Why We're Worried About Danica Patrick

After former IndyCar driver Danica Patrick retired from racing, she could have stuck to being a race commentator, but she chose a much different track — taking a deep dive into some of the most out-of-this-world conspiracy theories.

While Patrick has gigs as a Sky Sports and "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" pundit, she also moonlights as a podcast host who provides a platform for people who might believe that "The X files" was a docuseries. When she shared on Instagram that Tucker Carlson is the reason she got into politics, Patrick put herself in danger of becoming a new-age version of Alex Jones, the former Infowars host who promoted wild conspiracy theories about not only the U.S. government but also aliens. On her "Pretty Intense" podcast, Patrick takes a cue from Jones by dabbling in politics and whether extraterrestrials might walk among us.

While interviewing "Ancient Aliens" producer David Wilcock, Patrick offered her theory about why the topics addressed on Wilcock's History Channel show — which suggests that alien astronauts have influenced human civilization — aren't taught at school. "Obviously, there are egos involved but then there's probably something else, and it's the something else that I'm really curious about, the more nefarious sort of reasons within government or certain global companies that are running the world," she said. Wilcock lumped these entities together in the popular conspiracy theory bogeyman: The "Deep State." Shockingly, their discussion wasn't nearly as weird as the episode titled "How To Spot A Reptilian Shapeshifter."

In a June 2024 episode of "Pretty Intense," Danica Patrick spoke to Elizabeth April, a psychic who believes the conspiracy theory that humanoid reptilians are disguising themselves as Homo sapiens. According to Time, former sportscaster David Icke helped popularize this conspiracy by publishing a series of books in which he claimed that certain world leaders, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, are actually lizard people. Patrick kept a straight face as April suggested that the cold-blooded hiding among us are trying to control the population. April also assured listeners, "I do want to say that not all reptilians are bad. We do have good reptilians, just like we have good and bad humans."

According to April, she learns what the reptilians are up to through psychic viewings. This is how she knows that a massively successful pop star is one of them. "I had a vision ... that one day Justin Bieber was going to shapeshift into a giant reptilian on stage in front of hundreds of thousands who all have their phone on him," she said. When April suggested that humans will start to see evidence of reptilians' existence in years to come, Patrick seemed to get excited. "Oh! We're going to see them," she said. She also expressed zero skepticism when April suggested that proof of the reptilians being outed includes the viral video of a plane passenger screaming, "That motherf***er back there is not real!"

Elizabeth April told Danica Patrick that she's in direct contact with something called the Galactic Federation, which is where she gets some of her reptilian intel. Again, Patrick did not seem skeptical of this at all. "What does a Galactic Federation have to say about who still owns this planet?" she asked at one point. Elsewhere in the podcast, Patrick revealed that taking mushrooms made her realize that our reality is a lie. "I knew I wasn't real," she said. According to Patrick, she's actually a "waveform."

While there are plenty of celebrities who believe in strange conspiracy theories, Patrick's podcast went off the deep end for some people. "She is too far down the rabbit hole now," one Redditor wrote. A fact about Patrick that some people might not know is that she has suffered numerous head injuries while racing. "I'm sure I've had 12 concussions," she told ESPN in 2017. Some armchair medical experts on Reddit brought this up when commenting on her lizard people discussion. "Not hating on her, but she probably has CTE from all her wrecks. Repeated head trauma really messes with the brain," one person theorized. Another suggested, "I guess all those hard hits destroyed her critical thinking abilities. Or maybe she was always nuts and she was just good at hiding it." But they won't be laughing when it's molting time for the lizard people, right, Danica?