The Alex Jones Podcast Starts Listening
By Libby Cohen and Alexandra Currie-Buckner
Hosts Libby Cohen and Alexandra Currie-Buckner of the podcast ‘A Lie, Repeated’ began interviewing and reaching out to people from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s past over the few weeks.
‘A Lie, Repeated’ intends to highlight just how impactful right-wing figures are on their followers as it takes its listeners on a deep dive into Alex Jones, one of the most influential people in the far-right echochamber. The hosts want to first tell the story of Jones’s transformation from local libertarian commentator to Trump guard dog and major peddler of misinformation.
While initial interest has been from reporters and experts, Cohen and Buckner are excited to reach out to a few vital characters like Jones’ ex-wife Kelly Jones and others from Jones’ early years. In addition to outreach, the team has set their eyes on a few key events to tell Jones’ story — public access television, InfoWars, the 9/11 truther movement, Jones’s expulsion from social media, the Sandy Hook Shooting, his divorce and his relationship with former President Donald Trump are all topics up for discussion.
Jones’s life and career followed a rollercoaster path to take him from local Austinite to national conspiracist. On public access television, Jones seemed relatively harmless according to sources. No one knew that he would grow into a figure that would deny events like 9/11 or the Sandy Hook Shooting.
Cohen and Buckner are interviewing several firsthand experts, reporters and individuals that can speak about Jones at these quintessential moments in time. Most recently, Cohen and Buckner interviewed The Austin Chronicle’s Mike Clark-Madison about Jones and his time on public access in the ‘90s.
Clark-Madison is a longtime reporter in the Austin area and has covered Jones since his beginnings on Austin’s public access television. He spoke with Cohen and Buckner about Jones’s ups and downs over the past 25 years, the shifting attitude toward Jones in Austin during the 1990s and 2000s and the evolution of Jones’s audience.
Cohen and Buckner hope others directly involved in Jones’s life, such as ex-wife Kelly Jones, may lend some personal insight into Jones’s life, his personal and professional evolution and his public and messy divorce.
The team has yet to hear back from InfoWars about an interview with Jones himself, but hope is not lost. They want to go to the InfoWars studio and see what they can find. At the very least, a former InfoWars employee has shown interest in being featured on the podcast. This source intends on sharing what it was like to work under Jones.
Over the next few weeks, Cohen and Buckner plan to kick the interviewing process into gear as a recent winter storm in Austin caused power outages and water shortages for the team and postponed operations for over a week and a half. But not even a once in a century weather occurrence can stop the two from telling this story.
