September 30, 2025 • 16 mins
In 1921, artist-turned-polymath Walter Russell claimed to spend 39 days in a coma-like “illumination,” tapping the very “source of all knowledge.” His revelations became The Universal One — a sweeping vision of reality as crystallized light, consciousness, and rhythm. Nearly every scientist dismissed him as mad. Except Nikola Tesla.
This episode unpacks the gaslighting Russell faced, the poetic truths that turned him into a cult prophet, and what his story reveals about how science treats outsiders. From Galileo to Semmelweis to Tesla, the distortion cycle repeats: ridicule, myth, and a carefully rewritten history.
Was Walter Russell a crackpot sculptor… or a prophet a thousand years too soon? And what does his story teach us about spotting distortion in the stories we’re told today?
Based on themes from Jim Detjen’s new book Distorted: How Gaslighting and Poetic Truth Bend Our Perception of Reality.
Stay sharp. Stay skeptical. #SpotTheGaslight
Read and reflect at Gaslight360.com/clarity
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Picture this.
(00:01):
New York, 1930.
The New York Times prints aletter from an American artist
named Walter Russell, a manbetter known for sculpting Mark
Twain and painting presidents.
But this time he's not showingoff marble or oils.
He's challenging Isaac Newton.
Russell writes that gravitationas we know it is wrong, that
matter isn't what we think itis, that everything, rocks,
(00:24):
rivers, even your body, is justcompressed light, shaped by
thought.
Within days, the scientificestablishment swats him down,
professors fire back in theletters page, editors take a
tone somewhere between bemusedand, is this guy serious?
The cultural verdict?
Russell is dismissed as a crank.
Now, here's the tension.
(00:46):
Why do we call someone mad inone generation and visionary in
the next?
Why do institutions sell us thestory that science is an open
marketplace of ideas whenhistory shows us the stalls are
often padlocked?
And why do we cling to theromantic myth, the poetic truth,
that maybe humanity just wasn'tready yet?
(01:08):
Walter Russell's 39-dayIllumination, his 1926
manuscript The Universal One,and his quiet meeting with
Nikola Tesla, they're a casestudy in gaslighting and poetic
truth colliding head on.
This is Think First, where wedon't follow the script.
(01:29):
We question it.
Because in a world full ofpoetic truths and professional
gaslighting, someone's gotta saythe quiet part out loud.
In May of 1921, an Americanpolymath named Walter Russell
disappeared into silence.
For 39 days he lay in what hecalled an illumination, a
(01:50):
coma-like state where, heclaimed, his mind touched the
source of all knowledge.
When he returned, he didn't easeback in.
He exploded, page after franticpage, sketches, formulas,
metaphysics, wave patterns, evencosmology.
It became the bones of a massivemanuscript called the Universal
(02:13):
One.
He mailed it to the great mindsof his day, 500 of them, by his
own account.
Nearly all dismissed him as mad,except one, Nikola Tesla, the
visionary who knew a thing ortwo about being ahead of your
time.
Tesla was so struck that he toldRussell to lock it away, to seal
it for a thousand years.
(02:34):
Humanity, he warned, wasn'tready.
And what was it we weren't readyfor?
That matter isn't solid, butcrystallized light, slowed and
shaped by thought, that theuniverse isn't material, but
mental, pulsing in waves ofexpansion and contraction like
breath.
That good and evil areillusions, everything seeking
(02:58):
balance, that death is justlight, uncompressed, returning
to its source, that time itselfisn't linear, but spiral, past,
present, and future coexisting.
He even claimed electricitywasn't electrons but a living
spiral of energy.
That space itself was not empty,but a sea of untapped potential.
(03:22):
For Russell, health was rhythm.
Disease was imbalance.
Reality itself was mind.
In 1926, this made him a crank.
Today, some call him a prophet.
And between those two poles, thegaslight and the poetic truth,
sits the distortion.
Because the real story isn'tjust about Walter Russell, it's
(03:44):
about how power decides what'sready, how institutions protect
themselves with ridicule, andhow admirers protect their
prophets with myth.
Most of us grow up with thefairy tale version of science.
The story goes like this scienceis self-correcting, objective,
and ruthlessly open to newevidence.
(04:06):
If you've got the data, ifyou've got the experiment, the
system will reward you.
That's the poetic truth.
It's comforting.
It flatters our institutions.
But history tells another story.
Ask Galileo, threatened withtorture for daring to place the
sun at the center.
Ask Semmelweiss, fired andmocked for suggesting doctors
(04:28):
should wash their hands beforedelivering babies.
Ask Walter Russell, lampoonedfor saying matter was
crystallized light.
Different masks, same puppetmaster.
The system doesn't just ignoreoutliers, it gaslights them.
It says, if you don't havecredentials, you don't have
credibility.
It says, if you don't publish inour journals, you don't exist.
(04:51):
It says, your genius is madnessuntil we can repackage it
without crediting you.
And here's the setup.
When you watch how institutionstreat people like Russell, you
start to see the distortion.
The gaslighting?
The shaming and blame shiftingthat keeps the establishment
safe?
The poetic truth?
(05:12):
The cozy bedtime story thatscience is always fair in the
end.
So let me ask, what makes anidea too early?
Who decides when humanity isready?
Why do we crucify visionariesand then canonize them later?
And is the story of scienceitself a gaslight?
(05:36):
This isn't just history, you seeit now in debates about AI,
medicine, and energy.
Dismiss the outsider, smooth itlater.
That's the distortion pattern,and it's exactly the kind of
pattern I track in distorted.
This is the same playbook we'verun for centuries.
Galileo in 1633.
(05:56):
We don't need to look throughyour telescope.
The consensus has spoken.
Semmelweiss in 1847.
Wash our hands?
Absurd.
You're the lunatic here.
Russell in 1926.
Compressed light?
Please.
Stick to your sculpture.
Different centuries.
(06:16):
Same script.
And here's the kicker (06:17):
the gaslight always comes wrapped in
authority.
The credential, the journal, thepodium, the robe.
It tells the public, trust us,he's the crazy one.
That, my friends, is the storywe're sold.
That science is a shiningmeritocracy.
When in reality, it's a humaninstitution, every bit as
(06:38):
political as Congress orHollywood.
And when the establishmentgaslights the visionary, what
story do the admirers tell tomake sense of it?
The poetic truth.
The comforting myth thathumanity just wasn't ready, that
the prophet was a thousand yearsahead.
That Tesla himself whispered toRussell, seal this in a vault.
(06:59):
The world isn't ready yet.
Now, did Tesla really say that?
Yes.
At least according to Russell'swife Lau, who recounted the
meeting in 1956.
There's no Tesla letter, noprimary archive, but the story
has stuck for decades.
Why?
Because it's neat.
(07:20):
It flatters us.
It gives us a reason the worlddidn't listen.
That's how poetic truth works.
It's not necessarily a lie, it'sa story that smooths the
discomfort.
And that's what I unpack anddistorted.
The system gaslights theheretic.
The fans invent a legend tocover the wound.
Both stories bend reality.
(07:45):
So, what did Walter Russellactually claim?
And has any of it held up?
Receipt number one.
Matter is crystallized light.
Russell argued that everythingwe call matter is just slowed
down light, compressed bythought.
Modern physics?
We do talk about mass-energyequivalents, fields,
(08:06):
excitations.
But not that way.
No physicist today teachesthought molds light into atoms.
That's Russell, not Einstein.
Receipt number two.
The universe is mental, notmaterial.
He said mind is the truesubstance.
Matter is just effect.
(08:26):
That's pure metaphysics.
Science doesn't sign off.
But here's the echo.
In consciousness research, somephilosophers ask whether mind is
fundamental.
Panpsychism, integratedinformation theory.
You can see why Russell's wordsstill resonate on the edges.
Receipt number three cycles ofexpansion and contraction.
(08:50):
The cosmos, he said, breathes.
Life and death, night and day,waves.
Mainstream science?
We do model oscillations.
Some cosmologists explorebouncing or cyclic universe
theories.
Echoes again.
But Russell's diagrams, spiralperiodic tables, cosmic waves,
(09:11):
remain fringe.
Receipt number four.
Electricity is not electrons buta living spiral of energy.
Nope.
Flatly contradicted by modernphysics.
Receipt number five.
Death is the release ofcompressed light.
That's poetry, not biology.
Receipt number six.
Time is not linear, but spiral.
(09:34):
Science.
Time is relative, shaped bygravity and velocity.
Spiral?
Not in the equations.
So, do we see resonances?
Yes.
Vacuum energy sounds like hissea of potential.
The observer problem in quantummechanics sounds like his mind
(09:56):
shapes reality.
But actual proof?
No.
Now, let's widen the frame.
Galileo, house arrest forsuggesting Earth moves around
the sun.
Semmelweiss dies in an asylum,mocked for hand washing.
Russell, dismissed as crank forsaying matter is light.
(10:16):
In each case, the gaslightsounded the same.
The science is settled.
The consensus is secure.
You, sir, are mad.
And in each case, the poetictruth followed.
History will vindicate him.
We weren't ready.
That's the distortion cycle.
(10:38):
Gaslight, dismiss, smooth.
And here's where distorted comesin.
We cling to both stories becausethey make us feel safe, safe
that authority is competent,safe that visionaries will
eventually be vindicated.
But what if both are wrong?
What if Galileo was right, butnot because the system later
admitted it?
What if Semmelweiss was right,but only decades after he was
(11:01):
buried?
What if Russell's poetry willnever be physics?
And that's okay?
The danger isn't just ignoringthe visionary, the danger is
buying the story that explainsaway the discomfort.
Before we dive back in, a quickword about the project that's
bigger than this podcast.
What if the biggest lies you'vebeen told weren't lies at all?
(11:24):
What if they were stories?
Comforting stories, soothingmyths, the kind of poetic truths
that feel good, even whenthey're not true.
That's the game.
Politicians do it, media doesit, institutions do it.
They don't just lie, theydistort.
They gaslight you with shame,they cradle you with bedtime
myths, and that gap betweenperception and reality is where
(11:45):
we're losing the plot.
That's why I wrote Distorted howgaslighting and poetic truth
bend our perception of reality.
It's not another self-help book,it's a survival manual, a guide
for spotting the tricks, dodgingthe spin, and refusing to
outsource your thinking.
Early access is open now.
Find it at Barnes Noble, Amazon,and at gymdechin.com.
(12:09):
And if you do grab a copy,here's my one ask: leave a
review.
Because the world isn't short onlies.
It's drowning in distortions.
Alright, back to the show.
Now, let's steel man theestablishment.
Why did scientists dismissRussell?
(12:31):
Because he had no math, noexperiments, no falsifiable
predictions.
And honestly, that matters.
Peer review, replication,standards, these are the
guardrails that keep sciencefrom sliding into chaos.
If every mystic sketchbook wastaken seriously, you'd drown in
nonsense.
(12:52):
Semmelweiss had data, Galileohad telescopes, Russell had
visions and diagrams.
So you can see why the systemsaid no.
But here's the paradox.
The more ahead of your time youare, the more you'll sound
insane to the present.
I call this the paradox of theprophet.
If your ideas are just one stepbeyond the consensus, you're a
(13:15):
reformer.
If they're five steps beyond,you're a revolutionary.
If they're fifty steps beyond,you're a madman.
And until the world catches up,the prophet looks
indistinguishable from thecrank.
That's the paradox.
And it's why gaslighting andpoetic truth keep colliding in
stories like Russell's.
The establishment gaslights.
(13:36):
You're insane.
The fans counter with poetictruth.
He's just too far ahead.
And reality sits somewhere murkyin the middle.
This is exactly why I wrotedistorted.
To show that both gaslightingand poetic truth are
distortions.
Different masks, same puppetmaster.
So, how do you spot thedistortion next time?
(13:59):
Three tells of sciencegaslighting.
One, credential shaming,dismissing the person, not the
idea, you're not one of us.
2.
Moving goalposts.
Show more proof.
Now more.
Now more again.
3.
Narrative laundering.
When the system eventuallyadmits it, they rewrite history
(14:21):
so it looks like they werealways open.
And two signals to watch for.
1.
Consciousness research.
Serious labs exploring whethermind plays a role in physics.
Not mysticism, but not settledeither.
2.
Cyclic cosmology, bounce models,loop quantum gravity.
(14:42):
No proof yet, but if itadvances, Russell's cosmic
breath metaphor might get asecond look.
That's your field guide.
Straight out of distorted.
Walter Russell, the sculptor whoclaimed to tap the source of all
knowledge, ignored byscientists, embraced by mystics,
(15:02):
gaslit by the establishment,draped in poetic truth by
admirers.
And maybe that's the real story.
Not whether he was right orwrong, but how the stories about
him distort our view of scienceitself.
Because when you strip it down,the distortion is always the
same.
Institutions protect themselveswith shame.
(15:22):
Cults of personality protect thevisionary with myth.
And the truth, whatever it is,gets lost in the fog.
That's why I wrote Distorted.
Because we live in that fogevery day, in politics, in
media, in the culture.
The trick isn't just the lie,it's the story we accept to make
it easy to live with.
(15:42):
So next time you hear someonedismissed as crazy or someone
lionized as a prophet, askyourself who benefits from the
distortion?
Because you don't need all theanswers, but you should question
the ones you're handed.
Until next time, stay skeptical,stay curious, and always think
(16:02):
first.
Want more?
The full six-step framework weuse is at gaslight360.com.
You can also dive into thedeeper story, the bio, the
podcast, and the mission atjimdechen.com.
And if you like this one, tagit, save it, share it.
On X at SpotTheGaslight.
(16:25):
Hashtag spotTheGaslight.
Picture this.
(00:01):
New York, 1930.
The New York Times prints aletter from an American artist
named Walter Russell, a manbetter known for sculpting Mark
Twain and painting presidents.
But this time he's not showingoff marble or oils.
He's challenging Isaac Newton.
Russell writes that gravitationas we know it is wrong, that
matter isn't what we think itis, that everything, rocks,
(00:24):
rivers, even your body, is justcompressed light, shaped by
thought.
Within days, the scientificestablishment swats him down,
professors fire back in theletters page, editors take a
tone somewhere between bemusedand, is this guy serious?
The cultural verdict?
Russell is dismissed as a crank.
Now, here's the tension.
(00:46):
Why do we call someone mad inone generation and visionary in
the next?
Why do institutions sell us thestory that science is an open
marketplace of ideas whenhistory shows us the stalls are
often padlocked?
And why do we cling to theromantic myth, the poetic truth,
that maybe humanity just wasn'tready yet?
(01:08):
Walter Russell's 39-dayIllumination, his 1926
manuscript The Universal One,and his quiet meeting with
Nikola Tesla, they're a casestudy in gaslighting and poetic
truth colliding head on.
This is Think First, where wedon't follow the script.
(01:29):
We question it.
Because in a world full ofpoetic truths and professional
gaslighting, someone's gotta saythe quiet part out loud.
In May of 1921, an Americanpolymath named Walter Russell
disappeared into silence.
For 39 days he lay in what hecalled an illumination, a
(01:50):
coma-like state where, heclaimed, his mind touched the
source of all knowledge.
When he returned, he didn't easeback in.
He exploded, page after franticpage, sketches, formulas,
metaphysics, wave patterns, evencosmology.
It became the bones of a massivemanuscript called the Universal
(02:13):
One.
He mailed it to the great mindsof his day, 500 of them, by his
own account.
Nearly all dismissed him as mad,except one, Nikola Tesla, the
visionary who knew a thing ortwo about being ahead of your
time.
Tesla was so struck that he toldRussell to lock it away, to seal
it for a thousand years.
(02:34):
Humanity, he warned, wasn'tready.
And what was it we weren't readyfor?
That matter isn't solid, butcrystallized light, slowed and
shaped by thought, that theuniverse isn't material, but
mental, pulsing in waves ofexpansion and contraction like
breath.
That good and evil areillusions, everything seeking
(02:58):
balance, that death is justlight, uncompressed, returning
to its source, that time itselfisn't linear, but spiral, past,
present, and future coexisting.
He even claimed electricitywasn't electrons but a living
spiral of energy.
That space itself was not empty,but a sea of untapped potential.
(03:22):
For Russell, health was rhythm.
Disease was imbalance.
Reality itself was mind.
In 1926, this made him a crank.
Today, some call him a prophet.
And between those two poles, thegaslight and the poetic truth,
sits the distortion.
Because the real story isn'tjust about Walter Russell, it's
(03:44):
about how power decides what'sready, how institutions protect
themselves with ridicule, andhow admirers protect their
prophets with myth.
Most of us grow up with thefairy tale version of science.
The story goes like this scienceis self-correcting, objective,
and ruthlessly open to newevidence.
(04:06):
If you've got the data, ifyou've got the experiment, the
system will reward you.
That's the poetic truth.
It's comforting.
It flatters our institutions.
But history tells another story.
Ask Galileo, threatened withtorture for daring to place the
sun at the center.
Ask Semmelweiss, fired andmocked for suggesting doctors
(04:28):
should wash their hands beforedelivering babies.
Ask Walter Russell, lampoonedfor saying matter was
crystallized light.
Different masks, same puppetmaster.
The system doesn't just ignoreoutliers, it gaslights them.
It says, if you don't havecredentials, you don't have
credibility.
It says, if you don't publish inour journals, you don't exist.
(04:51):
It says, your genius is madnessuntil we can repackage it
without crediting you.
And here's the setup.
When you watch how institutionstreat people like Russell, you
start to see the distortion.
The gaslighting?
The shaming and blame shiftingthat keeps the establishment
safe?
The poetic truth?
(05:12):
The cozy bedtime story thatscience is always fair in the
end.
So let me ask, what makes anidea too early?
Who decides when humanity isready?
Why do we crucify visionariesand then canonize them later?
And is the story of scienceitself a gaslight?
(05:36):
This isn't just history, you seeit now in debates about AI,
medicine, and energy.
Dismiss the outsider, smooth itlater.
That's the distortion pattern,and it's exactly the kind of
pattern I track in distorted.
This is the same playbook we'verun for centuries.
Galileo in 1633.
(05:56):
We don't need to look throughyour telescope.
The consensus has spoken.
Semmelweiss in 1847.
Wash our hands?
Absurd.
You're the lunatic here.
Russell in 1926.
Compressed light?
Please.
Stick to your sculpture.
Different centuries.
(06:16):
Same script.
And here's the kicker (06:17):
the gaslight always comes wrapped in
authority.
The credential, the journal, thepodium, the robe.
It tells the public, trust us,he's the crazy one.
That, my friends, is the storywe're sold.
That science is a shiningmeritocracy.
When in reality, it's a humaninstitution, every bit as
(06:38):
political as Congress orHollywood.
And when the establishmentgaslights the visionary, what
story do the admirers tell tomake sense of it?
The poetic truth.
The comforting myth thathumanity just wasn't ready, that
the prophet was a thousand yearsahead.
That Tesla himself whispered toRussell, seal this in a vault.
(06:59):
The world isn't ready yet.
Now, did Tesla really say that?
Yes.
At least according to Russell'swife Lau, who recounted the
meeting in 1956.
There's no Tesla letter, noprimary archive, but the story
has stuck for decades.
Why?
Because it's neat.
(07:20):
It flatters us.
It gives us a reason the worlddidn't listen.
That's how poetic truth works.
It's not necessarily a lie, it'sa story that smooths the
discomfort.
And that's what I unpack anddistorted.
The system gaslights theheretic.
The fans invent a legend tocover the wound.
Both stories bend reality.
(07:45):
So, what did Walter Russellactually claim?
And has any of it held up?
Receipt number one.
Matter is crystallized light.
Russell argued that everythingwe call matter is just slowed
down light, compressed bythought.
Modern physics?
We do talk about mass-energyequivalents, fields,
(08:06):
excitations.
But not that way.
No physicist today teachesthought molds light into atoms.
That's Russell, not Einstein.
Receipt number two.
The universe is mental, notmaterial.
He said mind is the truesubstance.
Matter is just effect.
(08:26):
That's pure metaphysics.
Science doesn't sign off.
But here's the echo.
In consciousness research, somephilosophers ask whether mind is
fundamental.
Panpsychism, integratedinformation theory.
You can see why Russell's wordsstill resonate on the edges.
Receipt number three cycles ofexpansion and contraction.
(08:50):
The cosmos, he said, breathes.
Life and death, night and day,waves.
Mainstream science?
We do model oscillations.
Some cosmologists explorebouncing or cyclic universe
theories.
Echoes again.
But Russell's diagrams, spiralperiodic tables, cosmic waves,
(09:11):
remain fringe.
Receipt number four.
Electricity is not electrons buta living spiral of energy.
Nope.
Flatly contradicted by modernphysics.
Receipt number five.
Death is the release ofcompressed light.
That's poetry, not biology.
Receipt number six.
Time is not linear, but spiral.
(09:34):
Science.
Time is relative, shaped bygravity and velocity.
Spiral?
Not in the equations.
So, do we see resonances?
Yes.
Vacuum energy sounds like hissea of potential.
The observer problem in quantummechanics sounds like his mind
(09:56):
shapes reality.
But actual proof?
No.
Now, let's widen the frame.
Galileo, house arrest forsuggesting Earth moves around
the sun.
Semmelweiss dies in an asylum,mocked for hand washing.
Russell, dismissed as crank forsaying matter is light.
(10:16):
In each case, the gaslightsounded the same.
The science is settled.
The consensus is secure.
You, sir, are mad.
And in each case, the poetictruth followed.
History will vindicate him.
We weren't ready.
That's the distortion cycle.
(10:38):
Gaslight, dismiss, smooth.
And here's where distorted comesin.
We cling to both stories becausethey make us feel safe, safe
that authority is competent,safe that visionaries will
eventually be vindicated.
But what if both are wrong?
What if Galileo was right, butnot because the system later
admitted it?
What if Semmelweiss was right,but only decades after he was
(11:01):
buried?
What if Russell's poetry willnever be physics?
And that's okay?
The danger isn't just ignoringthe visionary, the danger is
buying the story that explainsaway the discomfort.
Before we dive back in, a quickword about the project that's
bigger than this podcast.
What if the biggest lies you'vebeen told weren't lies at all?
(11:24):
What if they were stories?
Comforting stories, soothingmyths, the kind of poetic truths
that feel good, even whenthey're not true.
That's the game.
Politicians do it, media doesit, institutions do it.
They don't just lie, theydistort.
They gaslight you with shame,they cradle you with bedtime
myths, and that gap betweenperception and reality is where
(11:45):
we're losing the plot.
That's why I wrote Distorted howgaslighting and poetic truth
bend our perception of reality.
It's not another self-help book,it's a survival manual, a guide
for spotting the tricks, dodgingthe spin, and refusing to
outsource your thinking.
Early access is open now.
Find it at Barnes Noble, Amazon,and at gymdechin.com.
(12:09):
And if you do grab a copy,here's my one ask: leave a
review.
Because the world isn't short onlies.
It's drowning in distortions.
Alright, back to the show.
Now, let's steel man theestablishment.
Why did scientists dismissRussell?
(12:31):
Because he had no math, noexperiments, no falsifiable
predictions.
And honestly, that matters.
Peer review, replication,standards, these are the
guardrails that keep sciencefrom sliding into chaos.
If every mystic sketchbook wastaken seriously, you'd drown in
nonsense.
(12:52):
Semmelweiss had data, Galileohad telescopes, Russell had
visions and diagrams.
So you can see why the systemsaid no.
But here's the paradox.
The more ahead of your time youare, the more you'll sound
insane to the present.
I call this the paradox of theprophet.
If your ideas are just one stepbeyond the consensus, you're a
(13:15):
reformer.
If they're five steps beyond,you're a revolutionary.
If they're fifty steps beyond,you're a madman.
And until the world catches up,the prophet looks
indistinguishable from thecrank.
That's the paradox.
And it's why gaslighting andpoetic truth keep colliding in
stories like Russell's.
The establishment gaslights.
(13:36):
You're insane.
The fans counter with poetictruth.
He's just too far ahead.
And reality sits somewhere murkyin the middle.
This is exactly why I wrotedistorted.
To show that both gaslightingand poetic truth are
distortions.
Different masks, same puppetmaster.
So, how do you spot thedistortion next time?
(13:59):
Three tells of sciencegaslighting.
One, credential shaming,dismissing the person, not the
idea, you're not one of us.
2.
Moving goalposts.
Show more proof.
Now more.
Now more again.
3.
Narrative laundering.
When the system eventuallyadmits it, they rewrite history
(14:21):
so it looks like they werealways open.
And two signals to watch for.
1.
Consciousness research.
Serious labs exploring whethermind plays a role in physics.
Not mysticism, but not settledeither.
2.
Cyclic cosmology, bounce models,loop quantum gravity.
(14:42):
No proof yet, but if itadvances, Russell's cosmic
breath metaphor might get asecond look.
That's your field guide.
Straight out of distorted.
Walter Russell, the sculptor whoclaimed to tap the source of all
knowledge, ignored byscientists, embraced by mystics,
(15:02):
gaslit by the establishment,draped in poetic truth by
admirers.
And maybe that's the real story.
Not whether he was right orwrong, but how the stories about
him distort our view of scienceitself.
Because when you strip it down,the distortion is always the
same.
Institutions protect themselveswith shame.
(15:22):
Cults of personality protect thevisionary with myth.
And the truth, whatever it is,gets lost in the fog.
That's why I wrote Distorted.
Because we live in that fogevery day, in politics, in
media, in the culture.
The trick isn't just the lie,it's the story we accept to make
it easy to live with.
(15:42):
So next time you hear someonedismissed as crazy or someone
lionized as a prophet, askyourself who benefits from the
distortion?
Because you don't need all theanswers, but you should question
the ones you're handed.
Until next time, stay skeptical,stay curious, and always think
(16:02):
first.
Want more?
The full six-step framework weuse is at gaslight360.com.
You can also dive into thedeeper story, the bio, the
podcast, and the mission atjimdechen.com.
And if you like this one, tagit, save it, share it.
On X at SpotTheGaslight.
(16:25):
Hashtag spotTheGaslight.
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