Suspicious history, followed past the headline.
NWCZradio's Down The Rabbit Hole follows Big D and Brandon through long trails of suspicious history, from C.I.A. drug allegations to surveillance powers and marketing manipulation. The tone is conversational and wary, with source requests, side stories, and practical warnings carrying more weight than polished scripting.
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NWCZradio's Down The Rabbit Hole is a long-form conspiracy history show with the pacing of a kitchen-table briefing and the instincts of an amateur archive. Big D and Brandon do not treat suspicion as a mood alone. They build it through books, old cases, official powers, disasters, and everyday examples of systems that ask for trust while gathering power. The show is conversational first. Openings can wander through Texas weather, listener emails, comedy bookings, source requests, reading habits, or a midweek topic that changed because one detail pulled the episode sideways. Then the trail begins. Recent subjects include Gary Webb, C.I.A. drug allegations, the Patriot Act, Pegasus spyware, Pokemon Go data collection, Owsley Stanley, Yellowstone supervolcano fears, energy lockdown concerns, and the Pepsi 349 Disaster in the Philippines. Some episodes are clearly about conspiracy claims. Others are cautionary tales about marketing, surveillance, disaster panic, or the quiet ways institutions and businesses shape behavior. The show is strongest when it translates large mechanisms into ordinary stakes. A surveillance power becomes a traffic stop scenario. An advertising theory becomes a lottery ticket, a billboard, or a product promise. A supervolcano panic becomes a tour through calderas, monitoring, and what is actually likely. The tone is grave without being sterile. It can be dry, warm, annoyed, or amused, but it rarely sounds detached. Big D tends to press on institutional trust, archived sources, law enforcement powers, and manipulation. Brandon often brings curiosity about odd branches of a topic, including geology and strange history. Together they favor accumulation over compression. That means repetition, side routes, and real-time clarification are part of the texture. The show suits listeners who enjoy being walked through a case slowly, with skepticism left visible on the table. It is less useful for anyone wanting a tightly edited explainer or neutral academic distance. Its appeal is the sense of following a paper trail with people who keep asking who benefits, what changed, and why the official version feels too neat.
Made for: For listeners who like long-form fringe history, institutional skepticism, and source-led arguments about power, surveillance, disasters, drugs, and public manipulation. Best for people who prefer conversational depth over tight documentary polish.
What sets it apart: The show pairs conspiracy-minded subjects with a slow accumulation of sources, personal examples, listener follow-up, and practical suspicion. Its distinctive texture comes from the way casual banter turns into source trails and real-world warnings.
Hosts Big D and Brandon Valentine explore the strange, weird and disturbing stories, theories and events in our world. We aren't conspiracy theorists, we're conspiracy realists!!!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Historical myths, surveillance claims, and modern fears receive conversational scrutiny grounded in documents, reported cases, and a willingness to reconsider.
Down The Rabbit Hole follows Big D and Brandon as they test alarming claims against documents, reported cases, and the details that headlines often flatten.
A CIA sabotage manual meets Facebook misinformation, and Brandon makes your next scroll feel suspiciously familiar.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Yellowstone-first geology tour that pulls the drama back toward reality.
Brandon starts with Yellowstone as the familiar entry point, then moves through what a supervolcano is, where these systems are found, and what a major eruption would actually mean.
A skeptical look at the Patriot Act, surveillance power, and how ordinary life can feed data collection.
Down The Rabbit Hole treats the Patriot Act as a force that can widen surveillance well beyond what most people expect, reaching into local policing and data gathering.
A Pepsi-Cola promotion becomes a tight warning about how consumer promises can harden into belief.
Pepsi-Cola's 1990s story in the Philippines lands here as a sharp warning about what happens when a promotion starts to feel like a promise. The host threads it through Edward Bernays's The Crystallization of Public Opinion, behavior studies, and ads that sell happiness or…
A run map turns into a privacy problem fast.
This episode moves past catfishing and settles into a broader warning about how ordinary tracking can expose people. Big D and Brandon stay grounded in concrete details: Strava bragging, fitness maps, a route in the desert that lines up with a military base in Afghanistan, and…
Two catfishing stories turn into a plain warning about the cost of online deception.
Brandon starts with a quick definition of catfishing, then moves into two stories built around online deception and the damage it can leave behind.
A loose, useful Thermopylae review that weighs 300's legend against Spartan society and a divided Greece.
The Battle of Thermopylae is treated less as a monument to Spartan glory than as a test of the story that 300 helped fix in popular memory. The episode sets the famous stand against the society that produced it, from iron bars used as currency to discourage wealth and trade to…
A CIA manual becomes a blunt tour of sabotage, misinformation, and consequence.
Brandon spends much of the hour reading from the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual and tying its warnings to present-day talk about false information, radio, official leaflets, and narrative shaping.
Host Brandon Valentine explores the historical truth behind the Battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan 300, contrasting it with popular depictions like the movie '300'.
Host Brandon Valentine of Down The Rabbit Hole explores the CIA's declassified Simple Sabotage Field Manual from 1944.
This episode discusses the major event involving Charlie Kirk, a significant figure in the United States, as introduced through listener emails on the podcast Down the Rabbit Hole.
This episode explores conspiracy theories about 9/11, specifically questioning whether the president had prior knowledge or involvement in the attacks.
This episode explores 9/11 conspiracy theories and facts, focusing on the Carlyle Group and questioning whether the World Trade Center attacks were accidental or intentional.
Big D and Brandon open NWCZradio's Down the Rabbit Hole by tying the New Deal to the earlier 'business plot' episode, and they say the Great Depression (1929-1939) peaked at 25% unemployment in 1933.
This episode explores the controversial death of journalist Gary Webb, questioning whether it was suicide or a CIA murder, with personal connections and investigative insights.
This episode of Down the Rabbit Hole explores an unexpected story about Owsley Stanley, known as the Acid King, after the host got stuck on one aspect during research.
This episode introduces a discussion on the historical involvement of the CIA with drugs, focusing on sourcing and archival challenges for listeners.
The host introduces the podcast, promotes a partnership, and teases a discussion about a book related to energy lockdowns.
This episode explores allegations that the CIA has been involved in illegal drug trafficking operations.
Brandon takes on the Yellowstone supervolcano fear head-on.
Big D and Brandon open on the Patriot Act.
Big D centers the episode on Pepsi's 1992 Number Fever promotion in the Philippines, where a 1 million peso prize was worth about $40,000 against average monthly pay near $100.
Big D and Brandon open with catfishing and a catch-up after a break that felt longer than it was.
Brandon opens by thanking the listeners for the emails and messages they keep sending in.
This episode explores the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual, with the host reading and commenting on the document in a style similar to a previous episode on Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.
This episode examines the Ruby Ridge standoff, an 11-day siege in Idaho involving Randy Weaver and federal agents that sparked a paradigm shift in law enforcement tactics.