It Could Happen Here Weekly 7

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Raffie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation, Babyga, So who is the Man behind
Baby Bluga? Every human beings wants to feel respected. When
we start with, all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new dad and host of Finding Raffie,

(00:22):
a new podcast from My Heart Radio and Fatherly. Listen
every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm John Gonzalez, the host of
s i s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly. Sports Illustrated
has delivered some of the best storytelling in sports for
seventy years, and now that continues. On our show. Each

(00:43):
week will dive deep into the best stories from around
the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Subscribe now. Raf He is the
voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation,

(01:04):
Baby So Who is the Man behind Baby Bluga? Every
human being wants to feel respected. When we start with,
all good things can grow from there. I'm Chris Garcia, Comedian,
new dad and host of Finding Raffie, a new podcast
from my heart Radio and fatherly listen every Tuesday on

(01:26):
the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody,
Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know.
This is a compiletion episode. So every episode of the
week that just happened is here in one convenient and
with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to
in a long stretch if you want. If you've been
listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna

(01:47):
be nothing new here for you, but you can make
your own decisions. Wellcome to spook Oooky Week, a week
where we are not really any spooky or honestly than
the average things happening, because everything happening is is terrifying

(02:11):
and like ghosts and ghoules are are a lot more fun. Anyway,
hang up in this podcast, don't listen, Go watch Herbert
West reanimat or have some fun um. But if you
decide to keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we
have a bunch of spooky content for you this week.
How was that? How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad?

(02:35):
All right, Garrison, get going do your thing? Yeah, my
my thing. So yeah, we're doing. We're doing spooky spooky Week,
which is very excited about. But yeah, every everyone ive
told about spooky Week, They're like, oh, so it's just
a regular week for for the show, Like, yeah, pretty much,
it's more fun, but it is in a few ways.

(02:56):
It is actually gonna be more fun because this the
spook key spooky goddamn yes, spookoky mind bedding tales actually
do have do have some more fun than just the
solely depressing ones. I mean, this was this was the
first theme week that we all agreed upon. This was

(03:17):
the first like can we do something around spooky nous
near Halloween? And everybody younestly said yes, yes, yes, this
is the first theme week. Um, we have we we have.
We have been promising Nut Week coming up. Eventually we're
going to tease about things that made us nut or

(03:37):
where we talk about the legumes mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, Um,
but anyway, we should we should have start off our first,
our first spooky tale. Um, so I'm going I'm going
to tell a very very spooky tale of a of
an entire French town going going mad over the course
of a single week. Yeah, probably probably with the help

(04:00):
of psychoactive drugs and a certain three letter agency. You
know what, I think we're going to get to do
Garrison accent. You can't be racist against the French. They're
like the British or Americans. I didn't get a new
messages saying that your French accent was very racist, Tore.

(04:25):
There is a certain number. It's like the Germans. There's
a certain number of genocides after which people get to
make fun of your country and it's not racist. And
that number is, let's say three. Honestly, the worst part
of this story is that we're probably doing critical support
for France. I mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm

(04:48):
gonna be kind of more critical support to the CIA
by the end of this one. Um yeah, that's that
is the most critical support can be. So anyway, our
very spooky tail begins in ninet one in a small,
charming French village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is

(05:09):
how I'm gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um so,
not much happened in this little picturesque, little little town
on the south side of France. You know, Uh, on
the day we start, it's just like a regular summer
day people are going about their routine, going to their jobs,
kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly
baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um.

(05:34):
And I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild,
mild mild effects here. So on in August, first dozens,
then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nausea,
uh you know, and some people with some like stomach
and abdominable pain. They're coming up less often, less often. Noted,

(05:55):
there was a few instances of like vomiting and diarrhea
um only, but the represented people had diarrhea. That is
that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on
like a town wide basis three significant thirty Sorry, yeah,
it's a significant strain on the sewage. The people affected.

(06:15):
It's just gonna be like a few hundred versus I
was taking drugs with a group of friends. Third of
them had diarrhea. I would say, we might need to
go to a hospital that we have taken someone that
perhaps what we got was tainted. There is there is Yeah,
well we'll be talking about what actually what the actual
drugs being used here are going to be, but that's

(06:36):
something where that's not an uncommon side effect. But yeah, first,
first nausea, a little a little bit of vomiting, stomach pains, cramping. Um.
Hospitals began reporting people experiencing alternating warm and cold waves
over their body. Uh. The British Medical Journal recalls abundant
sweating and a disagreeable odor, which I'm guessing the odor

(06:58):
is just because there's all those sting people in the
same cramped hospital room in the summer. In the summer heats. Yeah,
so anyway in their French so a lot of scargo sweats.
I don't want to get more messages saying that I
have to stopped to do it more. By the way,

(07:19):
do we know that the diarrhea was the result of
whatever substance or maybe it's just the wine ships again,
we don't we there's no way to tell. So yeah.
Patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure around their neck,
which yeah, um. And one of the one of the
most reported symptoms was in insomnia, in some cases lasting

(07:42):
several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal, the first
symptoms appeared after a latent period of six to forty
eight hours. The digestive disorders quickly became worse, with burning
sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced sensations of
burning at the anus. A state giddiness persisted. I mean,

(08:03):
who's not giddy when your anus is burning? Am I? Right?
I fear like like this is like this is like
the like the clear side that there's like some some
psychoactive job going on, because like your anus is burning
and yet your very you are born. Yeah, it's like
that sign from that what is that from a rejected
by what? What? What's the cartoonist? Like my anus is bleeding,

(08:25):
but like you're down, you know, you're down for it? Yeah, yeah,
you're you're John Millenny impression. No, no, no, it's it
wasn't a John Linney impression. So far, that's just your
poison millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah, great artist, Yeah, great artist.

(08:48):
So these pale and limp patients, still quoting the British
Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous trembling
of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of the
visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So this
this is this is the more mild. This is the

(09:11):
could one ar So this is for many people affected,
this is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia
for a while, with you know, mild disorders of the
visual accommodation um and you know, and the stomach pains
and like weird like neck things, after they were able

(09:31):
to sleep. That was the sign of their recovery. Is
like the ability to sleep again. African insomnia war off.
But in a in around fifty of the cases reported,
the effects were much more intense. Um. I'm going to
continue from from the medical journal first and then get
into some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh.
Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in

(09:53):
particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All
of these visions were fleeting, invariable in many of the patients.
They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right.
That's actually pretty good description of like l s A LSD.
Those kind of like that. Movies always get it wrong
because you're not usually not like you're not seeing some
sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's these

(10:15):
kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things in
the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty good
especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly they
were on because then they definitely can be the more
cartoon la. I mean, you can get full open eyed hallucination,
like especially the shogun chemicals will do that that I
don't get it so much with like LSD, L, S A,
and L say, if you want to shoot yourself that

(10:36):
is that is right some Hawaiian baby wood rows seats
from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So
the delirium seems to be systematized with animal hallucinations and
self accusation. It's weird, weird terms from them from self accusations. Yeah,

(10:57):
it's I think I think they're trying to get at
ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet
do that or that, Like sometimes you're hallucinating it like
overcoming like guilt like oh I did this terrible thing,
or yeah, yeah, everybody's angry at me or whatever, like
continuing from the Medical journal, self accusation and and it
was sometimes mystical or macabre in some cases terrifying visions

(11:20):
were followed by fugus, which is an old um for
like fugues. Says fugues. Yeah, it's pronounced fugue. It's it's
like it's it's like, it's like extreme, it's extreme disassociation. Yeah. Yeah,
you're kind of zombified a little bit. Yeah, and two
and two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah.
The delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be

(11:42):
interpreted for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt
at restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's restraining. I've
had to restrain a number of people and it does
not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah,
this sounds like a real, real bad time to do.

(12:03):
In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The duration of these
periods of delirium was varied. They lasted several hours, several
hours and some patients and in others they persisted overnight.
So that and then here it's it's we're gonna get
a little bit darker and then we're gonna have more fun. Um.
We observed four fatal cases, three men and one woman.

(12:25):
Three of these people were old and in bad health.
One of the men was only twenty five years old
and had been in good health previously. They died in
a muscular spasm in a state of cardiovascular collapse. I
think this is probably mostly due to how the doctors
were handling these patients. I mean, obviously your your blood pressure,
want that can elevate when you're hallucinating. But yeah, I

(12:45):
think it also has a lot to do with the
way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right. Um, the
disorder has developed more quickly in children, but also left
them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the cases
was that the delirium it was the first sign to
be noted, So it depends people come up him up
on different ways, or some of them first had a
weird body feel like some of them first started just
seeing stuff. Um. One other interesting tidbit that we're not

(13:08):
going to spend much time talking about, but like around
two weeks after this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear,
either through like a secondary poison egg or it was
like some kind of like acid flashback. Yeah, it must,
it must, because I've done a buckload to ASCID. I've
never had a flashback. Um, I did at one point
I mean, I have like done some damage and so

(13:29):
I have permanent tracers. But it's not like my guess
is they got I think the idea that there are
like acid flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty
heavily debunked. My guesses they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know.
I might fight you good. It's like it could be
that it was traumatic enough that like they're having they're
dealing with PTSD and kind of that that's what's happening.

(13:50):
But I don't know, And I think I definitely have
seen enough reports that would see acid flashbacks definitely actually
being a thing in some cases, especially in the early
days of studying these types of rugs and like the sixties,
like the CIA reported a lot of stuff around acid
flashbacks around the people that they tortured. But I guess
it's it's tied to torture. That couldn't be PTSD. Stuff
could be PTSD. It's also, I mean, one thing you

(14:11):
have to know, and I don't know what kind of
dose these people were getting. With the CIA, with dosed people,
they were sometimes giving people doses people do not take
like you do not take that much like hundreds or
thousands or millions of yeah, ridiculous, irresponsible doses. Yeah. So
now now we're going to get to some of the
some of the more fun descriptions here, which we can

(14:32):
actually kind of like, based on our experiences, can actually
kind of see like what was actually going on in
these people's heads. Um, So basically we had at least
dozens and dozens of people tripping very very hard. Um.
The local postman was doing his rounds on his bicycle
when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations.
Quoting him, it was terrible. I had the sense, I

(14:52):
had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire
and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah, that guy
had some other stuff going. Yeah, because the very first
acid trip was on a bicycle when Heinrich Kaufman like
made it and dosed himself. He started coming up. I
believe it was an Amsterdam like riding his bicycle, which
is like, well, this is lovely, Yeah, I've made something cool.

(15:16):
Why was the postman riding a bicycle to deliver packages?
And because because we do not have vis It's fifties,
it's not there to France, I mean that I'm sorry,
pot So. Yeah, the mailman fell off his bike and
was taken to the taking to a hospital in a

(15:37):
nearby town. He was putting a straight jacket, and he
shared a room with three teenagers who were also tripping,
and the teenagers were changed to their beds to keep
them under control. Yeah, that's that's how it sounds horrible.
Flashbacks to this, to being chained to a bed tripping. Yeah,
that's so bad. Some of my friends trying to get

(15:59):
out the window. They were thrashing wildly, screaming in the
sound of the metal beds and jumping up and down.
The noise was terrible. I would prefer I would prefer
to die then go through that again. This sounds like
like the worst acid trip you could go. That sounds
like about the worst way you could have a trip go.
It sounds awful. So back in the French town, a

(16:20):
little girl screamed as she was being chased by man
eating tigers. A woman sobbed about how her children had
been ground into sausages. Oh great, and specific a large
men founded off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture and

(16:42):
using the wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy, good
for you. Husband and wife right around chasing each other
with nys. Again, probably something else going on there. My
guesses we're not just talking the acid and that because
I have been on acid a lot around knives and
other weapons. I've never chased some money. I've never chased

(17:05):
someone around with knives like the couple who was on
the verge of a knife chick. I think, I think,
I think the important part here is that like in
this French town, like acid wasn't a thing yet, Like
like like lucinogenic drugs weren't a thing, right, even like
even like mushrooms weren't popular around this time, no one
knew what what the hell was going on. Like they

(17:25):
just think that they're just basically losing their minds, like
they're like there's there's no other explanation for what's happening
to them. And let's just say that the most shocking
thing that has come out so far as that when
Robert was on acid, he wasn't chasing people with knives.
That seems like it's honest, Like, depending on your acid trip,
you wouldn't want to chase someone with a knife. Like,
it's not it's not the kind of we would we

(17:47):
would like during this, Yeah, we would. We would take
a bunch of drugs and grab my A K forty
seven and hike out into the woods and we would
shoot down a fir tree and we would drag it
back to a clearing and we would bury it standing up,
and we would drape it in pig intestines and put
a pig's heart on it, and when we cover it
in gasoline and lighted with firecrackers and dance around it
like the pagans of old. But there was nothing aggressive

(18:08):
about no. You you you very rarely would want to
hurt somebody on acid. And my experience like you generally
generally are at least like way more compassionate in a
lot of ways. Um, But if you have no idea
what acid is and you're just you're in the nineteen
fifties and you're losing your mind and you're seeing weird
things that, Yeah, I can see how this would maybe
cause some other types of behavior. You just think that

(18:30):
because is angry at you, like like like it's like
they're not they're not dosing themselves either, like they're being
dosed rights like they don't. It's very different where like
you're deciding to go with a trip versus this is
happening to you when you have no decision. I think
for basically anyone in this position, the logical assumption would be, oh,
the devil has taken over our town and our minds
have we have been infested with demons. Like that's what

(18:52):
else are you going to assume? You're not gonna be like, Oh,
this drug that's just barely been invented and that nobody
really knows about yet except are weird nerds. It must
be some version of that that I've taken accidentally. No,
you're going to do in your blood. So one interesting tid.
But before we before we go and break, um, even
some of the local animals had been affected by whatever

(19:13):
poison in the town. Um there there was there was
one dog in particular that kept chewing on rocks until
its teeth chipped away like this, And and ducks were
behaving very odd. Um it's described it. They were. They
were walking around erect and upright, like penguins in a line.
And they're just like weird, weird behavior from ducks I've

(19:36):
heard so far that kind of makes me want to
dose our ducks. Scares. We are not We're not wasting
acid on the ducks a lot. I mean, there's a
lot of things you could give ducks. We're not. We're
not giving ducks assets. That's not a thing about giving
ducks drugs. Is they're all monsters. That is true. They
are monsters and rapists, every one of them. Yeah, ducks.

(19:59):
So anyway, re occurring theme was that people were running
around wildly and being very fearful of like monstery animals
and encroaching flames. Um, it sounds like the ducks are
having a good time doing their ministry of silly walk shit. Like,
I don't know what all these people are bummed about.
This is rad okay. So when when you first said that,
I heard dogs and I was like, that is the
most terrible ever heard ducks. It's like ducks standing like

(20:23):
very upright, like penguins walking around in the line. I
think ducks might enjoy it. I think dogs are a
little too aware of what's going on. Dog. The stone
thing was about the dog, Yeah with the dog. Yeah,
I just don't know that the dogs enjoy because, like
I've seen dogs accidentally eat large amounts of pot and
whatnot and they get weird. They they they're they're pretty scared.

(20:47):
They're pretty're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what
is also very spooky? Yeah, capitalism and all of these
spooky advertising to sell things. Advertisements are also a form
of mind control. Speaking of the CIA in the fifties anyway,
profoundly damaging. We are back from the spooky advertised yeah anyway. Um. So,

(21:18):
I think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot
of these people have very similar types of experiences around
like snakes, um, which we're talking about later, and like flames,
is like with this many people tripping and no one
knows what tripping is. I think it's really easy for
an idea or a fear to spread from one person
to another while they're tripping. Um. With like this many people,
I think if someone says something, it's going to start

(21:39):
happening to someone else, and it's kind of kind of
this like cascading effect where they're all developed these very
similar fear is because it's almost like being spread like
an infection. Um. So there was there was a one
man convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain and
he jumped out a window. Oh did he live to this?
He did live? Um? I'm guessing a lot of these

(22:01):
It's it's like France in the fifties, So I'm guessing
most of these buildings are not super They're not super
high up. No, No, you're like falling a foot or two.
Although here we have another one. Another mad reportedly left
for a window yelling, look, everyone, I'm a dragonfly. The
men broke. The men broke both legs, but he stood

(22:23):
up and continued running. Rad king Sigma stigma behavior absolute sigma.
This is a new kind of man. Just drapped. Look everyone,
I have a dragonfly, breaks both legs to keeps running.

(22:46):
Based on the information you've provided us, I can't say
he's not a dragon. No, he is an absolute, absolute king.
Good for I hope he had a great life. Yeah.
Another one saw his heart escape through his feet and
beseeched the doctor to try to put it back into place.

(23:06):
You don't want to have that happen. That doesn't sound fun.
You want to keep that somewhere around the middle of
your body. Someone sprinted down the lane, claiming that he
was being chased by bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river.
A man was convinced that he was a circus tight
rope walker and attempted to balance his way across the
cables of a suspension bridge. No, it doesn't say. The

(23:28):
report does not tell you. He's not in the death report.
Yeah he's. And therefore another another person did try to
die in the river. He tried to jump into the river,
only to be saved by his friends. And he was screaming,
I am dead, I am dead, and my head is
made of copper, and I have snakes in my stomach

(23:49):
and they are burning me. It's such a weird description
of like tripping and saying like my head is made
of copper. I'm trying to think of what was going on, what,
like what what series of events did did he spiral
down in his brain to have that sentence I did?
I'm not quite sure. It's it's it's it's definitely. I

(24:11):
can definitely see it happening. I just I just I'm
trying to think, like we're exactly what what happened to
get to that point. It's really really interesting. I think
some of these are hard because again it's like these
people just think literally think they're going insane or that
like this stuff is just actually happening to them, Like
you were like when when you're tripping on acid, you
already kind of have the feeling that there is moments

(24:32):
where you feel like this is like this is like
never gonna end, even though even though you know you
know you're on acid. These people don't know that, right,
Like these people don't have the reascernce to like, no,
I took acid, I'm on a drug. This is gonna
be over. They think this is gonna last forever, right
Like they think this this is just the world now,
like this is just one of those Anton Wilson, who
is a thinker I enjoy a lot, writes a lot

(24:52):
about how to calm people down when they've taken too much,
and most of his advices around talking about like, okay,
well how long ago did you take it? Hey, well
that the good news is that this is going to
end here you know it's only gonna last this long,
like you're you're through this point. Oh, this is the
this is the second hour, freakies, and by the third
hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it. Like it's
all about making keeping in people's minds like this is

(25:13):
going to pass. So yeah, you're right, Like this is
the fucking worst way to take drugs. Alright, So local
newspapers uh and also like in national newspapers described described
this as a among the stricken delirium rose patients thrash
wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming
from their bodies, people throwing themselves some rooftops, men and

(25:34):
women throwing their clothes off and running in the streets naked,
and children complaining their stomachs were infested with coils and snakes.
Which I mean, half of that sounds like, yeah, that's
like a normal good time just running around the streets
naked on acid. Other I was like, yeah, that that
doesn't seem pleasant with coils and snakes in your stomach,
but also like flowers blossoming fund your body. I can,
I can, I can understand that kind of sensation. Um,

(25:56):
but like it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the
night like nightmare we were. We already mentioned the giddy
people with burning anuses, um, but for like the full
and tripping folks. According to the New York Times, there's
reports of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing you know,
bright colors the world look beautiful to them. Apparently the
head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of pages

(26:18):
of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must be
sick as ship because knowing nothing, he starts tripping. Not
knowing he's tripping. It's just like time to make some
fucking art. You know what, this head state is good
for writing some ship. He just went to his cabinets

(26:39):
wrote poetry. That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll bet
he handled just everything that life through it. Well, Like
that says a lot about you when you're like, oh,
demons have infiltrated my brain. Yes, I'm gonna hang out
in my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow,

(27:01):
like I could. I can hardly write ship on acid.
I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a
lot of creative stuff on acid. Creative stuff. Yeah, I
just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can
be hard at certain points. You know, if if you're
like coming down that it can be easier. But like
a good for like writing, it's good for ideas that

(27:22):
you later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately,
you know, because this was you know, no one who
was going on. Many people were taken to local asylums
in straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly
worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I
can't even be angry at them because like they don't
know what's going you know, like you no idea what's

(27:43):
going on the whole, Like every attemptant restraint increase the
agitation line. It's like horrifying from the concept of like
you're tripping, you do you do? You don't know what's
going on, and people are tying you down to beds,
making you feel like you're even more stuck in this
permanent set of delirium. It's just it's just it is
the worst nightmare. Yeah, if this is horrible, The mayor
of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men and

(28:05):
women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets, hiding
themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah,
it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know
what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary, except for the
poetry guy. Good for him, yeah, good for him. Um yeah, so,
but by by the time the effects had subsided for

(28:25):
everyone affected, which is around like a few days after
the initial reported like nausea, like you know, not it
didn't affect everyone at the same time. You know, some
people got dosed later on. It's it's it's unclear what
exactly because it's of the fifties, we didn't have a
great idea of the exact timeline of events of like
when the first effects were felt and like how all
the was spaced out. But this whole instant arrassed lasted

(28:47):
around like a few days for like everyone, everyone totaled. UM.
It was supported that anywhere between like three hundred and
five hundred people had felt the effects UM, you know,
around fifty feeling very very extreme like open i like
hallucinations of objects that aren't even there, like like very
extreme hallucinations. UM. And and four people did die in
connection to the poisoning UM at least where people died.

(29:09):
It's again it's unclear for exact numbers for a lot
of this stuff. UM. An investigation into the sudden outbreak
of the madness was probably underway. Town officials wanted to
get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible.
Do you want to figure out what was happening? Um,
and the blame fell onto a single batch of bread,

(29:33):
so among the common denominator among those affected that they
all allegedly consumed bread from one specific baker. He was
accused of using er got contaminated rye flower, and he
was arrested and a temporarily imprisoned um. Also, a nearby
miller that he got the flower from was also arrested

(29:54):
and given some of the blame um. The funny part
is that around this time, the French government had a
very top down grain distribution system that originally controlled everything
about where the grains were milled, where they were sent,
and what bakers could use which flower, so bakers had
no choice and what type of flower to use or
what kind of a grain they could use some baking.
It was all decided by other people because France bread

(30:17):
is like real big deal and pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah,
for the record, just like air got poisoning. There are
a lot of cases of like different like dancing manias
and whatnot in like the medieval in medieval Europe, or
like whole towns will be well, everyone will start like
dancing or like hallucinating, and you know they always came
down as like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about

(30:39):
like demon possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of
the suspicion is like, oh yeah, some air god gotten No,
yeah it was. It was just poisoning. It seems like
one of the rougher trips to go on. It's not
super clean, it's no. I mean I've done L s A,
which I think is similar and similar to their tripp
to means that are like really rough in it's I

(31:01):
would not don't don't do L s A. No. Hawaiian
baby wood roase seeds for if you're going to take
L s A, than actually like synthesizing, which is fel um.
But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood roase seeds
and eat them and you will have maybe the worst

(31:22):
trip of your life. Great advice from the from the
pod um. So yeah, on on on on the on
the On the rye and ergot topic, the past growing
season was especially wet and orgot fun guy did grow
across the country's rye fields. Um, but the amount of
ergot on the rye and the amount of rye used
in baking was thought to not be enough to induce

(31:43):
any any type of poisoning. Um. In fact that the
last time or like orgot poisoning had struck France was
back in was back in eighteen sixteen, so almost like
a century and a half before this incident, and a
century if it's the fifties, right, litt less than a century. No,
So the last instant was eighteen sixteen. This was nine no, no,

(32:06):
a century and a half ago. Um. And no other
towns anything, and no other part of France was affected
by anything similar to this. Um. So the ur got
thing is kind of iffy um it. But the explanation
was the only thing that doctors investigators could come to
would do, like you know, the their their limited knowledge
around brain altering substances, and just pressure from town officials

(32:28):
to get to the bottom of this so that they
had something to blame and people could move on. Um.
But you know, as a result, not much evidence really
backs up there backs up there got claim, and a
lot of experts today kind of deemon bunk um it
doesn't There's and and there's a bunch of like, um,
there's this thing hike on that the Greeks would take
that was like this Greek collucinatory thing that they think

(32:50):
it was because they were putting grain and wine and
it might have been air got poisoned, but also like
people enjoyed it, and so there's a lot of debate
over whether or not it could have been ergot But
I don't know, Um, I don't know what else is
There are other other theories about what it might Boy
is it the CIA? Where can they get to it? So, yeah,

(33:12):
it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts
of urgot rye would only be in one batch of
grain used in a single batch of bread from just
one bakery in one small town. Doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um.
Other explanations um that people have come to includes like
mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been
mostly disproven that seem like mercury poisoning. No, but there

(33:33):
is a guy who likes to drink some mercury, you know, boy.
So yeah, So there's a lot of other theories around,
like fungic sides being used, but those have been kind
of disproved by some people, but others still a point
to them as possible explanations. But but there is one
other theory that we will focus on that features two
of my favorite things uh LSD and the nineteen fifties

(33:55):
CIA because if you're gonna pick a c I A,
they had the most fun. They had the most right,
Like you know who else has a lot of fun?
Garrison who is also the nineteen fifties c i A
whom our sponsors. Oh really gonna happen here is sponsored
only by the fifties c i A. Only the one

(34:18):
from the fifties. Yeah, when you order any of our
product products, they will come to your house and inject
you with seven thousand hits of LSD. Hey free, Hey,
that is that sounds like a great deal. Honestly, you're
saving a lot of money. You are saying that that
is a lot of free a lot of acid for
the amount of money you're spending that you won't do
more acid, that's for sure. You that that's acid for life.

(34:40):
You do it again? Yeah, you might, you probably, You
won't have to do it, you won't. You want to
do any expenses ever again. Yeah, you'll survive. You'll just
be a very different person by the end of the Yeah,
you you won't survive your body with it. At the
end of that someone else will wake up. So I
speaking of taking up here as a products so nineteen

(35:03):
fifties c I A UM wild time in two US
and nine. Hank P. Albarelli is an an American writer
and journalist released a book called A Terrible Mistake, which
focuses on the suspicious death of a CIA scientist named
Frank Olson, who worked on the CIA mind control experiments
during the late forties and early fifties. While researching the book,

(35:25):
Albarelli claims to have come across a number of old
CIA and White House documents referencing the Pont Saint de
Sprite incident, and he claims that the village was the
target of a CIA experiment on the mass effects of
LSD and that around the time that Frank Olsen wanted
to sever his ties with the Army and CIA, Frank
started talking about his participation in the experiment, which may
have led to the government off in Olson. So I

(35:47):
know that is a lot and it is slightly more
than justice speculation. We're going to get into the evidence
here shortly, UM, but by now it's pretty well known
that throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties, both the U. S.
Army and the CIA tried to use hallucinoge hallucinogenic drugs
such as LSD as both an offensive weapon and as
a way to make like psychic super soldiers. Programs like
mk Ultra and k Naomi Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, UM,

(36:12):
Lots of lots of these things were trying to find
different ways of using LSD for like offensive and defensive means. UM.
Some of the interest was promoted by was was prompted
by reports of the Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs
around the same time. Also stuff around like you know,
hYP like like like like psychic powers and hypno says.
This was very popular around this time for for lots

(36:34):
of different intelligence agencies. UM. But so Albert Ellie uncovered
report from nineteen forty nine by the director of the
Edwood Arsenal which many which which was where many US
government LSD experiments were carried out, and this report stated
that the Army should do everything, everything is post everything,
everything possible to launch so called field experiments using this drug.

(36:56):
And later in his to US A nine book a
Really claims that he found references to a government document
with the label rett SPRI and f Olsen files s
O SPAN slash France Operation File inclusive Olsen intel files.
Hand Carrie to Bellan, tell him to see to it
that these are buried. Um, this document does exist like

(37:18):
we we we like we we we we we do
have this label on on this document um, but like
the actual contents of the documents are are gone. But
this is this is this is this is just a
label that is being referenced asle. So the document label
references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So. Bellan was the
executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created by the White

(37:41):
House in the mid seventies to investigate abuses carried out
worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So Albrely believes that
the that the French town lst incident um, which is
like the pont Stre which is the name of the town,
and the f Olson files mentioned in the document would
definitely show that if the document hadn't been buried as

(38:02):
it was said in the in the label the CIA,
it would show that the CIA was experimenting on the
townspeople by dosing them with what he thinks was lsd UM.
Now there is also a bit more to it than that. Um.
Using Foya's he got ahold of another CIA document, a
two page report from nine Team fifty four detailing a
conversation between a CIA agent and a representative of the

(38:22):
San DAWs Chemical Company. So this the Sandas base was
the place where Albert Hoffman invented LSD in night Um
and it was it was it was only a few
hundred kilometers away from pont St Ausprie, the town where
this happened, So the chemical company was actually pretty pretty
close relatively to like europe Um and it was also

(38:44):
the only place where LSD was being made at the time.
And they were providing both the Army and the CIA
with a lot of a lot of acid. But you
mean they're also giving it like they're also giving it
to universities. They gave lots to Timothy Laria initially they were.
They were, and a lot to tim Larry they were.
They were giving a g out to a lot of
different universities and people, but including the US government. So

(39:10):
the c I A the CIA agent wrote um in
this report that was like he was detailing a dinner
he had with this representative of the chemical company, and
he reported that after having several drinks, the scientists started
talking about the pomp St Desprite incident. The send off official,
burned out the pomt st a spirit secret was that
it was not the bread at all. Continued to send

(39:30):
off official for weeks. The French tied up our laboratories
with analysis of the bread. It was not the grain ergot,
It was a die ethyl laminated Sorry it's it's the
last part of the LSD. Yeah, the die ethel lemonide
like compound. So yeah, the surgic diethyl acid is what
LSD stands for. So yeah, he the side just said

(39:52):
that it was. It was like it was like basically
an LSD like compound. Um, So that's that was the
that was report or to detail like a dinner that
a CIA agent had with this scientist um, and that
document was uncovered that it was from like the fifties.
Now this this, this next part has a little bit
less proof to it because there's no documents backing this up.

(40:14):
But al Brelli also claims that Dirk is digging too forward.
CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed
some details of some possible details of the method of
the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected
to an air blitz of pulverized LSD. I'm sorry, that's

(40:36):
fucking based so to force the people taking the substance
through the air. According to the researchers, this manner of
just of this manner of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um,
forcing the CIA to move onto phase two, which was
contaminating local food. So apparently the if the if if

(40:57):
the air blitz was a thing, it didn't work super well. Um.
Although actually about to have Sophie Bias a plane. We
will talk about this later, but um, the c A
did do more air blitzing um of of acid in
New York City. Actually, they would ride around in cars

(41:18):
um in like poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM,
shooting LSD out of the back of the car to
see what would happen if, I mean take out the racism.
And that really is a dream job, just driving around
cities air dosing people with acid and random smoking cigarettes.
Probably so with the conclusion drawn that it was one

(41:40):
of the town's bakeries being the source of the poisoning,
Albrel says it was possible that LSD was put in
or onto the bread um. So yeah, and also lots
of the scientists lots of the scientists dispatched to investigate
the poisoning after it took place, where actually from the
Sandals Chemical Company me. UM. They studied the situation for

(42:01):
like two or three weeks UM and gave the explanation
that would later be kind of disproven, uh, that it
was got poisoning, which they they told the town officials
and the British medical journal. Um what what, What no
one knew at the time was that one the existence
of LSD in the first place, UM, and two that
San DAWs was the company making it and giving these
drugs to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM.

(42:23):
And apparently apparently Albert Hoffman himself went to the town
to investigate this incident. UM. So yeah. And one last
thing on like the physical evidence side of things UM.
Albarelli also found an undated White House document that appeared
to be part of a larger file that had been
sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission, containing the names

(42:43):
of two French nationals who had been secretly employed about
the CIA and made direct references to the quote pont
Saint Sprit incident UM. Also it was linked the document
linked former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief of
the Fort Derrick's Special Operations to vision. So those are
all places that they were experiencing with this similar kind

(43:03):
of thing. Um we we we have mentioned the Rockefeller
Commission a few times now for remember the names, uh,
Frank Olsen, the guy one of the CIA researchers on LSD,
and David Bellan. Where they were they were they were
on the label of that missing document. So but Bellin
was the executive director of the White House Commission to
investigate the CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the

(43:23):
Rockefeller Commission. It was formed by President Ford in nineteen
seventy five to investigate abuses and other activities by the
CIA and a few other intelligence agencies that were operating
within the States. Um. So, the Rockefeller Commission revealed not
only like the reason why we know but m Kaeltro
was because the Rockefeller Commission. This is this is how
we know this was a thing. Um. So it not

(43:45):
only revealed stuff about like programs around m k Ultra,
but also revealed the details of the CIA dosing their
own scientist, Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly killing him.
Um there's also like there's like a Netflix series about
this called Would Work and Haven't. I haven't actually watched yet,
so I don't know how good or accurate it is,
but they did. They did make a series a few
years ago about the death of Frank Olson Um and

(44:07):
all of the weirds get yourself, surrounding both his job
and and and and and his death. Um. We do
love the CIA, folks. So the The commission also concluded
that the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor Sydney
ghost Leap, destroyed all of the drug programs records in
nineteen seventy three to hide the details of possibly illegal actions,

(44:30):
and he was personally involved in the torture of Frank
Olsen Um. Twenty years after Mr Olsen's death and ten
years after the elistic experiments were halted, a doctor Godlieb
ordered the destruction of all the records of the program,
including a total of one hundred and fifty two separate files.
This came shortly after other reports that that that records
were being destroyed by Richard helms That, the then Director

(44:53):
of Central Intelligence. So it's undoubtedly true that the CIA
was up to up to some ship involving les D
around around the exact time period of this French Town incident. Yeah,
it's certainly not like you're not coming out of nowhere
suggesting the CIA may have dosed all these people, but
they set it to a bunch of folks. If they

(45:13):
didn't do it here, they've done similar ship. And it's
also it's also worth mentioning at this point that like
this is like the point where the CIA is also
running this like enormous heroin network out of France, as
like if they basically basically have this whole they have
this deal with the French where they're like, okay, so
the French mob can like basically move all the heroin
they want in exchange they'll like stop the communists and

(45:35):
taking control of the point of Marseillas. And so this
is this is all also going on like at the
same time that they're doing the LSD stuff. It's great. Yeah,
so's there's some storians that think the LSD theories not
hold enough water. Um Stephen Kaplan, it's a US historian
specializing in the French food history and the author of
the two book Cursed Bread, which follows this incident. Um

(45:57):
He says that he is I have numerous objections to
this whole tree evidence that this that this against the CIA.
First of all, it's clinically incoherent. LSD takes effects in
just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants, where the inhabitants
showed symptoms only after thirty six hours or more. For
the more, LSD does not cause that the digestive elements
or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. Um. And

(46:17):
So to both those claims, I say, they're not necessarily true. Um,
it's it's it's unclear how soon the delirious effects took
place for some people they were they first effect felt. Um.
So the whole thing about like the effects only taking
effect after thirty six hours, that's not that's not necessarily true. Um.
And Also LSD can definitely have nauseating or digestive effects yeast.

(46:41):
So that's that's that's that's not that's yeah. And and
but but like there were other types of symptoms that
are not common for what we think of as like
modern LST. Again, this is the ninetifties, and we don't
know what they were actually on it did it's maybe not.
It may not be what we think of as like LSD.
Now it could be slightly that you know that this
is a whole class of psychoactive drugs that's unclear what

(47:01):
they were all actually being dosed with. Yeah, who the
funk knows what they were being given and who the
funk knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah,
we have no no idea. It's also you know, I
think it's Leary was the origin of the phrase that
like the things that determine what happens on a trip
or set setting in dose, so your mindset, where you
take it and who you take it around, and the
dose and the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms

(47:24):
could be to the fact that like other people taking
acid have never taken it this way and without knowing
what acid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around
like the delivery system. He says, it's absurd this idea
of transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting
it in the bread as for pulver as to get

(47:44):
for ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible
at the time. Most compelling Lee why would they choose
the town of pont Sta Spree to conduct these tests.
It was half destroyed by the U. S Army during
fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It
makes no sense. And and to that, I say, that
makes it the perfect town for the CIA to fun with. Me. Yeah,

(48:05):
they generally would choose to dose someone with acid because
it sounded funny. Like I think the fact that this
town was already kind of like only half inhabited and
half destroyed by the by the Second World War, that
makes the perfect town to work with like. Yeah. And
also they also, the CIA and the government very much
did have the means to try to distribute stuff via

(48:25):
the air, because we can see other we can see
other documents around the time of them doing this too,
specific areas of of New York City. They also tried
to poison the entire New York Subway with LSD in
the fifties, but that was shut down by higher ups
in in the Central Intelligence. Um. Fortunately, God what a
time that would have been. But but cap But but

(48:46):
Caplan isn't sure or got responsible either. Um. He says
that inhabination would not have worked because it doesn't make
sense that only one sack of grain would have been affected. Um.
And he says if it was or got the the
effects would have been way more widespread. Yeah, that does.
He rules out LSD in the grounds and the symptoms
of people suffered, although similar don't quite fit what we
modernly think of the drug. Also, I don't I don't

(49:07):
think Caplin's ever taken LSD, So I don't think I
think he's right about it probably not being air got.
But I don't think he knows much. Yeah, hell he
also he also He also points out that LSD probably
wouldn't have survived the fierce temperatures of the Baker's oven,
although Albarelli counters that it could have been that LSD
could have been added after the fact to the surface
of the breach. You could just drop it on, you
could you just drop it on with like with like

(49:28):
liquid blodders, which also explain how the effects were so
different from person to person, because one person may be
having a whole drop of LSD, where somebody maybe only
have like a tiny little like you know, speck of
like speck of like like moist liquid. So I can
explain some things, but you know, this is still pretty
much a mystery. You know, it's very clear this very much,
very well could have been some kind of hidden LSD.

(49:51):
C I a experiment um or the CIA could have
just been you know, interested in studying what happened in
the town since they were also doing studies into psychoactives
substances at the time. Um, it could be either or um.
And that's where it's spooky because you'll never know. So, yes,
that is that. That is the spooky incident of a

(50:11):
French town basically thinking that they lost their minds and
then you know they love to see it, do we.
It is a little funny. It is definitely a little funny. Um,
it's it is a great example of like the worst
way to trip. Yeah that that's that's pretty high up there. Um. Anyway,

(50:32):
critical support to the CIA for doosing random people with acid.
Always one of my favorite sets of stories. You you
love to see it, so yeah, tune tune in, tune
in tomorrow for more spooky, spooky story and you can
follow the spooky social media that poisons your brain at

(50:55):
pap in here, pod and cool Zone media which yes,
Twitter will poison your brain. That is just as spooky, um, spooky,
way worse for your brain than surprise c I a askeid.
To be honest, the acid wears off the gangster Chronicles

(51:20):
podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld
and criminals and entertainers to victims's crime and law enforcement.
We cover all facets of the game Gainst. The Chronicles
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and repercussions of these activities because at the wall she
played gainst games. You are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes.

(51:41):
Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts, but don't take
our award for it. Find Against the Chronicles podcast and
my Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.
Hello and welcome to our show. I'm Zoie de Chanel
and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends
and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to
recap our hit television series New Girl. Join us every

(52:03):
Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll
share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes,
reveal the truth behind the legendary game True American, and
discuss how this show got made with the writers, guest stars,
and directors who made the show so special. Fans have
been begging us to do a New Girl recap for years,
and we finally made a podcast where we answer all

(52:24):
your burning questions like is there really a bear? In
every episode of New Girl. Plus each week you'll hear
hilarious stories like this at the end, when he says,
you got some schmid on your face. I feel like
I pitched that joke. I believe that. I feel like
I did. I'm not on a thousand percent I want
to say that was I tossed that one out. Listen
to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I

(52:45):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast The
Shadow Girls. I Always wanted to kill somebody started laughing.
Prosecutors described him as a serial killer survant, kicking up
these girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability when

(53:08):
he got hold of their neck. That was it. I'm
Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident at the Pacific Northwest.
I grew up near the banks of the Green River
and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name.
How many times did you bring the camera? One of time?
Just want He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother,
and he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't

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only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims.
We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go
in the woods, all of the kind of strange, you
know how he feels about prostitutes. Listen to the Shadow
Girls on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm so to clicking

(54:00):
leaf meeting. Every time that that bullshit comes up, It's like, yes,
I can sent. That's why I'm fucking here. All right.
So we we're starting with that line from Daniel Well,
come to spooky. It could happen here today. We are
discussing a truly spooky topic, one that everyone is just

(54:24):
really gonna hate. Uh. And it's we're talking about let's
say esoteric Kecki is um and me magic. So Shanni A,
my brothers and sisters come along on a Rhow we
read a whole book for this? Oh? I at least
I did you read a book just for this? I

(54:44):
would say that like all of the books I read
from age nineteen to twenty two prepared me have been
preparing here for that. Yeah, the books I read while
I was doing psychedelics twice a week. All really, we're
good background on this subject. That is true. You want
to kick us off and I don't. So I think

(55:05):
firstly we're talking about we're gonna we're gonna emphasize awareness
over amplification or that kind of my my goal for
this is that we can all be more aware of
kind of the power that images on the Internet can
have over influencing the actual world, and talking about people
who believe this to a ridiculous degree and how they
actually have been able to institute change not only because

(55:27):
of this belief, just because of their dedication to this practice,
because it's it's because it's a thing that exists and
it has had real world ramifications, and it's good to
understand that that's a thing, and that also maybe we
can influence the way we like us use the internet
to also maybe make good things happen as opposed to
just being doomers all the time. Um So that's kind

(55:50):
of what I wanted to start with. Many jobs to
that Garrison complete keck with you God. Although to be fair,
the past few days I have just been spamming the
it could happen here a group chat with horrible nonsense
surround cack. It has been the most insufferable week of
my life. Horrible nonsense like like paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs, walls

(56:17):
of text so big. Any any actually safe working environment
that cared about its employees would have fired you long ago. Yeah. So,
I think the other thing that we should definitely mention
is that any type of like occultism, mysticism or like
woo woo um has actually does have a decent history
within right wing political ideas, and specifically like you know,

(56:41):
like more extreme like right wing um stuff in the
past few years, like everyone's most people know that like
the modern not like the like the early Nazis had
some mystical stuff going on. There's a lot more stuff
going behind the scenes. A lot of their favorite authors
also were like practicing occultists. Um so this is this
is this is a thing that goes back awhile you

(57:02):
can even see this to some degree with like how
close Christianity is to a lot of the right wing,
to a lot of like the modern right wing the
States as well, a lot of what we would consider
evangelical Christianity has a lot of stuff that's actually very
similar to occultism. They just use different terms because occultism
and and like magic is taboo. But it's actually the
same things. It's all like just it's inter it's interacting
with the same systems, just with different words. So like

(57:25):
this is this is the thing that is is not
it's it's not just on the internet. This is thing
that's been going on for thousands of years. In particular
the past one years, we've seen a big rise in
the amount of like occultism and mysticism specifically tied to politics. Yeah,
and there's this. I mean, there have been a couple
of articles written just recently about the fact that a
lot of like the Woo Woo left, the kind of

(57:46):
um not really esoteric but kind of mainstream a culti left,
like the popa culti left has has increasingly turned towards
stuff like Q and on and a big chunk of
it is like this, this openness to like feel power
in coincidences, synchronicity would be they and and just a
general open mindedness to um maybe too many things. Sure, Yeah,

(58:12):
I mean it's you can see this on on on
a lot of a lot of sides because it's yeah,
it's it is definitely not just the right wing. I mean,
it's like the biggest example of this would probably be
facets of Q and on the past few years have
done very similar types of things. Uh, there's a lot
of other stuff going on behind the scenes, like how
how Pepe operated was very similar to that, which is
what we're mainly talking about today. Um, but you know,

(58:35):
there is also stuff like this on on the left wing,
whether it be like New a g type stuff that
seems to kind of mostly be bullshit, but there's a
you know, other other type of like like like like
folk magic or like indigenous traditions that have that have
i would say slightly more uh significantly more like there's
reasonable actually stuff going on as opposed to just like

(58:58):
new Age selling books and that kind of stuff. Yeah.
One of the things that also separates actual religion from
religion that kind of has formed in this nomadic way
recently is that all of this stuff, particularly what we're
talking about today, formed simultaneously with political sentiment and as
and and was was crafted and in a lot of cases,

(59:20):
like they they state facts wrong specifically because they are
trying to craft a political narrative alongside this like weird
quasi spiritual things. I mean, speaking of spiritualism coming to
the same kind of coming to the same and this
is you know, we're all kind of anarchistic adjacent here.
And one of the things that really came up around
the same time as anarchism in the twentieth century was

(59:41):
a concept called chaos magic, which was really really really
tied to a lot of old really tied to a
lot of like anarchist thought and anarchists kind of thinkers.
Some of the most same with chaos magicians are like
explicitly anarchist, someone like Grant Morrison. Um. Others are like Discordians,
which have a lot of like anarchists crossover stuff, like
like Robert Enton Wilson, which kind of operates in that

(01:00:03):
same ocean. Yeah, he played a big role in kind
of pulling me away from proto alt right style beliefs.
And I think also a lot of his work was
very intelligently crafted because he wrote about conspiracies, he wrote
about esoteric magic, but always with a really intent eye
on increasing people's defenses to this kind of stuff what

(01:00:24):
we're talking about today. Um, he was very like cognizant
of that, Like he wrote about conspiracy as an enthusiast,
but also as someone who was trying to stop um
kind of unchecked conspiratorial belief. Yeah, he went away about
that in peculiar ways, but he was an odd man. Yeah.
And the reason why I've been getting more into this
type type of stuff the past year, uh increase. And

(01:00:46):
the reason why I really like chaos magic as I
like it as like a post modern system of magic
of looking at how basically if magic is just ideas
and trying to figure out how our brains can interact
with the physical world, then chaos magic in produces a
lot of interesting stuff around like late stage capitalism, because
it is is it's explicitly tied to to like postmodern

(01:01:07):
art and postmodern thought um in the way you know,
brands and marketing and specifically the Internet all affects our minds,
all the stuff it gets talked about in charismatic a lot.
And I really like look using that framework for things
um and speaking of that kind of stuff specifically around
the Internet, we're gonna be talking about. The first thing
I want to mention is like the concept of searching

(01:01:27):
for something and then you're like you're and you're gonna
find it, whether that you know, Robert Enton Wilson and
um like the Illuminatious Trilogies has like and like, and
Discordianism has like twenty three and the Law of Fives. Right,
I I read that book when I was twenty and
I have been like seeing twenty three's repeatedly at like
significant moments in my life for the last fourteen years

(01:01:48):
or so. Like, Yeah, it's it's like, once you get
that kind of meme implanted in your brain, it can
stick with you for forever. And and this this happens
to everything. You know, this happens to This happens to everyone.
Like once you learn about a new topic, the next day,
you'll see it somewhere right, You'll be like, you'll you'll
like it. And it's in all these places that that
you didn't see it before. This happens all of the

(01:02:08):
time with everything. This is how this is like how
synchronicity works, and this is where religions come from, yeah,
throughout history. And it's because like this all has its
roots in why we're very good hunters. We are patterned
were pattern recognition, Like our brains are pattern recognizing machines.
That's what we're best at. And it means that we're

(01:02:30):
good at spotting berries and tracking deer. And it also
means that we can't stop making religions. We can religion
and if we have one too many synchronicities, we can
change the entire way we view about the like the
whole world, which can have varying degrees of effects. Sometimes
I can if it's just a little bit that can
maybe ahould be very helpful. Um, if you join a

(01:02:52):
weird cult that does messed up stuff, then it's like, yeah,
that's a problem. Yeah, sometimes it ends in burning man
and sometimes it ends in burning men. Yeah, drop the
bomb on that one. So first thing I want to
kind of discuss before we get into the actual timeline
of how pepangcasm became a thing, I want to just
do a brief overview of sigils and memes um and

(01:03:16):
the idea of what like, let's let's take the original
concept of the meme, which is like you know, the
it's genes are genetic, memes are cultural. There's are cultural
ideas that can spread like a virus um and usually memes.
In the since since since the Internet has become way

(01:03:37):
more popular, memes have become more tied to images like
like memes are a much more visual thing now, whereas
in the nineties they were more of just like like
an idea concept, but now they have like in this
extra visual backing. So a sigil is a is a
magical concept and mostly to chaos magic, which is basically
an abstract concept um or or like a specific con

(01:04:00):
scept put into an abstract image that then gets charged
and then it's going to manifest itself in your life.
The reason why this works is because part part of
this desire gets implanted deep in your brain when you
charge it through like a trance or that there's a
there's there's like there's different methods of charging sigils, but
you have this, you have this concept and this idea
and this desire and it gets put into you. So

(01:04:22):
you're gonna kind of subconsciously do things that that influence
it into becoming something that you can see. Just like
you know, if you're if you're looking, if you hear
about twenty three, you're gonna see it. Same thing for this.
It's it's it's it's the same kind of based concept
um and then Grant Morrison of Comic Book Writers my
my favorite comic book writer. He he was, he's really
the only person that's developed sigils more since their inception.

(01:04:45):
UM with the concept of a hyper sigil, which is
taking this theme idea of like wanting to influence change
in the world via this visual medium of a sigil,
and instead of just having it be like an abstract
glyph that you charge, hyper sigil is an entire work
of art with this express interest. Um. So everything that
you do in this is trying to get some type

(01:05:07):
of real world change, and it's very very intentional, right,
And a lot of art already oprights like this. This
is why a lot of postmodern magic is very similar
just to like making art, because it's the same kind
of basic idea, whether that be something like you know,
like the matrix or you know, any any type of
art kind of does this already if it is good, um,
and it in it can find ways to influence reality.

(01:05:28):
So memes operate on this same way. And eventually people
actually found eventually people on four ch and realized that
they that they were doing the ceduls and started using
this word because it's really the same thing when you're
when you're altering all of these images of this frog
and posting it into all these different kind of more
abstract more like ugly obscure kind of like weird, like

(01:05:49):
surreal types of types of memes, and you're spamming them
on politicians Twitter account. You're basically doing a group a
group schedule, and a group hyper cygil. Because you're all
making these individual things and are spamming them into the world,
and because there's so many of them, Yeah, they're gonna
have they're gonna have a real world effect, and they're
gonna have a real world effect in part because of
the way human brains work, in part because of the

(01:06:09):
way algorithms work, which is one of the things where
like it's it's easy, especially if you're an impressionable kid,
to mistake the algorithm doing what it's designed to do,
which is find patterns groups of people sharing something and
expand that to a larger group of people, because oh,
if this cluster of people like this, this will probably
be something that's very Algorithms are great at making synchronicities

(01:06:30):
because that's what they're designed to do. That's what they're
supposed that's the whole point of why they exist, and
that's why this is that that that's why are because
as you stated a little earlier, and one of these
days on Bastards we're gonna talk about Helena Blovotsky and
like the Theosophy movement and more detail, like all of
the occult stuff that fed into the Third the early
stage of the Third Reich. But the occult back then

(01:06:53):
is very different from the kind of occult feeding into
fascism now, which is heavily based around synchronicity, because it's
also heavily based around social media, the way memes bread. Yeah,
that's why I thinks what the chaos magic has really
gotten kind of a resurgence the past few years with
social media and how algorithms developed, because they do mirror
a lot of the concepts within chaos magic, because the
Internet is kind of a chaotic place. But it's also

(01:07:14):
it's not just pure chaos. It is chaos within a
framework of order, which is why I like the like
the like the chaos star, like the like the actual
like chaos like sigil. Yes, the errors a pointing in
every direction, but you can make a perfect circle around
all of the arrows. It's because it's not just pure chaos.
It actually is contained with within this other framework. And
by the way, Garrison when you started talking about synchronyge

(01:07:37):
cities and sigils. I checked my phone for a second
and saw that it was five seventeen on October five.
Of course contains both two and three and as thus
a sacred number October twenty three. I shouldn't have to
explain why that significant, and it's yeah, but it's the
twenty three on my phone. Why is my phone's fucked up?

(01:07:58):
Because because the universe, baby, that's the synchronicity. I'm living
in the future. Motherfucker's And what time is it that
it's not right now? It was my phone and the
other time it is. I I don't need to know
what time it is the default reality. No, no, yeah,

(01:08:19):
you're you're you're on a different, different dimensional plane. Now
we have two into two different ones. I think I
think that I think this gives up gives us a
perfect opportunity for the audience to find their own synchronicities
in these ads, because who knows what's going to happen,
what's gonna play, So look for patterns and you'll find them.

(01:08:43):
Here's some mass I hope it's an ad for the
Egyptian goddess Mott, and we are back, We're gonna, We're
gonna now actually kind of get into some of the
some of the actual Peppe nonsense. Um. I think another
important part to mention is that like for a lot
of people doing this online, this, this is like an
online pattern that happens all the time. Um, it happens

(01:09:06):
with It happens with stuff like this, It happens with
with with cat Boys, it happens with a whole bunch
of stuff. Is that like stuff starts as a joke
and then you do it a lot and the repetition
basically makes you do it genuinely. Yeah, like me talking
about getting all of my followers to a compound in
Idaho where we die fighting the f d A exactly
Interually that turns into an actual death cult. So it's

(01:09:29):
it's it starts as a joke and then under repetition
it becomes genuine. This happens so basically almost everything on
the internet. Yeah, this this, this, this, this leads to
Garrison and I doing the inevitable Robert Evans Behind the
Bastards episode. This episode it's a three part or if
I ever heard one you you hope so you wish
what what are what are cat Boys. This is different.

(01:09:54):
That is a different you're here, that is a different podcast.
I think, Yeah, Hi, sorry, I know, I only inser
Jake briefly. Is that is that? Are they? Are they
like pre furries? Is that different? No, Cowboys post fury,
it's kind of it's it's it's it's rehumanizing the it's
rehumanizing the furies. So like the same way, the same way,

(01:10:14):
the same way. Sonic the Hedgehog is a re Mickey
mossification of vegeta. Uh, cowboys are a humanification of furries.
This is a whole process on the I can explain
this in great detail in the later episode, but I
think we have enough. We have enough to talk about already.
Thank you so much, my dog. Okay, sure would someone

(01:10:37):
be willing to sacrifice their own mentality to describe the
rise of Pepe and just originally in the early twenty teens, Yeah,
so it started. Is this guy's comic that there was
nothing particularly about. Yeah, it was just it was a
dude's comic. He was like, uh, feels good Man was
kind of fel good Man. He was a chill dude.

(01:10:59):
He was a chill dude. Yeah, not a fascist comic.
Peppe is actually pretty fun. Yeah, comic Pepe, he's like
he's like a millennial slacker who doesn't really know what
to do with his life after like after nine eleven,
after the financial crash. He's just trying to kind of
get by the comics fine. Yeah, the comics fine, but
the art just that kind of the specifics of how

(01:11:19):
he drew Pepe made him very well suited for a
meme because he's expressive and he so he shows up
and starts getting spread in four chan, and you know,
that kind of idea goes viral, and it particularly gets
attached to a lot of like the political ship on
Pole and the people who are like churning into gamer
Gate and the right sad Pepe gets very popular, Smug

(01:11:40):
Pepe gets very popular. Yeah yeah. And then as so
kick is text of it, Like later on, I think
we'll go over more for like how Pepe is like
the cartoon character got you know, as soon as it
becomes a meme, it spreads out into all corners. And

(01:12:02):
the people who meaned this hardest we were on Fortune.
So this is how pep Peppe became kind of tied
to this. And I think the last bullet in Pepe
really solidifying him as as an alt right meanings specifically
was the Richard Spencer punch. I think I think that's
the thing that actually was like done. It's like, no,
Pepe is just this now, he can't be anything else
because but when when when Richard Spencer was being punched,

(01:12:24):
he was describing what Pepe was. That was what's happening
in that specific viral moment. If you want to talk
about like magical terms, this is Pepe getting like charged,
Like this is the idea of like this idea getting
getting charged because it is now going to be perflated
to the masses in this in this moment of like
pure motion. So that's when Pepe really gets tied to

(01:12:44):
And I think Hillary Clinton made it very, very worse
the way she talked about this kind of stuff on
her speeches basically gave gave the all right a baseball
bat to hit her with. The the problem that Clinton
and everyone else because a big part of I would
argue that like the largest part of why Pepe became

(01:13:05):
a thing that was destined to last was that pundits
and politicians, including Hillary and media people kept talking about
it as a fascist symbol and kept discussing like what
it was, and that anyone who grew up on the Internet,
who grew up around these communities, knows that you ignore
them as much as possible, to the extent that that's possible.
You don't feed the troll you don't give them power. Yeah,

(01:13:26):
you don't. And and talking about it again, this is
like chasmetic like referencing it, bringing it up, bringing it
into the real world gives it power. That's the thing
that feeds it. Yeah, So that that's how it got
so much more power. The more Clinton talked about it,
the more news media wrote about it, everyone got so
excited on the four change. That's like, that's that's that's like,
that is them winning than them seeing this thing. And

(01:13:48):
and then and then this goes back pre even being far.
I can't remember because I was in these spaces when
they first started doing ship like raids on the Church
of Scientology. Every time there would actual like news coverage
of what people on the Internet did, it got people
so fucking excited because like, the Internet had been this
thing that didn't matter for the longest. I think in

(01:14:09):
the in the book I read about this kind of stuff.
They they did use the example of like Anonymous and
the raids on centology being like a precursor to this
type of like me magic of this thing, like like
internet forums influencing the real world through repetition and getting
getting to grow power. We're getting people who don't use
Internet to talk about these same things. It was like

(01:14:30):
a precursor to then what we what we saw the
al right, which is which is a pretty pretty common opinion. Um.
And then and then enter enter the Egyptian gods, Roberts,
do wanna do you wanna? Don't wanna? I don't wanna
discuss that. We're gonna That's what we're gonna say. Next
is how is this intersex with Egyptian gods? The ancient

(01:14:53):
Pharaoh's played a card game of ancient and terrible power man.
Nobody watched you as a kid, now, Robert, do you wanna?
Do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do you want to
discuss keck? Yeah, I mean so way back in the day.

(01:15:14):
Um And I think I think this even pre dates
World War Craft. I remember at first happening on like
StarCraft games online, there would be like gamers from Korea
and like when you were doing like a Zurg rush
or something, which is when you have a bunch of
guys and they all attack the enemy base or whatever.
They would type out their term for l O L,
which was like keck k e K yeah okay u
K so would usually just look like a stream of

(01:15:36):
ku k e k k k over and over and
over again. This really took off in world of warcraft,
where like there were Korean gold farmers were a big thing,
and like keck was something that like everyone kind of
knew what it meant because it was often the only
thing you can understand. You could you could understand as
an American that like these people would be typing um
and it as a result of kind of all of that,

(01:15:56):
it took off an internet culture as just an l
O and specifically like one of the things that's going
on here. So as the mid auts dawn and the
Internet becomes serious business and like social media really and
everybody's even before social media is dominant, but just when
everybody's taking the Internet seriously, it's clear there's a lot
of money in it. It's it's mainstream. You have this

(01:16:17):
this kind of second generation of Internet people who got
on in the late nineties early two thousands, when they
were kids who get frustrated at the fact that all
of these different terms and phrases and like bits of
internet culture that they had identified with our going mainstream
and normalies are using them. Yeah. Yeah, And keck is
everyone knows what l O l is. People don't know

(01:16:37):
what keck is. So in places like four Chan, that
becomes a really popular thing. And keck kind of is
like so keck as a as a term for laughters,
like floating around at the same time as like pepe
A memes, and so whenever you whenever you like meme
something into the mainstream, whenever like some four Chan opera
whatever you wanna call it, like succeeds in getting mainstreams it.

(01:16:59):
It's it as a clud and mentions pepping on stage.
Everyone fortune goes kick because they're laughing. They go can
they say stuff like top kick and whatnot, and and
and eventually somebody realizes that there's an Egyptian goddess. One
of the translations of that god and goddess his name
is k k Um. Now there's a couple of other translations.
There's there's there's a whole bunch of issues with this.

(01:17:19):
If you wanted to look at it. That's with the
rational kind of brain is because like this there was
this old family of god's are very very old old
Egyptian gods. They all had male and female versions. The
male versions all had frog heads, um and but around
frogs can change their gender. Yeah, so like so like
all of the all this whole era of Egyptian gods

(01:17:41):
all had frog heads. So there was one of them
that was named Keck, who was a god of chaos.
And this also played into how Fortune was using Trump
because like they liked Trump mostly as like as like
a chaotic reforce that got people angry, because that's what
that's what Fortune wanted to do as well. They wanted
to be a chaotic force again that gets people angry.
That's why they really latched onto true ump Um. And

(01:18:01):
then when they found out that, oh there's this god
named Keck who is like the lord of like like
like um like pro that what's the word um primordial darkness,
primorial darkness. Yeah, and this idea yeah kind of like
um um urinus and like Greco Roman faith, right, like

(01:18:21):
a god kind of before the gods that are are
more well known, but like this was a synchronicity so
they took it as like, you know, the same way
religions take take synchronicity and create and create like divinity.
They took this as like this take they took this
as like divinity. Again this this starts as a joke,
but you do it enough and you start to take

(01:18:42):
it seriously, and there's a you get a mix of um,
you get a mix of of real. Like Egyptology was that. Yeah,
there was a god named Kick, like among a bunch
of other gods. One of the ways he was depicted
was with a frog head. But also like bad Egyptology, Like,
I found an article on the word plus press blog
Peppe the Frog Faith, which oh, I'm sure this, I'm

(01:19:03):
sure this is like a bastion of archaeology, and and
the title is amateur Egyptologist weighs in on the frog
statue hieroglyphs. And one of the things he points out
are talking about the frog statues that isn't check but
they thought it was Kick, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a
number of things. So like one of the things this
guy claims is that the hieroglyphics for Keeck are a
frogman um and then a couple of what he calls

(01:19:23):
baskets first, up their cups not baskets. Second, the actual
um uh hieroglyphics for for K e K don't include
the little frogman. They're like the two of the little
cups in this weird T shaped thing. Like yeah, it's
all it's all like it's bad again amateur egyptologist Like
he's just a kid who was googling stuff and like
got some either lied or got some hieroglyphics wrong. But

(01:19:47):
this kind of stuff compounds. But keck as like an
idea is like now we have a backing of an
ancient god again first as a joke, but then some
people started to take it more seriously, really really caught on.
Among people could because because it's funny, like it's it's
just funny, and it's funny. It's gonna catch on on
for chat because it's hilarious, right, so they're gonna start

(01:20:09):
using this and repeating this and creating whole new memes,
creating like there's like there's like an eight eight part
book series that's like fake books written by like someone
who's like just me bing but pretending to take it seriously.
But like the authenticity doesn't actually matter because because it exists,
it doesn't actually matter how authentic it is. Yeah, Like,
and there's there's weird coincidences that continue to occur, Like

(01:20:32):
one of the biggest being there's this like phrase shadow,
which creeps up in all of this and becomes like
this exhortation that they use like a way of like
exclaiming and such. And then somebody figures out that shadow
is also a song, like an Italo disco song I
think from the seventies, and the album that Shadow is
on has like a frog man face on the cover. Um,
and so they're like, it's a sign because you're gonna

(01:20:55):
find frogs wherever you look now because that has becomes
the think of uncommon frogs. You're gonna find them everywhere
now and there are every ancient religion everywhere in the world.
I'm gonna get guarantee there's some fucking frogs in it
because like they're everywhere, and that they're old creatures people,
frogs they've been around for a long times, have been around.

(01:21:19):
So the other the other thing that happened, so people
not only basically created their whole mythology around this, creating
different types of religion. There was like kecki is Um
as a religion, the cult of keck Um esoter Keechism,
all of their own distinct differences. Because these people spend
all their time on the internet. Um, they developed all
these things. And they also found this old frog statue

(01:21:41):
that they said was keck it Actually it isn't it's
actually it's actually a gold called heck it Um. But
on the basis does it doesn't matter. But on the
base of the statue it had it had gliphs which
appear to us modern humans as they they look like
someone sitting on a computer like they look like like

(01:22:03):
someone sitting in front of a monitor on a keyboard. Um.
And on the other side of the keyboard is a
DNA is like what looks like a DNA spiral. So
this is like jes like jeans, right, jeans jeans are
d NA memes our cultural DNA. This is a glyph
of the god teck on a statue with someone on
a computer with a DNA spiral. Of course they're gonna

(01:22:25):
take this is like some like message from the from
the gods. You're like, yes, I'm supposed to be. I
am supposed to be by my meming, I'm doing Chex's
work to put Trump into office. Yeah, it's um god,
that's frustrating insurance. Uh, it sure is. But like all
of those in the in group, this is like the
statue was just a depiction of what the check people

(01:22:46):
and the and the pepper spanders were doing posting on
the Internet to manifest real world change. And that's that's
all it is. If you want to see other examples
of this, like if you look at the ancient alien stuff,
there's this like famous Mayanna higher glyph of the astronomer
that's like if you if you know what a telescope is,
because you're looking at it a thousand years after it
was carved, it kind of looks like it might be

(01:23:07):
a telescope, and it's part of what like people say like, oh,
this is proof that like that this is an alien
Like he's looking at a fucking telescope. No, it was.
There's other explanations for it. It was something like that
somebody carved. Yeah, I think there's another thing that you started.
And I see this like not even like I see
this just this is just on the end of all time,
like I see left just do this or like so

(01:23:29):
like okay, so you learn something and then oh it's
not true. But then people will keep spreading the thing
because they'll say, yeah, yeah, well it has more power
with it, so you're still going to believe it. Yeah,
Like when we talk about the fact that Will Wheaton
murdered three people in if you want to this is
the message, like yeah, yeah with a knife, what's horrible? Yeah, Now,

(01:23:54):
I mean he was in Thailand at the time, so
he was able to get out and we don't extra die.
So's he's he's got out Scott for But yeah, but
I mean like this is like the same this is
this is the same thing that Trump does, which we'll
talk about it, but we'll talk about a bit. It's
like if you would appeate the thing enough, it becomes
true for large swats of the population that that's that's
that's all truth actually needs to be for people. Um,

(01:24:15):
I think I think we're gonna go and break uh
and come back and close us, close us up, and
finally finished this horrible discussion. Um. Anyone know who won't
meme fascism? Well, actually, KFC the the have you seen
have you seen the KFC fascist posting on Twitter? Yea,

(01:24:39):
there's like a Spanish KFC account that has been doing that.
That is up to some ship. Yeah, I hate I
hate that. That's a sentence that that that you got
to say, I just hated for products. And we are back.
I have finished and entire dark meat bucket and I

(01:25:03):
am so full. Um yep. And now I'm sad. I'm
sad because I'm still thinking of the fascist KFC Twitter account.
Um so we we. The other thing I want to do,
want to mention is kind of Trump's own uh power
of belief kind of idea and how Trump was basically

(01:25:24):
using esoteric terms, was able to basically create an alternate
reality for millions of people to live in. Um And
there's really no getting through to them now because they're
literally just in a just in a different dimension, and
there's just there's there's no way to pierce that other dimension.
They're basically living in just a totally alternate reality there.
There's there's no use saying that it is the one
that we live in. UM. So Trump was obsessed with

(01:25:47):
a few of these ideas. He's less than like the like,
He's less interested in like the woo and more interested
in like the power of positive thinking, power of your
own belief. Um, he grew up in a movement and
specific appeal stuff. Yeah, he grew up following a specific
movement and church called that falls under the umbrella called
New Thought, um, which is where Trump's you know, Trump's

(01:26:11):
like like how strong Trump's ego is comes from this
idea of that you need to reinforce yourself and reinforce
your own victories because if you do that, you're gonna
you're you're gonna find them. Right if if you're looking
for you're gonna find it. If you're looking for your
own victories, you're going to force them to happen, um,
even if they don't happen into other people. Right. But like,

(01:26:33):
so that we see this happening successfully with the election,
we see both like all of the meming everything that
happened in the trusteen election worked for Trump um. And
you know, you know, of course, of course he didn't
win the popular vote, but that doesn't actually matter, but
it worked into in getting him to office now it
you know, it worked less well for the election, um,

(01:26:57):
but still his real assertions that he won still gave
us a lot of real world results, like the January
six Capital insurrection. So like it's this right, So this
type of idea that if you read, if you if
you reinforce this thing, if you reinforce this belief, if
you can, if you have if you have this idea
and you keep putting it out into the world, it's

(01:27:19):
gonna manifest some type of real, real world result. And
that that was January six That's what that was. And
and that's the kind of the world we live in now.
It's like the weaponized unreality world where people because of
how media works, because are the Internet works, they're able
to create this like chaotic like like sphere of of

(01:27:40):
energy and ideas that can like spread so much faster
than anything used to be. That could everyone can segment
their own reality into two degrees that we've never really
seen before because of how fast information can travel. Now, um,
it is, it is. It is a new it's it
is a relatively new thing. The way that the way

(01:28:01):
that this this this can operate so like memes, memes
themselves like Pepe and all this kind of stuff undoubtedly
had had an impact on not only just the twenties
sixteen election, but just the entire political climate surrounding the
whole Trump presidency. Uh Now, to the degree to which
we can credit me magic or the god kick, that
part is meaningless because because the effect is the same

(01:28:21):
that like the synchronicities were still experienced and and truth
is just is just experiential. So it's the beliefs that
we kind of hold will shape how we experience things anyway,
and that will experience what the actual truth is. There's
there there is a great Robert Anton Wilson quote that
is like reality is what you can get away with,

(01:28:42):
ye And that's that's like that that like summarizes how
Trump was able to be so successful is because he
was able to shape reality, right. I think me, me
and me and Chris were talking about this the other
day about how, Chris, do you want to say the
thing about like the Democratic Party and Republican Party and
how yeah, okay, okay, So there's there's there's there's a thing.

(01:29:04):
And Garrison I think was too young for this. But
there's a very famous thing that that one of the
Bushman pedietrition people said about how Democrats lived in the
reality based community and this this is like a whole
thing in the in like the two thousands, this is
in the Bush administration and everyone loses their minds and
this is like a whole meme when the Democrats that's like, oh,
where the reality based community? And they're not. But but

(01:29:25):
then this is the interesting part. If you look at
the second part of that quote, right, what he's actually
saying is that so the Democrats are the reality based community, right,
they they analyze reality. The Republican Party is the party
that creates reality because other people in control the empire.
And this is this is what neo conservative this was, right,
And you know, the argument here basically is that the
Democrats are you know, they're always going to be a

(01:29:46):
step behind because they're merely analyzing reality, whereas Republicans using
the powers or of the state to you know, change
and define it. And this this worked for them, you
know what. I would argue that this is how they
came into power, This is how there's this is what
they're still doing. Yeah. Yeah, why every president since Ronald
Reagan has just been Ronald Reagan with a mask. Yeah.

(01:30:07):
But but I think I think there's something very important here,
specifically about how Bush took off this right, because Bush,
Bush steals the election. Right, Bush does like the thing
that Trump was trying to do is what George Bush
did into in two thousands, but with a riot, just
with a very kind of riot. Yeah. But but this
is the thing, the thing, this is the thing that
Bush and the neo kons understood that the Trump is

(01:30:28):
kind of understand but never quite solidified because they're not
like they're not sort of insider political actors. Which is that. Okay,
so all of the stuff about saying something and it
becoming real, right, there's there there's sort of a limit
to this if if you don't have a gun. Now,
if you have a gun, then the limits of that

(01:30:49):
are are you know, it's it's you can do basically
whatever you want because you can just you can force
everyone else to also accept this as reality. You know,
this is what the state is, right, and there's there's
a whole there's a whole thing. This is a couple
of performance theory. Like yeah, so like you you saying
the thing makes it so right? Well, this is this
is what a state is. And this is how Bush
won the election because he, unlike Trump, who's people tried
to like take power directly about like Stormy in the Capitol.

(01:31:11):
Bush was smart and Bush was like, oh okay, I'm
gonna I'm gonna de clare that I won the election.
And but but but instead of like openly doing it right,
I'm going to get the Supreme Court to declare that
I'm president. And you know, and this this, this requires
the Brook's brothers riot stop the counts and all the stuff.
Were like, you know, it's doesn't yeah, yeah, it's great,
but it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter that, you know,

(01:31:32):
he he didn't win Florida, like if if if if
if if if the if the votes had actually been counted,
he would not have won Florida. But because he was
able to get the courts to say that he was president,
he was president. And and that's that is the concept
of magic words yep, yep, and this is this is this,
this is this is all the state is right, it's
this this this the state is magic with a gun

(01:31:52):
behind it. Yeah it is, yeah, the state of magic.
Because he's like, yeah, you're right. It's like magic can
have a hard cap. There's gonna be a certain people that,
you know, with with with Trump's reality altering kind of power,
there's a certain that there is a hardcap on how
much I can influence the general population. But if you
have a gun behind that, that gives us so much
more enforceable power. And to go back to Egyptian mythology,

(01:32:15):
one of the attitudes they had about the pharaoh is
that reality was whatever the pharaoh declared. Other a lot
of societies of this idea towards their monarchs, and the
duty of his people is to make reality conform to
the Pharaoh's will, and like, that's that's what the GOP does.
Like that, I think I think the quote surrounding like, yeah,

(01:32:36):
the Democrats are the reality based party because they because
they you know, observe it, except the reality and like
and yeah and and like and like and like. Libs
and Democrats are like, yes, they like they take some
private like yes, we are rational, we observe reality. Meanwhile
the Republicans are like, no, you just observe it, but
we can just we can create it. I think that
is a great example of how those two parties operate

(01:32:59):
politically and how because like, yes, they're both they're both
the right leading parties. But here's the difference for how
they actually operate is that one of them is way
more passive in their observing of reality, and one is
is okay with getting their hands dirty and actually forcing
this type of reality altering changes. I will say, I
think like one thing to close this out is that

(01:33:19):
you know, we can we when we can tie this
all the way back to the second part of the
Due of Higher episode, which is that the Niokon Neokon
project doesn't work. And the reason it doesn't work is
that you know, they they like they basically they lose
militarily and that just that implodes the entire project. And
so you know, and if if if if you look
back at like all of this stuff about how we
can shape reality, we can shape reality, we can shape reality.

(01:33:41):
That stopped being true the moment that you know, like
they lose control of Bosra or like you know, all
like they when the other people uh Alsader is to
be unkillable by all the weapons of Empire. Yeah, yeah,
it's like you know, and and Sawder and Solder does
this by like you know, Sauder sets up a bunch
of baby clinics, right, He's like, here's a bunch of clinics.

(01:34:03):
Here we we we will will give help the pregnant mothers,
like are you guys really gonna shoot us? And you know,
he build a militia around this and he's and he's
able to like he's one of the smartest people on
the planet. He's yeah, and it's not a good guy,
but like completely shatter the neo kons like they they're dead,
Like they don't like that that project which was like
the culmination of this this incredible like that described on

(01:34:24):
electro prodectsble military project and they got their absolute as
kick by watch of people doing dual power. Yep, I think,
and I I really, I do want to talk more
about kind of chaos magic and there's a lot on
the pot ground and I think, but yeah, I think
this is a great interesting how the how these concepts
overlapped with politics and reality. Disagree on the end of

(01:34:48):
this with one aspect, Garrison, because you said their reality
can't be pierced, but the ancient texts speak of a
spear that once pierced the side of Christ itself, and
while Hitler held it, his armies were send it, but
it was stolen. And if we can find the Sparrison,
we can pierce their reality. Hey, I have a Fedora,

(01:35:09):
I have a whip. We could we all have fedora, Garrison,
Let's do it. Let's go. We are. We are off
to find the spear that sides us off, the Spear
of Destiny. You can follow our adventures happened here pod
and Nicolson Media on Twitter. Um and yeah, I'm sure
we will give you updates for our spirit ventures at

(01:35:30):
the pod. Sophie, we need half a million dollars to
find the Spirit of Destiny. Okay, great, see you on
the other side, Hey, lead the listeners take here. Last
season on Lethal Lit, you might remember I came to
Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt best name

(01:35:54):
and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't
counted on a rap show of new murders tearing apart
the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger.
Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
Ify Tig, I like you, But now all signs point

(01:36:14):
to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this
game is just starting, you better believe I'm gonna win.
I'm Tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit.
A tag Torre's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in the season two, dropping weekly

(01:36:35):
starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode.
Listen to Leave a Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The art
world it is essentially a money laundering business. The best
fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You know they
don't even know or suspect that they're fakes. I'm out

(01:36:56):
like Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed
and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting
was fake. Um. Listen to Art Fraud starting February one
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I call the Union Hall as

(01:37:27):
his matter, life and death. I thank these peoples of
planning to kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin
Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty
criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty
to the crime and spent the rest of his life
in prison. Case closed right, James L. Ray was upon

(01:37:49):
for the official story. The authorities would parade all we
found a gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham
the kill Dr King, except it isn't the gun that
killed Dr. King. One of the problems that came out
when I got the ray case was that some of
the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not

(01:38:10):
match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first
episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kill them

(01:38:31):
All this has been it could happen here. The show
where I just kill them all. Harrison and Chris want
to let's take over. Oh boys, woke up. I haven't
have coffee yet. That is incredibly spooky, urging murder. Well,
it is spooky. You're right, this is true. I didn't

(01:38:52):
realize that until just now. But retroactively that makes it fine,
extreme spoky. Yeah, what are we doing? Who are we?
We're we're doing We're where it can happen here. We're
doing this is this is This is a a podcast
where we talk about spooky stuff that happens around Halloween,
and today we are doing the spookiest thing of all,

(01:39:16):
which will be revealed shortly. Oh boy, I hope it's
Will Wheaton. Is not what Wheaton? Well, unfortunately, I really
I really should have looked for that tie in because
there might be one is a CIA asset, we might
get there. I don't know. Okay, see this is this
is I'm hacking a fraud and I didn't actually look

(01:39:36):
into this. Well we missed it, you and most journalists. Yeah,
all right, what are we? What are we doing? What
are we doing? On June four, a rancher named W. W.
Mac Brazil and his son Vernon We're driving me across
their property when they encountered quote a large area of

(01:39:58):
bright wreckage made up of strips, tinfoil, and rather tough
paper and sticks. Yeah me too, Just a regular night
in in in Oregon. But yeah, yeah, well buzzles back
in a time where people are baffled when weird things happened,
instead of going oh it's Tuesday, so oh man, what
a time. Yeah, so they didn't just go straight to Twitter. No, no,

(01:40:21):
he he, you know, he doesn't. That was actually, you know,
I kind of like reasonably a reasonably responsible thing to do,
in which is that he spends about a week like
picking up all of the scraps that he can and
like putting them in a box and he he drives
it to the sheriff and the sheriff, his name is George.
That says a lot about the difference in urgency back then,

(01:40:42):
where it's like, oh, this is important, I'll spend a
week getting everything together, take it off to the share.
Like before the Internet you could really afford to sit.
It was an era in which like if you had
a busy life, three things happened. Okay, yeah. So so

(01:41:03):
George Wilcox, the sheriff, looks at this and it's like,
I have no idea what any of this crap is, Like,
what is happening? So he takes it to Roswell Air
Force Base for further investigation. Now, Colonel Butch Blanche, the
commander of Roswell Airfields five O nine Composite Group you
know it send sends a team out to analyze the wreckage,

(01:41:24):
which includes an Air Force intelligence officer named Major Major
Jesse Marcel. Now Marcel gives a now infamous series of
quotes to the media that results in the Roswell Daily
Record running the sentence quote. The Intelligence office of the
five O ninth Bombardment Group at Roswell Airfield announced that
noon that the field has come into possession of a
flying saucer. Now this is the birth. Yeah, I mean,

(01:41:48):
this isn't the birth of modern ufiology, but this is
you know this, this is one of the most important
error events. And the pictures do rule all of all
of the Roswell pictures are super rat because it's just
random ship in the field, and they're like, it's aliens.
There's a random ship in the field. Now this this

(01:42:08):
is all happening to be just like like scattered sort
of reports of UFOs that have been cropping up throughout
the sort of like the post war era. Yeah, and
the next day, the Air Force releases a statement saying
there's no flying saucer in the wreckage. Is just an
air balloon? Is this you know it's it's it's just yeah. Yeah,
so the airport sure air Force weather balloon. Yeah, yeah,

(01:42:30):
they're lying. Everyone knows they're lying. But this is where
things get bad because when Mark Brasil really discovered with
something even spookier and more sinister than aliens. Mark Brazil
had discovered was the American military Industrial complex. It turned out,
Oh it's it's it's real spooky. It's yeah, we're right.

(01:42:50):
By by the end of this episode, they will have
I had to cut two times they almost killed everyone
on Earth. Okay, well all right, so we're gonna be
judging folks for almost killing everyone on Earth, like you
haven't almost killed everyone on Earth. Come on, that's true,
that's true. Podcasting saves me from a mass distinction of
the entire human race and will eventually end all life

(01:43:14):
on this planet. I believe in podcasting's potential to kill
absolutely everyone. Yeah, it's it's great, it's it's a time.
It's actually you know this part part of this is
actually going to be about how we get to the
point where everyone is podcasting on the internet. De belt
things that that does. This does absolutely plagued in to

(01:43:36):
the Swell incident. Yeah, because there's a there's a strong
line between ship like Coast to Coast FM and the
old like conspiracy you know, the precursors to that alien
UFO whatever radio shows and ship on the on the
wide band back in the day, and uh in podcasts
where we are right now. Yep, it's it's great, it's

(01:43:58):
a it's a good time. We're descended from great media.
We're going to continue to produce green media where totally
not just like an extremely a much larger version of
the radio broadcast you get right before genocide. That's like,
that's not what's happening here. It's all in fact good
and cool. I mean, this is why I tell people
too get machetes. It's true that was a bad made

(01:44:21):
that made that comment. Look, we just we we just
we just we just got to make sure only ways
to blaze on right ahead. Now, the Air Force is
lying out of its ass. But the Air Force isn't
lying out of its ass because they have a flying saucer.
The Air Force knows precisely what they've gotten their hands
on here because the other identified flying object that has

(01:44:42):
trashed at Roswell is actually something called Project Mogul. Now
to understand Project Mogul, we need to go back a
little bit. Yeah, in the US drops two nuclear bombs
of Japan. And this does a lot of things literally
all of which are bad um. And what one of
which is that it sets off a sort of and
it's it sets off you know, the thing that we

(01:45:04):
all live in now, which is the nuclear arms race
between the U S and the U S s R.
Who you know, but pretty quickly after World War two
are just bitter enemies, and you know, but there's just
bores raging across the world between communist anti companist forces.
This is what's war in China, I mean in Greece,
which I think people know. People know more about the
Chinese of war, people know less about Greece. Were just

(01:45:27):
like the British. The British are like, oh, the Communist
are gonna take power, So they just like give all
the guns back to the fascist and they start doing
the Holocaust again, and that you know, sets off this
own another civil war there. And you know, as as
as Europe becomes you know, divided between the two great powers,
the US becomes increasingly worried about the USS are crying

(01:45:48):
acquiring their own nuclear weapons. So to detect the potential
Soviet nuclear test, the US embarked on Project Mogil. Project
Mogil sent six d and fifty seven foot balloons. These
are like massively, they're twice the size that's actually of liberty. Yeah,
those balloons are bigger than a balloon needs to be. Yeah,
they're they're too large. It's too big for balloons. And

(01:46:09):
they so they load these balloons with like sensor and
listening equipment to like detecting nuclear detonation. They like they
like float them into the upper jet stream and the
jetteam like pushed them to Russia. Is sort of the
plan behind it, and this sort of works, except the
Russians don't have nukes yet. So yeah, this, by the way,
is also why the song Red Balloons was not just

(01:46:30):
a banger but also very realistic, because we absolutely could
have had a nuclear exchange over some fucking balloons. Oh yeah, yeah,
actually I don't I'm not sure there's any direct balloon
related near nuclear exchanges in this episode, but don't worry.
It happened. Yeah, well, you know, and what what what

(01:46:50):
it did actually do was you know, set off the
modern UFO thing because you know, one of these balloons
like fails and it's it's views the records around and
you know there's, yeah, this this, you know, this is this.
Then you see a bunch of the problems that are
gonna happen with the rest of how the course of

(01:47:11):
UFOs go, because you know, you have initially the government's
like we have a flying saucer and then they turn
around and do this like incredibly half ass cover up
that like everyone knows his fake and you know, so
you know, because Americans are Americans, they don't assume that
like the US is, you know, creating a devastating new
surveillance and intelligence program that would be used to further

(01:47:34):
total nuclear war. Instead they go, it's aliens, Yeah, because
we're great at okoins Razor. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a time.
But I think what's really important here is it what
Brazil had actually made first contact with was America's new
thermal nuclear monarchy. And this is something that I think
more people should talk about, which is that having nukes

(01:47:55):
just as a thing massively centralizes power into sort of
individual people and the executive branch. Because you know, so
if you have nuclear weapons, right, the theory is that
you have to have one person who presses the button
to shoot them, and you can't have like, you know,
there's not enough time for like a parliamentary delivered or
body to like set the dukes off. And so this

(01:48:15):
becomes this rationale for enormously centralizing the party executive branch.
And this this produces an absolutely terrifying new wage of
state secrecy, filled with increasingly powerful and clandestine government agencies
and bureaucracies ranging from the CIA are Good Friends to
the much lesser known Atomic Energy Commission and these agencies

(01:48:36):
the power of their secrecy is so strong that I mean,
by the Atomic Energy Commissions, like successor agency decides that
they can keep secrets from the president on the basis
that the president does not need to know, which is
absolutely horrifying. Well yeah, I mean, look, it's just you've
got a democracy, and that's going to be a problem

(01:48:58):
because it in democracy people presumably to make choices, and
if you don't want them to decide not to continue
making weird ship to throw into the sky, then you
know why, you probably should just not tell anybody anything. Yeah. Well,
and that that particular story is also grim I it's
one thing that was debating covering they're they're covering up

(01:49:19):
the fact that they deliberately poisoned enormous like hundreds and
hundreds of people with radiation to do human testing on them. Yeah,
it doesn't need to know this, Like it doesn't need
to know about you know. I mean it's like we
don't tell Sophie. Guys, a lot of the things that
we do our budget. Um, like when we irradiated all
those people for a podcast, we're we're still not telling

(01:49:43):
Sophie that, Yeah, it could happen here black budget remain secret. Yeah,
it is a lot of money. Please continue. Now. All
of the secrecy around this, and the fact that these
cover ups are like the most half asked ship anyone
has ever seen, you know it could it fuels his
rampant speculation around UFOs and the conspiracy theorists are also

(01:50:03):
aided by the fact that people keep seeing weird flying objects.
Be sure, do we love We love to see weird
ship in this guy. We are very good at it. Yeah,
it's we're incredible. It's see it and this guy is
full of weird. It's true. I saw crow the other day. Anyway. Yeah,
in hundreds of people start who are on airplanes start

(01:50:26):
seeing these just enormous flaming crosses flying in possibly high
and possibly fastened the sky, and publicly KKs gained space flight.
It's it's worse than that. It's it's the people. The
people doing this are worse than the KKK, which is
what a sentence. It's great, it's yeah. So so you know,

(01:50:49):
in public, the US governments like whatever, these aren't the thing,
they're fake, whatever their mediological disservices. In private, the passengers
who are on these jets that that see these flaming
Crosses are all detained the FBI and sworn to secrecy
after providing accounts of what they'd seen. Awesome and yeah,
and this this is also part of the surf uf
OL mythology. And this does actually happen like that, The

(01:51:10):
FBI does actually show up to these people. Well, that's
who you send in when you want people to stop
wondering if something shady is going on. Yeah. Yeah, it's
when I hear the FBI is telling people to shut
up about something, I think, well, that's not worth looking
into it all. When you have five men in suits
and sunglasses show at your door and talk about something,
you know, that means definitely thing is fine and normal.

(01:51:31):
You know what I don't think of when I think
of the FBI UFO cover ups. It's great. Yeah, this
is this is This is America's first contact with yet
another new part of his clandestine military military bureaucracy. Area
fifty one. Area fifty one is a secret military aeronautics
research and development facility built on a salt flat called

(01:51:53):
Lake Groom inside the massive Nevada Test and Training Range UM.
This place, by the way, this place is massive. This
place is like the size of connect Like, it's like
larger than Connecticut, It's larger than than most of the
eastern state. Yeah, it's enormous. And but you know, it's
something I think it's very interesting about this is that,
for all it's mystique, Area fifty one is not the
most dangerous facility on the Nevada tests and training right now.

(01:52:13):
That's they're fifty two, the sub level below where they
store the real weird ship. Yeah. Okay, so I watched
I watched a few YouTube videos. I think I know
what I'm talking about definitely, so that we are actually
going to get to all right, Yeah, well, the thing,
the thing that's actually really dangerous is areas twelve, nineteen,
and twenty, because that's the Nevada areas. Do these motherfucker's names.

(01:52:37):
There's a damn all these things, yeah, all the others,
because I mean this, this this is like a state
sized like testing facility. Right, Okay, they get all these
fucking areas, but the branch Davidians have one compound where
they don't even do very many illegal things, and suddenly
it's a problem. Here's the thing that let's see how
it is. Video has never had nukes and that that
that that could could you imagine though, pretty amazed. You

(01:53:01):
know what, if they'd had nukes about like a D,
people would still be alive maybe for everyone would be dead. Yeah,
that's two a D people would be alive or everyone
on Earth would be dead. So Area fifty one is
the partner of the Nevada test site, which which is
areas twelveth, nineteen and twenty, and that's where the real

(01:53:23):
dangerous ship happens, which is the US test nuclear weapons there. Okay,
but we need to make it clear at the outset
we should not be underestimating Area fifty one. That place
has done irreparable harm to the cause of world peace
and very nearly like cause us all to go extinct
several times. So do not underestimate the power of of

(01:53:43):
of military spy airplanes yeah can lead us all destruction.
Are honestly way more way more spooky than any little
gray creatures at large. Different various planes, just with cameras
on them have gotten us closer to the extermination of
all life on Earth and basically anything else except for

(01:54:07):
that one computer buck that the Russians had that would
have killed us all if not for Petrov. I think
his name is I forget his last name. That one
guy who was like, we're not going to have a
nuclear war right now, Well, there's there's a lot this is.
This is Weirdly the Soviets come out looking like yeah,
so yeah. It's like every every time there's almost a
nuclear war, it's like it doesn't happen because the Soviets

(01:54:28):
are like no, and the Americans are like, we want
this war and the like. When it comes to atomic
apocalypse stories, if you, if you, if you tally up
all the columns, because the Soviets definitely have a few
in their side, but it winds up way more fucked
up nuke incidents on the U S side of things
than the Soviet side of things, although there wasn't. That

(01:54:50):
time they built a bomb so big that it might
have changed to the tilt of the earth if they had,
and at the last moment they were like, let's take
half of the zile material out of this. This like
a bad idea, It's it's great. Yeah, so so speak
speaking of bad ideas involving in involving nuclear weapons. So

(01:55:13):
oh no, I thought, speaking speaking ideas, you know what
else will change the tilt of the earth? The products
and services, their quality. It's so intent that it's like
the Czarre bomba. It is just like that explosive potential. Yeah.

(01:55:36):
Area fifty one was founded in nineteen fifty one by
the Atomic Energy Commission, a federal agency established as a
successor to the mother of all black projects, the Manhattan Project.
Now black projects are secret off the book's military defense projects,
the existence of which are kept secret even from Congress,
which is a totally cool and normal thing to have
in a democracy when you're representative body does not know

(01:55:59):
what what out what what the military is doing. Now,
Avery fifty one is interesting because it's it's basically like
a black project of a black project. It's so secret
that like the Vice President lb J, who is like
not a funk off vice president, right, is this is
lb J? Like LBJ, He's he's like type yeah yeah,

(01:56:22):
And and she's also gonn show up the story briefly
but yeah, like even he didn't actually really know what
was going on there until like after JFK was assassinated.
So this this place is really secret, and as best
we can tell, in its first four years, it was
essentially the Atomic Energy Commission I basically wanted a place

(01:56:43):
to do off the books, like pilot and aircraft testing,
and they were able to do the successfully that like
we basically don't know what they did for four years.
But yeah, but but but in the facility has taken
over by an even spooky organization, the Central Intelligence Agency,
our our old friends. Now that the CIA, you know,

(01:57:06):
this is this n and the CIA has spent the
early years of the Cold War getting just it's absolute
ass handed to it in Europe because you know, this
is what happens with a bunch of different Harvard grads
in like yeah, because the people with acid and that's
all they're doing. Yeah, yeah, but probise. So they're running
into a real intelligence stategency, which is the KGB, who like,
like those guys do not sunk around. They don't just

(01:57:28):
poison people with acid. They they they're they they're they're
much much more intense than than the early fifties the CIA. Yeah, yeah,
and so and so they have this real problem which
is that they the CIA basically can't get intelligence out
of Eastern Europe, which is bad when your whole, like
your entire like state is based off of like fighting

(01:57:49):
Eastern Europe. So the kin of your main target. Yeah. Yeah,
So the solution is to fly a plane really high
over Russia and uses to take pictures. Now seems good. Yeah,
Like I think like this sounds like I think kind
of banal to us in the twenty one century, where
like this is this is like this is like this
is like pre satellite Yeah yeah, and and you know,

(01:58:10):
like like we were all just sort of used to
the fact that like the government is buying on us
at all times. We sure are, but you know, in
in in the nine this is incredibly radical. Like the
the US, the US has only had intelligent agencies for
like ten years, and there is no precedent at all.
There's none, no precedent for flying surveillance over a country

(01:58:31):
you aren't actively at war with, Like the only reason
you flying airplane over countries if you're about to bomb them.
People should note also that like the first ten years
or so that we had an intelligence industry, every single
or that we had ant like intelligence agencies, every single
vote for funding them, every single like vote for giving
them new powers was like universally supported by both parties.

(01:58:55):
There was there was zero dissent about whether or not
we should have a c I, A and they should
have a giant black budget to do all sorts of
scary ship that might provoke a nuclear war. People are
just like, well, of course it's really bad. And I
think this is this is you know, this is what
Area fifty one actually is. The Area fifty one is
the place where the development is, the permanent intelligent industrial

(01:59:16):
complex is permanently solidified. And this all starts with the
U two. Now, the CIA brings in Lucked Martin and
a little known but very powerful and influential defense contractor
called E. G and G. Who I mean, they do
a lot of stuff, but that's such a defense contractor. Yeah,
it's it's it's it's like it's the ultimate defense contra nation,

(01:59:38):
actual name, and nobody knows who they are because they
make like cameras and like film equipment and stuff. But like,
you know, so these are the people who like made
the cameras that could take pictures of nuclear Yeah, yeah,
and you know, and so and so the CIA brings
them all to this like remote testing Rage in Nevada
to work in a secret project called Dragon Lady. Now
in its early stages, Area fifty one is so secret

(01:59:59):
that like even the Air Force doesn't know about it,
and this like really pisss off the Air Forces senior
senior generals, in particular a guy who was going to
become very important to the story, Air Force General Curtis LeMay,
who like that man like that. I I don't say
this very often about historical figures, but like if someone

(02:00:21):
had assassinated General Curtis Lemie, the world like we would
like the amount safer that the world would have been.
Described the architects of saturation bombing started in World War
Two and continuing. Uh and from up to now we
didn't stop. And that is that is not the worst
thing he's involved in. Yeah, now, but in Lomay is

(02:00:44):
extremely piste off that the CIA doesn't tell them about this,
and he's going to remember that that that's gonna become
important later in this story. But eventually the CIA is
forced to bring the Air Force into Area fifty one
for a number of reasons, partially because they're flying airplanes
and partially because the YouTube is kind of a piece
of ship, you know, and part of it Okay, so
they're learning how to fly plane is really high for

(02:01:05):
the first time, but you know the YouTube if you
fly it too slowly. It's stalls, which is like, Okay,
that's kind of a normal airplane. The you the YouTube
is an amazing aircraft because it just as the most
absurd pieces of aviation equipment ever designed, and like watching
those things take off and land is the most funny
thing on that's wild. Like the other problem is like

(02:01:27):
as a stalling problem, but also has the problem if
you fly it too fast, the wings will fall off.
Okay's plane, Chris. It's so it's so massive and so fragile.
The wings are so heavy and so large. It's one
of the most ridiculous pieces of equipment ever designed. It's
it's it's incredible. So yeah, so the CIA needs help

(02:01:50):
to get this thing working. And so the result is
that Area fifty one at this point is is staffed
by about it's one third CIA, one third Air Force,
and one third Locking Martin. What a what a combination
these are the god, can you imagine that cafeteria. The conversations.
It's wild too, because it's like, because you have a
bunch of just like spooks, right, You're a bunch of
just like people. And then there's just like a bunch

(02:02:10):
of test pilots who are like just nuts and have
been like a bunch of like like people who are
like genuine war heroes who like fought in World War
two but then went turned around and like it did
horrible war crimes and like Koreas like Tom Cruise from

(02:02:30):
Top Gun but with horrible PTSD and Michael Douglas from
falling down. He hasn't picked up a gun yet. We can,
we can, we can mention this now. So top the
reason that Top Gun exists is actually also AREAFT one?
Yeah yeah, yeah, Because at one point the US, like
so the Israeli's managed to convince it was three pilots

(02:02:52):
to defect, and then they gave the airplane to the US,
and so the US spent a bunch of time like
flying this big twenty three a round and figuring out
how it worked. And that's how they like trained they
basically trained all their pilots because they suddenly do how
the Biggs worked, and that's that's the origin of the
top Gun program. But then also hilariously that the Biggs
got their revenge when when an Air Force general whose
name is whose name is I am not making this up.
His name is General Bond and he was like he's

(02:03:15):
like shows up you want like I want to fly,
I want to fly and make eighteen and they're like okay, buddy,
And then he just flew into a mountain and died,
which okay, well all right, we have turned my opinions.
Yeah he was, which is like a really that is

(02:03:35):
the fast, difficult to control plane. Just that rules, that
rules so hard. I see, I was. You just completely
changed my opinion of this man. That is that is
the that is incredibly based. Unfortunately, there's a lot of
other way more depressing plane crashes that happens here. And
part of the reason it's bad is because you know

(02:03:55):
this this whole thing is a black I have trouble
imagine being depressed about anyone there die. Oh it's it's
it's kind of so there there's a I don't really
care as much about the people. But like so there's
a bunch of like fourteen of the people who are
flying you twos like die and they like they crashed
into a mountain and one of that about and it's like, yeah,
but but that sucks about it? Is it like like

(02:04:18):
the U. S. Government lies to their families for like
half a century about how they died. It's like this sucks,
But then it gets even worse because again this is
you know, this, this is the Black Project of like
all black projects, and that means that they have a
bunch of people from Operation paper Clip, because again this
is a facility run by the CIA in the nineteen fifties,

(02:04:38):
and so they let these literal not a bunch of
literal Nazi Nazi doctors rut in durance test on potential
YouTube pilots. Now, these doctors are Nazi concentration camp doctors
who had performed horrific human experiments on people in the camps.
So naturally when they do endurance test, they torture people.
So they would do things like they would force pilots
to like hold their arms under ice water for like

(02:05:00):
it's on me long times. They would traft with the
chairs just like randomly electrocute different parts of their body,
and it was like it's it's a nightmare, Like it's yeah,
you know, this is what happens when you give the
Nazis free reign over completely secretesting facility where no one
can even talk about what people did to them. It's
it's great, it's great, it's it's this is this is
why you don't have black projects because the Nazis wind

(02:05:21):
up in charge of them and they torture people. Yeah,
I think we're pretty we're pretty all on the same
page of not having really in the project's bad. Now,
the CIA has another problem, which is which is a
much weirder and funnier problem, which that people keep seeing
their spy planes. Yeah, and so part of this is
the original you twos were silver, which means that they

(02:05:43):
reflected the sun and the flaming cross. Yeah, because first two,
because they not that all Matt black yea like a
chromed a chrome. Doubt you too, what do th like?
It looks like us incredible? Yeah, and it's but you know,
like this this this is you know, this causes like
a huge number of the UFO settings just people seeing

(02:06:05):
this thing and and eventually they're like, wait, we have
to make this black because like having a spy plane
that glows in the sun. Yes, that idea now and
worse yet, so you know, the you two can fly
at like sixty five feet, which is its way outside
the range of anti aircraft guns. It is ridiculously how
hig how high that plane can go. But the CIA,

(02:06:26):
in their eternal hubrists assumes that it's also too high
for the Soviet radar to work, and so what happens
instead is that they fly a YouTube directly over the
Kremlin to like take pictures of Recruise Trevice sleeping, and
the Soviets just immediately see it and they get really
piste off because again, like there's no precedent for flying
a spy plane over a country you're not at war with,

(02:06:47):
and they're like, what the funk? Why are you flying planes?
The problem is that they can't actually like shoot them
down because the plane is too high up, so there's
some they can just see it. Yeah, yeah, And but
but the US is like, okay, this is not provocative enough, right,
Like we've we've now flown we've now flown planes over
the house of like a guy who can fire nuclear weapons.
That's not that's incredibly funny. It is very funny. But

(02:07:11):
they're like the So Curtis LeMay, who's all, anyway, we
don't need to actions in front of Russian embassies, continues,
So Lemmy is this guy, this guy is a threat
to all humanity and he has this idea. Okay, he
wants to figure out how the he want to figures
out like how the the USR radar system works, and

(02:07:34):
so his plan is he's going to get the USS
are to trigger the radar system, and he's going to
do this by flying a thousand B forty seven bombers
over Alaska and fly them like right at Soviet air
space and then turn around the moment before they get in. Guys,
come on, there's other ways to do trolling, Like you
don't need to Like, you don't need to risk the

(02:07:55):
entire populations. Yeah, Garrison, see this is why you're not
an A level troll. Level trolls know that if you're
not risking the entire future of possibly all life in
the known universe, then you're just there's other ways to
make some friends. Makes makes some friends and troll your friends.

(02:08:18):
It's not that hard. Come on, guys, troll the world
by by playing chicken with its continued ability to any
life above the microbial level, like the he has in
credle about this. She was the only reason any of
this works is that the Soviets, like in Soviets are
not good. But the Soviets aren't who the Americans say
they are, Like, you're not Like if if if the

(02:08:38):
US had done this against the US, everyone on earth
would have gone on the end of it. And and
may like you can say, like wholmy. Someone asked him
about this afterwards and his and she says, and I quote,
with a little bit more luck, we could have started
World War three. Oh man, this guy, this guy's a king.

(02:09:00):
Like yeah, they are like that. They are all just
like like this this is so bad that like the
c i A. Sends a panel of like advisers to
the President telling him that, like, you can't do this
again because the Soviets will think it's an actual attack.
When is calling you out, then yeah, I think it's
time to it's time to wrap up shop. Think we're done.

(02:09:22):
And the thing is like this is not the like
the only just absolutely psychotic thing going on in this period,
like a round are one. So in seven, the US
test the first dirty bomb and they really don't know
what this thing is gonna do. And it's like this
is extremely danious or detonating a bomb it spiced putonium
if youwhere, but just wait, uh, lest you think that

(02:09:45):
detonating a dirty bomb was not dangerous enough. In they
dropped something called the hood bomb, and this bomb, like
the blast this. Okay, they drop this, brought this bomb
in Nevada, right, the blast of this bomb blows out
windows and l a people people see this is in
people see the explosion in Canada. Great, they see in Mexico,

(02:10:08):
like you can see it from eight hundred miles out
to see. And the funniest part is that it temporarily
renders Area fifty one uninhabitable and they forgot to tell
the people and are if you want to evacuate, that
is incredible. Everybody cancer incredibly Yeah, and then you know
the people still want to work there and so they

(02:10:29):
but this is like before they have hasmat suits. So
they send a bunch of people in lab coats with
like magnets to go collect radioactive bomb fragments so people
can bring Great, that's extremely fun, just killing all of
their I have no yeah, I have no problems with this. Yeah,
this is fine. This is completely fine. We have had

(02:10:49):
probably saved a lot of lives, honestly. Yeah. Well, the
problem the problem is though they they like Area fifty
one was allowed to resume and that like very nearly
killed us all. Yeah, it's been like the more people
that die there, if you want to get cancer, that
probably odds are that contributes to it is it is
It is slow death. I guess that's what everyone says

(02:11:11):
about radiation poisoning. It happens too slowly. Yeah yeah, Now, okay,
So every fifty ones you two's are like continuing to
do flights and pissing off the Soviets. But unbeknown to
the Americans, the Soviet anti air capacity was rapidly improving,
and on Mayday nineteen sixty, the US pushes it too
far and they send a pilot and Gary Powers to

(02:11:32):
fly over the Soviet Union, and the Soviets just like
shoot the shift out of him and this this is
actually this really cute moment where like he crashes and
he survived, and he's found by some radi Soviet farmer,
and the Soviet farmer just like it's like, oh hey cool,
just like gives them a cigarette with Lucky of the
Space Dog on it, and they have this very nice
moment where they smoke a cigarette together, and then Powers

(02:11:52):
gets arrested by the Soviet government and put on show
for espionage. Now the interesting part about this is that
so the US assumes that Powers is dead because when
they designed the you tube, the Cia was like, oh, yeah,
if this they didn't tell the pilots, everyone will die.
You are done. Yeah yeah. It's like but but you know,
Powers lives through it, and so they they they the
US is like claiming on life television that Powers was like, oh,

(02:12:15):
this wasn't the spy plane. He was collecting high altitude
weather data for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. This
lets Kristiev has like his finest hour here is like
incredible theatrical moment. He gives this incredible speech that's like
he's he's like he's like asking like comrades, like what
what would happen if Soviet planes flew over Detroit? An
immediate war? And he goes on this thing about how

(02:12:36):
he's accusing, like he's like, okay, so who who said
the spy plane? And he's like, well, it couldn't be
the American people. It must have been the American militarist
running this spiplane program without the knowledge of the commander
in chief. And so the US like keeps denying it,
and then Christief a couple days later gainst this another
incredible line. I'm gonna quote from this speech because it
rules comrades. He said, I must let you win on

(02:12:57):
a secret. When I made a report two days ago,
I delivered refrained from mentioning that we have the remains
of the plane and we also have the pilot who
was quite alive and kicking, and the US just like
it gets owned because safe. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure
this state is I'm sure this state isn't thrilled. Oh yeah,
it's it's like, it's an enormous embarrassment for this and
this this is this is a couple of other great lines. So,

(02:13:19):
so Gary Powers gets tried for espionage, and there's there's
this incredible line this trial where Sergey Rodenko, who is
this he's an Air Force general and he's also part
of the trial, and he calls area fifty one quote
a criminal conspiracy between quote a major American capitalist company
and espionage and reconnaissance center and the military of the US.
And this because this is this is literally what um

(02:13:46):
you know, but but this is where everything goes to
ship because there was supposed to be a massive like
US USSR Pace summit to like look at the nuclearization
uh huh yeah yeah, and so and and Kristef is like, okay, Eisenhower,
you un need to apologize for flying spy planes over
our country. And Eisenhower is like no, and this this, yeah,

(02:14:06):
the conference is canceled and the world has plunged into
mortal peril that will only barely survive. And but barely,
I mean it's oh yeah, we got extremely lucky. Um
all all of this basically causes cruise shift to like
start the military build up in Cuba. And you know,
you can see where this is going. But but don't
worry less less you think that Area fifty one is

(02:14:27):
only indirectly responsible for this. They are in fact directly
responsible for the Cuban missile crisis. You know, they they
they Air fifty one does they did? They do a
bunch of other stuff that like funk with the Cubans
that they have this thing with it. They send in
pilots like right up the right up to to Cuban
airspace and like have them basically trade missile locks with
Soviet pilots so that they can test the Soviets like

(02:14:49):
electronic weapons capacity. And it's like again, once again, we
only didn't die because the Soviets didn't shoot after the
U S did some like just absolutely we would have
absolutely them people have done. Yeah, if if a MiG
had buzzed like Washington, d C, we would have ended
all humanity. Yeah, we share would have they fucking knew that. God?

(02:15:12):
That has to be so frustrating. Yeah, Like not a
lot of sympathy for the U S s R in
my book, but just being like, well, this is unacceptable.
But if we do literally just what they're doing to us,
so I guess we have to be chills here. It's
like yeah, well, and speaking of doing things, there's also
there's also an incredible Bay of Pigs connection, which is

(02:15:34):
that Richard Bassell, who's the guy who did Bay of Pigs,
was the guy who read one. And one of the
reasons why it fails is that so remember I talked
about how the CIA piste off Curtis LeMay by not
telling him about every one. So, uh, the May is
supposed to send a bunch of B fifty two bombers
to support the Bay of Pigs and he doesn't do it.

(02:15:55):
And this defense is that he sucked like He's defense
is that he sucked up the time zones, which I've missed. Hey,
we've all missed meetings because of that I'm late all
the time because at time zones. It's that that you
know what, Curtis Lamy did nothing wrong. Yeah, it's amazing.
And this this causes the cell, but yeah it doesn't

(02:16:17):
work because it's a cluster fuck and this you know this,
this causes the cell to get kicked out of the
security establishment. But it it doesn't stop the U S
fucking with Cuba. We still haven't stopped fighting. Yeah, we're
like never going to It's it's incredible. And and but
because this is the time that came closest to killing
us all, which is that well, Chris, you know what

(02:16:38):
will also eventually kill us all products and services. Yeah
that's not even a joke, that's just true. Yeah, all
of these things that is being sold for fake money.
So yep, by products. And this is when Garrison goes
on a rant about Fiat currency. We're back and we're

(02:16:59):
talking about the the Fiat, which is certainly a car.
I lost all I lost I lost with all the Fiat.
Please everyone everyone sent me, send me what you can.
I'll reinvest and give you back your money in a
few days. You're gonna buy one of those fucking one
of those eight bit illustration and f T s that
costs two million dollars, aren't you Garrison? Oh you bet see?

(02:17:23):
I heard, I heard now that they're making physical copies.
This is a brand new phenomenon, making physical versions of
an n f T so you can actually like have something. Yeah,
it's basic, there is there's nothing else like this. It's
like art, but you actually can have it. It's the
first time. It's really Robert. You guys, you can't. You

(02:17:45):
can't tell the public how are how how how how
we funnel all of our money around for our black projects.
You're not allowed to explain our money laundering schemes on air?
You know. One one surprising thing about all of this,
like Air one stuff is honestly the degree to which
the government does not deflect stuff by using alien ship

(02:18:07):
more often, because if they were smart, they could just
use alien ship more often to deflect any suspicion about
what's actually happening. So they I don't know, they go
back and so so part of what's going so they
go back and forth on this, and part of what's
going on is the CIA when when when people start
first reporting UFOs like they have to like concerns. One

(02:18:28):
of which is that it's just going to cause panic
in the US public and they don't want that they're
doing this sort of like elite panic thing, and they're
afraid they're once they will go insane or whatever. But
the second thing that they're worried about is that they're
really concerned that the Soviet Union is going to block
out the U s IS early warning system by sending
a bunch of a QFO reports, which would be very Funnyeah,

(02:18:49):
it would be very funny, but you know, but so
so they their initial line on UFOs is like they're
they try, They spent a lot of time trying to
get everyone to like not believe in them, because they're like,
this is this is treading a sterea and it's like
damaging our early warning capacity because people keep reporting, and
also because people just keep seeing their spy planes and
so they're just like, guys, there's no UFOs. Yeah, well,

(02:19:09):
we'll get to in a little bit of some more
about that, because there's a lot of very weird stuff
going on there. But first we have to almost end
the world. All right, Let's let's just do that at first,
and then in six two the CIA flies, It flies
a YouTube over over Cuba and they get a bunch

(02:19:30):
of pictures of nuclear weapons and this this is basically
the thing that starts to cube At missile crisis. Although
I also I also we need to talk about LeMay
one more time because before they get these pictures, Lemy
is convinced there's there's no nukes there. And LeMay wants
to do a preactive strike on Cuba to stop the
Soviets and bring missiles in, which again literally would have
killed us. All yeah, yeah, but but let's let make

(02:19:53):
us voted down. So the CIA, you know, sends the
youtubes in and this this is the thing that starts
to the starts to Cuban missile crisis, and you have
the Soviets and Americans like staring each other down at sea.
And but again because these people are just like like
because there are if you do want people to see
how people are just nuts, they keep sending UFOs and
if they keep sending you twos over Cuba, and they

(02:20:16):
they're sending youtubes over Cuba, and and the Americans like
lyne on the you Tuesday sendever is if they shoot
down a YouTube, we're going to invade. And so the
Soviets actually do shoot shoot down a YouTube. But for
like the only time ever in history, uh, the US
is like, wait, maybe we shouldn't end all like literally
end all humanity, and like we we got this because

(02:20:38):
this moment, we're just like, you know, you get to
actually so you have all the like just horrific leadership
stuff that has got you here, but you get a
moment where like the soul of humanity is tested in
like a very small number of people, and it's like
if any one of these people on either side flinches
or like decides that they want to end all life
on earth, everyone is going to die. And for one

(02:21:00):
of like this is you know, this is like this
is like one of the only times ever that it
has actually mattered that we're not all just like terrible
pieces of ship. And we didn't do it, and we
didn't end all humanity, and eventually the whole, the whole
thing is wound down. Alternatively, the people in charge realized
that if they were doing this, they could no longer

(02:21:21):
do whatever fun stuff they didn't their spare time. And
it's only for selfish reason. Oh yeah, I mean, because yeah,
the lead let me say, it's like the leaders get
no credit here at all. The people who do get
credit are just like the random assholes on a ship
who like got sent over to the other side of
the world and had to just like sit there knowing
that they could be destroyed in any moments and then

(02:21:42):
didn't panic and like held and kept kept everyone on
Earth from dying by just not just like holding it
together in a situation that would have just like destroyed
most people. So so good good on, good on like
the cruise of the ships for not killing us all. Yeah, yeah,

(02:22:03):
depending on how I feel now. Part part part of
what's happening here is is the you tu is getting
shot down. It makes the area fifty one people go,
we need to build a faster plane. Sure, And so
there's their solution to this is the A twelve ox cart.
And the l oxcar is interesting because this is another

(02:22:25):
thing that everyone thinks is the UFO but actually isn't.
And I mean there's a very famous UFO picture of
like one of NASA's like X fifteen rocket jets, and
in the very like in the very corner of this
rocket picture of the rocket jet, there's there's an A
twelve and everyone is like, oh, this is UFO. Is
the UFON is like, no, it's not, it's this. But
you know, the CIA keeps doing these like halfass cover ups,

(02:22:47):
but like like you can just see these out of
passenger planes, like if you're in a plane, you just
see it. It's like, oh, this thing looks like a
cigar's flute past and they they do looking they do
look incredibly weird. Yeah, and it just doesn't work. And eventually,
in the mid sixties, Walter Cronkite like goes on TV
and tells the American public at the CIA have been
doing a UFO cover up, which is true, but everyone

(02:23:10):
assumes this is about aliens. But it's not about aliens.
Nothing you with aliens. It has everything to do with
the fact that people keep seeing this biplanes. And so
the Air Force gets put in charge of an investigation
of UFOs. But the problem is that only a few
top Air Force generals know about the A twelve. Yeah,
they only a few people know what the existence of
this aircraft. Yeah yeah, And so the low level investigators
are like, oh, the Air Force is doing a uh

(02:23:32):
cover up, which they are, but they assume that it's
about aliens. And so a bunch of these people like
turned into aliens like UFO conspiracy theorists, and yeah, because
this is you know, and we're getting to see this
the the US basically through it sort of like the
secrecy on these programs, it just it keeps creating UFO conspiracies.
And yeah, there there's some Okay, there's some question as
to how to liberally they're doing this. Um So, the

(02:23:55):
head of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, which
is like the uf U s IS UFO Study Group
in nine is taken over by Joseph Bran the Third, who,
Joseph Brian the Third was the CIA's first chief of
Political and Psychological Warfare. He seems like a solid dude
to hang out with. Yeah, so I have no idea

(02:24:15):
what that means does And there's there's some reports that
there have been a couple of like books and documentaries
and a lot and in the last like ten years
that have repared that. Yes, but it basically reported that
that people in the CIA deliberately fed like fake UFO
information to people to cause people to like go even
deeper into their conspiracy. Absolutely believe, Yeah, I would. I

(02:24:39):
will say this, Okay, so, like this is the kind
of thing the CIA would do, but the people who
are giving the evidence are sketchy, and I mean, of course, yeah,
like that that is yeah, that is kind of how
that mean they probably feed it to a lot of people,
and the people who talk about it, well, I mean
so that the people were testifying a bet are people
who allegedly did it, Yeah, which is interesting. But but

(02:25:00):
the thing that well, the probably is weird about those
people also just sort of they're like, oh, I spread
this conspiracy, but like they they also want to get
into the UFO scene. And so the question it's it's
weird and it's a lot of weird conflicting interests going on.
And this is this is one of the problems with
the CIA, which is that like, okay, so there's there's
there's a couple of there's like some important things you
need to understand about the CIA. They're bad. You don't

(02:25:22):
need conspiracy theories for that. They're just they're bad. They
do a lot of bad things. Um, the CIA having
done something is not in and of itself proof that
they did another thing. So for example, like you can
say that you like you know, you says think like
the CIA is a mood base, right, and someone asked
you for evidence that you can go, oh, well, they
did Operation paper Clip and they're involved in development of
rocket technology. But just because the CIA did Operation paper

(02:25:43):
Clip and had rockets does not mean they have a
moon base, right, Like this is this is this is
something this something happens all the time when people talk
about the CIA falling into Yeah, yeah, you cannot. You
cannot use something that the CIA has done as direct
evidence they did something else less there's a direct time
between unless unless you have evidence that the other thing happened.

(02:26:04):
There's other people who suck yeah yeah, And if the
everything is, they're not omnipotence. And then this is what
the example I always bring up because it's really funny.
So the c i A just completely missed two two
different Indian nuclear weapons tests like across two decades, Like
not only did they not realize that that they were
testing me happening soon like they didn't even know that
India was doing tests at all. And then they yeah,

(02:26:26):
so these news would go off and they would learn
that the India was doing tests when Indiana of renounced
on TV. So like they're they're not actually omnipotent. I think,
I think what is this interesting. I'm not sure if
you're in a type I'm not sure if you can
bring this up shortly, but like this sort of thing
is definitely is still happening in terms of like like
air force pilots seeing weird stuff in this guy and
then going to talk about it be like you know,
it's just like this is some other aircraft. Usually it's

(02:26:49):
it's usually usually we're able to actually like prove what
these things are. Um, but like you know, military or
people see stuff, they talk talk about the news, and
the time, it was always weird. It's always been like
some other like like civil arrest is happening when like
we get some weird piece of information about UFL is
like oh really, what a coincidence? And it's it's it's
an interesting thing to be though, because like there's this

(02:27:11):
kind of like weird interplace because like a lot of
like like like senators and presidents like actually believe that
there's UFOs and and this is like I mean the
weird things, but like the different do you mean like
UFOs are do mean like aliens? Well, like like aliens
like this like that there are there are a lot
of people in the government who do believe in aliens,
and and and it's it's this weird tension because and

(02:27:31):
a lot like everything is like like I don't know,
Like Harry Read for example, was a big alien dude, right,
but Harry Reid, like, I mean, I know he's very
powerful in Nevadas, like maybe he knew, but like Harry
Reid is not someone who knows what's happening in these
black projects because they don't tell. They don't tell Congress, right,
I mean he he might know because of how powerfully is,
but like again, it's up in the even even the

(02:27:54):
people who are supposed to be in charge, I don't
know what's actually happening. And that means they fall for
conspiracy theories because yeah, they felt conspiracy theories. And at
this point, it's more of a it's more of a
fandom than anything else. It's really easy to get sucked
into a fandom. Like so I can't I mean, I
don't trust any Congressman on any level specifically around this issue,
because this is solely a fandom issue. It It's like

(02:28:15):
it's like it's like taking their opinion on like religion.
It's like I care zero amount because it's only a fandom,
and I think I think that the thing that is
very dangerous about this stough is that again, Area fifty
one is like the existence of Area fifty one is
like an atrocity to anyone who thinks you live in
a democracy. They have almost killed us, like multiple multiple times,

(02:28:36):
and everyone is like, oh, it's the Aliens. Was like, nope,
they they literally almost ended life on Earth like four times,
and and yeah, you know what we're gonna get into
they they you know, will get into the other horrible
stuff they do at a second. But I do want
to talk about the one cool thing they did, because okay,
they did one thing that was incredibly awesome. That was
the greatest thing the American Empires ever produced, which is

(02:28:58):
they made the SR seventy one. The SR seventy one
is fucking sick. This is this is the coolest airplane anyone.
It's like, just like, go google a picture of it.
It looks so cool. It could hit it could hit
Mock three point four. Like it's just fast. It's faster
than bullets. Uh it is. It doesn't any weapons on it,
and it's it's it's defense strategy, so missile is to

(02:29:18):
outrun the missile. Yeah, it's what's the man It does
look just like the X Wing and it does look
just like the X Men's Yeah, well yeah, it's specifically
there modified. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's shiitest thing ever.

(02:29:39):
And it's like from that was like that was the
pinnacle of the American empires when they made this, this
one just absolutely incredible machine, and then they used to
do war crimes in Vietnam and then they were like, oh,
it's too expensive. Dick Cheney, who is a demon in
human form who will one day returned to the Hell
that spawned him and spend the rest of his days

(02:29:59):
between an apport by Satan, has the program killed because
he wants to make B two bombers, and he's like, oh,
we've got to be able to drop nukes from weird
triangle planes. We can't run the coolest plane of all
time ever anymore. So he kills it, and it's depressing
and it's it's everything is bad now, and he will
rotten Hell eternally for of his many crimes. Killing the

(02:30:21):
SR seventy one. The only good thing the Americans ever did.
He should have This is the only thing we should
have ever spent money on us a kind yeah, but
if look if the roads just a network of SR
seventy it was that was almost three d million dollars
in today's money for one. Yeah. Sure, but like is
like just like a trillion dollar Look at how much

(02:30:42):
worse that plane looks than the SR seventy one. Like
if I success flying around in FT, they're so wet,
they're so bad because Professor Xavier has has fucking style unfortunately.
So there's the other things they're building there are horrifying. Um.
One of the most important ones that I think people

(02:31:04):
have sort of like forgotten the real impact of is
is that the F one sevent Night Hawk and so
so uh Eric fifty one is basically where American steuth
technology is developed, which really does on the conspiracy. But
like no, this is actually like yeah, this, this is
this is what they're doing. They're doing, Yeah, they're doing
seuth technology and the Nighthawk. The night Hawk is really bad.

(02:31:24):
And the night Hawk is really bad because it fundamentally
changes the balance of power between anti A weapons and bombers.
And this means that the US can just like I
don't know, for example, just obliterate an army of fleeing
Iraqi conscripts without having to like worry about someone shooting
down their planes. To be fair, I do think I
do think the night Hawk looks way better than the

(02:31:44):
previous plane we mentioned. That's for so many one. Now
that's not a bad looking plane, but the night beautiful plane,
it's a it is a horrible killing machine. It's all
designed for and it looks like it. It looks like death.
Like the plane looks like It's true, it doesn't look
like well that's why I likely there's only one because
seventy one just looks like it looks like looks like death, yeah,

(02:32:08):
whereas where this one looks like like. This one looks
like like like like like yeah, like a government put
into a plane that is death, that is and that
is what it looks like. And so yeah, this is
this is this is part of a transition the night
Hawks actually is there's an interesting tansition that's happening here,
which is that so a night Hawks. Uh, the Nighthawk
is tested at at Airy fifty one. But this is

(02:32:31):
the first plane that like can actually drop bombs that
Airy fifty one ever made, because up until up until
this point they've been doing Becconnissance aircraft and be doing
the YouTube that seventy one A twelve, which is like
they're just capable of accidentally ending the world, these deliberately
ending it by dropping bombs. Yeah, and and this this
this is when is that the CIA gives control of

(02:32:52):
A fifty one to the Air Force one. Yeah, and
this is all. This is also where airy fifty two
comes in, because every fifty two wih it's it's it's
literally just the facility X fifty one. And so they
air fifty one is like, I sorry. Air fifty two
is built up basically to like house the night Hawks
now it is it is interesting that like the older
night Hawks look a lot more like UFOs than the

(02:33:15):
newer night Hawks. Like the newer night Hawks look more
like the stupid like Tumbler batmobile, but in a plane,
the older night Hawks look a lot more sci fi
um And it is interesting with the difference to be
like if I saw the older night Hawk and be like, oh,
that's the UFO. If I saw the new er knight Hawk,
I'm like, oh that is like a military plane. Yeah, well,
and I was, I will say this. So they start

(02:33:36):
doing a lot of things to like reduce the number
of UFO sightings they produce. So, like they said, they
start flying, they start flying at night because it's actually
really hard to see a black airplane at night. Yeah.
But but you know, the the other thing that they're
doing in air fifty one, and they've been doing this
really since the sixties is Air fifty one is where
the US basically develops its drones. Yeah, and that is

(02:33:59):
that that is the modern thing that pilots talk of
it on CBS or whatever, and and you know, and
it's interestingly so so I I mean I've been sort
of aware of this, I didn't fully understand it. The
US like had drones in the sixties, which just put
them for a lot. Yeah. Yeah, like they like one
of the things they do with the A twelve is
they put like they had this like Ramjet drone on

(02:34:20):
top of it, which just like pretty like a Ramjet
joone is sick. Like that's like that's just like a
cool thing. Yeah. If it wasn't used for killing people,
then all these things are designed to people. Well yeah,
but the thought about the ram Jet things, they had
to stop using it because it kept it kept just
like like cutting the airplane that kept cutting the A
twelve and a half. Okay, well to the ram Jet drone.

(02:34:44):
But yeah, and I think that the last thing we
should talk about is that, Yeah, so Area fifty ones.
The latest thing that we know that they did that
is horrifying and awful is so up up until nine eleven,
there had been a line in the U. S. MILT
and that line was you do not put weapons on
unarmed drones. After after oh what a time? Yeah, and

(02:35:11):
every note eleven, uh, the Air Force in the CIA
basically get together and they're trying to draw up a
plan to kill Ben Laden and so their their plan
to do this is to put health fire missiles on
a drone. And this is this is this is the
origin of what a horrible series of event. Drone like
the few decisions that have impacted the course of humanity
for the next century that are being responsible for so

(02:35:34):
many and and this thing, you can you can see
where this is going in the initial thing, because so
when when when when they're testing the missiles on this
right in Airy fifty one that they set up like
a mock version of like Ben Lawden's house, and they're
setting it up so that they can figure out how
many children they are going to kill when they blow
this thing up, and yeah, that's that's that's that's that's been,
that's been air fifty ones modern. No, the worst, the

(02:35:57):
worst thing to come from places like this is putting
guns on robots and drums. This is like the worst thing,
almost almost almost ending the world with nuclear weapons, and
then now drones deciding to put deciding to put bombs
and weapons on little tiny things that fly and little
and little robots that crawl around. This is the worst

(02:36:19):
thing imaginable that we could have We could have just
not done, but we're like, nope, let's do it. And
now because the things about it, even even though like
seventies c. I A Was like, this is a bad idea.
I know, it's one of one of the first laws
of like one of the first laws of first of robotics,
the first lave of robotics. Yeah, but we stopped talking

(02:36:39):
about that years ago, and now we have those. Now
we have those fucking robot dogs with that fucking like
five five six rifles SI even worse, even worse. Yeah,
and that's the episode and yet more, a rifle a

(02:37:00):
little go right through a robot yeah, I'm really excited
for the Robot Wars and then it's gonna suck so bad.
We're already in the Robot Wars. Yeah, I know. Yeah,
it's well, it's happened. Well, but you know what will
never happen. It would have been so much it would
have been so much better if it was just Aliens.
God what no not? Yeah, you know, I would though,

(02:37:24):
if we ever do Stomry, we should just destroy it
like that. That's just that place. That place should be
raised to the ground and like left as a monument
to the people that killed, because that should be most
of the states. Yes, specifically, we fill every inch of
it with concrete and we top it with a statue
of Fox Molder. You know. You know what we do

(02:37:46):
is we do the thing like for the theoretical, the
theoretical nuclear waste disposal site. Yeah, that is what we do.
It is also still sort of a radiant and also
it is still also radiant. So yeah, nothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing of value is kept here. Turn to turn away. Yep, yeah,

(02:38:07):
well I wish it was aliens. Aliens. All right, Well,
see that's the episode. You can follow our cia exploits
that that happened here upon on Twitter and Instagram. Gotta
hate social media. All right, that's the episode. Here's to

(02:38:27):
the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled
for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills, and you
just kind of fell into it, and you know, it's
like totally fine, just another few decades or so and
then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something

(02:38:48):
else you could do. If you've got something to say.
You could, I don't know, start up podcast with spreaker
from my heart and unleash your creative freedom and spend
all day researching and talking about stuff you love and
maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your
irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey,

(02:39:13):
I'm no settler, I'm an explorer spreaker dot com. That's
spr e a k e er hustle on over Today.
I'm Jake Halbern, host of deep Cover. Our new season

(02:39:33):
is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.
We controlled the courts, we controlled absolutely everything. He broughbed
judges and even helped a hit man walk free, until
one day when he started talking with the FBI and
promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent
the past year trying to figure out why he flipped

(02:39:53):
and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob
was too good to be true. There's got to be
something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He
looks like a little scum, big liar stool Pidgeon, you
looked like what he was or at I can say
with all certainty I think he's a hero because he
didn't have to do what he did, and he did
it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the

(02:40:13):
first time, my life was over. If it ever got out,
they would kill me. In the heartbeat, listen to deep
Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. When P. T. Barnum's Great
American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five,
what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome

(02:40:35):
to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange,
the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll
be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex
and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show.
So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of
the stage and learn about the people who were at

(02:40:56):
the center of it all in a place where spectacle
was king. We will soon discover there's always more to
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and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mile Presents
now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim
and Mild dot com. Slash presents a spooky All right,

(02:41:29):
We're done. Um, Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show
that this is on the week that this is, which
is the spooky week of the year where things are spooky. Today,
my guest Katie Golden Katie sit say hello to the audience. Hello, audience,
now say goodbye. Okay by audience, now tell the audience

(02:41:51):
that acts of industrial sabotage are always morally justified in
defense of the climate. Uh acts of Wait, okay, so
are you do you guys have a team of lawyers
that I can access or absolutely they say it's fine.
They say it's fine. If you tell people that, then

(02:42:11):
you know, industrial sabbatui or whatever he said, it is cool.
I love it, all right, everybody. I wouldn't have made
that kind of claim, but but you heard Katie, so
you know, there you go. Full We've now made a
full throated defense of the Niger Delta Avengers. That is true.
That is an upcoming episode of Chris Um Katie, What
do you? What do you do? What do we? What

(02:42:33):
do we? What do we? What? What are we? What
are we? What are We're? All star dust Robert? Okay,
well that sounds soothing. Actually well well first, Katie of
of of the Goldens is the host of Creature. You
right for some more news. You're the host of Creature
feature Jesus Sophie, you gotta remember these things. Yeah, um m,

(02:42:57):
everything's always beautiful. What are we? What are we doing today?
What do you got? What? What are what's happening? I mean,
this is your podcast. But I thought, all right, fine,
it's my podcast. Now, welcome to it could happen? We
are hosted by Katie Golden. I thought we could talk.

(02:43:18):
I thought we could talk about animals because I like animals.
All right, you got a spooky thing about an animal
for us? Yeah, I thought because the theme of your
podcast seems to be, you know, sort of the future
and how things could get pretty fucky in the future,
and I thought there are some examples of things getting

(02:43:39):
fucky with animals in the current present. That seems to
it could maybe be a bit of a crystal ball
for things that could happen in the future with climate change.
That is kind of spooky. All right, let's do it.
Have you guys heard of this? I get antelope. I mean,

(02:44:03):
I've heard of antelopes, and I've heard of the saiga,
and I guess I'm not surprised that there's antelopes in
the Saga. Do me a quick favor and just google
siga antelope and just take a gander. Take them on
in as I I'll describe them to the aud Wow. Yeah,
they are kind of some of the cutest, dufiest little

(02:44:28):
in the world. Little little they have the best little face.
I know, it's weird. It looks it's like just too
it's just a big nose. Yeah, it's just a big,
ridiculous nose. My god, that looks silly. They must be
endangered because they look they look like they're terrible at
staying alive. Their their faces all nose. It's like someone's

(02:44:48):
whole face was just a nose like someone stuck an
ant eater to like an They look delicious. I'm just
gonna say it. I would hunt and eat them. They
like incredibly with Voldemort's nostrils in the Harry Potter movie.
But like long, Yeah, they look ridiculous. Yes, they like

(02:45:09):
a Star Wars animal. Yeah, some of them. They're patterning
makes it look like they have tear drop tattoos under
their eyes, which I think means they've all killed someone
in prison the hard correctly. Yeah, anyways, are you going
to tell something that is happening with them, Katie? Yes?
Are they raist? Are these racist antelope? Katie? We're gonna

(02:45:31):
milkshake duck these antelopes. Yeah, they're They're all um as
far as I know, they're not too racist. They have
some problematic views on like, you know, gender abortion. Yeah
that's I mean, all antelope have really regressive attitudes towards
women's reproductive healthy I mean frustrating. Yeah, yeah, it's a
but these guys look like Star Wars animals to me,

(02:45:53):
they kind of look like a Star Wars anal named
like a grass honker or something. Yeah, they look extremely fake.
It's a like a guy you'd meet at the bar
where the Aliens played jizy. Yes, that type of music
that Katie's doing is canonically and and if you and
if you are, if you are, if you are a
musician who plays jiz, you are a jiz whaler. And

(02:46:16):
the best thing about that is that I know all
of the thought that George Lucas put to that was, Oh,
someone asked what the type of music they played in jazz?
Jazz is a real kind of music. Let me just
put an eye in the vowel. Now, well, that's gonna
be the day for me put an apostrophe in which

(02:46:39):
it could have it could have, it could have been
so even the effort wasn't there because these are okay, sorry, no,
I can talk about this for hours. I just the
differences between J. K. Rowling and and George Lucas as
creators who both made very popular fiction franchise is and

(02:47:00):
want people to think they thought about them more than
they did. Is absolutely hysterical because J. K. Rowling does
that by creating all these convoluted backstories, and George Lucas
replaced the A and jazz with an eye and didn't
realize that, right, what an incredible person. It is pretty good. Sorry, Katie, No,

(02:47:21):
it's fine, it's fine. So these saga antelope a k a.
Jizz whalers are found in the grasslands and semi deserts
in Central Asia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. They
actually used to have a much wider range, but because
of all the Roberts out there wanting to taste their
delicious delicious, uh just that nose on a plate, their

(02:47:48):
population declined and is now limited to a small territory.
So yeah, so there's still enough for meat to eat
a couple. No, Robert, if you try to kill one,
I'll kill you first. Antelope hunting, we have to. We
have to protect the look they look stupid as shit.

(02:48:09):
It can't possibly be good at stuff. Actually what that knows?
I bet their senses are. They could do a lot
of interesting things. Yeah, anybody, let Katie tell the story.
You interrupting, Fox go sorry, we all got jiz pill
now not so it's okay, it's I understand the excitement
about these guys. Um. I do want to paint a
mental picture for the audience, just so they get like

(02:48:31):
why people are freaking out. So they have this elephant,
Like imagine a little antelope and they're they're small. They're
about two three ft tall, about six pounds. Yeah, they're
little babies. And it looks like you took like a
cute little deer and just glued like a big elephant
nose to it. It's not as long as an elephant trunk,

(02:48:52):
but it's sort of a like a it curls under
like an elephant seal nose stuck to a little deer
and that's out. Is called a proboscis, And yeah, it's
a they're kind of a they have sort of a
light tan white coat. Uh, they can get really fluffy
in the winter. Uh. They have these really huge tubular

(02:49:15):
nostrils on that nose and that gigantic conquer helps them
filter dirt as the huge herds sort of trample on
the ground and kick up dirt clouds um And it
can also act as an ac unit that cools the
syga antelopes blood. So as blood flows through it, you

(02:49:36):
have this spacious chamber and it cools the blood and
it recirculates. And then in the winter it can act
as a space heater that warms the air before they
breathe it in so ac heater. Yeah, filter system. It's
really a cool nose, which is why it was absolutely
horrifying when entire herds of the Saga antelope started dropping

(02:50:00):
dead on mass within like days of each other, just
like a biblical plague. So there are photos. What's properly unbelievable.
You're so embarrassing sometimes, Katie, I'm so sorry. No, it's

(02:50:21):
it's it's fine. Um, I'm I mean, I don't know
how else to sort of add levity to just the
most adorable little antelope in the world just all suddenly dying. Uh. There.
So there are photos in Kazakhstans of in Kazakhstan of
these fields just littered with these white lumps, and when

(02:50:42):
you zoom in you realize they're all Saga antelope corpses
just covering the ground. It's pretty bone chilling. It kind
of looks okay, this is a little bit, uh. It
kind of looks like a cult death, a mass cult death,
like jonestown antelope. Oh boy, I was going to say,
when you go grenade fishing, but yeah, the same kind

(02:51:04):
of idea grenade fishing. Yeah, what did you drop a
grenade in a lake and then it kills all the
fish and they float to the top, so you can. Okay,
I thought it was like you were fishing for fishing,
like running around a field going like it's that if
you go fishing in a lake where people go grenade fishing,

(02:51:26):
you may in fact catch a grenade. But but two
grenades with one stone, well kind of I'm having this
image of bobbing for apples. But like above, the apple
pareful with lakes in Iraq? Is it because they've got

(02:51:48):
grenades in them? Yeah? Really that's how you fish? Yeah, okay, yeah,
if I'm still obsession looking at these pictures, Okay, so
what what caused all this? This this nightmare plague that
killed all of the all of the weird nos the
gonzo antelope, right, the gonzo antelope. It was kind of

(02:52:09):
a mystery. So in two hundred thousand siga died off
in that year alone, and like literally not that many.
So yeah, it was like the it wiped out the
majority of the global population because they were already endangered.
Um yeah, they just like keeled over died without explanation,

(02:52:31):
and so researchers were obviously horrified and confused and slightly
curious and started that's more than left. Yeah. Yeah, so
they're like a hundred thousand left. Um. And so they
started investigating the mass deaths and they found that the
cause was a bacterial infection of pastor Ella multosita type

(02:52:56):
B bacteria, which is a really catchy name um, and
it caused hemorrhagic sceptics simia um, which is a horrible
I looked up the symptoms. It's like internal bleeding and
just it's like the worst cold ever, but also with
your organs bleeding inside, which doesn't sound great. It sounds

(02:53:18):
and honestly looks like Captain trips, like the plague from
Stephen King's The Stand that killed all of the people.
Like just this horrible plague that makes everybody bleed out
and drop where they're standing. Yeah, that's essentially what it happened.
What happens also with a lot of snots, like a
lot of ye that's also very captain trips. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

(02:53:41):
I mean maybe that yeah yeah, so meat fun. So yeah,
what is thought to have happened is that basically this bacteria,
pastor Ella has often been found in siga antelope large noses.
They're also found in other like a yell at noses

(02:54:02):
that have big, these big sort of proboscus noses and
it lives in there. But it's normally not a problem
because the immune system is able to fight it off
fine and maintains this balance. But the climate, I don't
know if you guys have heard, but climate is kind
of getting weird. That is something I've I've heard of, yeah,

(02:54:22):
learning about it. It may be it may be changing
from what it used to be a little bit. Yeah,
it's called change of climate kind of on a global scale,
everything getting slightly warmer. Yeah, usually it's climate hottening. Climate hottening.
Because of climate hottening, this bacteria it had much more ideal, uh,

(02:54:48):
kind of of an environment to grow. So inside the
beautiful proboscis of the antelope, you can imagine, it's moist,
it's warm, it's great, it's moister, yeah, with fester inside
the nose right exactly. And so when it gets more
humid on the outside, more hot and humid, that nose
increases in temperature as well, and it became the perfect

(02:55:08):
incubator for hosting this bacteria such that it overwhelmed the
antelopes immune system and literally they just started dropping like
flies from this infection, like an entire herd dying within
a couple of days. When when we first mentioned this,
you're talking about how they can use their nose as
like an air conditioner. I was thinking like, oh, maybe

(02:55:30):
maybe these animals will be like well adapted to climate
change so they can stuff regulate. But no, of course not.
Of course it's not a good story. Um yea. Now
I think that's what's so creepy about climate change to
me is there's like the obvious effects are things like
more fire, we get real hot and we die because
it's too hot. But things like oh, this means bacteria

(02:55:53):
loves loves living life and like starts eating us from
the inside out. Like that's not a really I guess
in two of consequence of global warming, but it is
one of the things that seems to be likely to happen.
So it's really creepy. Well it's fun is when you
started this and talked about like a whole herd of
of of these antelopes dropping at once, I thought it

(02:56:15):
was going to be like, oh, another one of those
like horrible sulfur bubbles that killed like a city's worth
of animals in a matter of seconds. Because a bunch
of ice melted um and I'm not sure which is creepier. Actually,
this is worse, Like they died in like horrible pain. Yeah,
I don't think the sulfur wasn't painful. But yeah, they're
both horrifying, the sulfurs at least faster. They're both very frightening.

(02:56:40):
And it's also both things that like, oh yeah that
could that could they that could drop some people that
could just jump right across. There's there's a couple of
ways this could go bad for us. This is the thing.
And Robert was looking a little bit into to put
together the first five scripted episodes of The Daily Is
we In a few books we read, there were there
were there were section, like large sections about this is
gonna basically just make plagues be a thing forever. Now, Yeah,

(02:57:04):
this is gonna be hard for people to really get
their heads around. But imagine a plague hit in in
in the twenty one century. How scary that would be,
just really trying to get your head around that global plague. Yeah,
people drop into frightening, you know. So the coronavirus coronavirus
is technically it's not a plague, right because it's not
it's not bacteria. It's yeah, it's like it's it's it's

(02:57:32):
both both both Like vitral pathogens, bacterial pathogens are with
with globalization, can spread it much faster, right, and now
with global warming there's gonna be more breeding ground for
literally new bacterias. And this is and with with stuff
melting in the ice caps and all that kind of stuff.
There's just a lot of reasons to just assume that, yeah,
we're just gonna kind of live with plugues constantly being
a problem now, Like it's that's just the were there there.

(02:57:55):
There never is going to be a post COVID nineteen world.
It's just this forever. COVID was just the first plague
that really got through the defenses that we're never going
to hold up to the damage we're doing to the climate.
Like there were a couple of plagues beforehand that like
we we were able to kind of cat tamp down
on get a lit on, and COVID was just the

(02:58:16):
system actually finally shattering and it's never gonna get fixed
and the plagues are just gonna get plague gear and uh,
it'll be fun. But on the other side, on the upside,
here's some mats. Okay, Yeah, on the upside, capitalism, we
are back. I've I've unfortunately, I've got to the point
where I'm scrolling through these pictures where I've now found

(02:58:38):
the mountain of dead animals. Yeah, it's real, fucking the
stand ship. Yeah, it's a lot of them, a lot
of them dead, just in a giant pile. Like imagine
the cutest Sesame Street character, cuter than snuffle Off, I guess,
just lying in heaps, and that big nose has to
make him extra vulnerable to fucking how horrible nose bacteria.

(02:59:01):
That's what we were just talking about. It's literally that's
just what we said. Katie just explained that. I know.
But it's so sad. It is very sad. It's very sad,
and there's this is not an isolated case that will
never happen again. Researchers warn that it's very likely stuff

(02:59:25):
like this will keep happening with climate change, and they're
warning that reindeer populations are at risk because reindeer actually
also have a really even though it doesn't seem like
they have a huge boss, because they have a very
impressive nose. It's very spacious. It also actually works like
a little space heater and warms up the air as

(02:59:45):
they breathe it in. It's pretty amazing. But those same
characteristics that are so beneficial to the reindeer now could
actually become very dangerous for them with climate change if
this bacterial growth happened. So we're looking at potential, um,
you know, risk to reindeer population, and there's also a

(03:00:05):
lot of risk to farm animals as well, like for
something similar have to happen, where this bacteria can infect
farm animals like cows and other types of ungulate farm animals. Uh.
And so you know, even if people don't care about
the adorable psyched antelope, which I guess would be just psychopaths, murders,

(03:00:29):
you know. Uh, But like you know, we also have
very important species like you know, reindeer that are keystone
species and also you know our farm animals that you know, Yeah,
they're very for a lot of people to basically how
they live their lives are based around cultivating these animals

(03:00:51):
and hunting and raising it. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean,
in my opinion, every species, even if no matter how
obscured it is, it is typically something very important for humans.
It's just it's sort of the like seven degrees of
Kevin Bacon. It's like you don't have to get too
far away to realize that Kevin Bacon, like his survival

(03:01:13):
is really important to the planet um. Except instead of
Kevin Bacon, it's like any animal. And that is basically
all animals and all ecosystems, no matter even if you
feel like they're not super important the way our world
works and how it doesn't work, they're all incredibly intrinsic
and reliant on each other. So even you know that's
that we're seeing stuff about, like why don't we just

(03:01:35):
like turn entire deserts into solar fields and be like, well, no,
because the desert equisystem actually, like if they serves a
very important purpose, Like you can't just be like, oh,
deserts are important, Like no, like they have an actual
egoistm that's actually very important to the surrounding areas. We
can't just bulldoze it and turn into a solar just
sand garrison, which is coarse and irritating and it gets everywhere.

(03:01:57):
It's everywhere. It's an actual quote from from episodes episode two,
Attack of the Clones by hearing Christensen playing Anakin Skywalker
the Padawan with with the rat tail. Yeah, yeah, classic
that Yeah, his rat tail amazing. The courage they used
to the courage of two three stunning. Yeah, How could

(03:02:19):
pad May not How could she not want that? How
could you resist? It's like that Ween song Every girl
wants a guy with a rat tail. Yeah, I'm just
assuming if that were a song, it would be by
Ween called it's called a like a love Lover. I
think that's right, that's right. So what's up with these animals? Yeah,

(03:02:45):
you want some more animals because I talked about how
those animals mostly all died. Oh I'm I'm just thinking,
like what's like, what's what like? Do you know, like,
what's happened with them since they all dropped? A whole
four thousand of them left alive? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, they're
not currently all dying of this bacterial infection. I think,

(03:03:06):
like some of them are. They apparently outside of the
danger zone. I guess outside of the area where there. Yeah,
that's about the best you can say for any species.
Some of them aren't in the danger area occurringly, but
obviously that's going to change as global warming progresses. So yeah,
it's a it's pretty grim. It's Also, I think, you know, obviously,

(03:03:30):
when you think about these things, humans obviously don't have
like these big snuffle off a guess noses, which is
really sad because I'm imagining us with it, and we're
we'd all be dead, would all be dead? But really,
which would be better for the planet? So but we
but we we would we would be way better at
whaling jizz. And honestly, I feel like we would be
whaling the hell out of some jizz man. One can dream.

(03:03:54):
We would be nose deep in a big old pilages.
Oh wow, yeah, how would How does the Bible quantify jizz?
Um cubits? Okay, that's what Noah said, but he wanted
to get the j on the ark. God's like, you

(03:04:16):
must two jis of every kind. Well, Noah was big
into Now we're just like drawing that it was ever
about music? All right? Sorry, Katie, No, that's all right,
I asked, so, h yeah, I mean I thought another

(03:04:39):
thing we could talk about is how animal folklore is
really important to pay attention to and to kind of
listen to as both information and warnings for the future. Um,
because we often dismissed folklore as like, oh, you know,
these are just spooky stories that we tell around the campfire.

(03:05:01):
They're just legends. They don't mean anything. We're especially dismissive,
I think when it comes to indigenous peoples. It's like, oh,
your folklore, Oh that's so cute and quaint. But yeah,
we listen to it. We we look at it as
we we like really like infantilize it as like, oh,
look at you primitive people still doing folklore, which is
extremely extremely disrespectful and also like very naive about how

(03:05:25):
things work when you look at how heavily engineered all
of like the forests were in the entirety of the
America's like from the Amazon of the up to the
Pacific Northwest. It's a little like like the architect of
a building comes in and says, hey, you can't knock
out that retaining while the building is gonna collapse, and
we're gonna be like, oh, Mr architect with his magic walls,

(03:05:46):
and then the building. You know, there's there's a bunch
of paintings. You're like, there's like these drawings from like
this is like the early sixteen hundreds of people like
in North America, and and it will be the drawing
and it's all these European guys standing on a tree
and what they're watching is like it's it's one of

(03:06:08):
one of the I forget exactly what tried. This is
one of one of the people. Like they figured out
how to have like a fire that's like it burns
it like exactly, like like perfectly in this ring around
the tree does not catch anything else inside of it.
Like and it's funny because it's like you look at
this and it's like, okay, like the people, like the

(03:06:28):
people who are drawing this painting cannot do this. And
it's like it's very clear that they're just like incredibly
befuddled by this. But it's like you know, and just
it's it's just sitting there and then all the people
who paint, who paint that, you like, all the European
artists who like do this each like no, no, not,
it's fine. We don't know how they're doing this fire
control stuff. But we're Europeans. Everything we every ignoring everything

(03:06:52):
other people say is gonna go fine and great, and
we're not gonna like turn half the country into a
dust bowl. What do they got to hs? We figured
out how to make boats that only kill half the
people on them, only half barely. I mean that, I
mean that is a really good point. Uh. Controlled burns
have been practiced by a number of civilizations for millennia.

(03:07:16):
But when European settlers came and colonized North America, were
like controlled burns. But we want to sell the timber
and that sounds dangerous, so let us handle it. But
this is all immortalized in the biographical song Timber Bye
Bye pit Bull, which which which tells this story in

(03:07:37):
in lyrical version please continue, and in uh and in
uh Timberland boots, and in Timberland boots. That's right, every
Timberland boot has a piece of the story. Yeah, and timberwolves.
The I'm gonna say, a hockey team. Yes, the hockey
team is yeah, okay, yeah, Sophie is shaking your head.

(03:08:00):
And I'm sorry, Sophie, Minnesota Wolves. I'm sorry everyone, but yeah,
I mean so in North America, especially in California. Uh,
Indigenous American tribes practice controlled burns for thousands and thousands

(03:08:20):
of years. Uh. The europe Carrack and Hoopa tribes of
California did controlled burns, which, in addition to preventing larger,
more dangerous wildfires by getting grid of dead brush. It
also promoted new growth of vegetation like really important plant
species like oak and hazel. It even had unexpected effects

(03:08:43):
like supporting the salmon population because as you did these
controlled burns created a block from the sun so that
the ash clouds and then that would cool down the
temperatures of the streams. And I know what you're thinking, that, hey,
to counter global warming, we should burn everything so that
I cooled down. Um, the problem with burning everything like

(03:09:08):
these uncontrolled burns is they also kill living vegetation. And
it's just like it burns everything in sight and leaves
basically nothing, and it burns off a huge amount of
carbon stores. So the great thing about controlled burns is
it very slowly burns off these carbon stores in this
dead wood, and then it gives it time to re

(03:09:30):
grow so that you recapture the carbon rather than just
like burning all this carbon at once, releasing it all
at once, and then it's like trying to play catchup.
It's like if you still like a little bit of
milk on the table and you use a paper towel
and wipe it up, it works. But if you just
like pour out the entire milk jug on the table. Uh,

(03:09:52):
you know, on like a sloppy Saturday, just pouring out
that milk. It's like a paper towel is not gonna
do anything. That's like trees carbon you know what I'm saying. Yes, yeah,
I do, I do, I do. I do pick up
what you are putting down. They say, although I still
think melk analogy, we should try a controlled burn on.

(03:10:14):
Let's say Boston, see how it goes, right, I didn't
care for it. I didn't care for Boston. Don't see
how we need it? Even North End, Yeah, I didn't
care for it. M hm. They've got good Canolis there, though,
I'm sure they do. You know where else has good Canolis?

(03:10:36):
I don't because I don't care for Canoli's either. Okay, well,
all right, that's uh. I'm actually living in Italy, and
so if they find out I've been on this podcast,
I'm going to get kicked out of the Oh you
need to be yeah, very careful. It's filled with Italians.
They're everywhere. If you can get up to the Alps,

(03:10:58):
there might be some Swiss nearby who can protect. Yeah,
but it's you're in dangerous territory. I didn't realize their
Italians here, that's scary. Yeah, it's one of the main
problems that Italy has. Yeah so uh yeah so. But
when basically um indigenous tribes had a pretty good system
of controlled burns in California, and then when you know,

(03:11:20):
colonizers came to North America, we were like, hey, stop that.
In fact, we're gonna make it illegal to do controlled
burns because that seems dangerous. And they focused on fire
suppression and protection of timber stores rather than you know,
paying attention to the way people had been doing this
for thousands and thousands of years and how it kind
of worked. And so they just thought like, hey, if

(03:11:42):
we just stopped fires from ever happening, they'll never happen.
But spoilers they just started happening still happen and it's
worse and they're out of control and they're big problems
every year. And yeah, learned nothing, yep um. But another
thing is that we could have learned about controlled burns
much much earlier if we had decided to listen to

(03:12:05):
the Aboriginal people's in northern Australia UM about fire hawks.
So fire hawks are raptors. That is like birds of
prey who seemed to either accidentally or intentionally spread wildfire
by picking up smoldering twigs and sticks from a burning

(03:12:26):
area and dropping them elsewhere. And then once they start
that fire, they watch for all the little scared mice
and rodents and lizards and just feast upon the fleeing animals.
It's extremely metal. It does sound like that does sound
very fun, yeah, uh, And so research published in eighteen

(03:12:50):
uh detailed about how three species of birds of prey
in Australia seemed to do this. But of course this
is not news because aber original people's have known about
this for thousands and thousands of years and have documented
this in their own folklore. There's uh even a ceremony

(03:13:11):
called yabada in which people act out birds carrying smoldering branches,
which sounds amazing, but essentially they are teaching this uh
sort of naturalist history of sorry of how they have
seen these uh, these hawks, these fire hawks, carrying these

(03:13:31):
burning sticks and distributing it. And if this, if we
had listened to this, you know, earlier, we may have
had more research on how you know, maybe these birds
of prey have been terraforming the Australian out back for
thousands and thousands of years, and that's really cool and

(03:13:51):
it may be really informative, but unfortunately we kind of
really only decided to start researching in and those researchers
started doing it because they listened to, uh, these stories
from the Aboriginal people. So yeah, yeah, I feel like
everyone should. I feel like everyone should be more okay

(03:14:16):
with understanding why folklore exists and what purpose it serves.
This is this, this is something I got into years
ago because of the because of the Lower podcast, learning
about just how folklore influences culture and politics and a
whole bunch of really interesting and weird ways, And that
is something I wanted to talk about more because it's

(03:14:38):
it's a thing, and folklore is different for us now
in terms of how we have like a cultural stories,
but it's it's it's still the same, it's still the
same purpose and we just couldn't deny it in a
way that is kind of silly. Yep. Yeah, I think
there's often this idea of there is a clear distinction
between fact and folklore, and well, it's true, like we

(03:15:00):
can't necessarily just take folklore for at its exact word
because like it's sort of like a telephone game throughout
years and years. Folklore is going to take on new
shapes every generation. But we really should take it seriously
as a part of very important data set of like
this is human observational history. Maybe some of it has

(03:15:22):
been sort of uh turned into myth, but a lot
of it could be genuine observation that people are relaying
over many, many generations, which I think is really important. Well,
thank you Katie Golden for talking about those those very
silly Gonzo things that are unfortunately dropping dead at the

(03:15:44):
little Gonzo climate change genocide. And then and then the
other climate change issues are on folklore. Um where where
can people find you on the old internet in interwebs? Yeah,
I got a podcast. I don't know if you've heard
about those. Uh, it's called Creature Feature. And I talk

(03:16:07):
about stuff like this all the time about animals. It's
not always about animals dying in horrible ways, but sometimes
it is. It's a good mix, you know, it's like
sometimes animals being alive, sometimes animals being dead. Sometimes some
animals making other animals dead and interesting way animals, Yeah,
you can never predict them. Uh, And you know, uh,

(03:16:31):
You can find me on Twitter at Katie Golden. That's
ka E T I E G O L D I
N uh yeah where I just you know, just posted
on the Twitter doing that to creature feature. Find Katie
on Twitter and uh shoplift Sure what's up guys on

(03:16:59):
my shop allowed and I am Troy Millions and we
are the host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where we
break down business models and examine the latest trends and finance.
We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of
the biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ
Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I
mean our alumni lists expansive. Listen to as our guests
reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs and their respective fields.

(03:17:21):
The knowledge is in death and the questions are always
delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you
want to know. We talked to the legends of business,
sports and entertainment about how they got their start and
most importantly, how they make their money. Earn your Leisia
is a college business class mixed with pop culture. Want
to learn about the real estate game? Unclears how the
stock market works. We got you interested in starting a

(03:17:41):
truck and company or vending machine business. Not really sure
about how taxes or credit work. We got it all covered.
The Earnier Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier
Leisure on the Black Effect Podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What grows

(03:18:02):
in the forest trees? Sure you know what else grows
in the forest. Our imagination, our sense of wonder, and
our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect from
this and connect with this, we reconnect with each other.
The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest

(03:18:23):
near you and start exploring. I discover the Forest dot Org,
brought to you by the United States Forest Service and
the AD Council. It's spook all right, I didn't so

(03:18:48):
if I'm done for the day, taking the rest off,
we sure do. Uh. So, you know, normal, This is
a show about collapse, all that good stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA,
But fucking it's Halloween week. So we're we're we're, we're
we're making sure all of our stuff has a little

(03:19:08):
bit of an extra spooky twist. It's like when you
you make a Martini and you decide to actually put
vermuth inside it, as opposed to just kind of waving
it nearby. That's what we're doing this week with Spookiness
being the vermouth and mixing up our martini. Today is
Margaret Killjoy, Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so

(03:19:30):
clearly this will be very good now Margaret today for
this very special episode of it could happen here on
spooky week. You have written us while you've written a
short story, and you're going to read it and and
and we're all gonna enjoy it. Is that is that accurate? Um?
I hope at least I can I can testify to

(03:19:50):
the first parts, and I hope for the last part. Excellent.
All right, Well with without further ado or with minimal
further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's you know, with
the with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret with the stuff. Well,
this is great because this is actually a short story
that you start reading of Oh ship, Yeah, where's that link?

(03:20:11):
You tasted it to me? But I don't have my
phone on me. Okay, let me put it in the
chat here. Um. Based impressive, to say the least, based
in fiction. Pilled. Okay, I start reading the italics. Yeah,
it's the first, a couple of paragraphs of introduction, and
that you're you're interviewing me. Alright, motherfucker's let's get it started.

(03:20:35):
The Northern Host, for all it's lingering horror and misery,
the wake of a war is rich to reign for
a folkloreist like myself. More people report more supernatural experiences
during times of war than times of peace. Some of
my peers have argued the stress and shock of battle
leaves our brains more susceptible to mass delusion. Others claim

(03:20:56):
that the veil between worlds remains thin when so many
are passing from life to death. The Second American Civil
War has been no exception. Most famously, of course, soldiers
from each of the three armies present at the fifteen
day Siege of Saint Louis reported a wailing man who
walked among the wounded, healing some and ending the lives
of others. On the Cascadian Front, rebel forces spoke of

(03:21:19):
black bears, who in effect stood sentry for their guerrilla positions.
During the White Army's occupation of Washington, d C. Civilians
and soldiers alike reported apparitions pouring out from the Pentagon
Crater every new moon. Of all the various myths and
legends to spring up in the wake of the recent conflict, however,
I find myself most strongly drawn to the stories of

(03:21:40):
the Northern Host. Never have I heard a myth recounted
in such detail by such a wide variety of people.
My favorite telling comes from Private Sarah Dollar in the
Battle of Asheville. This interview was recorded in the spring
of twenty thirty five and lightly edited for clarity with
permission of the subject. Note that the subject refers to
the White Army by pejoratives throughout. These have been left

(03:22:03):
intact for the historical record. Could you introduce yourself and
tell me what you saw. Yeah, my my name is
Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old. I live in
Asheville and the Appalachian region of the United States of
America on stolen Cherokee Land. My u S military rank
was private. They made us all privates when they incorporated
the irregulars into the army, but I only served in

(03:22:25):
the Union to fight the White Army a year later.
I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't think the
reconfiguration goes far enough. I never fired a gun in
my life before the Irregulars, and I hope I never
fired another one again. By temperament, I'm neither a lover
nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans girl who
likes cats and hates Nazis. I fought in three engagements

(03:22:46):
in Weaverville, Leicester, and Asheville. I think I killed two people.
One of them I know I killed him. I saw
him bleed out and I saw him taken away in
a black bag. The other person was a man I
shot in the thigh during the Battle of Ashville. I
didn't know you could die from a bullet in the thigh,
but I've spent a lot of time looking at casualty records,
and someone who fit that man's general description died in

(03:23:08):
that battle from a bullet to the thigh. Does that
bother you? Yes? No, I don't know. I don't lose
sleep over it, but I think about it a lot.
I look at the docks on both of them. The
first guy was a true believer, a real blood and
soil type. It doesn't bother me that I mingled those
two things for him. The second man, though I'm not

(03:23:30):
so sure he signed up because his son signed up.
I don't have any kids myself, but I could see
myself doing that. His son survived the war. Have you
been in contact with his son? No funk. That guy
that kids a fucking Nazi, and I don't know he
talked his way out of the tribunals. Can you tell
me what you saw at the Battle of Asheville. This

(03:23:51):
was during the Fascist Spring offensive last year, you know
Hitler's birthday April. By that point, the White Army was
pretty much done, but they weren't about to go down
without doing some major symbolic damage. So there were about
forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders, no
army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned, common
sentiment in the South. I was on the street out

(03:24:13):
in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was half
rubble at that point. Only the library was standing because
symbols matter and all that bullshit. So that's where we
were making a stand. Neither side had artillery really by
that point, the brass had just commandeered even our RPGs
for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming, not
for them and not for us. Really, the Battle of

(03:24:35):
Ashville was was like nothing to the rest of the world,
and we knew it. So I was doing the rounds,
thinking about my ship luck, thinking maybe I was going
to die, and how so many people had died, and
what's another dead girl to add to the pile. I
was thinking about how at least this dead girl is
going to die surrounded by or in defense of books.
And then I heard dogs from around the side of

(03:24:56):
the building. One barked loud and near, the other sort
of distant and echoy. I went to check it out.
Turned the corner and there was this naked guy. He
was pale as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like
I said, he was naked as the sun. I stared
at him, he stared at me. I got so distracted
trying to figure him out that it took me a
moment to realize there were nine others behind him, or

(03:25:19):
maybe they weren't there at first, I don't know. Most
of them were men, mostly of the tall, Norse looking variety,
but there was a Middle Eastern man and three women,
including one who by my read was Latin X. No
dogs anywhere that I could see. The man closest to me,
he asked me something in a language I didn't know.
I just kind of stared. He asked me another question

(03:25:40):
in another language. What I asked? Who are you? Who
are we fighting? He asked? His accent was thick, and
I couldn't place it for the life of me. I mean,
I know now, but I sure as ship didn't know
it then we I asked what I was due back
out front, because I was a century doing the rounds
and this sure needed reporting. But what the hell was

(03:26:00):
I going to tell? People? Who were we fighting? Where
are we? You're in Asheville? Who are you? Ah? The
American conflict, the man said behind him, others nodded. Their
movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk. I later
realized one of them had dried blood running down from
her lip onto a not insubstantial belly. You're fighting the nationalists,

(03:26:23):
the first one said, We're here to help you. Who
are you? I asked this third time he actually answered,
my name is bell Gear. We are the dead. We
are the Eynhyar from Valhalla. Every day we are sent
to a battle to fight, and we die. The others
behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now, I know there were

(03:26:45):
good folks on our side who were into European paganism,
but you have to understand that a lot more of
the fashion were into that ship than anybody else. If
they hadn't been naked and drunk, I might have mistaken
them for the enemy and shot them Valhalla, I said,
reciting the tiny But I knew that's where Vikings go
if they die in battle, feast every day and fight
every night in Odin's hall until the end of the world,

(03:27:09):
where you like also fight and die but wolf feeds
the sun or something close enough, Belgar said. I mean,
Odin only gets half the battle dead, and Viking isn't
a good name for us. But sure, and you're here
because we are to take arms alongside you, fight your
enemies and die today, and are going to die today.

(03:27:30):
Only the seers and the gods know that. I've been
calling myself a witch half of my life, but honestly
that was mostly because I like taro and astrology and
panagrams and ship. I've never been someone who took the
supernatural all that seriously. But nothing in the world made
sense like it used to. Fascists had just been driven
out of d C. Cascadia had not only succeeded, but
was in a civil war of its own. Now Mexico

(03:27:52):
was gone and replaced by self governing states of almost
every stripe in the political rainbow. China had backed white
supremacists and other nationalist types, and in Amry in civil
war and anti government leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like
me in the damn u s Army. I can't say
those things were as weird as naked dead don't call
us vikings talking to me in the street. But somehow

(03:28:13):
all of that was just comparably bizarre. Come let us
arm ourselves and fight together. You and I belger said.
So that's how I met the Northern host. Most people
don't believe me, assume it was just some kind of
drunk wing nuts, maybe some irregulars I've never met before.
But I saw what I saw, and I believe it.
The rest of us who survived they saw it too.

(03:28:34):
And how did it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How
did it go? We got the inn here yard into
irregular's garb and armed them. There were plenty of guns
at that point in the forgotten hellhole up front, Bullets
not so much but plenty of guns. They were all
comfortable with firearms. The one fellow groused about what he
wouldn't do for an axe and shield, and another said

(03:28:56):
what we had was fine, but monofilament web guns were
better than any combat shotgun. To hear them, tell it,
funk it? Why am I pretending like I don't believe them?
I believe them with every bit of my soul, and
damn what people think of me for it. The Northern
Host fight every night and every night. They are in
a different time and place. Most battles in human history
were in the past, they said, which sounds optimistic, doesn't it.

(03:29:17):
But they said they fought in every century up to
nothing happens after the century Ragnarok most likely the end
of the world, wolves eating the sun and the moon.
All that. They stood guard out with me out front.
Around midday we got hit with an e MP. We
knew that was coming. It didn't screw us up much.
We had a hardened phone in the basement, and all

(03:29:39):
our weapons operated just as well in dumb mode a
smart mode, including our own e MPs. The White Army
showed up maybe a hundred men, all men. That's their
whole stick. They came in on motorcycles and a t
v s and horses more stick, Like, how fucking folksy
they are. We hit them with the m e mp
s anyway, level the field, took out the a t
v s, the bikes were retrofitted, no electric and a horse.

(03:30:02):
You can't imp a horse. I don't know if there
was a skirmish in that war that didn't start with
both sides ritually knocking the other one back to basically
the twentieth century. I think the tactical e MP is
the reason there's anything left of this country. We took
a few pot shots while they were still at range,
but we didn't have the AMMO to waste on anything else.
I don't think we did any damage. They took up

(03:30:23):
position further up the hill and the ruins of the
old Basilica. Then we waited. We should have mined the church.
That old thing was blown half to ship. Anyway, It
wouldn't have made the world any worse if we'd either
leveled it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical
war or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled
every mosques, synagogue and quote heretic church. They got their

(03:30:45):
hands on, not to mention libraries and universities and even
the goddamn Statue of Liberty because they had immigrants. But
we were supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war.
Those two words don't got nothing to do with one another,
and everyone knows it. So they hold up in the
basilica and we pulled back into the library and we
had one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people

(03:31:05):
die slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's
when Laura got shot right in the head because we
missed a spot when we bullet proof of the facade.
She's dead. She had natural red hair, but she always
died at redder and her favorite show was Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, and she liked to drink water out of
long stem glasses. She was I think she was thirty seven,

(03:31:28):
way past rafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement.
She was only there because she loved books, had plenty
of time to avoid looking at her corpse while she
was in there with us dead. Dwight was another one
of my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people,
hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with
that Viking ship in Dark Ages in general. Both his

(03:31:50):
parents had come over from Sweden, though his dad was
originally from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies
in another African history, and I I can't tell you
how many times during basic run down the details of
this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa.
If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it.
But if there were swords and armor or spears and shields,
he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings.

(03:32:12):
First thing. He was the first person to believe them,
to to really believe them, and his faith was contagious.
While we were pinned down, he asked them everything. Mostly
they were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing
they were very insistent on and that I overheard them
talking about Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not?

(03:32:33):
Dwight asked, It takes two things to go to Valhalla.
The spokesperson said, you have to die in battle and
you have to venerate odin a bunch of those fuckers
or oldness. He said, no, they aren't. Their nationalist, fascist,
racial separatists. They're all kinds of things, but they don't
venerate Odin. Whatever they think, What do you mean? They
only know one half of Odin. They know the masculine side,

(03:32:55):
the heterosexual side, the Christian side. They worship a bastardization
of our God, a bastardization first created by a nationalist
Christian eight hundred years ago that's only gotten further afield
since our Odin practices women's magic, the magic of these
sexually penetrated. We also worshiped female gods of war, and
male gods of the hearth, and gods who change their

(03:33:16):
gender when they're bored. Nazis don't understand that any of it.
In life, we raided, sometimes traded, other times. We also
did all sorts of things that won't fit your modern sensibilities,
things that were I alive you might kill me for.
But we're not Nazis. And people who worship a Christian
version of our God most certainly do not go to Valhalla.

(03:33:38):
It was as if the man had used up every
word allotted to him for the day, because I don't
believe a one of them spoke again before the battle
began in earnest And how long was that another hour?
Maybe the sun was still right overhead when the white
army rushed us. It was a bullshit move, rushing us
one part over confidence in one part desperation. If you

(03:33:59):
can imagine that they knew they were losing the war
at that point, but they had us more than two
to one, and we all know that KKK commanders don't
give two ships about the lives of their men. That's
when I put a bullet on a man's leg while
he was in the street running. It was a good shot.
He was running, and I led the target and everything.
I've been aiming for center body mass, but but still

(03:34:21):
at least a hundred yards against a moving target. I
was proud of that shot at the time on a
technical level, even if I'm not sure i'm proud of
it anymore now that I know the man's name. We
expected the charge. What we didn't expect was the ordinance
that knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But that happened,
and almost all the fighting happened right there on the
first floor, among the empty shelves. The whole thing felt

(03:34:43):
like it lasted half an hour. I've looked it up since,
from the time of the first blast at the time
the last shot was fired, we're talking about three minutes.
In twelve seconds, we thought they were going to pour
in through the door after they blew it the funk off.
So James got in there with our one functioning automatic
and he took at least ten of the fashion down
with him before someone got him in the neck. It

(03:35:04):
was a faint and they blew a hole in the
side of the building. Well, well that was going on,
and that's where they got in close quarters combat as
a whole different beast, a worse one, maybe maybe a
better one. I go back on fourth on that. Sometimes
instead of sleeping, I think about the pros and cons
of various types of absolute horror. Is it better to
see your death coming or to get picked off without

(03:35:24):
knowing it? I would have thought the Vikings would expend
themselves right off. I mean Vikings. They were starting to
sober up by that point, but still they'd been drinking,
and they were already dead, and they were doomed to die.
But they were smarter than that, never risked themselves unnecessarily.
Your next assumption of a comrade you know is doomed
is that they'll sacrifice themselves to save others. None of

(03:35:47):
that either. They knew they were the best trained soldiers
on the field, and that in order for us to win,
they had to be in the fight as long as
they could. They were smart like that, assholes like that.
I stationed myself in the back. I fancy myself more
of a sniper than the assault sort, so I watched
the whole thing go down. I also only hit three
targets out of a hundred and seventeen bullets I fired.

(03:36:09):
But that's another story. I watched us whin. We took
casualties of fifty percent, half of those were Kia, but
we defeated a force twice our strength. I watched the
inn hangar bayonet men and shoot them, and I saw
one of the Viking women break a man's face apart
with her fists. Soon after, a bullet found her heart
and she collapsed with a smile on her lips. She disappeared,

(03:36:32):
like literally she phased out of existence. Being me up, Scotty.
We pushed them back onto the pavement, And when I
say we, I'm honestly not being fair because I didn't
do much of it myself. We had them scattered and running,
most of them. Dwight was out there waving a pistol
in one hand and swinging a wooden stock rifle like
a club in the other. A Viking with a shotgun

(03:36:53):
stood beside him. I think the same fashy little ship
killed them both, maybe in the same three round burst.
I tagged Fashion in his belly, and his friends helped
him get away, and the remaining Nazis ran. He survived
his wound. Why do we have so much information about
the war? Does it do me any good to know
who I killed and who I didn't? And Dwight. Dwight

(03:37:14):
lay alone in the concrete, face down. There wasn't much blood,
but he was dead. Two ravens sat atop him, one
on each shoulder. I've never seen a raven in Asheville
in my life, not before, not since. There were two
of them, as big as people say those things are.
They barked and they sounded like dogs. One was loud,
like it was right where I was. The other was distant, echoing.

(03:37:37):
Then they flew away, directly up and towards the sun,
and I tried to watch to see where they went,
but you can't look directly at the sun like that.
I looked back down and Dwight was gone. Okay, so
his body was still there, but there was there was
something about him that was gone, and I don't know
how to tell you what it was. That that was
that we won sort of. They didn't storm the library,

(03:38:00):
guess means we won. But sometimes I'd think I'd burn
every single book in that place. It would bring back
Lord or Dwight or any of the rest of my friends.
The war was over at that point, even if we
didn't know it yet. So what did they die for?
I guess for symbols. Maybe symbols matter that much. I
don't know. I deserted after that. Half the survivors of

(03:38:20):
the Battle of Asheville died less than a week later
up in Pittsburgh. And I suppose I'd be dead if
I had gone, And it probably makes me a coward
that I didn't. It's not that I was afraid of dying.
It's that I was afraid of dying in battle because
I believe in Odin. Now it's hard not to believe
in a god without venerating him. I don't want to
go to Valhalla. I don't want to fight ever again,

(03:38:42):
let alone every night. I don't want to serve with
the iron and yard at the twilight of the gods
sometime in the twenty fifth century. If I don't want
to do that, then I don't want to die in
battle Dwight, though I expect he's happy. I expect he
dies every day with a smile on his lips and
meat in his belly. He won't have to fight alongside
the monsters of the human race either, because, as I

(03:39:04):
learned in Nashville, Nazis don't go to Valhalla. All right,
that was awesome, Margaret, Thank you. Yeah, thanks Dan. I'll
put a bunch of applause noise here because translating over
yeah as an end and and uh an air horn

(03:39:24):
stick an. I don't think the air horn is going
to be that as Garrison air horn. Thank you, Thank
you Garrison. Margaret, Um, how long ago did you write that?
I wrote that I believe in seventeen maybe. Yeah, Well

(03:39:48):
it's not gotten less relevant. Yeah, man, I uh, there's
definitely some times where I've I've wished for a platoon
of vikings uh to deal with some ship. Yeah. Uh,
well this has been it could happen here and this

(03:40:10):
has been spooky week. I hope you enjoyed this scary
story that's also relevant to our theme. Of collapse, Margaret,
you want to tell the people where they can find you. Yeah,
I'm on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm on Instagram
at Margaret kill Joy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot
com slash Margaret Killjoy, where this story and many other
stories are available for anyone who sponsors me at a

(03:40:31):
dollar a month. Then if you make less money than
I do, then just message me and I'll give you
all my ship for free. And I have an upcome
because you've asked me to plug things and I'm definitely
just gonna go ahead and plug things. Um. I have
a book coming out from a K Proces. It's a
reissue of my anarchist utopian book, A Country of Ghosts.
If you like my very I like writing war stories,

(03:40:52):
but I specifically like writing war stories that are actually
sad and how about how war is horrible? Um, and
so A Country Ghosts is such a book and this
story will eventually I'm excited to say I just signed
a contract for a K Press is going to put
out a story anthology of mine which will include this.
Yeah that sounds incredibly rad Yes, great publisher. Yeah, not

(03:41:15):
biased at all in that. No, no, no, nor towards
stories of the Second American Civil War with superior I've
been introduced to just today. UM, all right, we'll check
out Margaret's book Parentheses. S uh and and UM check

(03:41:39):
out this show when it comes back someday one day.
You'll never know when, but you'll hear a whisper on
the wind, and there will be where it will be
the next weekday after one of those two. Hey, we'll
be back Monday with more episodes every week from now

(03:42:00):
until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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(03:42:24):
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(03:42:45):
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Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess

(03:43:05):
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We're here on Eating Wall Broken. Today, I'm gonna break
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(03:43:29):
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(03:43:51):
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