OUR RATING:
Conspiracy Theory Meets Extremely Online Leftism
If you’ve ever wanted to hear two people giggle their way through the Jeffrey Epstein scandal while dismantling the American imperial project, well good news, TrueAnon is the podcast for you. Hosted by Brace Belden (a former YPG fighter in Syria) and Liz Franczak, this show occupies a very specific niche: it’s for people who think “doing your own research” should involve actual primary sources rather than Facebook memes, but who also want that research delivered with the energy of two extremely caffeinated grad students who’ve been up for 72 hours connecting red strings on a cork board.
The podcast launched in 2019 with a deep dive into the Epstein case, and honestly, they picked the perfect moment. While mainstream media outlets were awkwardly tip-toeing around the implications of a billionaire pedophile with connections to pretty much every powerful person on Earth, Brace and Liz just… went for it. They read the court documents. They tracked the money. They made jokes about how we live in hell. It was cathartic in a way that traditional journalism somehow wasn’t, probably because traditional journalists have to at least pretend they’re not screaming on the inside.
TrueAnon is a singular podcast in the sense that it’s not really a “conspiracy theory” podcast in the traditional sense, it’s more like an investigative journalism podcast for people who’ve completely lost faith in institutions. They’re not telling you that lizard people run the world; they’re telling you that regular people run the world, and that’s somehow worse. The conspiracy isn’t hidden, it’s right there in court filings, financial disclosures, and declassified CIA documents. The real conspiracy is that everyone just kind of shrugs and accepts it. Increasingly, and maddeningly so.
The show has expanded far beyond Epstein to cover everything from 9/11 to the JFK assassination to obscure Cold War psychological operations to whatever extremely cursed news story just dropped. Their approach is thoroughly researched but delivered with a heavy dose of irony and millennial/Gen-Z humor that can feel like you’re listening to your smartest, most paranoid friends explain why everything is connected. Sometimes they’re absolutely right. Sometimes they’re probably reaching. The line between the two is part of the entertainment.
Brace and Liz have a funny dynamic in which he brings war stories and an almost nihilistic acceptance of how broken everything is, while she brings research and a slightly more measured (but still very online) perspective. They’re joined by a rotating cast of guests who are often journalists, academics, or other podcasters from the leftist media ecosystem. These episodes can range from illuminating interviews about American foreign policy to inside jokes about Twitter/X drama that will make absolutely no sense if you weren’t extremely online in 2019.
The show’s politics are firmly leftist, but in a way that’s skeptical of pretty much everyone: Democrats, Republicans, NGOs, the media, other leftists who aren’t cynical enough. If you’re looking for solutions or hope, you’ve come to the wrong place. If you’re looking for someone to validate your feeling that the world is run by a relatively small number of ghouls who operate with near-total impunity, well, they’ve got spreadsheets to back that up. It’s the kind of podcast where you’ll learn something interesting about BCCI or Operation Gladio, and then someone will make a bit about being “Epstein-pilled” and you’ll remember this is also supposed to be fun?!?
The hosts have figured out that the only way to discuss all these modern-day horrific realities without losing your mind is to laugh at the sheer audacity of it all. It’s gallows humor for people who’ve spent too much time reading primary source documents and now can’t enjoy a Marvel movie because they’re thinking about COINTELPRO.
Is TrueAnon for everyone? Absolutely not. If you prefer your podcasts with a light dusting of both-sidesism and a general faith in American institutions, this will probably give you hives. But if you’re the kind of person who’s ever gone down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2am and emerged four hours later thinking “wait, the CIA did WHAT in Guatemala?”, then Brace and Liz are basically your people. They’ve built a whole show around that feeling of reading something so insane it has to be fake, then realizing it’s completely documented. It’s a conspiracy theory podcast for people who’ve read the footnotes.
Where to listen to TrueAnon
Pod.link | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro
Discover the best episodes of TrueAnon