Hello and welcome to Something's Off with Andrew Heaton. I'm your host

Andrew Heaton and I appreciate how promptly you pay your friends back. They need

Venmo, but you don't. You wouldn't guess it based on how fancy I am, but my first job out of college was on a

ranch in Logan County, Oklahoma.

I spent a summer doing manual labor, which is my least favorite kind of labor,

building loafing sheds for cattle and erecting fences which had been knocked out by flood damage.

I would get there early to beat the heat and I'd bring a massive thermus of coffee with me and I'd work my way through it before lunch.

And after about a month of doing that, I realized by the time I'd finished that thermus of coffee I would get paranoid.

Not about government conspiracies or anything. When I get paranoid I just get insecure

and worry that I said things that would be taken out of context in a social situation.

So I'd be operating the bobcat, which in this context is a vehicle and not an animal, although

I would love to someday domesticate a bobcat.

And I'd start worrying that my friendships were about to collapse or that I defended the

girl I was saying. And after a while I realized that four cups of coffee is about my limit

per day, because after that I get shifty. So we've established

that I'm a folksy guy who worked on a ranch and that I have paranoid tendencies

after about 450 milligrams of caffeine.

Let's add to that that I also love a good conspiracy theory.

I grew up listening to Coast Coast AM, which is like the BBC for people who've been abducted

by aliens. Check it it out it's terrific

so I'm excited for today's installment of Thinky Fun Time where I am going to talk to

an author or a think tank warlord in today's instance I'll bring on Jesse Walker

...