March 17, 2017 • 64 mins
In the US, the 1960s were a crucible of culture -- college students, veterans, the disadvantaged and activists across the country sought to overthrow the status quo and build their own vision of a better world. This period in time produced some of the most influential art, music and prose in recent history, and introduced LSD to the mainstream. So why do so many people think it was ultimately a CIA operation?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:23):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
My name is no Hippie is an establishment label for
a profound, invisible, underground evolutionary process. For every visible hippie
Barefoot the flowered be did there are a thousand invisible
members of the turned on underground, persons whose lives are
tuned into their inner vision, who are dropping out of
(00:44):
the TV comedy of American life. That's a quote by
Timothy Leary. I'm ben your you. This is stuff they
don't want you to know. And what do you think, gentlemen,
about the nineteen sixties. It was a wild, heavy time,
a free love. I don't know. It was easier to
(01:06):
get validated. That's the best music I think came out
of the six The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Animals
with Eric Burden, the zombies. Oh man, how could we
We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the zombies. There
were a couple of political dynasties that came out of
the sixties, at least that I was aware of. The
(01:28):
Kennedy's were the big one. There were some drugs, A
couple of drugs, yeah, a couple of the really good ones, right,
just about as much as you could fit in your fist, yeah,
or you know, could fit onto a tiny piece of paper,
put it right. They're also proxy wars that were occurring
in several different parts of the globe between the United
(01:51):
States and other countries. Today, we were talking about the
nineteen sixties in the United States, one of the most
culturally charged and powerful eras in this nation's history, and
one could argue that we have sort of cycled back
in a way to a similar atmosphere now politically and
(02:13):
culturally as the nineteen sixties. We can talk about that more.
But you know, in terms of revolution, the idea of
you know, being opposed to the government and the government
being you know, starting another drug war and trying to
shut down free speech things like that, it's interesting parallel. Yeah,
and uh, and the way that technology empowers and hinders
(02:37):
that sort of revolution. But you're right, the more things
change dot dot dot ellipses. I don't know why I
said that, Like I was dramatic. I'm just spelling out ellipses.
What we're talking about when we talk about these revolutionary
attitudes in the nineteen sixties, and his Noll said, in
the modern days we record this, Um, we're talking about
(03:01):
something called counter culture, right, a way of life and
set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the
prevailing social norm. And this could be any number of things.
It doesn't have to be one particularly doesn't have to
be drugs. It doesn't have to be, um, what living
off the grid or something like that, But it could
(03:21):
be living off the grid is um what a militia.
Maybe if you're in a group of people who have
decided to pick up arms and defend maybe a small
part of a rural area Maybes city. I mean, you
could counter cultures ultimately, uh, dependent upon what is normal
(03:44):
in your global neck of the woods. Right. If you're
a poncho person in an umbrella town, congratulations, you are
the counter culture, at least when it rains stamped stamped Right.
And in the US we tend to you the term
counterculture to describe the sixties, in particular, when you know,
(04:04):
these wild and crazy hippie kids were dropping out and
tuning in and trying the drugs, and they determined hell
bent for leather to change the world through a kind
of a sort of a stoned version of just loving everything,
just being one coming together over me right now? Sure,
(04:27):
and also you know, becoming one with the universe or
you know something. Um, yeah, I know it's not really
an unfair characterization, but it's funny and we you know,
not entirely untrue. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. Here's what
started changing in the nineteen sixties versus the nineteen forties
and eighteen fifties. These long held values and norms of
(04:50):
behavior seemed to break down, specifically and especially among the young.
So we have the post World War two society in
the late forties. It's booming in the fifties. You know,
get your nuclear family, your two point five kids, maybe
two cars, a dog and a half, a dog and
(05:11):
a half and a lot of college. A nuclear family
sounds dangerous. It was. It was at least frightening. It was.
Originally before they knew about the health risk. It was
called the radioactive family, and they were like, no, no, no,
why are they why are the kids glowing like that?
The atomic family came along, the hydrogen family. Oh guys,
just a little f y. I Matt and Ben particularly
(05:34):
are just if they come off as a little bit
punchy in this episode because they've been up all night,
pulled an all night er, uh, working on an amazing
new video project that we will be shoving out into
the world very soon and keeping you posted about so
keeping near to the ground on that one. I'm super
excited about it. How do you guys feel, I've punchy,
(05:55):
I guess, but also inspired. Good moving on, Yeah, you guys,
you will enjoy it, hopefully, ladies and gentlemen. And you
will hopefully enjoy it, ladies and gentlemen. It does feature uh,
it does feature Matt's video Sorcery and Noel Brown on
(06:19):
camera and been writing and narrating like that old school
stuff they don't want you to know style. Oh yes,
we will see right. Well, you've seen it, shake the
dust stuff. You've seen it multiple times. Uh. And speaking
of fantastic segues, many college aged men and women became
political activist at this time, right, they or the driving
(06:42):
force but behind things like the civil rights movement and
anti war movements. Well, and these were times where like
these efforts on behalf of young people felt like they
actually had some potential for revolution and to change policy.
For example, with the civil rights movement, in protests and
sit ins, a lot of this sort of new left
(07:03):
culture that was coming out of the colleges and universities
really did have an impact and were a very visible
part of some of these struggles. Right, Yes, that's what
we are talking about. Won't splore that in a second
with political activism. Uh, And we have to look at
the other side of this too, in two movements that
(07:24):
are often lumped into each other. Uh, other young people
simply air quotes dropped out and separated themselves from mainstream culture.
Just became you know, like the kinda what's the stereotype
about hipsters and Williamsburg whatever, which is not entirely fair
but also not entirely untrue. We can't really afford to
(07:44):
be hipster and Williamsburg and and not do anything because
it's really expensive there unless you have rich parents. You
eve heard the term Trustafarians. That's a good one, but yeah,
they're they're dropping out bend. So that is it a
way to just show that I'm not a part of
this mainstream culture that I see around me. I disagree
with it and that's not me that a party assist
(08:06):
in me, and at the same time kind of contributed
to giving their generation a bad rap for not being
participatory and literally just saying no, man, I'm done. I'm
gonna do my thing, and you guys do you and
I'm knocking over the twain shall meet and um it
was that did not represent the entire generation, as we
(08:29):
will discuss with the political activism. Like yeah, and very
important thing to know here as well is the attitudes
towards sexual moray's or gender dichotomies appeared to loosen, uh,
and women began to openly protest the traditional roles of
of your either a housewife or a mother. And that's
(08:50):
that's it, you know what I mean. So now more
than ever at this point in US history, Uh, we're saying, oh,
all these people are actually people. And there is a
tension that occurs because the post World War two geopolitics
blossomed into a full on Cold wars. The U s
s R. And the US both vied for global supremacy.
(09:12):
As you mentioned earlier, Matt, this meant proxy wars, of
which the most famous is the Vietnam War. Here in
the States at least. We've touched on the Vietnam War
in previous episodes. Stuff they don't want you to know
dot com, where you can find every audio episode we've
ever done, including that the recent one about abandoned soldiers.
So for today, let's just say quick and Dirty version
(09:34):
t l d R. The Vietnam War was tremendously unpopular
for the public and tremendously supported by the establishment, and
this divide led to massive protest. So here's the interesting
thing though. While I would say people today generally associate hippies,
this this vision of a hippie with these protests, the
(09:57):
Vietnam War protests. However, there's this vibrant community focusing on
all kinds of issues, and they're called the New Left.
And for a time, these people seem to be set
to make some four reel changes. As an All said earlier,
there it seems as though it's viable, like it's gonna happen.
I think it's gonna happen. It's not just some pine
(10:19):
in the sky thing where we imagine a better world.
We're gonna make it. So left wing politics in the
sixties was attracting pretty much primarily middle class college Students UM.
There was an organization called the Students for a Democratic
Society that was founded at the University of Michigan in
nineteen sixty and it acted as the organizational base for
(10:43):
this new left movement UM. And the term itself was
actually coined in the group's sort of mission statement, the
nineteen sixty two port Huron Statement, which version well, actually
the there. If you've seen The Big Lebowski, will remember
a scene where the dude brags that he was part
of one of the organizing members that wrote the port
(11:05):
Heran statement. He said, but his was the much better
first draft, and I did little research on that. Apparently
there was only one draft that the dude abides just
the same. You know, my parents told me a lot
about the SDS growing up, because they went to Kent
State University, as many of you listeners know, and they,
you know, at the time of the massacre, and they
(11:25):
said the STS they were one of the main reasons
that there was violence occurring, just because everybody got so
riled up by what was being said by that group
in the writings. So what did the port Huron statement say. Well,
first of all, it criticized UM this lack of individual freedom. Um,
sort of like the idea of giving up your individual
(11:46):
rights in order to be you know, for the greater good. Uh.
And also it criticized the power of bureaucracy, which in
their view had ballooned out of control and government also
in universities and especially corporations uh um. And it called
for a participatory democracy, in other words, grassroots political activists. Yeah,
(12:07):
powers of the people. Right, sounds like fairly recent protests
in the early two thousands. I'm talking about the Occupied movie.
Yeah again, Like that's why I was saying, I really
feel kind of a kinship to this period we're talking about,
especially now with like the Women's March and some of
the big you know, the Occupied movement years ago, but
now especially it seems like we're really seeing this grassroots
(12:31):
uprising of folks that are not happy with the state
of government and corporation, especially with like citizens United and
corporations having more control and all this deregulation we're seeing.
I really do feel like we're in an interesting, uh
kind of circular thing with the kinship with the sixties,
and there is strange political bedfill is one thing that's different. Well,
(12:52):
there're two primary things are different about this time. One
is the spread of communicative technology, which fun mentally changes
the game. And the other is that you know, Matt,
you mentioned you alluded to the Occupied movement, but that
if that were far left, then also there's the Tea
Party movement, which is arguing very surprisingly similar stuff right
(13:17):
in terms of what they see as overreach of government
control or the quote unquote system before opposition to the
Vietnam War, mushroom, we're back in the sixties. Now, this organization,
the STS and others like it, focused on student freedoms,
you know, yeah, fighting dress codes, uh, fighting what they
felt were unfair course requirements or discrimination by sororities and
(13:42):
fraternity fighting for minority admissions, admissions to you know, matriculating
into into college. The New Left participated in these these
enormous protests and sit ins, and they were more and
more often anti war oriented. Also, it is important to
(14:03):
note that associated groups protested for gender equality and gay
rights and in you know, in many cases, uh, in
many cases, the fight for gay rights was not as
successful initially as some of the other things. And now
we get to hippies versus anti left. Yeah, So like
(14:28):
this New Left group, these hippies. Uh, they have some
stuff in common. They're mostly middle class whites, but they've
they've switched out the political drive of the new Left
with oh, I don't know, what would you call it, um,
the munchies. That's that's not right. That's that's so wrong,
(14:49):
and that's not true. Just a more laid back approach
to to the political dealings that are going on. Yeah, man,
what's all this? What's all this give about? You're on
a really bad trip about geopolitics, you know, Like, let's
just listen to music, if you ever really listened to music.
(15:10):
Let's play a clip from an episode of Mr Show
that kind of give us a sense of how the
powers that be viewed the hippies. Dad, Look, it's a hippie.
Careful sissy. Don't worry, dad. Our hippies won't harass you
(15:31):
or expose your children to any anti authority lifestyles. Our
hippies are the kind the whole family can enjoy. Hey, man,
my name is Groovy Gravy, and I want to be
your friend. Take my hair too fun place where you
won't have a care and all your friends will be
(15:52):
there because you can ride all tames in Hippie Land.
You can fly in the air in Hippie. Hippie Land
will feature several attractions like Woodstock the movie The Ride,
a three day roller coaster ride featuring the original members
of shann Anna, My Man Gravy. That hippie was all right.
(16:21):
That hippies all right with me. And that's the thing.
It's like, you know, and this is gonna get into
are there. This is where it gets crazy. Bit that's coming.
But the hippies were sort of this like neutered version
of that political activist sector where you know, you had
the sense that they weren't really gonna do anything. They
(16:41):
weren't necessarily a threat, uh in terms of the status
quo from a government perspective. They just wanted to like
have that free love, go to some music concerts, drop
some acid and and tooke on some some jay's. But
that's a different type of threat. Right. They wore jeans,
tie tyed shirts, sandals, beard's, long hair, and a lifestyle
to embrace sexual bromiscuity, recreational drugs, right. Uh yeah, hallucinogen
(17:06):
c LSD being the most popular, right, Uh, Marijuana, you know, Um,
I imagine there was cocaine in their coludes were Was
that a thing? Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't there. You weren't there. I've just seen Woodstock,
the movie, The Musical of the Right. Yeah, dot org
(17:27):
so and it isn't. Now, we're not not trying to Obviously,
a lot of amazing art and amazing culture came out
of the counterculture, the hippie movement. You know, you've got
the Grateful Dead, You've got like bands from San Francisco,
the psychedelic movement. I mean, it's an amazing source of
art and culture. Um, and certainly there were folks that
would kind of split the difference between being in the
(17:50):
hippie scene and being actually political actors. I'm not trying
to say that hippies and the um psychedelic New Left
movement were completely devoid of of any kind of conviction
and that there wasn't overlap, because there certainly was. But
we're just we're kind of doing a little bit of
a black and white thing here to show that there
certainly was a divide, but then there's also a gray area. Yeah. Yeah,
(18:11):
there's no false psychotomy here. But the question is, how
did so earlier we said that there were there was.
There was this hippie movement, this hippie scene if you will,
or demographic that in many ways was different in comparison
to the earlier uh social revolutionary affecting positive change, at
(18:33):
least as they saw it, new Left. So how did
the hippies get on the scene? How did people, largely
from the scene demographic move from protests in other words,
interacting with the outside world to a more inward gazing
exploration of consciousness, of self identification and drugs. Well, guys,
while we wait for the acid to kick in, why
(18:54):
don't we take a quick sponsor break. All right, we're back.
Oh yeah, I feel like we were always here. We've
always been here. We've always been here. The thing is,
(19:14):
we can check out anytime we want. That's true. We
can never believe. And as it turns out, you guys
have never left. They've been here again since last night. Um,
And that is how we roll. And what a fun
episode to do on zero sleep. Yes, yes, and the
question it seems like so many years ago, through the
(19:35):
magic of editing, that we were we we launched into
that first sponsor break, and now we're back and the
people who folks, ladies, and gentlemen listening now, you have
no idea about the adventures that we went through. So much,
so much stuff. I got a brand new phone because
my other one broke, you know, and I'm glad my
hand grew back finally. So the question that we asked
(19:57):
so long ago was how how did this evolution, this
differentiation occur. The first and most obvious answer, of course,
would be something along the lines of, well, guys, people
are all different and all like different things, even if
they're from the exact same demographic. We interviewed every twenty
eight year old Han Chinese male living in Shankai, and
(20:20):
then guess what, They're not gonna agree on everything, even
though they're from the same place, they're the same age,
same gender, et cedric, et cedric, etcetera. So then the
protest of the early nineteen sixties became subsumed by a
hippie movement, which led to the increasingly self centered zeitgeist
of the nineteen seventies. And maybe that's just how things happen.
(20:41):
Maybe people are just different, maybe attitudes change. But what
if somebody orchestrated this change? What if somebody there was
a puppet master at work pulling the strings in order
to suck the wind out of this revolutionary way of thinking.
What if that was pushed them away from the left,
(21:04):
These guys are like flipping Out's right, well, we're leaving
that in the whole video team has been here all
night and they're outside having a full on freak out
(21:26):
and meltdown. Right now. We're freaking out, man. We will.
We'll get into what that is in in the plug section.
For now, Let's get back to the to the left
for the nitty gritty. Here's where it gets crazy. What
if there was no organic evolution of this culture? What
(21:47):
if instead this growth was influenced, manipulated, perhaps even controlled
by an organized and hidden force. Who would it be?
Who could it be? Now? Maybe the c A. That's right.
According to several conspiracy theorists and various authors, the counterculture
(22:07):
movements in the United States was co opted by none
other than the c I A. You know, the CIA
is fake news, right, I've I've heard it's A it's
an alternative intelligence. But they're the centralized central intelligence agency whatever, like,
all of it goes towards them, no matter what direction
(22:27):
it's coming to is They're d I A A decentralized
intelligen Look at first, yes, this might sound insane. Why
the hell would the CIA care about this sort of thing?
You know, when they care people have long hair and
wear jeans whatever, the money still spends the same and
the books still burn at the same rate when you
apply heat. That's a good point. I don't know it.
(22:51):
To me, it seems like it gave them a target,
a subject of ridicule in a way, to sort of
take the wind out of the sales of a potential
political uprising. And he's challenged to the status quo, you know,
and if you point to the hippie movement and say,
(23:11):
look at the this is all we got, this hippie
thing like this is this is laughable. There's no threat there. Yeah,
it was. If you look at the history of what
the CIA has done in the past that we've covered
on this show numerous times in all kinds of different ways.
MK Ultra the experiments with LSD that they did on
unsuspecting people to see how it would affect consciousness in
(23:33):
a way and to see if you could make someone
more susceptible to being tortured or you know, not tortured,
but giving information on if you're all wonky on the
what it's not the sauce. It's the I don't know
if there's word for it, mind sauce sauce. I think
it's the correct. Oh, excellent, excellent. We also see the
(23:54):
CIA practicing extraordinary rendition where you sweep someone away to
a black site and they just don't exist anymore. And
you know, maybe those black sites, maybe they don't exist,
maybe they still do. I think whether whatever the reality
on the ground is, the official US position would be
that they do not exist. But you're absolutely right. And
(24:17):
then there's also the CIA engages in propaganda and foreign
regime change occasionally with the use of quote unquote student
groups and assets in nonprofit organizations. These are not none,
None of the things that Matt just named are theories,
right right, These all actually happened. And we can look
(24:39):
at the CIA experiments with LSD during the fifties, nineteen fifties,
that is uh, in less, the CIA is much older
than NOL Matt, and I know, uh they conducted experiments
with LSD just as Matt said, they wanted to evaluate
whether it could be used as a truth serum or
a brainwashing agent, and interrogations, and I also wanted to
(24:59):
see if they could weaponize This all began to come
into light with the formation of the Rockefeller Commission, and
that's how the US public and Congress learned about some
of the more bizarre experiments that the CIA did. It's
got an incredible name, noll. Midnight climax. Is that like
(25:25):
ribbed for her pleasure? No, they're really not specifying, you
know what what type of climax is occurring? Who knows,
just just more of the time. Yeah, yeah, that word
climax that it can never not be naughty. Yeah. I
can't even to refer to like the thing that happens
at the end of a movie. I will just say,
(25:46):
you know the finale, Midnight Climax did involve you know,
a sexual aspect, right. It was an operation that paid
prostitutes in San Francisco and New York to dose un
suspecting john's with LSD and then get them lured to
a c I a safe house and then the agents,
(26:07):
the CIA agents were watch and film these, uh, the
sex workers with their clients from behind you know, a mirror.
It seems U trying to figure out the value for this.
Besides possible blackmail. I don't understand what the value would be,
you know, just to have it's just sort of cool
to have secrets. The collection Collection. And then there was
(26:30):
another LSD related scandal the Commission uncovered. It was the
nineteen fifty three death of a biological warfare specialist named
Frank Olson. He definistrated. I never get to use this word, definistrated.
Knocked out of a window, and for some reason, no
one finistrates. I don't know. Even just saying that, that's
(26:52):
like saying climate Superman, Superman. Yeah, I could totally do.
It's really hard. Like you know, us mere mortals. We
can go out of a window, but if it's high up,
it's like, you know, we need a ladder, and then
it's just called climbing a ladder. Yeah, you know, Well,
maybe we should get capes. We should get stuff. They
don't want you to know capes. Oh God, not to
derail these too much. But you know what movie is
(27:13):
on Netflix now, My favorite Mystery Science Theater episode Manos,
The Hands of Fate, featuring the Goatman Torgo and the Master.
And he has this amazing cape with red hands on it,
and I'm sorry, I'm I'm done. Yeah, that definitely doesn't
derail things. Nol. No, well, it makes it makes sense though,
(27:34):
if we're if we're talking about LSDA. You know who
My favorite LSD researcher was John C. Lily, who would
regularly take doses of LSD in the early sixties when
he was introduced to it, and then he would put
himself in the sensory deprivation tanks or he can you
(27:56):
imagine um? And he also was big on dolphin research,
and he would often take LSD and hang out with dolphins,
and then his research over time developed into much more
dolphins centric work where he was trying to communicate communicate
with dolphins felt like they had some sort of psychic
abilities that could be exploited by being on LSD allows
(28:17):
you to kind of reach that level and then you know,
have psychic conversations with these dolphins. And he even had
an experiment where he flooded a building and had a
woman a research assistant. I suppose you could say, live
with a dolphin in this flooded apartment and over time
(28:38):
developed something of a let's say, a relationship with with
said dolphin. But yeah, so it was the Wild West, Yeah, yeah,
and longtime listeners recognize some of uh, some of that
story from previous episodes where the thing was was the
(29:00):
dolphin actually communicating? It was the dolphins simply taking indecent
proposal style rewards for certain behaviors. You know which pro
quo if only one of us could make the dolphin noise? Yeah,
(29:21):
that was like a Tom Waite's dolphin. Okay, Yeah, So
Frank Olsen. Getting back to Frank Olsen defenustrated. Did he
jump out of the window of his New York hotel
room about a week and a half after his drink
had been spiked with LSD at a work retreat by
his coworkers or was he pushed? When the real cause
of Frank Olsen's death was finally made public by the
(29:43):
Rockefeller Commission in nine, it was a public relations nightmare
for the Ford administration, and they selected a guy to
run damage control on this issue. You might recognize him.
Name was Dick Cheney. So he did damage control on
(30:04):
this and then eventually they issued the US government issued
an apology to Frank Olson's widow. But the death of
Agent Olson, Frank Olson and the discovery of things like
Operation Midnight climax easily overshadowed most of the other, uh,
most of the other things we found out about Project
(30:26):
m KO Ultra. But another relevant finding was this the
CIA had funded academic research into LSD like a lot
before the drug was criminalized in nine oh. Yes, and
some of these academics working on LSD research knowingly took
(30:47):
money from the Central Intelligence Agency to do this stuff.
A lot of others had CIA money indirectly funneled to them,
and you know, maybe they didn't even know that this
was happening, but still that's what's funding their research. Um,
because they are all these front groups that the c
I U, c i A uses. We've discussed these before,
the FBI do the to any intelligence agency uses a
(31:08):
front group. It's a front company. It's a very handy thing. Yeah,
Like the the general rule of thumb here is at
least what the three of us have discovered is that
the more vague a group's name is, the more likely
they are a front for something, you know what I mean,
or just yeah vanilla. So it just feels serious if
there's yeah, like, if there's I and I am making
(31:32):
this up. So any resemblance to a real thing is
purely incidental. But like if we met a representative that
was like people for ideas, I think, I know, that's sketchy.
You know, people have all kinds of ideas and they're
all kinds of people, I mean, be specific for ideas
(31:53):
and things. Right, other researchers who people for ideas and things,
that's a watch out, Rand Corporation. There's a new guy
in town. Uh. Other researchers who did scientific experiments with
LSD did not have any funding from the CIA, but
(32:13):
the company might send a covert agent to keep track
of any interesting findings. So you know, Hi, my name's
John Smith. I'm the new lab Tech. Yeah, yeah, I
went to anywhere university. Yeah, right near America Town. Anyhow,
(32:38):
what's going on with these acids? Right that? I mean,
it's spot on. That's that's what happened, and this kind
of stuff can still happen to date. For people who
believe the CIA created or co opted the American counterculture movement,
the experiments that occurred in the nineteen fifties naturally evolved
(32:58):
into programs during the city sixties too. As we mentioned earlier,
neutralize that threat of social activism by turning the activists
into you know, his peace and love oriented and then
to me, I wonder if this was the case. Was
(33:19):
it more about the perception as well, you know what
I mean, where it's like, if they're not taken seriously,
it's sort of neuters them a little bit in terms
of like actually affecting change, getting other people to believe,
getting other people to sign on for their cause. And
you know, obviously the you know, like we said, there
was definitely a connection between the political activists scene and
(33:42):
the counterculture you know, psychedelic hippie movement for sure, but visually,
like from a pr standpoint, it's very easy for those
in power and people supporting those in power to view
this group negatively in a way where it's like, you know,
I am not threatened by them, I just kind of
(34:02):
feel like they're lazy, shiftless, do nothings that that means
that have no impact. You're not going to change the world,
and a pair of blue jean trousers. I'm gonna try
and we'll have to see how that how that hippie's
journey turns out. After a word from our sponsor, it's
not gonna go well. Boo jeans, baby queen. It is
(34:34):
been a bad baby, mean baby queen, baby queens. Alright,
it's like uh, you know the toddlers in Tierra Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that is like honey boo boo, pretty mercury as a baby.
Well that, as you can tell, the drugs have kicked in. Um,
(34:54):
we are now in that country, yes, and we are
still looking for evidence about this idea. Right. One of
the biggest pieces of evidence for people who believe that
the c I, a masterminded puppeteered a shift in counterculture
was the idea that Timothy Leary, whom we quoted at
(35:16):
the top of the show, was himself a c I.
A asset. What horror. Yes, writer and Mark Reebling asked
Timothy Leary about this after Leary gave a speech in Gainesville, Florida,
and Leary said, they never gave me a dime. But
(35:38):
here's the thing. In fact, he did get money from
the Central Intelligence Agency. He didn't get very much, but
he did get He got some some scratch, some chatter,
some mula. I'm just going to choose words for money now. Scrilla,
some scrilla, scrill is good. Some wampum. Yeah. So, while
Leary perhaps didn't know that he had been a willing CI,
(36:00):
a temporary agent stooge. Yeah, well, the agency or the
company ben as you call them before. I love calling
them the company their term, I know, but it just
calling it that is quite fun. Man. They tend to
promote people who who truly believe in a cause, but
(36:22):
are unaware perhaps of what they're really advancing, what the
left hand is truly doing while the right hand toils
away over here. Yes. Yes, so that's a great point
because we know that in some foreign countries where intelligence
agencies and I know we're picking on the CIA right now,
but intelligence agencies in general will have these kind of
(36:45):
covert practices. Imagine, uh, you know, a a developing country
or some sort of unstable regime, right, and your student
protests group, and somebody comes up and says, yeah, I
also believe in the call cause. Right, forget the monarchy
or forget the theocracy or whatever the current flavor of
(37:06):
democracy is. Here's some funding. And by the way, let
me teach you about protest techniques. You could totally think
that was just someone who knew their stuff, like democracy pistachio.
Democracy is a great democracy flavor. I would put it
up there, you know, in the top three. So this,
(37:26):
as Matt said, someone could completely believe in a cause,
finds help from a well dressed stranger, right while spoken stranger,
and not have any idea what that that person's ultimate
motivations were. So funds for Leary's research and drugs. The
(37:48):
material for it came from the CIA, and he has
an autobiography Leary does. It's called Flashbacks. It was published
three in that he credits a guy named cord Meyer
the CIA, a executive in charge of funding uh, the counterculture,
with quote helping me to understand my political cultural role
(38:08):
more clearly. And he goes on he says, the liberal
CIA is get this guy's the best mafia you can
deal with in the twentieth century, which is which is weird?
Do you hear the guy the dropout tune in guy best? Like?
How better than like the Sopranos? Like like that kind
(38:31):
of mafia? What are we talking? Yeah? I guess so
more efficient, less likely to break your legs. I don't
under Yeah. I guess he just got along with him.
I guess they were just maybe they just didn't shake
him down for his debts at the dog Track. I'm kidding.
They probably kept him you know in acid I'm sure
(38:51):
you know what. That's a good point, and that makes
me think of that owls Ley Fellow as well. So
other vanguards of the LSD movement, including Alan Gensburg, certainly
believed that the CIA played more than a cameo part
in this culture jamming. Right. So, the first major public
statements in the seventies by countercultural figures UM to actually
(39:14):
speculate on the relationship between the CIA and LSD happened
on October nineties seven at a conference at the University
of California in Santa Cruz that was called LSD A
generation later, sort of a postmortem UM. Alan Ginsburg, who
compared the conference to an acid head class reunion UH said,
quote am I Alan Ginsburg the product of one of
(39:37):
the CIA's lamentable, ill advised or triumphantly successful experiments in
mind control. Had they, by conscious plan or inadvertent Pandora's box,
let loose the whole LSD fad on the US and
the world things that make you go, that's right. And
(39:58):
Timothy Leary was also at the conference. He addressed questions
about the LSD c I a issue, and he said
the LSD movement was started by the CIA to the CIA,
hey can I do a voice? And he said, the
movement were started by the c I A. I wouldn't
(40:18):
be here now without the fore shight of the c
I A shy and tiste. It was no accident. It
was all planned and scripted by the Central Intelligence Agency.
And I'm all in favor of Central Intelligence? Is that
like a Sean Connery voice? Is Sean connor ish is
what I'm calling it? Because you know, I'm not doing
the whole I'm not quite going all the way there. Okay,
(40:39):
First of all, I love Sean Conner ish. That should
be a thing, and I want to see this opportunity
to announce a new word that I have coined um
for addressing things that are going on in the news
right now. And it is hilarifying. Oh that is quite
im portmant to No. Well done, just I had to
lay it down on some media so that I can,
(41:01):
you know, claim you're on the record, my friend. Hilarifying.
Ladies and gentlemen, please use that whenever you find it appropriate,
but do credit Noel Brown. It appears that that term
was used during the Hillary Clinton campaign as Hillary ifying.
No I feeling is different. Hilarifying is totally different. Yeah,
(41:24):
I just want I typed it in. It's all so
when you when you hillary ify something dazzling it So
there there's another interesting part here. Hilarifying aspect to this
guy is really good. I'm still on that. That's awesome.
I'm on that trip, as Kinks would say. Uh in.
(41:48):
Guy named John Marks, a former Foreign Service officer, published
a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, and
he looked at all the differ for ways this agency
attempted to control the human mind for the purposes of espionage.
And just for the record, running on pretty much no
(42:11):
sleep makes saying former Foreign Service officer pretty tough. You
do it with a plum. Thank you. I feel like
I'm doing it very carefully, very rural. Jurl e um,
you did it deep in your plumes. What in a
(42:32):
In a chapter covering the CIA's interest and experiments with
LSD Mars rights, CIA officials never meant that the likes
of Leary, Heasy and Ginsburg should be turned on. Yet
these men were, and they, along with many of the
lesser known experimental subjects like Harvard's Ralph Bloom, created the
(42:55):
climate whereby l s D escaped the government's control and
came available by the early sixties on the black market.
No one at the agency apparently foresaw that young Americans
would voluntarily take this drug, whether for consciousness expansion or
recreational purposes. The mk ultra experts were mainly on a
(43:16):
control trip, and they proved incapable of gaining insight from
their own LSD experiences of how others less fixated on
making people do their bidding would react to the drug.
So that's going to marks what what we're finding is
that the CIA did indeed finance hundreds of experiments into
(43:39):
LSD and maybe even more, But what happened is that
they couldn't control the supply. I mean, think about it.
They're they're in alder they're in multiple college campuses, universities, right,
and they have uh supplies of this hallucinogen left right, north,
south east west. Kin Kisi was a janitor, that one
not any access to it. And you're telling me that
(44:02):
guy didn't walk away sweetening the pot. Do you guys
remember that movie Half Baked abraca dabra b a, Yeah,
scup and be which that line still doesn't make sense
to me. It haunts me at night. But in their
you know, uh David Dave Chappelle plays of Janitor at
a Yeah, Janitor Spencer here or like what do they
(44:24):
have like lab? It was totally pre medical marijuana to
that movie. So I'm confused about why they had it.
Was his research facility of some kind. It was definitely
I think the somebody check us on this, but I
feel like the furthest they went was, you know, here's
a lab, right, I think so, I don't know if
(44:44):
they explained what they remember. Remember they had all of
the Maui wauie, I remember that was. Yeah. I totally
didn't understand a lot of that movie when I first
saw it. Yeah, yeah, that's like when I saw Pulp
actually when I was twelve, and that whole scene with
uh Uma Thurman where she overdoses or whatever. I didn't
(45:07):
understand the logistics of that, the distinction between what she
thought that thing was and what it actually was. The
We're a Family show, I'm not going to get into
it too much, but yeah, yeah, kids don't don't see
weird al rated movies about drugs when you're when you're young. Yeah,
I was like, I remember thinking she is unwell, and
then thinking what a spoiler, uh, and then thinking like
(45:31):
is she a vampire? Why did he? Why did you
stab her in the chest? Here are our conclusions. One
thing we have to know is that it is important
to to recognize that the U S counterculture at this
time was probably no more than ten percent of the
youth popular you know, like the youth population or that demographic.
(45:54):
Like like Noel said, they're just more visible, right, And
this is something we see speaking of cycles, this is
something we see in mass media today. The more visibly
distinct people will be, you know, the things that make
(46:14):
good optics are good television. Even if that's just one
out of a hundred people, we're gonna focus on that person.
It also seems that the CIA did have a powerful
role in the emergence of counterculture, but it might not
have been so much a grand puppeteering plan as it
was a series of whoops, eke my bads, you know,
(46:40):
and unintended consequences. This this goes to the idea of
whether or not you know, there's this disconnect that occurs
sometimes because the idea of whether or not this agency
is capable of perpetrating something like that right. It's to
strange a contradictory thing that occurs sometimes where you know,
(47:03):
you'll hear people say that a government or an organization
is inefficient and a bunch of dunder heads duface is
but then also somehow capable of duping hundreds of millions
of people, you know those That's a that's a its
(47:23):
own sort of double think. But one thing that keeps
us from throwing out this idea entirely is this. It
turns out the Central Intelligence Agency of the US is
absolutely capable of using culture as a weapon, and furthermore,
(47:44):
has no compunction whatsoever about doing so. So, as The
Guardian reports, the CIA quote used American modern art, including
the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell,
Willem dacoon ing Uh and also Mark Rothko, as a
weapon in the Cold War in the manner of a
Renaissance prince, except that it acted secretly. The CIA fostered
(48:08):
and promoted American abstract expressionist painting around the world for
more than twenty years. So why did the CIA support them?
Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this
new artistic movement could be held up as proof of
the creativity of the intellectual freedom and the cultural power
of the US Russian art strapped into the communist ideological
(48:30):
straight jacket. Could not compa that as a continuation of
the quote, Um, there's a long one you want to
do on the sure. Yeah. The decision to include culture
and arts in the US Cold War arsenal was taken
as soon as the CIA was officially founded in ninety seven.
They were dismayed at the appeal communism still had for
a lot of intellectuals and artists in the West, and
(48:52):
the agency set up a division called the Propaganda Assets
Inventory or the p AI, and its peak, it could
influence more than eight hundred newspapers, magazines, and public information organizations.
They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox. When
the CIA pushed a button, it could hear whatever tune
wanted playing across the world. So the big question goes
(49:17):
beyond just this this historical aspect. The big question is
not just whether the CIA actively neutralized social activism via
cultural influence in the nineteen sixties. Instead, the big question
is this, what is the CIA messing with culture wise
today and does it affect you? And how would you?
(49:42):
How would you decipher if it is in fact happening
to you right now, how could you tell you have
to tell me if you're a cop right now, I'm
definitely not a cop. That's also a myth. By the way, folks,
I've tried. It does not work, So I went to jail.
(50:03):
Kidding kind of words, sounds, speaking, colors, marshmallows, all of
which means that we hope you enjoyed our exploration of
the CIA's role in the course of culture, the evolution
(50:26):
the social dynamics upon which so much of history hinges
in this country. And we would like to thank our
friend Henry h who suggested this topic for us, along
with a couple of other topics. We're gonna follow up
with some stuff that that that Henry hipt the stoop
(50:46):
And speaking of our fantastic listeners, it sounds like it's
time for chat at corners. I'm gonna swoop in here,
guys and do one from rich Um. He wrote an email, Hello,
std W I c K love the show. I answered
your question about a million terabytes and threw in a
(51:09):
little extra about recording phone calls in this document. And
then he attached a PDF that reads as follows, I'm
an electrical engineering student, and I'm writing you in regards
to the question about what a million terabytes is called
a million terabytes is an exabyte, and then he gives
us this helpful chart. One terabyte is a billion bytes,
(51:29):
and then one kilobyte is a thousand bytes. One terabyte
times one kilobyte equals one exabyte. Fun idea. One telephone
call is sixty four kbps, which is kilobytes per second.
Eight bits equals one byte. One exabyte is one times
ten to the eighteen bytes eight e one eight bits
(51:52):
equals one exabyte. And then he's got some figures here.
It's a little over my head, but thank you for
the thoroughness in you or explanation of a million terribittes.
As it turns out, it is not a bagel bite. Um. No, no,
but that would be cool um. And then he goes
on to say. In February twelve, Utah Governor Gary H.
(52:14):
Herbert revealed that the Utah Data Center would be the
first quote facility in the world expected to gather and
house a yata bite and yata bites um. Since then,
conflicting media reports have also estimated our storage capacity in
terms of zeta bytes and xa bites. While the actual
(52:35):
capacity is classified for national security reasons, we can say
this the Utah Data Center was built with future expansion
in mind, and the ultimate capacity will definitely be a
lot of bites. Rich love that one. Thank you so much,
Rich for the info and for the insight. Yeah that
(52:56):
was really great. Rich. You lost me an ex a bite,
but you know it's all good. It was least I
enjoyed it when I hear numbers like that. Huh. My
brain doesn't function in that way. It just kind of
goes it seriously does That was a good sound. And
our next shout out goes to Jessica p. Jessica writes
in and says, Hi, guys, I have found and started
(53:18):
listening to your podcast about two weeks ago while looking
for something both interesting and informative to listen to on
my long commutes to work. I spend about three hours
in the car each day. Yeah that's rough. One. Uh,
thanks so much for the work you put into these
audio video series. They've certainly made my commute more enjoyable. Secondly,
(53:38):
have you, guys, ever done anything on spontaneous human combustion?
This one's near and dear to me as I vividly
remember having seen a documentary on it as a kid
and subsequently spending the next five to ten years and
fear of suddenly catching on fire. Anytime I would feel
inexplicable centralized warmth on any of my appendange is usually
(53:59):
an arm. I'd rush to the sink and start soaking
the affected area in cold water, just to put it
out preemptively, I guess, to combat what I was sure
was the start of my fiery demise. You'll be happy
to hear that I grew out of that fear, but
I'd love to hear what you guys have to say
about it. If you've already got stuff up and I
missed it, please shoot me a link. Thinks again, look
(54:22):
forward to more hours of hearing about the stuff they
don't want me to know, spontaneous human combustion. You know.
That made me think of a thing that I heard
on NPR this weekend. I believe it was um wait, wait,
don't tell me it was about a It was a
news story where in a Florida lawyer And I'm gonna
read this from the article that I pulled up. This
(54:42):
is from the uh Syracuse Dot com The headline is
lawyers pants catch fire during Miami arson case. So let's
see um. As a Florida lawyer argued in a court
case on Wednesday that his client's car spontaneously burst into flames,
his own pants caught on fire in front of the jury.
(55:04):
During the argument, Stephen Guccieris was fiddling in his pocket
when smoke started billowing and he had to rush out
of the courtroom, reports the Miami Herald. Jurors were then
escorted out and Gutierres returned unharmed with a burnt pocket.
As it turns out, it was a faulty E cigarette.
But how amazing is it that a lawyer arguing about
a case about a car spontaneously combusting had their pants
(55:28):
catch on fire. That's pretty fun, pants, Well, you probably
have burned really badly. That's not fun. I'm sorry about that,
but it's too delicious not to No, no, it's it
says that he's okay in the article, and our final
shoutout goes to Alex, who says, hey, guys, love your show.
Thank you, Alex. And I'm living here in Denver and
(55:49):
it's a place right with conspiracies. We have the murals
at the Denver International Airport. Lots of weird stuff. They're
the Stanley Hotel and or ad. Oh that's what I'd
like to delve into. I'd love to hear a show
about some of these. So keep up the great work.
Best Alex, Thank you Alex and good suggestions. Yeah, thank
(56:11):
you Alex, Thank you Rich and thank you Jessica. I've
got to ask, have you guys been to Colorado? Never? Once?
In my life? I have not either, although I actually
just reconnected with an old friend from youth group who
lives in Colorado and was very kind to offer a
couch to crash on any time I want to come
visit and spoke very highly of the place. That's awesome.
(56:31):
I I have only been to the airport, so I
don't know if you can, if you can count just
go into an airport as going to a place. I
don't know if you can the Denver Airport. Did you
see all the weird murals? And is it wild? It's
weird and it's creepy, Like I see why it is
off putting to people. But Blue Horse and listeners, if
(56:52):
you're not familiar with the Denver Airport has some very unusual,
dark kind of imperialistic looking imagery where there's like these
kind of like big centurion figures wearing gas masks, swinging sabers,
and then there's like this line of emaciated children and
refugees and it's very very dark. Look it up. Maybe
(57:15):
we'll do one on that, and I'm gonna be a
whole episode worth, but it might be worth fitting into
something about unusual murals are across the world. And we
do have a video from earlier. Yes, we do conspiratorial career.
Speaking of video, the we have to make the announcement now,
just do it because it's going out. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(57:35):
it's happening. It's all happening. So was it in September
of last year when we went to the guidestones. It
was a while ago. We went to the Georgia Guidestones
in Elverton, Georgia, or nine miles from Elverton, Georgia, and
we we shot the stones. We discussed with nol his
personal relationship with the granite. The three of us almost
(57:59):
got he stroke. I have a personal relationship with granite,
that's true. Um. And an awesome older gentleman named Wyatt
who you who had a talk with several talks with
and Uh he has a an even closer relationship to
the granted again, no sleep here, no sleep till okay. Yes,
(58:21):
So the reason why there's no sleep is because I've
been up for the past three nights past two am
working on this thing. These guys have been writing and
inter like. We interviewed Nold for this thing, and we're
using a bunch of his footage. Been has just been
writing his took us off to make this thing happen.
And we're so excited that it's finally coming out and
(58:42):
it's you know, you've noticed that we haven't been doing
the weekly videos lately, and I've been getting a lot
of questions as to whether they're coming back or not.
We've been kind of beating around the bush about it
a little bit, but this is our first real kind
of long form peace and we are so proud of it.
Um I personally am just insanely proud of Matt. He's
done so an incredible job. We kind of watched the
whole thing for the most it's days ago and since
(59:05):
Danny's I don't even know, but it was looking phenomenal.
It's really a heartfelt story there's a lot of interesting
twists and turns, things you might not have heard about yet. Um,
even if you're familiar with the story, even if you
listen to our podcast on it, so go back, check
out the podcast and be on the lookout. Where is
it gonna be math So yeah, the main thing here
(59:26):
is that it's gonna be on Amazon Video, so you
can stream it on Amazon. If you have a Prime account,
it'll be a commercial free. If you don't have a
Prime account, there might be a commercial or two in there,
but it's gonna be worth it. I garonn tee it. Yes,
we're hopefully gonna put it on YouTube as well after
a little while. And for everyone who has listened to
(59:49):
our earlier audio episode on the Georgia Guidestones Door, this
is different enough that we promise you won't feel like
you're sitting through the same thing. With pictures, we we
took a different approach. If you are a fan of
our classic stuff, they don't want you to know videos
(01:00:10):
you like this one. It will be worth your time.
We hope that you enjoy it as much as we have,
so let us know what you think. You can also
find us on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram where we're
conspiracy stuffing Conspiracy Stuff show. On our Instagram. You can
listen to every single audio episode we have ever done
(01:00:30):
at Deep Breath stuff. They don't want you to Know
dot com. Oh last point of business. Um. In this
month of this year, we're participating in this thing called
tripod t r y pod, wherein we recommend a podcast
that we would like you to try. UM. The hashtag
tripod is being used all around for people to share
(01:00:54):
their favorite shows with their friends and four shows to
share their favorite shows with their audiences. UM. So you
guys want to do one what's a what's a favorite
podcast of yours? Well? I wanna kind of do an
internal shout out really fast for Stuff of Life. Congratulations
to you, Noel Brown, Well, thank you. Yeah. We just
launched season two of the Stuff of Life with Julie Douglas.
(01:01:17):
It's a show that I produce and it's our most
kind of soundscaped sort of like audio journey kind of
show in the style of like Radio Lab A little
bit um and really proud of it. We've got an
episode up now called Broken and that's gonna be dropping wednesdays,
UM for eleven episodes. So we're doing another season of that.
Um yeah, try that one for sure. That would help
(01:01:39):
me out a lot to hear your thoughts. And you know,
actually this this season is a little darker than the
last season and it's got a little more of a
political angle to it, um with some of the stuff
that's been going on in the news right now. Stuff
of It's called the Stuff of Life. You can get
it on iTunes, uh, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much all the
places and let us know what you think. But yeah,
(01:02:00):
it broke my heart. I listened to the first three
minutes and fifty seconds and I was crime my eyes
out over year while I was trying to edit, probably
because you were lacking the sleep. But thank you very much,
it is. We did put our our hearts into it,
and I got a lot of original music by myself
and Dylan Fagan and um a buddy of mine, Tristan McNeil,
who makes incredible ambient music under the name Nude with
(01:02:24):
Liar l y Are. You can find that on Spotify
as well. Stuff of Life a sincere heartfelt hug for
your ears. It's a heart smart journey into the heart
of darkness. Heartily so well. I've got another quick one
if that's okay, Uh, shout out to the church of
What's happening with Joey Coco Diaz. I learned about this gentleman.
(01:02:45):
He's a comedian. It's been around the block so many
times that I don't even I'm not even sure that
he knows like what street he's on anymore. He's incredible, hilarious. Um.
He has a lot in common with my life from
the area in Jersey where he grew up, and he's
he's just hilarious. He's been on so many things now,
(01:03:08):
especially the Joe Road the podcast, so check those out
for tripod. Let your friends know and let us know
what you think. We would love to hear from you.
If you have an idea for an upcoming topic that
we should cover in this show. If you have any feedback,
where suggestions or dare we ask personal experience with the
(01:03:30):
C I, A and LSD during the nineties sixties, let
us know. Tell us if you don't want us to
use your real name, we'll assign you a really cool
undercover operative type nickname. The Cheese with Buttercup A Romeo Bravado.
So so act now so you can get your your
(01:03:53):
cover name, You can email us directly. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:23):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
My name is no Hippie is an establishment label for
a profound, invisible, underground evolutionary process. For every visible hippie
Barefoot the flowered be did there are a thousand invisible
members of the turned on underground, persons whose lives are
tuned into their inner vision, who are dropping out of
(00:44):
the TV comedy of American life. That's a quote by
Timothy Leary. I'm ben your you. This is stuff they
don't want you to know. And what do you think, gentlemen,
about the nineteen sixties. It was a wild, heavy time,
a free love. I don't know. It was easier to
(01:06):
get validated. That's the best music I think came out
of the six The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Animals
with Eric Burden, the zombies. Oh man, how could we
We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the zombies. There
were a couple of political dynasties that came out of
the sixties, at least that I was aware of. The
(01:28):
Kennedy's were the big one. There were some drugs, A
couple of drugs, yeah, a couple of the really good ones, right,
just about as much as you could fit in your fist, yeah,
or you know, could fit onto a tiny piece of paper,
put it right. They're also proxy wars that were occurring
in several different parts of the globe between the United
(01:51):
States and other countries. Today, we were talking about the
nineteen sixties in the United States, one of the most
culturally charged and powerful eras in this nation's history, and
one could argue that we have sort of cycled back
in a way to a similar atmosphere now politically and
(02:13):
culturally as the nineteen sixties. We can talk about that more.
But you know, in terms of revolution, the idea of
you know, being opposed to the government and the government
being you know, starting another drug war and trying to
shut down free speech things like that, it's interesting parallel. Yeah,
and uh, and the way that technology empowers and hinders
(02:37):
that sort of revolution. But you're right, the more things
change dot dot dot ellipses. I don't know why I
said that, Like I was dramatic. I'm just spelling out ellipses.
What we're talking about when we talk about these revolutionary
attitudes in the nineteen sixties, and his Noll said, in
the modern days we record this, Um, we're talking about
(03:01):
something called counter culture, right, a way of life and
set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the
prevailing social norm. And this could be any number of things.
It doesn't have to be one particularly doesn't have to
be drugs. It doesn't have to be, um, what living
off the grid or something like that, But it could
(03:21):
be living off the grid is um what a militia.
Maybe if you're in a group of people who have
decided to pick up arms and defend maybe a small
part of a rural area Maybes city. I mean, you
could counter cultures ultimately, uh, dependent upon what is normal
(03:44):
in your global neck of the woods. Right. If you're
a poncho person in an umbrella town, congratulations, you are
the counter culture, at least when it rains stamped stamped Right.
And in the US we tend to you the term
counterculture to describe the sixties, in particular, when you know,
(04:04):
these wild and crazy hippie kids were dropping out and
tuning in and trying the drugs, and they determined hell
bent for leather to change the world through a kind
of a sort of a stoned version of just loving everything,
just being one coming together over me right now? Sure,
(04:27):
and also you know, becoming one with the universe or
you know something. Um, yeah, I know it's not really
an unfair characterization, but it's funny and we you know,
not entirely untrue. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. Here's what
started changing in the nineteen sixties versus the nineteen forties
and eighteen fifties. These long held values and norms of
(04:50):
behavior seemed to break down, specifically and especially among the young.
So we have the post World War two society in
the late forties. It's booming in the fifties. You know,
get your nuclear family, your two point five kids, maybe
two cars, a dog and a half, a dog and
(05:11):
a half and a lot of college. A nuclear family
sounds dangerous. It was. It was at least frightening. It was.
Originally before they knew about the health risk. It was
called the radioactive family, and they were like, no, no, no,
why are they why are the kids glowing like that?
The atomic family came along, the hydrogen family. Oh guys,
just a little f y. I Matt and Ben particularly
(05:34):
are just if they come off as a little bit
punchy in this episode because they've been up all night,
pulled an all night er, uh, working on an amazing
new video project that we will be shoving out into
the world very soon and keeping you posted about so
keeping near to the ground on that one. I'm super
excited about it. How do you guys feel, I've punchy,
(05:55):
I guess, but also inspired. Good moving on, Yeah, you guys,
you will enjoy it, hopefully, ladies and gentlemen. And you
will hopefully enjoy it, ladies and gentlemen. It does feature uh,
it does feature Matt's video Sorcery and Noel Brown on
(06:19):
camera and been writing and narrating like that old school
stuff they don't want you to know style. Oh yes,
we will see right. Well, you've seen it, shake the
dust stuff. You've seen it multiple times. Uh. And speaking
of fantastic segues, many college aged men and women became
political activist at this time, right, they or the driving
(06:42):
force but behind things like the civil rights movement and
anti war movements. Well, and these were times where like
these efforts on behalf of young people felt like they
actually had some potential for revolution and to change policy.
For example, with the civil rights movement, in protests and
sit ins, a lot of this sort of new left
(07:03):
culture that was coming out of the colleges and universities
really did have an impact and were a very visible
part of some of these struggles. Right, Yes, that's what
we are talking about. Won't splore that in a second
with political activism. Uh, And we have to look at
the other side of this too, in two movements that
(07:24):
are often lumped into each other. Uh, other young people
simply air quotes dropped out and separated themselves from mainstream culture.
Just became you know, like the kinda what's the stereotype
about hipsters and Williamsburg whatever, which is not entirely fair
but also not entirely untrue. We can't really afford to
(07:44):
be hipster and Williamsburg and and not do anything because
it's really expensive there unless you have rich parents. You
eve heard the term Trustafarians. That's a good one, but yeah,
they're they're dropping out bend. So that is it a
way to just show that I'm not a part of
this mainstream culture that I see around me. I disagree
with it and that's not me that a party assist
(08:06):
in me, and at the same time kind of contributed
to giving their generation a bad rap for not being
participatory and literally just saying no, man, I'm done. I'm
gonna do my thing, and you guys do you and
I'm knocking over the twain shall meet and um it
was that did not represent the entire generation, as we
(08:29):
will discuss with the political activism. Like yeah, and very
important thing to know here as well is the attitudes
towards sexual moray's or gender dichotomies appeared to loosen, uh,
and women began to openly protest the traditional roles of
of your either a housewife or a mother. And that's
(08:50):
that's it, you know what I mean. So now more
than ever at this point in US history, Uh, we're saying, oh,
all these people are actually people. And there is a
tension that occurs because the post World War two geopolitics
blossomed into a full on Cold wars. The U s
s R. And the US both vied for global supremacy.
(09:12):
As you mentioned earlier, Matt, this meant proxy wars, of
which the most famous is the Vietnam War. Here in
the States at least. We've touched on the Vietnam War
in previous episodes. Stuff they don't want you to know
dot com, where you can find every audio episode we've
ever done, including that the recent one about abandoned soldiers.
So for today, let's just say quick and Dirty version
(09:34):
t l d R. The Vietnam War was tremendously unpopular
for the public and tremendously supported by the establishment, and
this divide led to massive protest. So here's the interesting
thing though. While I would say people today generally associate hippies,
this this vision of a hippie with these protests, the
(09:57):
Vietnam War protests. However, there's this vibrant community focusing on
all kinds of issues, and they're called the New Left.
And for a time, these people seem to be set
to make some four reel changes. As an All said earlier,
there it seems as though it's viable, like it's gonna happen.
I think it's gonna happen. It's not just some pine
(10:19):
in the sky thing where we imagine a better world.
We're gonna make it. So left wing politics in the
sixties was attracting pretty much primarily middle class college Students UM.
There was an organization called the Students for a Democratic
Society that was founded at the University of Michigan in
nineteen sixty and it acted as the organizational base for
(10:43):
this new left movement UM. And the term itself was
actually coined in the group's sort of mission statement, the
nineteen sixty two port Huron Statement, which version well, actually
the there. If you've seen The Big Lebowski, will remember
a scene where the dude brags that he was part
of one of the organizing members that wrote the port
(11:05):
Heran statement. He said, but his was the much better
first draft, and I did little research on that. Apparently
there was only one draft that the dude abides just
the same. You know, my parents told me a lot
about the SDS growing up, because they went to Kent
State University, as many of you listeners know, and they,
you know, at the time of the massacre, and they
(11:25):
said the STS they were one of the main reasons
that there was violence occurring, just because everybody got so
riled up by what was being said by that group
in the writings. So what did the port Huron statement say. Well,
first of all, it criticized UM this lack of individual freedom. Um,
sort of like the idea of giving up your individual
(11:46):
rights in order to be you know, for the greater good. Uh.
And also it criticized the power of bureaucracy, which in
their view had ballooned out of control and government also
in universities and especially corporations uh um. And it called
for a participatory democracy, in other words, grassroots political activists. Yeah,
(12:07):
powers of the people. Right, sounds like fairly recent protests
in the early two thousands. I'm talking about the Occupied movie.
Yeah again, Like that's why I was saying, I really
feel kind of a kinship to this period we're talking about,
especially now with like the Women's March and some of
the big you know, the Occupied movement years ago, but
now especially it seems like we're really seeing this grassroots
(12:31):
uprising of folks that are not happy with the state
of government and corporation, especially with like citizens United and
corporations having more control and all this deregulation we're seeing.
I really do feel like we're in an interesting, uh
kind of circular thing with the kinship with the sixties,
and there is strange political bedfill is one thing that's different. Well,
(12:52):
there're two primary things are different about this time. One
is the spread of communicative technology, which fun mentally changes
the game. And the other is that you know, Matt,
you mentioned you alluded to the Occupied movement, but that
if that were far left, then also there's the Tea
Party movement, which is arguing very surprisingly similar stuff right
(13:17):
in terms of what they see as overreach of government
control or the quote unquote system before opposition to the
Vietnam War, mushroom, we're back in the sixties. Now, this organization,
the STS and others like it, focused on student freedoms,
you know, yeah, fighting dress codes, uh, fighting what they
felt were unfair course requirements or discrimination by sororities and
(13:42):
fraternity fighting for minority admissions, admissions to you know, matriculating
into into college. The New Left participated in these these
enormous protests and sit ins, and they were more and
more often anti war oriented. Also, it is important to
(14:03):
note that associated groups protested for gender equality and gay
rights and in you know, in many cases, uh, in
many cases, the fight for gay rights was not as
successful initially as some of the other things. And now
we get to hippies versus anti left. Yeah, So like
(14:28):
this New Left group, these hippies. Uh, they have some
stuff in common. They're mostly middle class whites, but they've
they've switched out the political drive of the new Left
with oh, I don't know, what would you call it, um,
the munchies. That's that's not right. That's that's so wrong,
(14:49):
and that's not true. Just a more laid back approach
to to the political dealings that are going on. Yeah, man,
what's all this? What's all this give about? You're on
a really bad trip about geopolitics, you know, Like, let's
just listen to music, if you ever really listened to music.
(15:10):
Let's play a clip from an episode of Mr Show
that kind of give us a sense of how the
powers that be viewed the hippies. Dad, Look, it's a hippie.
Careful sissy. Don't worry, dad. Our hippies won't harass you
(15:31):
or expose your children to any anti authority lifestyles. Our
hippies are the kind the whole family can enjoy. Hey, man,
my name is Groovy Gravy, and I want to be
your friend. Take my hair too fun place where you
won't have a care and all your friends will be
(15:52):
there because you can ride all tames in Hippie Land.
You can fly in the air in Hippie. Hippie Land
will feature several attractions like Woodstock the movie The Ride,
a three day roller coaster ride featuring the original members
of shann Anna, My Man Gravy. That hippie was all right.
(16:21):
That hippies all right with me. And that's the thing.
It's like, you know, and this is gonna get into
are there. This is where it gets crazy. Bit that's coming.
But the hippies were sort of this like neutered version
of that political activist sector where you know, you had
the sense that they weren't really gonna do anything. They
(16:41):
weren't necessarily a threat, uh in terms of the status
quo from a government perspective. They just wanted to like
have that free love, go to some music concerts, drop
some acid and and tooke on some some jay's. But
that's a different type of threat. Right. They wore jeans,
tie tyed shirts, sandals, beard's, long hair, and a lifestyle
to embrace sexual bromiscuity, recreational drugs, right. Uh yeah, hallucinogen
(17:06):
c LSD being the most popular, right, Uh, Marijuana, you know, Um,
I imagine there was cocaine in their coludes were Was
that a thing? Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't there. You weren't there. I've just seen Woodstock,
the movie, The Musical of the Right. Yeah, dot org
(17:27):
so and it isn't. Now, we're not not trying to Obviously,
a lot of amazing art and amazing culture came out
of the counterculture, the hippie movement. You know, you've got
the Grateful Dead, You've got like bands from San Francisco,
the psychedelic movement. I mean, it's an amazing source of
art and culture. Um, and certainly there were folks that
would kind of split the difference between being in the
(17:50):
hippie scene and being actually political actors. I'm not trying
to say that hippies and the um psychedelic New Left
movement were completely devoid of of any kind of conviction
and that there wasn't overlap, because there certainly was. But
we're just we're kind of doing a little bit of
a black and white thing here to show that there
certainly was a divide, but then there's also a gray area. Yeah. Yeah,
(18:11):
there's no false psychotomy here. But the question is, how
did so earlier we said that there were there was.
There was this hippie movement, this hippie scene if you will,
or demographic that in many ways was different in comparison
to the earlier uh social revolutionary affecting positive change, at
(18:33):
least as they saw it, new Left. So how did
the hippies get on the scene? How did people, largely
from the scene demographic move from protests in other words,
interacting with the outside world to a more inward gazing
exploration of consciousness, of self identification and drugs. Well, guys,
while we wait for the acid to kick in, why
(18:54):
don't we take a quick sponsor break. All right, we're back.
Oh yeah, I feel like we were always here. We've
always been here. We've always been here. The thing is,
(19:14):
we can check out anytime we want. That's true. We
can never believe. And as it turns out, you guys
have never left. They've been here again since last night. Um,
And that is how we roll. And what a fun
episode to do on zero sleep. Yes, yes, and the
question it seems like so many years ago, through the
(19:35):
magic of editing, that we were we we launched into
that first sponsor break, and now we're back and the
people who folks, ladies, and gentlemen listening now, you have
no idea about the adventures that we went through. So much,
so much stuff. I got a brand new phone because
my other one broke, you know, and I'm glad my
hand grew back finally. So the question that we asked
(19:57):
so long ago was how how did this evolution, this
differentiation occur. The first and most obvious answer, of course,
would be something along the lines of, well, guys, people
are all different and all like different things, even if
they're from the exact same demographic. We interviewed every twenty
eight year old Han Chinese male living in Shankai, and
(20:20):
then guess what, They're not gonna agree on everything, even
though they're from the same place, they're the same age,
same gender, et cedric, et cedric, etcetera. So then the
protest of the early nineteen sixties became subsumed by a
hippie movement, which led to the increasingly self centered zeitgeist
of the nineteen seventies. And maybe that's just how things happen.
(20:41):
Maybe people are just different, maybe attitudes change. But what
if somebody orchestrated this change? What if somebody there was
a puppet master at work pulling the strings in order
to suck the wind out of this revolutionary way of thinking.
What if that was pushed them away from the left,
(21:04):
These guys are like flipping Out's right, well, we're leaving
that in the whole video team has been here all
night and they're outside having a full on freak out
(21:26):
and meltdown. Right now. We're freaking out, man. We will.
We'll get into what that is in in the plug section.
For now, Let's get back to the to the left
for the nitty gritty. Here's where it gets crazy. What
if there was no organic evolution of this culture? What
(21:47):
if instead this growth was influenced, manipulated, perhaps even controlled
by an organized and hidden force. Who would it be?
Who could it be? Now? Maybe the c A. That's right.
According to several conspiracy theorists and various authors, the counterculture
(22:07):
movements in the United States was co opted by none
other than the c I A. You know, the CIA
is fake news, right, I've I've heard it's A it's
an alternative intelligence. But they're the centralized central intelligence agency whatever, like,
all of it goes towards them, no matter what direction
(22:27):
it's coming to is They're d I A A decentralized
intelligen Look at first, yes, this might sound insane. Why
the hell would the CIA care about this sort of thing?
You know, when they care people have long hair and
wear jeans whatever, the money still spends the same and
the books still burn at the same rate when you
apply heat. That's a good point. I don't know it.
(22:51):
To me, it seems like it gave them a target,
a subject of ridicule in a way, to sort of
take the wind out of the sales of a potential
political uprising. And he's challenged to the status quo, you know,
and if you point to the hippie movement and say,
(23:11):
look at the this is all we got, this hippie
thing like this is this is laughable. There's no threat there. Yeah,
it was. If you look at the history of what
the CIA has done in the past that we've covered
on this show numerous times in all kinds of different ways.
MK Ultra the experiments with LSD that they did on
unsuspecting people to see how it would affect consciousness in
(23:33):
a way and to see if you could make someone
more susceptible to being tortured or you know, not tortured,
but giving information on if you're all wonky on the
what it's not the sauce. It's the I don't know
if there's word for it, mind sauce sauce. I think
it's the correct. Oh, excellent, excellent. We also see the
(23:54):
CIA practicing extraordinary rendition where you sweep someone away to
a black site and they just don't exist anymore. And
you know, maybe those black sites, maybe they don't exist,
maybe they still do. I think whether whatever the reality
on the ground is, the official US position would be
that they do not exist. But you're absolutely right. And
(24:17):
then there's also the CIA engages in propaganda and foreign
regime change occasionally with the use of quote unquote student
groups and assets in nonprofit organizations. These are not none,
None of the things that Matt just named are theories,
right right, These all actually happened. And we can look
(24:39):
at the CIA experiments with LSD during the fifties, nineteen fifties,
that is uh, in less, the CIA is much older
than NOL Matt, and I know, uh they conducted experiments
with LSD just as Matt said, they wanted to evaluate
whether it could be used as a truth serum or
a brainwashing agent, and interrogations, and I also wanted to
(24:59):
see if they could weaponize This all began to come
into light with the formation of the Rockefeller Commission, and
that's how the US public and Congress learned about some
of the more bizarre experiments that the CIA did. It's
got an incredible name, noll. Midnight climax. Is that like
(25:25):
ribbed for her pleasure? No, they're really not specifying, you
know what what type of climax is occurring? Who knows,
just just more of the time. Yeah, yeah, that word
climax that it can never not be naughty. Yeah. I
can't even to refer to like the thing that happens
at the end of a movie. I will just say,
(25:46):
you know the finale, Midnight Climax did involve you know,
a sexual aspect, right. It was an operation that paid
prostitutes in San Francisco and New York to dose un
suspecting john's with LSD and then get them lured to
a c I a safe house and then the agents,
(26:07):
the CIA agents were watch and film these, uh, the
sex workers with their clients from behind you know, a mirror.
It seems U trying to figure out the value for this.
Besides possible blackmail. I don't understand what the value would be,
you know, just to have it's just sort of cool
to have secrets. The collection Collection. And then there was
(26:30):
another LSD related scandal the Commission uncovered. It was the
nineteen fifty three death of a biological warfare specialist named
Frank Olson. He definistrated. I never get to use this word, definistrated.
Knocked out of a window, and for some reason, no
one finistrates. I don't know. Even just saying that, that's
(26:52):
like saying climate Superman, Superman. Yeah, I could totally do.
It's really hard. Like you know, us mere mortals. We
can go out of a window, but if it's high up,
it's like, you know, we need a ladder, and then
it's just called climbing a ladder. Yeah, you know, Well,
maybe we should get capes. We should get stuff. They
don't want you to know capes. Oh God, not to
derail these too much. But you know what movie is
(27:13):
on Netflix now, My favorite Mystery Science Theater episode Manos,
The Hands of Fate, featuring the Goatman Torgo and the Master.
And he has this amazing cape with red hands on it,
and I'm sorry, I'm I'm done. Yeah, that definitely doesn't
derail things. Nol. No, well, it makes it makes sense though,
(27:34):
if we're if we're talking about LSDA. You know who
My favorite LSD researcher was John C. Lily, who would
regularly take doses of LSD in the early sixties when
he was introduced to it, and then he would put
himself in the sensory deprivation tanks or he can you
(27:56):
imagine um? And he also was big on dolphin research,
and he would often take LSD and hang out with dolphins,
and then his research over time developed into much more
dolphins centric work where he was trying to communicate communicate
with dolphins felt like they had some sort of psychic
abilities that could be exploited by being on LSD allows
(28:17):
you to kind of reach that level and then you know,
have psychic conversations with these dolphins. And he even had
an experiment where he flooded a building and had a
woman a research assistant. I suppose you could say, live
with a dolphin in this flooded apartment and over time
(28:38):
developed something of a let's say, a relationship with with
said dolphin. But yeah, so it was the Wild West, Yeah, yeah,
and longtime listeners recognize some of uh, some of that
story from previous episodes where the thing was was the
(29:00):
dolphin actually communicating? It was the dolphins simply taking indecent
proposal style rewards for certain behaviors. You know which pro
quo if only one of us could make the dolphin noise? Yeah,
(29:21):
that was like a Tom Waite's dolphin. Okay, Yeah, So
Frank Olsen. Getting back to Frank Olsen defenustrated. Did he
jump out of the window of his New York hotel
room about a week and a half after his drink
had been spiked with LSD at a work retreat by
his coworkers or was he pushed? When the real cause
of Frank Olsen's death was finally made public by the
(29:43):
Rockefeller Commission in nine, it was a public relations nightmare
for the Ford administration, and they selected a guy to
run damage control on this issue. You might recognize him.
Name was Dick Cheney. So he did damage control on
(30:04):
this and then eventually they issued the US government issued
an apology to Frank Olson's widow. But the death of
Agent Olson, Frank Olson and the discovery of things like
Operation Midnight climax easily overshadowed most of the other, uh,
most of the other things we found out about Project
(30:26):
m KO Ultra. But another relevant finding was this the
CIA had funded academic research into LSD like a lot
before the drug was criminalized in nine oh. Yes, and
some of these academics working on LSD research knowingly took
(30:47):
money from the Central Intelligence Agency to do this stuff.
A lot of others had CIA money indirectly funneled to them,
and you know, maybe they didn't even know that this
was happening, but still that's what's funding their research. Um,
because they are all these front groups that the c
I U, c i A uses. We've discussed these before,
the FBI do the to any intelligence agency uses a
(31:08):
front group. It's a front company. It's a very handy thing. Yeah,
Like the the general rule of thumb here is at
least what the three of us have discovered is that
the more vague a group's name is, the more likely
they are a front for something, you know what I mean,
or just yeah vanilla. So it just feels serious if
there's yeah, like, if there's I and I am making
(31:32):
this up. So any resemblance to a real thing is
purely incidental. But like if we met a representative that
was like people for ideas, I think, I know, that's sketchy.
You know, people have all kinds of ideas and they're
all kinds of people, I mean, be specific for ideas
(31:53):
and things. Right, other researchers who people for ideas and things,
that's a watch out, Rand Corporation. There's a new guy
in town. Uh. Other researchers who did scientific experiments with
LSD did not have any funding from the CIA, but
(32:13):
the company might send a covert agent to keep track
of any interesting findings. So you know, Hi, my name's
John Smith. I'm the new lab Tech. Yeah, yeah, I
went to anywhere university. Yeah, right near America Town. Anyhow,
(32:38):
what's going on with these acids? Right that? I mean,
it's spot on. That's that's what happened, and this kind
of stuff can still happen to date. For people who
believe the CIA created or co opted the American counterculture movement,
the experiments that occurred in the nineteen fifties naturally evolved
(32:58):
into programs during the city sixties too. As we mentioned earlier,
neutralize that threat of social activism by turning the activists
into you know, his peace and love oriented and then
to me, I wonder if this was the case. Was
(33:19):
it more about the perception as well, you know what
I mean, where it's like, if they're not taken seriously,
it's sort of neuters them a little bit in terms
of like actually affecting change, getting other people to believe,
getting other people to sign on for their cause. And
you know, obviously the you know, like we said, there
was definitely a connection between the political activists scene and
(33:42):
the counterculture you know, psychedelic hippie movement for sure, but visually,
like from a pr standpoint, it's very easy for those
in power and people supporting those in power to view
this group negatively in a way where it's like, you know,
I am not threatened by them, I just kind of
(34:02):
feel like they're lazy, shiftless, do nothings that that means
that have no impact. You're not going to change the world,
and a pair of blue jean trousers. I'm gonna try
and we'll have to see how that how that hippie's
journey turns out. After a word from our sponsor, it's
not gonna go well. Boo jeans, baby queen. It is
(34:34):
been a bad baby, mean baby queen, baby queens. Alright,
it's like uh, you know the toddlers in Tierra Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that is like honey boo boo, pretty mercury as a baby.
Well that, as you can tell, the drugs have kicked in. Um,
(34:54):
we are now in that country, yes, and we are
still looking for evidence about this idea. Right. One of
the biggest pieces of evidence for people who believe that
the c I, a masterminded puppeteered a shift in counterculture
was the idea that Timothy Leary, whom we quoted at
(35:16):
the top of the show, was himself a c I.
A asset. What horror. Yes, writer and Mark Reebling asked
Timothy Leary about this after Leary gave a speech in Gainesville, Florida,
and Leary said, they never gave me a dime. But
(35:38):
here's the thing. In fact, he did get money from
the Central Intelligence Agency. He didn't get very much, but
he did get He got some some scratch, some chatter,
some mula. I'm just going to choose words for money now. Scrilla,
some scrilla, scrill is good. Some wampum. Yeah. So, while
Leary perhaps didn't know that he had been a willing CI,
(36:00):
a temporary agent stooge. Yeah, well, the agency or the
company ben as you call them before. I love calling
them the company their term, I know, but it just
calling it that is quite fun. Man. They tend to
promote people who who truly believe in a cause, but
(36:22):
are unaware perhaps of what they're really advancing, what the
left hand is truly doing while the right hand toils
away over here. Yes. Yes, so that's a great point
because we know that in some foreign countries where intelligence
agencies and I know we're picking on the CIA right now,
but intelligence agencies in general will have these kind of
(36:45):
covert practices. Imagine, uh, you know, a a developing country
or some sort of unstable regime, right, and your student
protests group, and somebody comes up and says, yeah, I
also believe in the call cause. Right, forget the monarchy
or forget the theocracy or whatever the current flavor of
(37:06):
democracy is. Here's some funding. And by the way, let
me teach you about protest techniques. You could totally think
that was just someone who knew their stuff, like democracy pistachio.
Democracy is a great democracy flavor. I would put it
up there, you know, in the top three. So this,
(37:26):
as Matt said, someone could completely believe in a cause,
finds help from a well dressed stranger, right while spoken stranger,
and not have any idea what that that person's ultimate
motivations were. So funds for Leary's research and drugs. The
(37:48):
material for it came from the CIA, and he has
an autobiography Leary does. It's called Flashbacks. It was published
three in that he credits a guy named cord Meyer
the CIA, a executive in charge of funding uh, the counterculture,
with quote helping me to understand my political cultural role
(38:08):
more clearly. And he goes on he says, the liberal
CIA is get this guy's the best mafia you can
deal with in the twentieth century, which is which is weird?
Do you hear the guy the dropout tune in guy best? Like?
How better than like the Sopranos? Like like that kind
(38:31):
of mafia? What are we talking? Yeah? I guess so
more efficient, less likely to break your legs. I don't
under Yeah. I guess he just got along with him.
I guess they were just maybe they just didn't shake
him down for his debts at the dog Track. I'm kidding.
They probably kept him you know in acid I'm sure
(38:51):
you know what. That's a good point, and that makes
me think of that owls Ley Fellow as well. So
other vanguards of the LSD movement, including Alan Gensburg, certainly
believed that the CIA played more than a cameo part
in this culture jamming. Right. So, the first major public
statements in the seventies by countercultural figures UM to actually
(39:14):
speculate on the relationship between the CIA and LSD happened
on October nineties seven at a conference at the University
of California in Santa Cruz that was called LSD A
generation later, sort of a postmortem UM. Alan Ginsburg, who
compared the conference to an acid head class reunion UH said,
quote am I Alan Ginsburg the product of one of
(39:37):
the CIA's lamentable, ill advised or triumphantly successful experiments in
mind control. Had they, by conscious plan or inadvertent Pandora's box,
let loose the whole LSD fad on the US and
the world things that make you go, that's right. And
(39:58):
Timothy Leary was also at the conference. He addressed questions
about the LSD c I a issue, and he said
the LSD movement was started by the CIA to the CIA,
hey can I do a voice? And he said, the
movement were started by the c I A. I wouldn't
(40:18):
be here now without the fore shight of the c
I A shy and tiste. It was no accident. It
was all planned and scripted by the Central Intelligence Agency.
And I'm all in favor of Central Intelligence? Is that
like a Sean Connery voice? Is Sean connor ish is
what I'm calling it? Because you know, I'm not doing
the whole I'm not quite going all the way there. Okay,
(40:39):
First of all, I love Sean Conner ish. That should
be a thing, and I want to see this opportunity
to announce a new word that I have coined um
for addressing things that are going on in the news
right now. And it is hilarifying. Oh that is quite
im portmant to No. Well done, just I had to
lay it down on some media so that I can,
(41:01):
you know, claim you're on the record, my friend. Hilarifying.
Ladies and gentlemen, please use that whenever you find it appropriate,
but do credit Noel Brown. It appears that that term
was used during the Hillary Clinton campaign as Hillary ifying.
No I feeling is different. Hilarifying is totally different. Yeah,
(41:24):
I just want I typed it in. It's all so
when you when you hillary ify something dazzling it So
there there's another interesting part here. Hilarifying aspect to this
guy is really good. I'm still on that. That's awesome.
I'm on that trip, as Kinks would say. Uh in.
(41:48):
Guy named John Marks, a former Foreign Service officer, published
a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, and
he looked at all the differ for ways this agency
attempted to control the human mind for the purposes of espionage.
And just for the record, running on pretty much no
(42:11):
sleep makes saying former Foreign Service officer pretty tough. You
do it with a plum. Thank you. I feel like
I'm doing it very carefully, very rural. Jurl e um,
you did it deep in your plumes. What in a
(42:32):
In a chapter covering the CIA's interest and experiments with
LSD Mars rights, CIA officials never meant that the likes
of Leary, Heasy and Ginsburg should be turned on. Yet
these men were, and they, along with many of the
lesser known experimental subjects like Harvard's Ralph Bloom, created the
(42:55):
climate whereby l s D escaped the government's control and
came available by the early sixties on the black market.
No one at the agency apparently foresaw that young Americans
would voluntarily take this drug, whether for consciousness expansion or
recreational purposes. The mk ultra experts were mainly on a
(43:16):
control trip, and they proved incapable of gaining insight from
their own LSD experiences of how others less fixated on
making people do their bidding would react to the drug.
So that's going to marks what what we're finding is
that the CIA did indeed finance hundreds of experiments into
(43:39):
LSD and maybe even more, But what happened is that
they couldn't control the supply. I mean, think about it.
They're they're in alder they're in multiple college campuses, universities, right,
and they have uh supplies of this hallucinogen left right, north,
south east west. Kin Kisi was a janitor, that one
not any access to it. And you're telling me that
(44:02):
guy didn't walk away sweetening the pot. Do you guys
remember that movie Half Baked abraca dabra b a, Yeah,
scup and be which that line still doesn't make sense
to me. It haunts me at night. But in their
you know, uh David Dave Chappelle plays of Janitor at
a Yeah, Janitor Spencer here or like what do they
(44:24):
have like lab? It was totally pre medical marijuana to
that movie. So I'm confused about why they had it.
Was his research facility of some kind. It was definitely
I think the somebody check us on this, but I
feel like the furthest they went was, you know, here's
a lab, right, I think so, I don't know if
(44:44):
they explained what they remember. Remember they had all of
the Maui wauie, I remember that was. Yeah. I totally
didn't understand a lot of that movie when I first
saw it. Yeah, yeah, that's like when I saw Pulp
actually when I was twelve, and that whole scene with
uh Uma Thurman where she overdoses or whatever. I didn't
(45:07):
understand the logistics of that, the distinction between what she
thought that thing was and what it actually was. The
We're a Family show, I'm not going to get into
it too much, but yeah, yeah, kids don't don't see
weird al rated movies about drugs when you're when you're young. Yeah,
I was like, I remember thinking she is unwell, and
then thinking what a spoiler, uh, and then thinking like
(45:31):
is she a vampire? Why did he? Why did you
stab her in the chest? Here are our conclusions. One
thing we have to know is that it is important
to to recognize that the U S counterculture at this
time was probably no more than ten percent of the
youth popular you know, like the youth population or that demographic.
(45:54):
Like like Noel said, they're just more visible, right, And
this is something we see speaking of cycles, this is
something we see in mass media today. The more visibly
distinct people will be, you know, the things that make
(46:14):
good optics are good television. Even if that's just one
out of a hundred people, we're gonna focus on that person.
It also seems that the CIA did have a powerful
role in the emergence of counterculture, but it might not
have been so much a grand puppeteering plan as it
was a series of whoops, eke my bads, you know,
(46:40):
and unintended consequences. This this goes to the idea of
whether or not you know, there's this disconnect that occurs
sometimes because the idea of whether or not this agency
is capable of perpetrating something like that right. It's to
strange a contradictory thing that occurs sometimes where you know,
(47:03):
you'll hear people say that a government or an organization
is inefficient and a bunch of dunder heads duface is
but then also somehow capable of duping hundreds of millions
of people, you know those That's a that's a its
(47:23):
own sort of double think. But one thing that keeps
us from throwing out this idea entirely is this. It
turns out the Central Intelligence Agency of the US is
absolutely capable of using culture as a weapon, and furthermore,
(47:44):
has no compunction whatsoever about doing so. So, as The
Guardian reports, the CIA quote used American modern art, including
the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell,
Willem dacoon ing Uh and also Mark Rothko, as a
weapon in the Cold War in the manner of a
Renaissance prince, except that it acted secretly. The CIA fostered
(48:08):
and promoted American abstract expressionist painting around the world for
more than twenty years. So why did the CIA support them?
Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this
new artistic movement could be held up as proof of
the creativity of the intellectual freedom and the cultural power
of the US Russian art strapped into the communist ideological
(48:30):
straight jacket. Could not compa that as a continuation of
the quote, Um, there's a long one you want to
do on the sure. Yeah. The decision to include culture
and arts in the US Cold War arsenal was taken
as soon as the CIA was officially founded in ninety seven.
They were dismayed at the appeal communism still had for
a lot of intellectuals and artists in the West, and
(48:52):
the agency set up a division called the Propaganda Assets
Inventory or the p AI, and its peak, it could
influence more than eight hundred newspapers, magazines, and public information organizations.
They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox. When
the CIA pushed a button, it could hear whatever tune
wanted playing across the world. So the big question goes
(49:17):
beyond just this this historical aspect. The big question is
not just whether the CIA actively neutralized social activism via
cultural influence in the nineteen sixties. Instead, the big question
is this, what is the CIA messing with culture wise
today and does it affect you? And how would you?
(49:42):
How would you decipher if it is in fact happening
to you right now, how could you tell you have
to tell me if you're a cop right now, I'm
definitely not a cop. That's also a myth. By the way, folks,
I've tried. It does not work, So I went to jail.
(50:03):
Kidding kind of words, sounds, speaking, colors, marshmallows, all of
which means that we hope you enjoyed our exploration of
the CIA's role in the course of culture, the evolution
(50:26):
the social dynamics upon which so much of history hinges
in this country. And we would like to thank our
friend Henry h who suggested this topic for us, along
with a couple of other topics. We're gonna follow up
with some stuff that that that Henry hipt the stoop
(50:46):
And speaking of our fantastic listeners, it sounds like it's
time for chat at corners. I'm gonna swoop in here,
guys and do one from rich Um. He wrote an email, Hello,
std W I c K love the show. I answered
your question about a million terabytes and threw in a
(51:09):
little extra about recording phone calls in this document. And
then he attached a PDF that reads as follows, I'm
an electrical engineering student, and I'm writing you in regards
to the question about what a million terabytes is called
a million terabytes is an exabyte, and then he gives
us this helpful chart. One terabyte is a billion bytes,
(51:29):
and then one kilobyte is a thousand bytes. One terabyte
times one kilobyte equals one exabyte. Fun idea. One telephone
call is sixty four kbps, which is kilobytes per second.
Eight bits equals one byte. One exabyte is one times
ten to the eighteen bytes eight e one eight bits
(51:52):
equals one exabyte. And then he's got some figures here.
It's a little over my head, but thank you for
the thoroughness in you or explanation of a million terribittes.
As it turns out, it is not a bagel bite. Um. No, no,
but that would be cool um. And then he goes
on to say. In February twelve, Utah Governor Gary H.
(52:14):
Herbert revealed that the Utah Data Center would be the
first quote facility in the world expected to gather and
house a yata bite and yata bites um. Since then,
conflicting media reports have also estimated our storage capacity in
terms of zeta bytes and xa bites. While the actual
(52:35):
capacity is classified for national security reasons, we can say
this the Utah Data Center was built with future expansion
in mind, and the ultimate capacity will definitely be a
lot of bites. Rich love that one. Thank you so much,
Rich for the info and for the insight. Yeah that
(52:56):
was really great. Rich. You lost me an ex a bite,
but you know it's all good. It was least I
enjoyed it when I hear numbers like that. Huh. My
brain doesn't function in that way. It just kind of
goes it seriously does That was a good sound. And
our next shout out goes to Jessica p. Jessica writes
in and says, Hi, guys, I have found and started
(53:18):
listening to your podcast about two weeks ago while looking
for something both interesting and informative to listen to on
my long commutes to work. I spend about three hours
in the car each day. Yeah that's rough. One. Uh,
thanks so much for the work you put into these
audio video series. They've certainly made my commute more enjoyable. Secondly,
(53:38):
have you, guys, ever done anything on spontaneous human combustion?
This one's near and dear to me as I vividly
remember having seen a documentary on it as a kid
and subsequently spending the next five to ten years and
fear of suddenly catching on fire. Anytime I would feel
inexplicable centralized warmth on any of my appendange is usually
(53:59):
an arm. I'd rush to the sink and start soaking
the affected area in cold water, just to put it
out preemptively, I guess, to combat what I was sure
was the start of my fiery demise. You'll be happy
to hear that I grew out of that fear, but
I'd love to hear what you guys have to say
about it. If you've already got stuff up and I
missed it, please shoot me a link. Thinks again, look
(54:22):
forward to more hours of hearing about the stuff they
don't want me to know, spontaneous human combustion. You know.
That made me think of a thing that I heard
on NPR this weekend. I believe it was um wait, wait,
don't tell me it was about a It was a
news story where in a Florida lawyer And I'm gonna
read this from the article that I pulled up. This
(54:42):
is from the uh Syracuse Dot com The headline is
lawyers pants catch fire during Miami arson case. So let's
see um. As a Florida lawyer argued in a court
case on Wednesday that his client's car spontaneously burst into flames,
his own pants caught on fire in front of the jury.
(55:04):
During the argument, Stephen Guccieris was fiddling in his pocket
when smoke started billowing and he had to rush out
of the courtroom, reports the Miami Herald. Jurors were then
escorted out and Gutierres returned unharmed with a burnt pocket.
As it turns out, it was a faulty E cigarette.
But how amazing is it that a lawyer arguing about
a case about a car spontaneously combusting had their pants
(55:28):
catch on fire. That's pretty fun, pants, Well, you probably
have burned really badly. That's not fun. I'm sorry about that,
but it's too delicious not to No, no, it's it
says that he's okay in the article, and our final
shoutout goes to Alex, who says, hey, guys, love your show.
Thank you, Alex. And I'm living here in Denver and
(55:49):
it's a place right with conspiracies. We have the murals
at the Denver International Airport. Lots of weird stuff. They're
the Stanley Hotel and or ad. Oh that's what I'd
like to delve into. I'd love to hear a show
about some of these. So keep up the great work.
Best Alex, Thank you Alex and good suggestions. Yeah, thank
(56:11):
you Alex, Thank you Rich and thank you Jessica. I've
got to ask, have you guys been to Colorado? Never? Once?
In my life? I have not either, although I actually
just reconnected with an old friend from youth group who
lives in Colorado and was very kind to offer a
couch to crash on any time I want to come
visit and spoke very highly of the place. That's awesome.
(56:31):
I I have only been to the airport, so I
don't know if you can, if you can count just
go into an airport as going to a place. I
don't know if you can the Denver Airport. Did you
see all the weird murals? And is it wild? It's
weird and it's creepy, Like I see why it is
off putting to people. But Blue Horse and listeners, if
(56:52):
you're not familiar with the Denver Airport has some very unusual,
dark kind of imperialistic looking imagery where there's like these
kind of like big centurion figures wearing gas masks, swinging sabers,
and then there's like this line of emaciated children and
refugees and it's very very dark. Look it up. Maybe
(57:15):
we'll do one on that, and I'm gonna be a
whole episode worth, but it might be worth fitting into
something about unusual murals are across the world. And we
do have a video from earlier. Yes, we do conspiratorial career.
Speaking of video, the we have to make the announcement now,
just do it because it's going out. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(57:35):
it's happening. It's all happening. So was it in September
of last year when we went to the guidestones. It
was a while ago. We went to the Georgia Guidestones
in Elverton, Georgia, or nine miles from Elverton, Georgia, and
we we shot the stones. We discussed with nol his
personal relationship with the granite. The three of us almost
(57:59):
got he stroke. I have a personal relationship with granite,
that's true. Um. And an awesome older gentleman named Wyatt
who you who had a talk with several talks with
and Uh he has a an even closer relationship to
the granted again, no sleep here, no sleep till okay. Yes,
(58:21):
So the reason why there's no sleep is because I've
been up for the past three nights past two am
working on this thing. These guys have been writing and
inter like. We interviewed Nold for this thing, and we're
using a bunch of his footage. Been has just been
writing his took us off to make this thing happen.
And we're so excited that it's finally coming out and
(58:42):
it's you know, you've noticed that we haven't been doing
the weekly videos lately, and I've been getting a lot
of questions as to whether they're coming back or not.
We've been kind of beating around the bush about it
a little bit, but this is our first real kind
of long form peace and we are so proud of it.
Um I personally am just insanely proud of Matt. He's
done so an incredible job. We kind of watched the
whole thing for the most it's days ago and since
(59:05):
Danny's I don't even know, but it was looking phenomenal.
It's really a heartfelt story there's a lot of interesting
twists and turns, things you might not have heard about yet. Um,
even if you're familiar with the story, even if you
listen to our podcast on it, so go back, check
out the podcast and be on the lookout. Where is
it gonna be math So yeah, the main thing here
(59:26):
is that it's gonna be on Amazon Video, so you
can stream it on Amazon. If you have a Prime account,
it'll be a commercial free. If you don't have a
Prime account, there might be a commercial or two in there,
but it's gonna be worth it. I garonn tee it. Yes,
we're hopefully gonna put it on YouTube as well after
a little while. And for everyone who has listened to
(59:49):
our earlier audio episode on the Georgia Guidestones Door, this
is different enough that we promise you won't feel like
you're sitting through the same thing. With pictures, we we
took a different approach. If you are a fan of
our classic stuff, they don't want you to know videos
(01:00:10):
you like this one. It will be worth your time.
We hope that you enjoy it as much as we have,
so let us know what you think. You can also
find us on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram where we're
conspiracy stuffing Conspiracy Stuff show. On our Instagram. You can
listen to every single audio episode we have ever done
(01:00:30):
at Deep Breath stuff. They don't want you to Know
dot com. Oh last point of business. Um. In this
month of this year, we're participating in this thing called
tripod t r y pod, wherein we recommend a podcast
that we would like you to try. UM. The hashtag
tripod is being used all around for people to share
(01:00:54):
their favorite shows with their friends and four shows to
share their favorite shows with their audiences. UM. So you
guys want to do one what's a what's a favorite
podcast of yours? Well? I wanna kind of do an
internal shout out really fast for Stuff of Life. Congratulations
to you, Noel Brown, Well, thank you. Yeah. We just
launched season two of the Stuff of Life with Julie Douglas.
(01:01:17):
It's a show that I produce and it's our most
kind of soundscaped sort of like audio journey kind of
show in the style of like Radio Lab A little
bit um and really proud of it. We've got an
episode up now called Broken and that's gonna be dropping wednesdays,
UM for eleven episodes. So we're doing another season of that.
Um yeah, try that one for sure. That would help
(01:01:39):
me out a lot to hear your thoughts. And you know,
actually this this season is a little darker than the
last season and it's got a little more of a
political angle to it, um with some of the stuff
that's been going on in the news right now. Stuff
of It's called the Stuff of Life. You can get
it on iTunes, uh, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much all the
places and let us know what you think. But yeah,
(01:02:00):
it broke my heart. I listened to the first three
minutes and fifty seconds and I was crime my eyes
out over year while I was trying to edit, probably
because you were lacking the sleep. But thank you very much,
it is. We did put our our hearts into it,
and I got a lot of original music by myself
and Dylan Fagan and um a buddy of mine, Tristan McNeil,
who makes incredible ambient music under the name Nude with
(01:02:24):
Liar l y Are. You can find that on Spotify
as well. Stuff of Life a sincere heartfelt hug for
your ears. It's a heart smart journey into the heart
of darkness. Heartily so well. I've got another quick one
if that's okay, Uh, shout out to the church of
What's happening with Joey Coco Diaz. I learned about this gentleman.
(01:02:45):
He's a comedian. It's been around the block so many
times that I don't even I'm not even sure that
he knows like what street he's on anymore. He's incredible, hilarious. Um.
He has a lot in common with my life from
the area in Jersey where he grew up, and he's
he's just hilarious. He's been on so many things now,
(01:03:08):
especially the Joe Road the podcast, so check those out
for tripod. Let your friends know and let us know
what you think. We would love to hear from you.
If you have an idea for an upcoming topic that
we should cover in this show. If you have any feedback,
where suggestions or dare we ask personal experience with the
(01:03:30):
C I, A and LSD during the nineties sixties, let
us know. Tell us if you don't want us to
use your real name, we'll assign you a really cool
undercover operative type nickname. The Cheese with Buttercup A Romeo Bravado.
So so act now so you can get your your
(01:03:53):
cover name, You can email us directly. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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