! A. Happy Monday: Happy Monday you Timesucking Meatsacks!! Hail Lucifina! I’m thinking about her today for some reason. Probably because she’s smart, sassy, and sexy as Hell. Welcome to the Cult of the Curious. Get ready to have fun stuffing more info into your learning hole. I’m Dan Cummins, the Master Sucker, the Head Meat Sack, Hovercraft Captain of the SS Suck. And you are listening to Timesuck. Got a solid Suck for you today. And, if you don’t stick around for updates at the end of the show, you may want to today. Got some golden ones. Some really, really, REALLY cool updates. B. Thank You For Reviews: Thanks so much for the recent iTunes ratings and reviews - just passed 7,000 ratings on iTunes and they really do help a ton. They are all appreciated! Rating and reviewing is the cheapest and best way to spread the suck outside of telling your friends. It has to do with some crazy algorithm over at iTunes that pushes the most rated and reviewed and subscribed podcasts to the top of the charts where new people can find a new show. And I always mention iTunes because that’s where analysts say the overwhelming majority of people listen to podcasts. We also exist on various Android platforms, tons of third part podcast players, our very own Timesuck app available in the Apple and Google Play stores, and also on Spotify, Pandora and Youtube if you want to see my goofy face. And on Spotify - you can easily bounce over and listen to six different standup albums of mine. C. Tour Dates: If you want to hear some new standup, come out to a Happy Murder tour date. I’ll be at the Texas Theater in Dallas on April 26th. The Secret Group in Houston on the 27th. Late show added for that date! 18 and up instead of the normal 21 and up for those shows. So get on out young Suckers! The Punchline in San Francisco May 1st - 4th, Live Ant Hill Kids on the Saturday the 4th looking like it’s gonna sell out. May 9th-11th I’ll be at Laugh Boston in Boston, MA. And then another live Ant Hill Kids Suck in Spokane on Sunday, May 19th, the Comedy Zone in Jacksonville, Florida, May 30th, 31st, and June 1st. And more dates coming up right after those. Ticket info for the entire 2019 Happy Murder Standup Tour at dancummins.tv D. 2019 The Gathering: GATHERING: Reminder about Timesuck The Gathering! Get your calendars out! Make some vacation plans! On April 29th at 12 noon PST, we are selling tickets to The Gathering! A Timesuck social event that will take place right here in CDA where you can see the Suck Dungeon, meet other Timesuckers and Space Lizards, and hang in the heart of Suckdom. The Gathering will happen on Saturday, August 17th, 2019. You get a personal tour of the Suck Dungeon and then a private dinner at Timesucker ran 10/6 where they will have a Timesucker themed private menu. The whole restaurant will be ours for food, drinks, giveaways and community. Tickets are first come, first serve. Each person may only buy two tickets. To buy tickets, you will go to the Timesuck Merch Shopify website and select The Gathering tab when they go on sale Monday, April 29th at Noon! Make sure you read all the directions and include your shirt size and mailing address and your preferred tour time at the Suck Dungeon. You will receive your official ticket in the mail, at least 2 weeks before the event. E. Segue to Topic: Now let’s keep on Sucking and Suck into the Moon Landing Conspiracy. Space awaits! PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II. Intro/Establish Premiss: Right out of the gates I have to say that looking into moon landing conspiracies which led to understanding why we wanted to land on the moon in the first place, and why humans are interested in space exploration in general, and the, um, “interesting” beliefs many people have about the moon was a blast to research. There is a LOT of moon info on the web! And luckily not all of it is written by British wackadoodle supreme and conspiracy LIVING FUCKING LEGEND David Icke! Not everyone shares David’s belief in the “moon matrix.” In David Icke’s 2010 book Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, David says, and I QUOTE: “The Moon is the Reptilian Control Centre and it is manipulating and regulating life on Earth in extraordinary detail… The Reptilians are broadcasting a false reality from the Moon that humans are decoding into what they think is a physical world. It is a vibrational construct, the same as the reality portrayed in the Matrix movies… The Moon, like all “physicality” is a waveform phenomenon that we decode into a hologram that only exists as such in our decoded reality…” So, you know, that’s ONE school of thought regarding the moon.