It Could Happen Here Weekly 7

s i s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly. Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the best storytelling in sports for seventy years, and now that continues. On our show. Each week will dive deep into the best stories from around the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now. Raf He is the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation,

Baby So Who is the Man behind Baby Bluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When we start with, all good things can grow from there. I'm Chris Garcia, Comedian, new dad and host of Finding Raffie, a new podcast from my heart Radio and fatherly listen every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know.

This is a compiletion episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Wellcome to spook Oooky Week, a week where we are not really any spooky or honestly than the average things happening, because everything happening is is terrifying

and like ghosts and ghoules are are a lot more fun. Anyway, hang up in this podcast, don't listen, Go watch Herbert West reanimat or have some fun um. But if you decide to keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we have a bunch of spooky content for you this week. How was that? How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad? All right, Garrison, get going do your thing? Yeah, my my thing. So yeah, we're doing. We're doing spooky spooky Week,

which is very excited about. But yeah, every everyone ive told about spooky Week, They're like, oh, so it's just a regular week for for the show, Like, yeah, pretty much, it's more fun, but it is in a few ways. It is actually gonna be more fun because this the spook key spooky goddamn yes, spookoky mind bedding tales actually do have do have some more fun than just the solely depressing ones. I mean, this was this was the

first theme week that we all agreed upon. This was the first like can we do something around spooky nous near Halloween? And everybody younestly said yes, yes, yes, this is the first theme week. Um, we have we we have. We have been promising Nut Week coming up. Eventually we're going to tease about things that made us nut or where we talk about the legumes mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, Um, but anyway, we should we should have start off our first,

our first spooky tale. Um, so I'm going I'm going to tell a very very spooky tale of a of an entire French town going going mad over the course of a single week. Yeah, probably probably with the help of psychoactive drugs and a certain three letter agency. You know what, I think we're going to get to do Garrison accent. You can't be racist against the French. They're like the British or Americans. I didn't get a new messages saying that your French accent was very racist, Tore.

There is a certain number. It's like the Germans. There's a certain number of genocides after which people get to make fun of your country and it's not racist. And that number is, let's say three. Honestly, the worst part of this story is that we're probably doing critical support for France. I mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm gonna be kind of more critical support to the CIA by the end of this one. Um yeah, that's that

is the most critical support can be. So anyway, our very spooky tail begins in ninet one in a small, charming French village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is how I'm gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um so, not much happened in this little picturesque, little little town on the south side of France. You know, Uh, on the day we start, it's just like a regular summer day people are going about their routine, going to their jobs, kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly

baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um. And I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild, mild mild effects here. So on in August, first dozens, then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nausea, uh you know, and some people with some like stomach and abdominable pain. They're coming up less often, less often. Noted, there was a few instances of like vomiting and diarrhea um only, but the represented people had diarrhea. That is

that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on like a town wide basis three significant thirty Sorry, yeah, it's a significant strain on the sewage. The people affected. It's just gonna be like a few hundred versus I was taking drugs with a group of friends. Third of them had diarrhea. I would say, we might need to go to a hospital that we have taken someone that

perhaps what we got was tainted. There is there is Yeah, well we'll be talking about what actually what the actual drugs being used here are going to be, but that's something where that's not an uncommon side effect. But yeah, first, first nausea, a little a little bit of vomiting, stomach pains, cramping. Um. Hospitals began reporting people experiencing alternating warm and cold waves

over their body. Uh. The British Medical Journal recalls abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor, which I'm guessing the odor is just because there's all those sting people in the same cramped hospital room in the summer. In the summer heats. Yeah, so anyway in their French so a lot of scargo sweats. I don't want to get more messages saying that I

have to stopped to do it more. By the way, do we know that the diarrhea was the result of whatever substance or maybe it's just the wine ships again, we don't we there's no way to tell. So yeah. Patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure around their neck, which yeah, um. And one of the one of the most reported symptoms was in insomnia, in some cases lasting several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal, the first symptoms appeared after a latent period of six to forty

eight hours. The digestive disorders quickly became worse, with burning sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced sensations of burning at the anus. A state giddiness persisted. I mean, who's not giddy when your anus is burning? Am I? Right? I fear like like this is like this is like the like the clear side that there's like some some psychoactive job going on, because like your anus is burning

and yet your very you are born. Yeah, it's like that sign from that what is that from a rejected by what? What? What's the cartoonist? Like my anus is bleeding, but like you're down, you know, you're down for it? Yeah, yeah, you're you're John Millenny impression. No, no, no, it's it wasn't a John Linney impression. So far, that's just your poison millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah, great artist, Yeah, great artist.

So these pale and limp patients, still quoting the British Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous trembling of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of the visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So this this is this is the more mild. This is the could one ar So this is for many people affected,

this is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia for a while, with you know, mild disorders of the visual accommodation um and you know, and the stomach pains and like weird like neck things, after they were able to sleep. That was the sign of their recovery. Is like the ability to sleep again. African insomnia war off. But in a in around fifty of the cases reported, the effects were much more intense. Um. I'm going to continue from from the medical journal first and then get

into some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh. Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All of these visions were fleeting, invariable in many of the patients. They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right. That's actually pretty good description of like l s A LSD.

Those kind of like that. Movies always get it wrong because you're not usually not like you're not seeing some sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's these kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things in the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty good especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly they were on because then they definitely can be the more

cartoon la. I mean, you can get full open eyed hallucination, like especially the shogun chemicals will do that that I don't get it so much with like LSD, L, S A, and L say, if you want to shoot yourself that is that is right some Hawaiian baby wood rows seats from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So the delirium seems to be systematized with animal hallucinations and

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

were followed by fugus, which is an old um for like fugues. Says fugues. Yeah, it's pronounced fugue. It's it's like it's it's like, it's like extreme, it's extreme disassociation. Yeah. Yeah, you're kind of zombified a little bit. Yeah, and two and two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah. The delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be interpreted for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt

at restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's restraining. I've had to restrain a number of people and it does not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah, this sounds like a real, real bad time to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted several hours, several hours and some patients and in others they persisted overnight. So that and then here it's it's we're gonna get

a little bit darker and then we're gonna have more fun. Um. We observed four fatal cases, three men and one woman. Three of these people were old and in bad health. One of the men was only twenty five years old and had been in good health previously. They died in a muscular spasm in a state of cardiovascular collapse. I think this is probably mostly due to how the doctors were handling these patients. I mean, obviously your your blood pressure,

want that can elevate when you're hallucinating. But yeah, I think it also has a lot to do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right. Um, the disorder has developed more quickly in children, but also left them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the cases was that the delirium it was the first sign to be noted, So it depends people come up him up on different ways, or some of them first had a weird body feel like some of them first started just

seeing stuff. Um. One other interesting tidbit that we're not going to spend much time talking about, but like around two weeks after this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear, either through like a secondary poison egg or it was like some kind of like acid flashback. Yeah, it must, it must, because I've done a buckload to ASCID. I've never had a flashback. Um, I did at one point I mean, I have like done some damage and so

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

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

dose these people were getting. With the CIA, with dosed people, they were sometimes giving people doses people do not take like you do not take that much like hundreds or thousands or millions of yeah, ridiculous, irresponsible doses. Yeah. So now now we're going to get to some of the some of the more fun descriptions here, which we can actually kind of like, based on our experiences, can actually kind of see like what was actually going on in

these people's heads. Um, So basically we had at least dozens and dozens of people tripping very very hard. Um. The local postman was doing his rounds on his bicycle when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations. Quoting him, it was terrible. I had the sense, I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah, that guy

had some other stuff going. Yeah, because the very first acid trip was on a bicycle when Heinrich Kaufman like made it and dosed himself. He started coming up. I believe it was an Amsterdam like riding his bicycle, which is like, well, this is lovely, Yeah, I've made something cool. Why was the postman riding a bicycle to deliver packages? And because because we do not have vis It's fifties, it's not there to France, I mean that I'm sorry,

pot So. Yeah, the mailman fell off his bike and was taken to the taking to a hospital in a nearby town. He was putting a straight jacket, and he shared a room with three teenagers who were also tripping, and the teenagers were changed to their beds to keep them under control. Yeah, that's that's how it sounds horrible. Flashbacks to this, to being chained to a bed tripping. Yeah, that's so bad. Some of my friends trying to get

out the window. They were thrashing wildly, screaming in the sound of the metal beds and jumping up and down. The noise was terrible. I would prefer I would prefer to die then go through that again. This sounds like like the worst acid trip you could go. That sounds like about the worst way you could have a trip go. It sounds awful. So back in the French town, a little girl screamed as she was being chased by man eating tigers. A woman sobbed about how her children had

been ground into sausages. Oh great, and specific a large men founded off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture and using the wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy, good for you. Husband and wife right around chasing each other with nys. Again, probably something else going on there. My guesses we're not just talking the acid and that because I have been on acid a lot around knives and

other weapons. I've never chased some money. I've never chased someone around with knives like the couple who was on the verge of a knife chick. I think, I think, I think the important part here is that like in this French town, like acid wasn't a thing yet, Like like like lucinogenic drugs weren't a thing, right, even like even like mushrooms weren't popular around this time, no one

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

would like during this, Yeah, we would. We would take a bunch of drugs and grab my A K forty seven and hike out into the woods and we would shoot down a fir tree and we would drag it back to a clearing and we would bury it standing up, and we would drape it in pig intestines and put a pig's heart on it, and when we cover it in gasoline and lighted with firecrackers and dance around it like the pagans of old. But there was nothing aggressive about no. You you you very rarely would want to

hurt somebody on acid. And my experience like you generally generally are at least like way more compassionate in a lot of ways. Um, But if you have no idea what acid is and you're just you're in the nineteen fifties and you're losing your mind and you're seeing weird things that, Yeah, I can see how this would maybe cause some other types of behavior. You just think that because is angry at you, like like like it's like they're not they're not dosing themselves either, like they're being

dosed rights like they don't. It's very different where like you're deciding to go with a trip versus this is happening to you when you have no decision. I think for basically anyone in this position, the logical assumption would be, oh, the devil has taken over our town and our minds have we have been infested with demons. Like that's what else are you going to assume? You're not gonna be like, Oh, this drug that's just barely been invented and that nobody

really knows about yet except are weird nerds. It must be some version of that that I've taken accidentally. No, you're going to do in your blood. So one interesting tid. But before we before we go and break, um, even some of the local animals had been affected by whatever poison in the town. Um there there was there was one dog in particular that kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away like this, And and ducks were

behaving very odd. Um it's described it. They were. They were walking around erect and upright, like penguins in a line. And they're just like weird, weird behavior from ducks I've heard so far that kind of makes me want to dose our ducks. Scares. We are not We're not wasting acid on the ducks a lot. I mean, there's a lot of things you could give ducks. We're not. We're not giving ducks assets. That's not a thing about giving ducks drugs. Is they're all monsters. That is true. They

are monsters and rapists, every one of them. Yeah, ducks. So anyway, re occurring theme was that people were running around wildly and being very fearful of like monstery animals and encroaching flames. Um, it sounds like the ducks are having a good time doing their ministry of silly walk shit. Like, I don't know what all these people are bummed about. This is rad okay. So when when you first said that, I heard dogs and I was like, that is the

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

They're pretty're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what is also very spooky? Yeah, capitalism and all of these spooky advertising to sell things. Advertisements are also a form of mind control. Speaking of the CIA in the fifties anyway,

profoundly damaging. We are back from the spooky advertised yeah anyway. Um. So, I think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot of these people have very similar types of experiences around like snakes, um, which we're talking about later, and like flames, is like with this many people tripping and no one knows what tripping is. I think it's really easy for an idea or a fear to spread from one person

to another while they're tripping. Um. With like this many people, I think if someone says something, it's going to start happening to someone else, and it's kind of kind of this like cascading effect where they're all developed these very similar fear is because it's almost like being spread like an infection. Um. So there was there was a one man convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain and he jumped out a window. Oh did he live to this?

He did live? Um? I'm guessing a lot of these It's it's like France in the fifties, So I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super They're not super high up. No, No, you're like falling a foot or two. Although here we have another one. Another mad reportedly left for a window yelling, look, everyone, I'm a dragonfly. The men broke. The men broke both legs, but he stood up and continued running. Rad king Sigma stigma behavior absolute sigma.

This is a new kind of man. Just drapped. Look everyone, I have a dragonfly, breaks both legs to keeps running. Based on the information you've provided us, I can't say he's not a dragon. No, he is an absolute, absolute king. Good for I hope he had a great life. Yeah. Another one saw his heart escape through his feet and beseeched the doctor to try to put it back into place. You don't want to have that happen. That doesn't sound fun. You want to keep that somewhere around the middle of

your body. Someone sprinted down the lane, claiming that he was being chased by bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river. A man was convinced that he was a circus tight rope walker and attempted to balance his way across the cables of a suspension bridge. No, it doesn't say. The report does not tell you. He's not in the death report. Yeah he's. And therefore another another person did try to die in the river. He tried to jump into the river,

only to be saved by his friends. And he was screaming, I am dead, I am dead, and my head is made of copper, and I have snakes in my stomach and they are burning me. It's such a weird description of like tripping and saying like my head is made of copper. I'm trying to think of what was going on, what, like what what series of events did did he spiral down in his brain to have that sentence I did? I'm not quite sure. It's it's it's it's definitely. I

can definitely see it happening. I just I just I'm trying to think, like we're exactly what what happened to

get to that point. It's really really interesting. I think some of these are hard because again it's like these people just think literally think they're going insane or that like this stuff is just actually happening to them, Like you were like when when you're tripping on acid, you already kind of have the feeling that there is moments where you feel like this is like this is like never gonna end, even though even though you know you

know you're on acid. These people don't know that, right, Like these people don't have the reascernce to like, no, I took acid, I'm on a drug. This is gonna be over. They think this is gonna last forever, right Like they think this this is just the world now, like this is just one of those Anton Wilson, who is a thinker I enjoy a lot, writes a lot about how to calm people down when they've taken too much, and most of his advices around talking about like, okay,

well how long ago did you take it? Hey, well that the good news is that this is going to end here you know it's only gonna last this long, like you're you're through this point. Oh, this is the this is the second hour, freakies, and by the third hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it. Like it's all about making keeping in people's minds like this is going to pass. So yeah, you're right, Like this is

the fucking worst way to take drugs. Alright, So local newspapers uh and also like in national newspapers described described this as a among the stricken delirium rose patients thrash wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, people throwing themselves some rooftops, men and women throwing their clothes off and running in the streets naked, and children complaining their stomachs were infested with coils and snakes.

Which I mean, half of that sounds like, yeah, that's like a normal good time just running around the streets naked on acid. Other I was like, yeah, that that doesn't seem pleasant with coils and snakes in your stomach, but also like flowers blossoming fund your body. I can, I can, I can understand that kind of sensation. Um, but like it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the

night like nightmare we were. We already mentioned the giddy people with burning anuses, um, but for like the full and tripping folks. According to the New York Times, there's reports of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing you know, bright colors the world look beautiful to them. Apparently the head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of pages of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must be sick as ship because knowing nothing, he starts tripping. Not

knowing he's tripping. It's just like time to make some fucking art. You know what, this head state is good for writing some ship. He just went to his cabinets wrote poetry. That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll bet he handled just everything that life through it. Well, Like that says a lot about you when you're like, oh, demons have infiltrated my brain. Yes, I'm gonna hang out in my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow, like I could. I can hardly write ship on acid.

I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a lot of creative stuff on acid. Creative stuff. Yeah, I just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can be hard at certain points. You know, if if you're like coming down that it can be easier. But like a good for like writing, it's good for ideas that you later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately, you know, because this was you know, no one who

was going on. Many people were taken to local asylums in straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I can't even be angry at them because like they don't know what's going you know, like you no idea what's going on the whole, Like every attemptant restraint increase the agitation line. It's like horrifying from the concept of like

you're tripping, you do you do? You don't know what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds, making you feel like you're even more stuck in this permanent set of delirium. It's just it's just it is the worst nightmare. Yeah, if this is horrible, The mayor of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men and women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets, hiding

themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah, it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary, except for the poetry guy. Good for him, yeah, good for him. Um yeah, so, but by by the time the effects had subsided for everyone affected, which is around like a few days after the initial reported like nausea, like you know, not it didn't affect everyone at the same time. You know, some

people got dosed later on. It's it's it's unclear what exactly because it's of the fifties, we didn't have a great idea of the exact timeline of events of like when the first effects were felt and like how all the was spaced out. But this whole instant arrassed lasted

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

of this stuff. UM. An investigation into the sudden outbreak of the madness was probably underway. Town officials wanted to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Do you want to figure out what was happening? Um, and the blame fell onto a single batch of bread, so among the common denominator among those affected that they all allegedly consumed bread from one specific baker. He was accused of using er got contaminated rye flower, and he

was arrested and a temporarily imprisoned um. Also, a nearby miller that he got the flower from was also arrested and given some of the blame um. The funny part is that around this time, the French government had a very top down grain distribution system that originally controlled everything about where the grains were milled, where they were sent, and what bakers could use which flower, so bakers had no choice and what type of flower to use or what kind of a grain they could use some baking.

It was all decided by other people because France bread is like real big deal and pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah, for the record, just like air got poisoning. There are a lot of cases of like different like dancing manias and whatnot in like the medieval in medieval Europe, or like whole towns will be well, everyone will start like dancing or like hallucinating, and you know they always came down as like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about

like demon possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of the suspicion is like, oh yeah, some air god gotten No, yeah it was. It was just poisoning. It seems like one of the rougher trips to go on. It's not super clean, it's no. I mean I've done L s A, which I think is similar and similar to their tripp to means that are like really rough in it's I would not don't don't do L s A. No. Hawaiian baby wood roase seeds for if you're going to take L s A, than actually like synthesizing, which is fel um.

But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood roase seeds and eat them and you will have maybe the worst trip of your life. Great advice from the from the pod um. So yeah, on on on on the on the On the rye and ergot topic, the past growing season was especially wet and orgot fun guy did grow across the country's rye fields. Um, but the amount of ergot on the rye and the amount of rye used in baking was thought to not be enough to induce

any any type of poisoning. Um. In fact that the last time or like orgot poisoning had struck France was back in was back in eighteen sixteen, so almost like a century and a half before this incident, and a century if it's the fifties, right, litt less than a century. No, So the last instant was eighteen sixteen. This was nine no, no, a century and a half ago. Um. And no other towns anything, and no other part of France was affected by anything similar to this. Um. So the ur got

thing is kind of iffy um it. But the explanation was the only thing that doctors investigators could come to would do, like you know, the their their limited knowledge around brain altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get to the bottom of this so that they

had something to blame and people could move on. Um. But you know, as a result, not much evidence really backs up there backs up there got claim, and a lot of experts today kind of deemon bunk um it doesn't There's and and there's a bunch of like, um, there's this thing hike on that the Greeks would take that was like this Greek collucinatory thing that they think it was because they were putting grain and wine and it might have been air got poisoned, but also like

people enjoyed it, and so there's a lot of debate over whether or not it could have been ergot But I don't know, Um, I don't know what else is There are other other theories about what it might Boy is it the CIA? Where can they get to it? So, yeah, it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts of urgot rye would only be in one batch of grain used in a single batch of bread from just

one bakery in one small town. Doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um. Other explanations um that people have come to includes like mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been mostly disproven that seem like mercury poisoning. No, but there is a guy who likes to drink some mercury, you know, boy. So yeah, So there's a lot of other theories around, like fungic sides being used, but those have been kind of disproved by some people, but others still a point

to them as possible explanations. But but there is one other theory that we will focus on that features two of my favorite things uh LSD and the nineteen fifties CIA because if you're gonna pick a c I A, they had the most fun. They had the most right, Like you know who else has a lot of fun? Garrison who is also the nineteen fifties c i A whom our sponsors. Oh really gonna happen here is sponsored only by the fifties c i A. Only the one

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

won't have to do it, you won't. You want to do any expenses ever again. Yeah, you'll survive. You'll just be a very different person by the end of the Yeah, you you won't survive your body with it. At the end of that someone else will wake up. So I speaking of taking up here as a products so nineteen fifties c I A UM wild time in two US

and nine. Hank P. Albarelli is an an American writer and journalist released a book called A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on the suspicious death of a CIA scientist named Frank Olson, who worked on the CIA mind control experiments

during the late forties and early fifties. While researching the book, Albarelli claims to have come across a number of old CIA and White House documents referencing the Pont Saint de Sprite incident, and he claims that the village was the target of a CIA experiment on the mass effects of LSD and that around the time that Frank Olsen wanted to sever his ties with the Army and CIA, Frank started talking about his participation in the experiment, which may

have led to the government off in Olson. So I know that is a lot and it is slightly more than justice speculation. We're going to get into the evidence here shortly, UM, but by now it's pretty well known that throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties, both the U. S. Army and the CIA tried to use hallucinoge hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as both an offensive weapon and as

a way to make like psychic super soldiers. Programs like mk Ultra and k Naomi Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, UM, Lots of lots of these things were trying to find different ways of using LSD for like offensive and defensive means. UM. Some of the interest was promoted by was was prompted by reports of the Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs around the same time. Also stuff around like you know, hYP like like like like psychic powers and hypno says.

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

And later in his to US A nine book a Really claims that he found references to a government document with the label rett SPRI and f Olsen files s O SPAN slash France Operation File inclusive Olsen intel files. Hand Carrie to Bellan, tell him to see to it that these are buried. Um, this document does exist like we we we like we we we we we do have this label on on this document um, but like the actual contents of the documents are are gone. But this is this is this is this is just a

label that is being referenced asle. So the document label references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So. Bellan was the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created by the White House in the mid seventies to investigate abuses carried out

worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So Albrely believes that the that the French town lst incident um, which is like the pont Stre which is the name of the town, and the f Olson files mentioned in the document would definitely show that if the document hadn't been buried as it was said in the in the label the CIA, it would show that the CIA was experimenting on the townspeople by dosing them with what he thinks was lsd UM.

Now there is also a bit more to it than that. Um. Using Foya's he got ahold of another CIA document, a two page report from nine Team fifty four detailing a conversation between a CIA agent and a representative of the

San DAWs Chemical Company. So this the Sandas base was the place where Albert Hoffman invented LSD in night Um and it was it was it was only a few hundred kilometers away from pont St Ausprie, the town where this happened, So the chemical company was actually pretty pretty close relatively to like europe Um and it was also the only place where LSD was being made at the time. And they were providing both the Army and the CIA

with a lot of a lot of acid. But you mean they're also giving it like they're also giving it to universities. They gave lots to Timothy Laria initially they were. They were, and a lot to tim Larry they were. They were giving a g out to a lot of

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

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

an LSD like compound. Um, So that's that was the that was report or to detail like a dinner that a CIA agent had with this scientist um, and that document was uncovered that it was from like the fifties. Now this this, this next part has a little bit less proof to it because there's no documents backing this up. But al Brelli also claims that Dirk is digging too forward. CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed some details of some possible details of the method of

the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected to an air blitz of pulverized LSD. I'm sorry, that's fucking based so to force the people taking the substance through the air. According to the researchers, this manner of just of this manner of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um, forcing the CIA to move onto phase two, which was contaminating local food. So apparently the if the if if the air blitz was a thing, it didn't work super well. Um.

Although actually about to have Sophie Bias a plane. We will talk about this later, but um, the c A did do more air blitzing um of of acid in New York City. Actually, they would ride around in cars um in like poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM, shooting LSD out of the back of the car to see what would happen if, I mean take out the racism. And that really is a dream job, just driving around cities air dosing people with acid and random smoking cigarettes.

Probably so with the conclusion drawn that it was one of the town's bakeries being the source of the poisoning, Albrel says it was possible that LSD was put in or onto the bread um. So yeah, and also lots of the scientists lots of the scientists dispatched to investigate the poisoning after it took place, where actually from the

Sandals Chemical Company me. UM. They studied the situation for like two or three weeks UM and gave the explanation that would later be kind of disproven, uh, that it was got poisoning, which they they told the town officials and the British medical journal. Um what what, What no one knew at the time was that one the existence of LSD in the first place, UM, and two that San DAWs was the company making it and giving these

drugs to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM. And apparently apparently Albert Hoffman himself went to the town to investigate this incident. UM. So yeah. And one last thing on like the physical evidence side of things UM.

Albarelli also found an undated White House document that appeared to be part of a larger file that had been sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission, containing the names of two French nationals who had been secretly employed about the CIA and made direct references to the quote pont Saint Sprit incident UM. Also it was linked the document linked former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief of

the Fort Derrick's Special Operations to vision. So those are all places that they were experiencing with this similar kind of thing. Um we we we have mentioned the Rockefeller Commission a few times now for remember the names, uh, Frank Olsen, the guy one of the CIA researchers on LSD, and David Bellan. Where they were they were they were

on the label of that missing document. So but Bellin was the executive director of the White House Commission to investigate the CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the Rockefeller Commission. It was formed by President Ford in nineteen seventy five to investigate abuses and other activities by the CIA and a few other intelligence agencies that were operating within the States. Um. So, the Rockefeller Commission revealed not only like the reason why we know but m Kaeltro

was because the Rockefeller Commission. This is this is how we know this was a thing. Um. So it not only revealed stuff about like programs around m k Ultra, but also revealed the details of the CIA dosing their own scientist, Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly killing him. Um there's also like there's like a Netflix series about this called Would Work and Haven't. I haven't actually watched yet, so I don't know how good or accurate it is,

but they did. They did make a series a few years ago about the death of Frank Olson Um and all of the weirds get yourself, surrounding both his job and and and and and his death. Um. We do love the CIA, folks. So the The commission also concluded that the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor Sydney ghost Leap, destroyed all of the drug programs records in nineteen seventy three to hide the details of possibly illegal actions, and he was personally involved in the torture of Frank

Olsen Um. Twenty years after Mr Olsen's death and ten years after the elistic experiments were halted, a doctor Godlieb ordered the destruction of all the records of the program, including a total of one hundred and fifty two separate files. This came shortly after other reports that that that records were being destroyed by Richard helms That, the then Director of Central Intelligence. So it's undoubtedly true that the CIA was up to up to some ship involving les D

around around the exact time period of this French Town incident. Yeah, it's certainly not like you're not coming out of nowhere suggesting the CIA may have dosed all these people, but they set it to a bunch of folks. If they

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

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

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

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

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

they were all actually being dosed with. Yeah, who the funk knows what they were being given and who the funk knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah,

we have no no idea. It's also you know, I think it's Leary was the origin of the phrase that like the things that determine what happens on a trip or set setting in dose, so your mindset, where you take it and who you take it around, and the dose and the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could be to the fact that like other people taking acid have never taken it this way and without knowing what acid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around

like the delivery system. He says, it's absurd this idea of transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting it in the bread as for pulver as to get for ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible at the time. Most compelling Lee why would they choose the town of pont Sta Spree to conduct these tests. It was half destroyed by the U. S Army during fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It makes no sense. And and to that, I say, that

makes it the perfect town for the CIA to fun with. Me. Yeah, they generally would choose to dose someone with acid because it sounded funny. Like I think the fact that this town was already kind of like only half inhabited and half destroyed by the by the Second World War, that

makes the perfect town to work with like. Yeah. And also they also, the CIA and the government very much did have the means to try to distribute stuff via the air, because we can see other we can see other documents around the time of them doing this too, specific areas of of New York City. They also tried to poison the entire New York Subway with LSD in the fifties, but that was shut down by higher ups in in the Central Intelligence. Um. Fortunately, God what a

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

modernly think of the drug. Also, I don't I don't think Caplin's ever taken LSD, So I don't think I think he's right about it probably not being air got. But I don't think he knows much. Yeah, hell he also he also He also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the fierce temperatures of the Baker's oven, although Albarelli counters that it could have been that LSD could have been added after the fact to the surface

of the breach. You could just drop it on, you could you just drop it on with like with like liquid blodders, which also explain how the effects were so different from person to person, because one person may be having a whole drop of LSD, where somebody maybe only have like a tiny little like you know, speck of like speck of like like moist liquid. So I can explain some things, but you know, this is still pretty

much a mystery. You know, it's very clear this very much, very well could have been some kind of hidden LSD. C I a experiment um or the CIA could have just been you know, interested in studying what happened in the town since they were also doing studies into psychoactives substances at the time. Um, it could be either or um. And that's where it's spooky because you'll never know. So, yes,

that is that. That is the spooky incident of a French town basically thinking that they lost their minds and then you know they love to see it, do we. It is a little funny. It is definitely a little funny. Um, it's it is a great example of like the worst way to trip. Yeah that that's that's pretty high up there. Um. Anyway, critical support to the CIA for doosing random people with acid.

Always one of my favorite sets of stories. You you love to see it, so yeah, tune tune in, tune in tomorrow for more spooky, spooky story and you can follow the spooky social media that poisons your brain at pap in here, pod and cool Zone media which yes, Twitter will poison your brain. That is just as spooky, um, spooky, way worse for your brain than surprise c I a askeid.

To be honest, the acid wears off the gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld and criminals and entertainers to victims's crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game Gainst. The Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilstit activities. We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because at the wall she played gainst games. You are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes.

Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts, but don't take our award for it. Find Against the Chronicles podcast and my Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to our show. I'm Zoie de Chanel and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to

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

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

From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow Girls. I Always wanted to kill somebody started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer survant, kicking up these girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability when he got hold of their neck. That was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks of the Green River and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name.

How many times did you bring the camera? One of time? Just want He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother, and he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go in the woods, all of the kind of strange, you know how he feels about prostitutes. Listen to the Shadow Girls on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm so to clicking

leaf meeting. Every time that that bullshit comes up, It's like, yes, I can sent. That's why I'm fucking here. All right. So we we're starting with that line from Daniel Well, come to spooky. It could happen here today. We are discussing a truly spooky topic, one that everyone is just really gonna hate. Uh. And it's we're talking about let's say esoteric Kecki is um and me magic. So Shanni A, my brothers and sisters come along on a Rhow we read a whole book for this? Oh? I at least

I did you read a book just for this? I would say that like all of the books I read from age nineteen to twenty two prepared me have been preparing here for that. Yeah, the books I read while I was doing psychedelics twice a week. All really, we're good background on this subject. That is true. You want

to kick us off and I don't. So I think firstly we're talking about we're gonna we're gonna emphasize awareness over amplification or that kind of my my goal for this is that we can all be more aware of kind of the power that images on the Internet can have over influencing the actual world, and talking about people who believe this to a ridiculous degree and how they actually have been able to institute change not only because of this belief, just because of their dedication to this practice,

because it's it's because it's a thing that exists and it has had real world ramifications, and it's good to understand that that's a thing, and that also maybe we can influence the way we like us use the internet to also maybe make good things happen as opposed to just being doomers all the time. Um So that's kind of what I wanted to start with. Many jobs to

that Garrison complete keck with you God. Although to be fair, the past few days I have just been spamming the it could happen here a group chat with horrible nonsense surround cack. It has been the most insufferable week of my life. Horrible nonsense like like paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs, walls of text so big. Any any actually safe working environment

that cared about its employees would have fired you long ago. Yeah. So, I think the other thing that we should definitely mention is that any type of like occultism, mysticism or like woo woo um has actually does have a decent history within right wing political ideas, and specifically like you know, like more extreme like right wing um stuff in the past few years, like everyone's most people know that like the modern not like the like the early Nazis had

some mystical stuff going on. There's a lot more stuff going behind the scenes. A lot of their favorite authors also were like practicing occultists. Um so this is this is this is a thing that goes back awhile you can even see this to some degree with like how close Christianity is to a lot of the right wing, to a lot of like the modern right wing the States as well, a lot of what we would consider evangelical Christianity has a lot of stuff that's actually very

similar to occultism. They just use different terms because occultism and and like magic is taboo. But it's actually the same things. It's all like just it's inter it's interacting with the same systems, just with different words. So like this is this is the thing that is is not it's it's not just on the internet. This is thing that's been going on for thousands of years. In particular the past one years, we've seen a big rise in

the amount of like occultism and mysticism specifically tied to politics. Yeah, and there's this. I mean, there have been a couple of articles written just recently about the fact that a lot of like the Woo Woo left, the kind of um not really esoteric but kind of mainstream a culti left, like the popa culti left has has increasingly turned towards stuff like Q and on and a big chunk of it is like this, this openness to like feel power in coincidences, synchronicity would be they and and just a

general open mindedness to um maybe too many things. Sure, Yeah, I mean it's you can see this on on on a lot of a lot of sides because it's yeah, it's it is definitely not just the right wing. I mean, it's like the biggest example of this would probably be facets of Q and on the past few years have done very similar types of things. Uh, there's a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes, like how how Pepe operated was very similar to that, which is

what we're mainly talking about today. Um, but you know, there is also stuff like this on on the left wing, whether it be like New a g type stuff that seems to kind of mostly be bullshit, but there's a you know, other other type of like like like like folk magic or like indigenous traditions that have that have i would say slightly more uh significantly more like there's reasonable actually stuff going on as opposed to just like new Age selling books and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

One of the things that also separates actual religion from religion that kind of has formed in this nomadic way recently is that all of this stuff, particularly what we're talking about today, formed simultaneously with political sentiment and as and and was was crafted and in a lot of cases, like they they state facts wrong specifically because they are trying to craft a political narrative alongside this like weird

quasi spiritual things. I mean, speaking of spiritualism coming to the same kind of coming to the same and this is you know, we're all kind of anarchistic adjacent here. And one of the things that really came up around the same time as anarchism in the twentieth century was a concept called chaos magic, which was really really really tied to a lot of old really tied to a lot of like anarchist thought and anarchists kind of thinkers. Some of the most same with chaos magicians are like

explicitly anarchist, someone like Grant Morrison. Um. Others are like Discordians, which have a lot of like anarchists crossover stuff, like like Robert Enton Wilson, which kind of operates in that same ocean. Yeah, he played a big role in kind of pulling me away from proto alt right style beliefs.

And I think also a lot of his work was very intelligently crafted because he wrote about conspiracies, he wrote about esoteric magic, but always with a really intent eye on increasing people's defenses to this kind of stuff what we're talking about today. Um, he was very like cognizant of that, Like he wrote about conspiracy as an enthusiast, but also as someone who was trying to stop um kind of unchecked conspiratorial belief. Yeah, he went away about

that in peculiar ways, but he was an odd man. Yeah. And the reason why I've been getting more into this

type type of stuff the past year, uh increase. And the reason why I really like chaos magic as I like it as like a post modern system of magic of looking at how basically if magic is just ideas and trying to figure out how our brains can interact with the physical world, then chaos magic in produces a lot of interesting stuff around like late stage capitalism, because it is is it's explicitly tied to to like postmodern art and postmodern thought um in the way you know,

brands and marketing and specifically the Internet all affects our minds, all the stuff it gets talked about in charismatic a lot. And I really like look using that framework for things um and speaking of that kind of stuff specifically around

the Internet, we're gonna be talking about. The first thing I want to mention is like the concept of searching for something and then you're like you're and you're gonna find it, whether that you know, Robert Enton Wilson and um like the Illuminatious Trilogies has like and like, and

Discordianism has like twenty three and the Law of Fives. Right, I I read that book when I was twenty and I have been like seeing twenty three's repeatedly at like significant moments in my life for the last fourteen years or so. Like, Yeah, it's it's like, once you get that kind of meme implanted in your brain, it can stick with you for forever. And and this this happens to everything. You know, this happens to This happens to everyone.

Like once you learn about a new topic, the next day, you'll see it somewhere right, You'll be like, you'll you'll like it. And it's in all these places that that you didn't see it before. This happens all of the time with everything. This is how this is like how synchronicity works, and this is where religions come from, yeah, throughout history. And it's because like this all has its

roots in why we're very good hunters. We are patterned were pattern recognition, Like our brains are pattern recognizing machines. That's what we're best at. And it means that we're good at spotting berries and tracking deer. And it also means that we can't stop making religions. We can religion and if we have one too many synchronicities, we can change the entire way we view about the like the

whole world, which can have varying degrees of effects. Sometimes I can if it's just a little bit that can maybe ahould be very helpful. Um, if you join a weird cult that does messed up stuff, then it's like, yeah, that's a problem. Yeah, sometimes it ends in burning man and sometimes it ends in burning men. Yeah, drop the

bomb on that one. So first thing I want to kind of discuss before we get into the actual timeline of how pepangcasm became a thing, I want to just do a brief overview of sigils and memes um and the idea of what like, let's let's take the original concept of the meme, which is like you know, the it's genes are genetic, memes are cultural. There's are cultural ideas that can spread like a virus um and usually memes.

In the since since since the Internet has become way more popular, memes have become more tied to images like like memes are a much more visual thing now, whereas in the nineties they were more of just like like an idea concept, but now they have like in this

extra visual backing. So a sigil is a is a magical concept and mostly to chaos magic, which is basically an abstract concept um or or like a specific con scept put into an abstract image that then gets charged and then it's going to manifest itself in your life.

The reason why this works is because part part of this desire gets implanted deep in your brain when you charge it through like a trance or that there's a there's there's like there's different methods of charging sigils, but you have this, you have this concept and this idea and this desire and it gets put into you. So you're gonna kind of subconsciously do things that that influence it into becoming something that you can see. Just like you know, if you're if you're looking, if you hear

about twenty three, you're gonna see it. Same thing for this. It's it's it's it's the same kind of based concept um and then Grant Morrison of Comic Book Writers my my favorite comic book writer. He he was, he's really the only person that's developed sigils more since their inception.

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

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

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

on politicians Twitter account. You're basically doing a group a

group schedule, and a group hyper cygil. Because you're all making these individual things and are spamming them into the world, and because there's so many of them, Yeah, they're gonna have they're gonna have a real world effect, and they're gonna have a real world effect in part because of the way human brains work, in part because of the way algorithms work, which is one of the things where like it's it's easy, especially if you're an impressionable kid,

to mistake the algorithm doing what it's designed to do, which is find patterns groups of people sharing something and expand that to a larger group of people, because oh, if this cluster of people like this, this will probably be something that's very Algorithms are great at making synchronicities

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

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

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

cities and sigils. I checked my phone for a second and saw that it was five seventeen on October five. Of course contains both two and three and as thus a sacred number October twenty three. I shouldn't have to explain why that significant, and it's yeah, but it's the twenty three on my phone. Why is my phone's fucked up? Because because the universe, baby, that's the synchronicity. I'm living in the future. Motherfucker's And what time is it that it's not right now? It was my phone and the

other time it is. I I don't need to know what time it is the default reality. No, no, yeah, you're you're you're on a different, different dimensional plane. Now we have two into two different ones. I think I think that I think this gives up gives us a perfect opportunity for the audience to find their own synchronicities in these ads, because who knows what's going to happen, what's gonna play, So look for patterns and you'll find them.

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

of stuff. Is that like stuff starts as a joke and then you do it a lot and the repetition basically makes you do it genuinely. Yeah, like me talking about getting all of my followers to a compound in Idaho where we die fighting the f d A exactly Interually that turns into an actual death cult. So it's it's it starts as a joke and then under repetition it becomes genuine. This happens so basically almost everything on

the internet. Yeah, this this, this, this, this leads to Garrison and I doing the inevitable Robert Evans Behind the Bastards episode. This episode it's a three part or if I ever heard one you you hope so you wish what what are what are cat Boys. This is different. That is a different you're here, that is a different podcast. I think, Yeah, Hi, sorry, I know, I only inser Jake briefly. Is that is that? Are they? Are they

like pre furries? Is that different? No, Cowboys post fury, it's kind of it's it's it's it's rehumanizing the it's rehumanizing the furies. So like the same way, the same way, the same way. Sonic the Hedgehog is a re Mickey mossification of vegeta. Uh, cowboys are a humanification of furries. This is a whole process on the I can explain this in great detail in the later episode, but I think we have enough. We have enough to talk about already.

Thank you so much, my dog. Okay, sure would someone be willing to sacrifice their own mentality to describe the rise of Pepe and just originally in the early twenty teens, Yeah, so it started. Is this guy's comic that there was nothing particularly about. Yeah, it was just it was a dude's comic. He was like, uh, feels good Man was kind of fel good Man. He was a chill dude. He was a chill dude. Yeah, not a fascist comic.

Peppe is actually pretty fun. Yeah, comic Pepe, he's like he's like a millennial slacker who doesn't really know what to do with his life after like after nine eleven, after the financial crash. He's just trying to kind of

get by the comics fine. Yeah, the comics fine, but the art just that kind of the specifics of how he drew Pepe made him very well suited for a meme because he's expressive and he so he shows up and starts getting spread in four chan, and you know, that kind of idea goes viral, and it particularly gets attached to a lot of like the political ship on Pole and the people who are like churning into gamer Gate and the right sad Pepe gets very popular, Smug

Pepe gets very popular. Yeah yeah. And then as so kick is text of it, Like later on, I think we'll go over more for like how Pepe is like the cartoon character got you know, as soon as it becomes a meme, it spreads out into all corners. And the people who meaned this hardest we were on Fortune. So this is how pep Peppe became kind of tied to this. And I think the last bullet in Pepe really solidifying him as as an alt right meanings specifically

was the Richard Spencer punch. I think I think that's the thing that actually was like done. It's like, no, Pepe is just this now, he can't be anything else because but when when when Richard Spencer was being punched, he was describing what Pepe was. That was what's happening

in that specific viral moment. If you want to talk about like magical terms, this is Pepe getting like charged, Like this is the idea of like this idea getting getting charged because it is now going to be perflated to the masses in this in this moment of like pure motion. So that's when Pepe really gets tied to And I think Hillary Clinton made it very, very worse the way she talked about this kind of stuff on her speeches basically gave gave the all right a baseball

bat to hit her with. The the problem that Clinton and everyone else because a big part of I would argue that like the largest part of why Pepe became a thing that was destined to last was that pundits and politicians, including Hillary and media people kept talking about it as a fascist symbol and kept discussing like what it was, and that anyone who grew up on the Internet, who grew up around these communities, knows that you ignore them as much as possible, to the extent that that's possible.

You don't feed the troll you don't give them power. Yeah, you don't. And and talking about it again, this is like chasmetic like referencing it, bringing it up, bringing it into the real world gives it power. That's the thing that feeds it. Yeah, So that that's how it got so much more power. The more Clinton talked about it, the more news media wrote about it, everyone got so excited on the four change. That's like, that's that's that's like,

that is them winning than them seeing this thing. And and then and then this goes back pre even being far. I can't remember because I was in these spaces when they first started doing ship like raids on the Church of Scientology. Every time there would actual like news coverage of what people on the Internet did, it got people so fucking excited because like, the Internet had been this thing that didn't matter for the longest. I think in the in the book I read about this kind of stuff.

They they did use the example of like Anonymous and the raids on centology being like a precursor to this type of like me magic of this thing, like like internet forums influencing the real world through repetition and getting getting to grow power. We're getting people who don't use Internet to talk about these same things. It was like a precursor to then what we what we saw the

al right, which is which is a pretty pretty common opinion. Um. And then and then enter enter the Egyptian gods, Roberts, do wanna do you wanna? Don't wanna? I don't wanna discuss that. We're gonna That's what we're gonna say. Next is how is this intersex with Egyptian gods? The ancient Pharaoh's played a card game of ancient and terrible power man. Nobody watched you as a kid, now, Robert, do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do you want to

discuss keck? Yeah, I mean so way back in the day. Um And I think I think this even pre dates World War Craft. I remember at first happening on like StarCraft games online, there would be like gamers from Korea and like when you were doing like a Zurg rush or something, which is when you have a bunch of guys and they all attack the enemy base or whatever.

They would type out their term for l O L, which was like keck k e K yeah okay u K so would usually just look like a stream of ku k e k k k over and over and over again. This really took off in world of warcraft, where like there were Korean gold farmers were a big thing, and like keck was something that like everyone kind of knew what it meant because it was often the only

thing you can understand. You could you could understand as an American that like these people would be typing um and it as a result of kind of all of that, it took off an internet culture as just an l O and specifically like one of the things that's going on here. So as the mid auts dawn and the Internet becomes serious business and like social media really and everybody's even before social media is dominant, but just when everybody's taking the Internet seriously, it's clear there's a lot

of money in it. It's it's mainstream. You have this this kind of second generation of Internet people who got on in the late nineties early two thousands, when they were kids who get frustrated at the fact that all of these different terms and phrases and like bits of internet culture that they had identified with our going mainstream and normalies are using them. Yeah. Yeah, And keck is everyone knows what l O l is. People don't know what keck is. So in places like four Chan, that

becomes a really popular thing. And keck kind of is like so keck as a as a term for laughters, like floating around at the same time as like pepe A memes, and so whenever you whenever you like meme something into the mainstream, whenever like some four Chan opera whatever you wanna call it, like succeeds in getting mainstreams it. It's it as a clud and mentions pepping on stage. Everyone fortune goes kick because they're laughing. They go can they say stuff like top kick and whatnot, and and

and eventually somebody realizes that there's an Egyptian goddess. One of the translations of that god and goddess his name is k k Um. Now there's a couple of other translations. There's there's there's a whole bunch of issues with this. If you wanted to look at it. That's with the rational kind of brain is because like this there was this old family of god's are very very old old Egyptian gods. They all had male and female versions. The male versions all had frog heads, um and but around

frogs can change their gender. Yeah, so like so like all of the all this whole era of Egyptian gods all had frog heads. So there was one of them that was named Keck, who was a god of chaos. And this also played into how Fortune was using Trump because like they liked Trump mostly as like as like a chaotic reforce that got people angry, because that's what that's what Fortune wanted to do as well. They wanted to be a chaotic force again that gets people angry.

That's why they really latched onto true ump Um. And then when they found out that, oh there's this god named Keck who is like the lord of like like like um like pro that what's the word um primordial darkness,

primorial darkness. Yeah, and this idea yeah kind of like um um urinus and like Greco Roman faith, right, like a god kind of before the gods that are are more well known, but like this was a synchronicity so they took it as like, you know, the same way religions take take synchronicity and create and create like divinity. They took this as like this take they took this

as like divinity. Again this this starts as a joke, but you do it enough and you start to take it seriously, and there's a you get a mix of um, you get a mix of of real. Like Egyptology was that. Yeah, there was a god named Kick, like among a bunch of other gods. One of the ways he was depicted

was with a frog head. But also like bad Egyptology, Like, I found an article on the word plus press blog Peppe the Frog Faith, which oh, I'm sure this, I'm sure this is like a bastion of archaeology, and and the title is amateur Egyptologist weighs in on the frog statue hieroglyphs. And one of the things he points out are talking about the frog statues that isn't check but they thought it was Kick, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a

number of things. So like one of the things this guy claims is that the hieroglyphics for Keeck are a frogman um and then a couple of what he calls baskets first, up their cups not baskets. Second, the actual um uh hieroglyphics for for K e K don't include the little frogman. They're like the two of the little cups in this weird T shaped thing. Like yeah, it's all it's all like it's bad again amateur egyptologist Like he's just a kid who was googling stuff and like

got some either lied or got some hieroglyphics wrong. But this kind of stuff compounds. But keck as like an idea is like now we have a backing of an ancient god again first as a joke, but then some people started to take it more seriously, really really caught on. Among people could because because it's funny, like it's it's

just funny, and it's funny. It's gonna catch on on for chat because it's hilarious, right, so they're gonna start using this and repeating this and creating whole new memes, creating like there's like there's like an eight eight part book series that's like fake books written by like someone who's like just me bing but pretending to take it seriously. But like the authenticity doesn't actually matter because because it exists,

it doesn't actually matter how authentic it is. Yeah, Like, and there's there's weird coincidences that continue to occur, Like one of the biggest being there's this like phrase shadow, which creeps up in all of this and becomes like this exhortation that they use like a way of like exclaiming and such. And then somebody figures out that shadow is also a song, like an Italo disco song I think from the seventies, and the album that Shadow is

on has like a frog man face on the cover. Um, and so they're like, it's a sign because you're gonna find frogs wherever you look now because that has becomes the think of uncommon frogs. You're gonna find them everywhere now and there are every ancient religion everywhere in the world. I'm gonna get guarantee there's some fucking frogs in it because like they're everywhere, and that they're old creatures people, frogs they've been around for a long times, have been around.

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

actually it's actually a gold called heck it Um. But on the basis does it doesn't matter. But on the base of the statue it had it had gliphs which appear to us modern humans as they they look like someone sitting on a computer like they look like like someone sitting in front of a monitor on a keyboard. Um. And on the other side of the keyboard is a DNA is like what looks like a DNA spiral. So this is like jes like jeans, right, jeans jeans are

d NA memes our cultural DNA. This is a glyph of the god teck on a statue with someone on a computer with a DNA spiral. Of course they're gonna take this is like some like message from the from the gods. You're like, yes, I'm supposed to be. I am supposed to be by my meming, I'm doing Chex's work to put Trump into office. Yeah, it's um god,

that's frustrating insurance. Uh, it sure is. But like all of those in the in group, this is like the statue was just a depiction of what the check people and the and the pepper spanders were doing posting on the Internet to manifest real world change. And that's that's

all it is. If you want to see other examples of this, like if you look at the ancient alien stuff, there's this like famous Mayanna higher glyph of the astronomer that's like if you if you know what a telescope is, because you're looking at it a thousand years after it was carved, it kind of looks like it might be a telescope, and it's part of what like people say like, oh, this is proof that like that this is an alien Like he's looking at a fucking telescope. No, it was.

There's other explanations for it. It was something like that somebody carved. Yeah, I think there's another thing that you started. And I see this like not even like I see this just this is just on the end of all time, like I see left just do this or like so like okay, so you learn something and then oh it's not true. But then people will keep spreading the thing because they'll say, yeah, yeah, well it has more power

with it, so you're still going to believe it. Yeah, Like when we talk about the fact that Will Wheaton murdered three people in if you want to this is the message, like yeah, yeah with a knife, what's horrible? Yeah, Now, I mean he was in Thailand at the time, so he was able to get out and we don't extra die. So's he's he's got out Scott for But yeah, but I mean like this is like the same this is this is the same thing that Trump does, which we'll

talk about it, but we'll talk about a bit. It's like if you would appeate the thing enough, it becomes true for large swats of the population that that's that's that's all truth actually needs to be for people. Um, I think I think we're gonna go and break uh and come back and close us, close us up, and finally finished this horrible discussion. Um. Anyone know who won't meme fascism? Well, actually, KFC the the have you seen

have you seen the KFC fascist posting on Twitter? Yea, there's like a Spanish KFC account that has been doing that. That is up to some ship. Yeah, I hate I hate that. That's a sentence that that that you got to say, I just hated for products. And we are back. I have finished and entire dark meat bucket and I am so full. Um yep. And now I'm sad. I'm sad because I'm still thinking of the fascist KFC Twitter account.

Um so we we. The other thing I want to do, want to mention is kind of Trump's own uh power of belief kind of idea and how Trump was basically using esoteric terms, was able to basically create an alternate reality for millions of people to live in. Um And there's really no getting through to them now because they're literally just in a just in a different dimension, and there's just there's there's no way to pierce that other dimension.

They're basically living in just a totally alternate reality there. There's there's no use saying that it is the one that we live in. UM. So Trump was obsessed with a few of these ideas. He's less than like the like, He's less interested in like the woo and more interested in like the power of positive thinking, power of your own belief. Um, he grew up in a movement and

specific appeal stuff. Yeah, he grew up following a specific movement and church called that falls under the umbrella called New Thought, um, which is where Trump's you know, Trump's like like how strong Trump's ego is comes from this idea of that you need to reinforce yourself and reinforce your own victories because if you do that, you're gonna you're you're gonna find them. Right if if you're looking

for you're gonna find it. If you're looking for your own victories, you're going to force them to happen, um, even if they don't happen into other people. Right. But like, so that we see this happening successfully with the election, we see both like all of the meming everything that

happened in the trusteen election worked for Trump um. And you know, you know, of course, of course he didn't win the popular vote, but that doesn't actually matter, but it worked into in getting him to office now it you know, it worked less well for the election, um, but still his real assertions that he won still gave us a lot of real world results, like the January

six Capital insurrection. So like it's this right, So this type of idea that if you read, if you if you reinforce this thing, if you reinforce this belief, if you can, if you have if you have this idea and you keep putting it out into the world, it's gonna manifest some type of real, real world result. And that that was January six That's what that was. And and that's the kind of the world we live in now.

It's like the weaponized unreality world where people because of how media works, because are the Internet works, they're able to create this like chaotic like like sphere of of energy and ideas that can like spread so much faster than anything used to be. That could everyone can segment their own reality into two degrees that we've never really seen before because of how fast information can travel. Now, um, it is, it is. It is a new it's it

is a relatively new thing. The way that the way that this this this can operate so like memes, memes themselves like Pepe and all this kind of stuff undoubtedly had had an impact on not only just the twenties sixteen election, but just the entire political climate surrounding the

whole Trump presidency. Uh Now, to the degree to which we can credit me magic or the god kick, that part is meaningless because because the effect is the same that like the synchronicities were still experienced and and truth is just is just experiential. So it's the beliefs that we kind of hold will shape how we experience things anyway,

and that will experience what the actual truth is. There's there there is a great Robert Anton Wilson quote that is like reality is what you can get away with, ye And that's that's like that that like summarizes how Trump was able to be so successful is because he

was able to shape reality, right. I think me, me and me and Chris were talking about this the other day about how, Chris, do you want to say the thing about like the Democratic Party and Republican Party and how yeah, okay, okay, So there's there's there's there's a thing.

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

then this is the interesting part. If you look at the second part of that quote, right, what he's actually saying is that so the Democrats are the reality based community, right, they they analyze reality. The Republican Party is the party that creates reality because other people in control the empire.

And this is this is what neo conservative this was, right, And you know, the argument here basically is that the Democrats are you know, they're always going to be a step behind because they're merely analyzing reality, whereas Republicans using the powers or of the state to you know, change and define it. And this this worked for them, you know what. I would argue that this is how they came into power, This is how there's this is what

they're still doing. Yeah. Yeah, why every president since Ronald Reagan has just been Ronald Reagan with a mask. Yeah. But but I think I think there's something very important here, specifically about how Bush took off this right, because Bush, Bush steals the election. Right, Bush does like the thing that Trump was trying to do is what George Bush did into in two thousands, but with a riot, just

with a very kind of riot. Yeah. But but this is the thing, the thing, this is the thing that Bush and the neo kons understood that the Trump is kind of understand but never quite solidified because they're not like they're not sort of insider political actors. Which is that. Okay, so all of the stuff about saying something and it becoming real, right, there's there there's sort of a limit

to this if if you don't have a gun. Now, if you have a gun, then the limits of that are are you know, it's it's you can do basically whatever you want because you can just you can force everyone else to also accept this as reality. You know, this is what the state is, right, and there's there's a whole there's a whole thing. This is a couple of performance theory. Like yeah, so like you you saying the thing makes it so right? Well, this is this

is what a state is. And this is how Bush won the election because he, unlike Trump, who's people tried to like take power directly about like Stormy in the Capitol. Bush was smart and Bush was like, oh okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna de clare that I won the election. And but but but instead of like openly doing it right, I'm going to get the Supreme Court to declare that I'm president. And you know, and this this, this requires the Brook's brothers riot stop the counts and all the stuff.

Were like, you know, it's doesn't yeah, yeah, it's great, but it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter that, you know, he he didn't win Florida, like if if if if if if if the if the votes had actually been counted, he would not have won Florida. But because he was able to get the courts to say that he was president,

he was president. And and that's that is the concept of magic words yep, yep, and this is this is this, this is this is all the state is right, it's this this this the state is magic with a gun behind it. Yeah it is, yeah, the state of magic. Because he's like, yeah, you're right. It's like magic can have a hard cap. There's gonna be a certain people that, you know, with with with Trump's reality altering kind of power, there's a certain that there is a hardcap on how

much I can influence the general population. But if you have a gun behind that, that gives us so much more enforceable power. And to go back to Egyptian mythology, one of the attitudes they had about the pharaoh is that reality was whatever the pharaoh declared. Other a lot of societies of this idea towards their monarchs, and the duty of his people is to make reality conform to the Pharaoh's will, and like, that's that's what the GOP does.

Like that, I think I think the quote surrounding like, yeah, the Democrats are the reality based party because they because they you know, observe it, except the reality and like and yeah and and like and like and like. Libs and Democrats are like, yes, they like they take some private like yes, we are rational, we observe reality. Meanwhile the Republicans are like, no, you just observe it, but

we can just we can create it. I think that is a great example of how those two parties operate politically and how because like, yes, they're both they're both the right leading parties. But here's the difference for how they actually operate is that one of them is way more passive in their observing of reality, and one is is okay with getting their hands dirty and actually forcing

this type of reality altering changes. I will say, I think like one thing to close this out is that you know, we can we when we can tie this all the way back to the second part of the Due of Higher episode, which is that the Niokon Neokon project doesn't work. And the reason it doesn't work is that you know, they they like they basically they lose

militarily and that just that implodes the entire project. And so you know, and if if if if you look back at like all of this stuff about how we can shape reality, we can shape reality, we can shape reality. That stopped being true the moment that you know, like they lose control of Bosra or like you know, all like they when the other people uh Alsader is to

be unkillable by all the weapons of Empire. Yeah, yeah, it's like you know, and and Sawder and Solder does this by like you know, Sauder sets up a bunch of baby clinics, right, He's like, here's a bunch of clinics. Here we we we will will give help the pregnant mothers, like are you guys really gonna shoot us? And you know, he build a militia around this and he's and he's able to like he's one of the smartest people on

the planet. He's yeah, and it's not a good guy, but like completely shatter the neo kons like they they're dead, Like they don't like that that project which was like the culmination of this this incredible like that described on electro prodectsble military project and they got their absolute as

kick by watch of people doing dual power. Yep, I think, and I I really, I do want to talk more about kind of chaos magic and there's a lot on the pot ground and I think, but yeah, I think this is a great interesting how the how these concepts

overlapped with politics and reality. Disagree on the end of this with one aspect, Garrison, because you said their reality can't be pierced, but the ancient texts speak of a spear that once pierced the side of Christ itself, and while Hitler held it, his armies were send it, but it was stolen. And if we can find the Sparrison, we can pierce their reality. Hey, I have a Fedora, I have a whip. We could we all have fedora, Garrison,

Let's do it. Let's go. We are. We are off to find the spear that sides us off, the Spear of Destiny. You can follow our adventures happened here pod and Nicolson Media on Twitter. Um and yeah, I'm sure we will give you updates for our spirit ventures at the pod. Sophie, we need half a million dollars to find the Spirit of Destiny. Okay, great, see you on

the other side, Hey, lead the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt best name and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rap show of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real Ify Tig, I like you, But now all signs point

to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you better believe I'm gonna win. I'm Tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit. A tag Torre's mystery out now, and then tune in for all new thrills in the season two, dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave a Lit on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The art

world it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes. I'm out like Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Um. Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I call the Union Hall as his matter, life and death. I thank these peoples of

planning to kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed right, James L. Ray was upon for the official story. The authorities would parade all we found a gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham the kill Dr King, except it isn't the gun that

killed Dr. King. One of the problems that came out when I got the ray case was that some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kill them All this has been it could happen here. The show where I just kill them all. Harrison and Chris want to let's take over. Oh boys, woke up. I haven't

have coffee yet. That is incredibly spooky, urging murder. Well, it is spooky. You're right, this is true. I didn't realize that until just now. But retroactively that makes it fine, extreme spoky. Yeah, what are we doing? Who are we? We're we're doing We're where it can happen here. We're doing this is this is This is a a podcast where we talk about spooky stuff that happens around Halloween, and today we are doing the spookiest thing of all, which will be revealed shortly. Oh boy, I hope it's

Will Wheaton. Is not what Wheaton? Well, unfortunately, I really I really should have looked for that tie in because there might be one is a CIA asset, we might get there. I don't know. Okay, see this is this is I'm hacking a fraud and I didn't actually look into this. Well we missed it, you and most journalists. Yeah, all right, what are we? What are we doing? What

are we doing? On June four, a rancher named W. W. Mac Brazil and his son Vernon We're driving me across their property when they encountered quote a large area of bright wreckage made up of strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper and sticks. Yeah me too, Just a regular night in in in Oregon. But yeah, yeah, well buzzles back in a time where people are baffled when weird things happened, instead of going oh it's Tuesday, so oh man, what

a time. Yeah, so they didn't just go straight to Twitter. No, no, he he, you know, he doesn't. That was actually, you know, I kind of like reasonably a reasonably responsible thing to do, in which is that he spends about a week like picking up all of the scraps that he can and like putting them in a box and he he drives it to the sheriff and the sheriff, his name is George.

That says a lot about the difference in urgency back then, where it's like, oh, this is important, I'll spend a week getting everything together, take it off to the share. Like before the Internet you could really afford to sit. It was an era in which like if you had a busy life, three things happened. Okay, yeah. So so George Wilcox, the sheriff, looks at this and it's like, I have no idea what any of this crap is, Like, what is happening? So he takes it to Roswell Air

Force Base for further investigation. Now, Colonel Butch Blanche, the commander of Roswell Airfields five O nine Composite Group you know it send sends a team out to analyze the wreckage, which includes an Air Force intelligence officer named Major Major Jesse Marcel. Now Marcel gives a now infamous series of quotes to the media that results in the Roswell Daily

Record running the sentence quote. The Intelligence office of the five O ninth Bombardment Group at Roswell Airfield announced that noon that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer. Now this is the birth. Yeah, I mean, this isn't the birth of modern ufiology, but this is you know this, this is one of the most important error events. And the pictures do rule all of all of the Roswell pictures are super rat because it's just random ship in the field, and they're like, it's aliens.

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

they're lying. Everyone knows they're lying. But this is where things get bad because when Mark Brasil really discovered with something even spookier and more sinister than aliens. Mark Brazil had discovered was the American military Industrial complex. It turned out, Oh it's it's it's real spooky. It's yeah, we're right. By by the end of this episode, they will have I had to cut two times they almost killed everyone

on Earth. Okay, well all right, so we're gonna be judging folks for almost killing everyone on Earth, like you haven't almost killed everyone on Earth. Come on, that's true, that's true. Podcasting saves me from a mass distinction of the entire human race and will eventually end all life on this planet. I believe in podcasting's potential to kill absolutely everyone. Yeah, it's it's great, it's it's a time.

It's actually you know this part part of this is actually going to be about how we get to the point where everyone is podcasting on the internet. De belt things that that does. This does absolutely plagued in to the Swell incident. Yeah, because there's a there's a strong line between ship like Coast to Coast FM and the old like conspiracy you know, the precursors to that alien UFO whatever radio shows and ship on the on the wide band back in the day, and uh in podcasts

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

that made that comment. Look, we just we we just we just we just got to make sure only ways to blaze on right ahead. Now, the Air Force is lying out of its ass. But the Air Force isn't lying out of its ass because they have a flying saucer. The Air Force knows precisely what they've gotten their hands on here because the other identified flying object that has trashed at Roswell is actually something called Project Mogul. Now to understand Project Mogul, we need to go back a

little bit. Yeah, in the US drops two nuclear bombs of Japan. And this does a lot of things literally all of which are bad um. And what one of which is that it sets off a sort of and it's it sets off you know, the thing that we all live in now, which is the nuclear arms race between the U S and the U S s R. Who you know, but pretty quickly after World War two are just bitter enemies, and you know, but there's just bores raging across the world between communist anti companist forces.

This is what's war in China, I mean in Greece, which I think people know. People know more about the Chinese of war, people know less about Greece. Were just like the British. The British are like, oh, the Communist are gonna take power, So they just like give all the guns back to the fascist and they start doing the Holocaust again, and that you know, sets off this

own another civil war there. And you know, as as as Europe becomes you know, divided between the two great powers, the US becomes increasingly worried about the USS are crying acquiring their own nuclear weapons. So to detect the potential Soviet nuclear test, the US embarked on Project Mogil. Project Mogil sent six d and fifty seven foot balloons. These are like massively, they're twice the size that's actually of liberty. Yeah, those balloons are bigger than a balloon needs to be. Yeah,

they're they're too large. It's too big for balloons. And they so they load these balloons with like sensor and listening equipment to like detecting nuclear detonation. They like they like float them into the upper jet stream and the jetteam like pushed them to Russia. Is sort of the plan behind it, and this sort of works, except the

Russians don't have nukes yet. So yeah, this, by the way, is also why the song Red Balloons was not just a banger but also very realistic, because we absolutely could have had a nuclear exchange over some fucking balloons. Oh yeah, yeah, actually I don't I'm not sure there's any direct balloon related near nuclear exchanges in this episode, but don't worry.

It happened. Yeah, well, you know, and what what what it did actually do was you know, set off the modern UFO thing because you know, one of these balloons like fails and it's it's views the records around and you know there's, yeah, this this, you know, this is this.

Then you see a bunch of the problems that are gonna happen with the rest of how the course of UFOs go, because you know, you have initially the government's like we have a flying saucer and then they turn around and do this like incredibly half ass cover up that like everyone knows his fake and you know, so you know, because Americans are Americans, they don't assume that like the US is, you know, creating a devastating new surveillance and intelligence program that would be used to further

total nuclear war. Instead they go, it's aliens, Yeah, because we're great at okoins Razor. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a time. But I think what's really important here is it what Brazil had actually made first contact with was America's new thermal nuclear monarchy. And this is something that I think more people should talk about, which is that having nukes just as a thing massively centralizes power into sort of

individual people and the executive branch. Because you know, so if you have nuclear weapons, right, the theory is that you have to have one person who presses the button to shoot them, and you can't have like, you know, there's not enough time for like a parliamentary delivered or body to like set the dukes off. And so this becomes this rationale for enormously centralizing the party executive branch.

And this this produces an absolutely terrifying new wage of state secrecy, filled with increasingly powerful and clandestine government agencies and bureaucracies ranging from the CIA are Good Friends to the much lesser known Atomic Energy Commission and these agencies the power of their secrecy is so strong that I mean, by the Atomic Energy Commissions, like successor agency decides that they can keep secrets from the president on the basis that the president does not need to know, which is

absolutely horrifying. Well yeah, I mean, look, it's just you've got a democracy, and that's going to be a problem because it in democracy people presumably to make choices, and if you don't want them to decide not to continue making weird ship to throw into the sky, then you

know why, you probably should just not tell anybody anything. Yeah. Well, and that that particular story is also grim I it's one thing that was debating covering they're they're covering up the fact that they deliberately poisoned enormous like hundreds and hundreds of people with radiation to do human testing on them. Yeah, it doesn't need to know this, Like it doesn't need to know about you know. I mean it's like we don't tell Sophie. Guys, a lot of the things that

we do our budget. Um, like when we irradiated all those people for a podcast, we're we're still not telling Sophie that, Yeah, it could happen here black budget remain secret. Yeah,

it is a lot of money. Please continue. Now. All of the secrecy around this, and the fact that these cover ups are like the most half asked ship anyone has ever seen, you know it could it fuels his rampant speculation around UFOs and the conspiracy theorists are also aided by the fact that people keep seeing weird flying objects. Be sure, do we love We love to see weird ship in this guy. We are very good at it. Yeah, it's we're incredible. It's see it and this guy is

full of weird. It's true. I saw crow the other day. Anyway. Yeah, in hundreds of people start who are on airplanes start seeing these just enormous flaming crosses flying in possibly high and possibly fastened the sky, and publicly KKs gained space flight. It's it's worse than that. It's it's the people. The people doing this are worse than the KKK, which is what a sentence. It's great, it's yeah. So so you know, in public, the US governments like whatever, these aren't the thing,

they're fake, whatever their mediological disservices. In private, the passengers who are on these jets that that see these flaming Crosses are all detained the FBI and sworn to secrecy after providing accounts of what they'd seen. Awesome and yeah, and this this is also part of the surf uf OL mythology. And this does actually happen like that, The FBI does actually show up to these people. Well, that's who you send in when you want people to stop

wondering if something shady is going on. Yeah. Yeah, it's when I hear the FBI is telling people to shut up about something, I think, well, that's not worth looking into it all. When you have five men in suits and sunglasses show at your door and talk about something, you know, that means definitely thing is fine and normal. You know what I don't think of when I think of the FBI UFO cover ups. It's great. Yeah, this is this is This is America's first contact with yet

another new part of his clandestine military military bureaucracy. Area fifty one. Area fifty one is a secret military aeronautics research and development facility built on a salt flat called Lake Groom inside the massive Nevada Test and Training Range UM. This place, by the way, this place is massive. This place is like the size of connect Like, it's like larger than Connecticut, It's larger than than most of the

eastern state. Yeah, it's enormous. And but you know, it's something I think it's very interesting about this is that, for all it's mystique, Area fifty one is not the most dangerous facility on the Nevada tests and training right now. That's they're fifty two, the sub level below where they store the real weird ship. Yeah. Okay, so I watched

I watched a few YouTube videos. I think I know what I'm talking about definitely, so that we are actually going to get to all right, Yeah, well, the thing, the thing that's actually really dangerous is areas twelve, nineteen, and twenty, because that's the Nevada areas. Do these motherfucker's names. There's a damn all these things, yeah, all the others, because I mean this, this this is like a state

sized like testing facility. Right, Okay, they get all these fucking areas, but the branch Davidians have one compound where they don't even do very many illegal things, and suddenly it's a problem. Here's the thing that let's see how it is. Video has never had nukes and that that that that could could you imagine though, pretty amazed. You know what, if they'd had nukes about like a D,

people would still be alive maybe for everyone would be dead. Yeah, that's two a D people would be alive or everyone on Earth would be dead. So Area fifty one is the partner of the Nevada test site, which which is areas twelveth, nineteen and twenty, and that's where the real dangerous ship happens, which is the US test nuclear weapons there. Okay, but we need to make it clear at the outset

we should not be underestimating Area fifty one. That place has done irreparable harm to the cause of world peace and very nearly like cause us all to go extinct several times. So do not underestimate the power of of of military spy airplanes yeah can lead us all destruction. Are honestly way more way more spooky than any little

gray creatures at large. Different various planes, just with cameras on them have gotten us closer to the extermination of all life on Earth and basically anything else except for that one computer buck that the Russians had that would have killed us all if not for Petrov. I think his name is I forget his last name. That one guy who was like, we're not going to have a nuclear war right now, Well, there's there's a lot this is. This is Weirdly the Soviets come out looking like yeah,

so yeah. It's like every every time there's almost a nuclear war, it's like it doesn't happen because the Soviets are like no, and the Americans are like, we want this war and the like. When it comes to atomic apocalypse stories, if you, if you, if you tally up all the columns, because the Soviets definitely have a few in their side, but it winds up way more fucked up nuke incidents on the U S side of things

than the Soviet side of things, although there wasn't. That time they built a bomb so big that it might have changed to the tilt of the earth if they had, and at the last moment they were like, let's take half of the zile material out of this. This like a bad idea, It's it's great. Yeah, so so speak speaking of bad ideas involving in involving nuclear weapons. So oh no, I thought, speaking speaking ideas, you know what else will change the tilt of the earth? The products

and services, their quality. It's so intent that it's like the Czarre bomba. It is just like that explosive potential. Yeah. Area fifty one was founded in nineteen fifty one by the Atomic Energy Commission, a federal agency established as a successor to the mother of all black projects, the Manhattan Project.

Now black projects are secret off the book's military defense projects, the existence of which are kept secret even from Congress, which is a totally cool and normal thing to have in a democracy when you're representative body does not know what what out what what the military is doing. Now, Avery fifty one is interesting because it's it's basically like

a black project of a black project. It's so secret that like the Vice President lb J, who is like not a funk off vice president, right, is this is lb J? Like LBJ, He's he's like type yeah yeah, And and she's also gonn show up the story briefly but yeah, like even he didn't actually really know what was going on there until like after JFK was assassinated.

So this this place is really secret, and as best we can tell, in its first four years, it was essentially the Atomic Energy Commission I basically wanted a place to do off the books, like pilot and aircraft testing, and they were able to do the successfully that like we basically don't know what they did for four years. But yeah, but but but in the facility has taken over by an even spooky organization, the Central Intelligence Agency,

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

poison people with acid. They they they're they they're they're much much more intense than than the early fifties the CIA. Yeah, yeah, and so and so they have this real problem which is that they the CIA basically can't get intelligence out of Eastern Europe, which is bad when your whole, like your entire like state is based off of like fighting Eastern Europe. So the kin of your main target. Yeah. Yeah, So the solution is to fly a plane really high

over Russia and uses to take pictures. Now seems good. Yeah, Like I think like this sounds like I think kind of banal to us in the twenty one century, where like this is this is like this is like this is like pre satellite Yeah yeah, and and you know, like like we were all just sort of used to the fact that like the government is buying on us at all times. We sure are, but you know, in

in in the nine this is incredibly radical. Like the the US, the US has only had intelligent agencies for like ten years, and there is no precedent at all. There's none, no precedent for flying surveillance over a country you aren't actively at war with, Like the only reason you flying airplane over countries if you're about to bomb them.

People should note also that like the first ten years or so that we had an intelligence industry, every single or that we had ant like intelligence agencies, every single vote for funding them, every single like vote for giving them new powers was like universally supported by both parties. There was there was zero dissent about whether or not we should have a c I, A and they should have a giant black budget to do all sorts of scary ship that might provoke a nuclear war. People are

just like, well, of course it's really bad. And I think this is this is you know, this is what Area fifty one actually is. The Area fifty one is the place where the development is, the permanent intelligent industrial complex is permanently solidified. And this all starts with the U two. Now, the CIA brings in Lucked Martin and a little known but very powerful and influential defense contractor called E. G and G. Who I mean, they do

a lot of stuff, but that's such a defense contractor. Yeah, it's it's it's it's like it's the ultimate defense contra nation, actual name, and nobody knows who they are because they make like cameras and like film equipment and stuff. But like, you know, so these are the people who like made the cameras that could take pictures of nuclear Yeah, yeah, and you know, and so and so the CIA brings them all to this like remote testing Rage in Nevada

to work in a secret project called Dragon Lady. Now in its early stages, Area fifty one is so secret that like even the Air Force doesn't know about it, and this like really pisss off the Air Forces senior senior generals, in particular a guy who was going to become very important to the story, Air Force General Curtis LeMay,

who like that man like that. I I don't say this very often about historical figures, but like if someone had assassinated General Curtis Lemie, the world like we would like the amount safer that the world would have been. Described the architects of saturation bombing started in World War Two and continuing. Uh and from up to now we didn't stop. And that is that is not the worst

thing he's involved in. Yeah, now, but in Lomay is extremely piste off that the CIA doesn't tell them about this, and he's going to remember that that that's gonna become

important later in this story. But eventually the CIA is forced to bring the Air Force into Area fifty one for a number of reasons, partially because they're flying airplanes and partially because the YouTube is kind of a piece of ship, you know, and part of it Okay, so they're learning how to fly plane is really high for the first time, but you know the YouTube if you fly it too slowly. It's stalls, which is like, Okay,

that's kind of a normal airplane. The you the YouTube is an amazing aircraft because it just as the most absurd pieces of aviation equipment ever designed, and like watching those things take off and land is the most funny thing on that's wild. Like the other problem is like as a stalling problem, but also has the problem if you fly it too fast, the wings will fall off. Okay's plane, Chris. It's so it's so massive and so fragile. The wings are so heavy and so large. It's one

of the most ridiculous pieces of equipment ever designed. It's it's it's incredible. So yeah, so the CIA needs help to get this thing working. And so the result is that Area fifty one at this point is is staffed by about it's one third CIA, one third Air Force, and one third Locking Martin. What a what a combination these are the god, can you imagine that cafeteria. The conversations. It's wild too, because it's like, because you have a bunch of just like spooks, right, You're a bunch of

just like people. And then there's just like a bunch of test pilots who are like just nuts and have been like a bunch of like like people who are like genuine war heroes who like fought in World War two but then went turned around and like it did horrible war crimes and like Koreas like Tom Cruise from Top Gun but with horrible PTSD and Michael Douglas from falling down. He hasn't picked up a gun yet. We can,

we can, we can mention this now. So top the reason that Top Gun exists is actually also AREAFT one? Yeah yeah, yeah, Because at one point the US, like so the Israeli's managed to convince it was three pilots to defect, and then they gave the airplane to the US, and so the US spent a bunch of time like flying this big twenty three a round and figuring out

how it worked. And that's how they like trained they basically trained all their pilots because they suddenly do how the Biggs worked, and that's that's the origin of the top Gun program. But then also hilariously that the Biggs got their revenge when when an Air Force general whose name is whose name is I am not making this up.

His name is General Bond and he was like he's like shows up you want like I want to fly, I want to fly and make eighteen and they're like okay, buddy, And then he just flew into a mountain and died, which okay, well all right, we have turned my opinions. Yeah he was, which is like a really that is the fast, difficult to control plane. Just that rules, that rules so hard. I see, I was. You just completely changed my opinion of this man. That is that is

the that is incredibly based. Unfortunately, there's a lot of other way more depressing plane crashes that happens here. And part of the reason it's bad is because you know this this whole thing is a black I have trouble imagine being depressed about anyone there die. Oh it's it's it's kind of so there there's a I don't really

care as much about the people. But like so there's a bunch of like fourteen of the people who are flying you twos like die and they like they crashed into a mountain and one of that about and it's like, yeah, but but that sucks about it? Is it like like the U. S. Government lies to their families for like

half a century about how they died. It's like this sucks, But then it gets even worse because again this is you know, this, this is the Black Project of like all black projects, and that means that they have a bunch of people from Operation paper Clip, because again this is a facility run by the CIA in the nineteen fifties, and so they let these literal not a bunch of literal Nazi Nazi doctors rut in durance test on potential

YouTube pilots. Now, these doctors are Nazi concentration camp doctors who had performed horrific human experiments on people in the camps. So naturally when they do endurance test, they torture people. So they would do things like they would force pilots to like hold their arms under ice water for like

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

up in charge of them and they torture people. Yeah, I think we're pretty we're pretty all on the same page of not having really in the project's bad. Now, the CIA has another problem, which is which is a much weirder and funnier problem, which that people keep seeing their spy planes. Yeah, and so part of this is the original you twos were silver, which means that they reflected the sun and the flaming cross. Yeah, because first two, because they not that all Matt black yea like a

chromed a chrome. Doubt you too, what do th like? It looks like us incredible? Yeah, and it's but you know, like this this this is you know, this causes like a huge number of the UFO settings just people seeing this thing and and eventually they're like, wait, we have to make this black because like having a spy plane that glows in the sun. Yes, that idea now and worse yet, so you know, the you two can fly at like sixty five feet, which is its way outside

the range of anti aircraft guns. It is ridiculously how hig how high that plane can go. But the CIA, in their eternal hubrists assumes that it's also too high for the Soviet radar to work, and so what happens instead is that they fly a YouTube directly over the Kremlin to like take pictures of Recruise Trevice sleeping, and the Soviets just immediately see it and they get really piste off because again, like there's no precedent for flying a spy plane over a country you're not at war with,

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

That's not that's incredibly funny. It is very funny. But they're like the So Curtis LeMay, who's all, anyway, we don't need to actions in front of Russian embassies, continues, So Lemmy is this guy, this guy is a threat

to all humanity and he has this idea. Okay, he wants to figure out how the he want to figures out like how the the USR radar system works, and so his plan is he's going to get the USS are to trigger the radar system, and he's going to do this by flying a thousand B forty seven bombers over Alaska and fly them like right at Soviet air space and then turn around the moment before they get in. Guys, come on, there's other ways to do trolling, Like you don't need to Like, you don't need to risk the

entire populations. Yeah, Garrison, see this is why you're not an A level troll. Level trolls know that if you're not risking the entire future of possibly all life in the known universe, then you're just there's other ways to make some friends. Makes makes some friends and troll your friends. It's not that hard. Come on, guys, troll the world by by playing chicken with its continued ability to any life above the microbial level, like the he has in

credle about this. She was the only reason any of this works is that the Soviets, like in Soviets are not good. But the Soviets aren't who the Americans say they are, Like, you're not Like if if if the US had done this against the US, everyone on earth would have gone on the end of it. And and may like you can say, like wholmy. Someone asked him about this afterwards and his and she says, and I quote, with a little bit more luck, we could have started

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

And the thing is like this is not the like the only just absolutely psychotic thing going on in this period, like a round are one. So in seven, the US test the first dirty bomb and they really don't know what this thing is gonna do. And it's like this is extremely danious or detonating a bomb it spiced putonium if youwhere, but just wait, uh, lest you think that detonating a dirty bomb was not dangerous enough. In they dropped something called the hood bomb, and this bomb, like

the blast this. Okay, they drop this, brought this bomb in Nevada, right, the blast of this bomb blows out windows and l a people people see this is in people see the explosion in Canada. Great, they see in Mexico, like you can see it from eight hundred miles out to see. And the funniest part is that it temporarily renders Area fifty one uninhabitable and they forgot to tell the people and are if you want to evacuate, that

is incredible. Everybody cancer incredibly Yeah, and then you know the people still want to work there and so they but this is like before they have hasmat suits. So they send a bunch of people in lab coats with like magnets to go collect radioactive bomb fragments so people can bring Great, that's extremely fun, just killing all of their I have no yeah, I have no problems with this. Yeah, this is fine. This is completely fine. We have had

probably saved a lot of lives, honestly. Yeah. Well, the problem the problem is though they they like Area fifty one was allowed to resume and that like very nearly killed us all. Yeah, it's been like the more people that die there, if you want to get cancer, that probably odds are that contributes to it is it is It is slow death. I guess that's what everyone says about radiation poisoning. It happens too slowly. Yeah yeah, Now, okay, So every fifty ones you two's are like continuing to

do flights and pissing off the Soviets. But unbeknown to the Americans, the Soviet anti air capacity was rapidly improving, and on Mayday nineteen sixty, the US pushes it too far and they send a pilot and Gary Powers to fly over the Soviet Union, and the Soviets just like shoot the shift out of him and this this is actually this really cute moment where like he crashes and he survived, and he's found by some radi Soviet farmer, and the Soviet farmer just like it's like, oh hey cool,

just like gives them a cigarette with Lucky of the Space Dog on it, and they have this very nice moment where they smoke a cigarette together, and then Powers gets arrested by the Soviet government and put on show for espionage. Now the interesting part about this is that so the US assumes that Powers is dead because when they designed the you tube, the Cia was like, oh, yeah, if this they didn't tell the pilots, everyone will die.

You are done. Yeah yeah. It's like but but you know, Powers lives through it, and so they they they the US is like claiming on life television that Powers was like, oh, this wasn't the spy plane. He was collecting high altitude weather data for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. This lets Kristiev has like his finest hour here is like incredible theatrical moment. He gives this incredible speech that's like he's he's like he's like asking like comrades, like what

what would happen if Soviet planes flew over Detroit? An immediate war? And he goes on this thing about how he's accusing, like he's like, okay, so who who said the spy plane? And he's like, well, it couldn't be the American people. It must have been the American militarist running this spiplane program without the knowledge of the commander in chief. And so the US like keeps denying it, and then Christief a couple days later gainst this another

incredible line. I'm gonna quote from this speech because it rules comrades. He said, I must let you win on a secret. When I made a report two days ago, I delivered refrained from mentioning that we have the remains of the plane and we also have the pilot who was quite alive and kicking, and the US just like it gets owned because safe. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure this state is I'm sure this state isn't thrilled. Oh yeah, it's it's like, it's an enormous embarrassment for this and

this this is this is a couple of other great lines. So, so Gary Powers gets tried for espionage, and there's there's this incredible line this trial where Sergey Rodenko, who is this he's an Air Force general and he's also part of the trial, and he calls area fifty one quote a criminal conspiracy between quote a major American capitalist company and espionage and reconnaissance center and the military of the US.

And this because this is this is literally what um you know, but but this is where everything goes to ship because there was supposed to be a massive like US USSR Pace summit to like look at the nuclearization uh huh yeah yeah, and so and and Kristef is like, okay, Eisenhower, you un need to apologize for flying spy planes over our country. And Eisenhower is like no, and this this, yeah, the conference is canceled and the world has plunged into

mortal peril that will only barely survive. And but barely, I mean it's oh yeah, we got extremely lucky. Um all all of this basically causes cruise shift to like start the military build up in Cuba. And you know, you can see where this is going. But but don't worry less less you think that Area fifty one is only indirectly responsible for this. They are in fact directly responsible for the Cuban missile crisis. You know, they they

they Air fifty one does they did? They do a bunch of other stuff that like funk with the Cubans that they have this thing with it. They send in pilots like right up the right up to to Cuban airspace and like have them basically trade missile locks with Soviet pilots so that they can test the Soviets like electronic weapons capacity. And it's like again, once again, we only didn't die because the Soviets didn't shoot after the U S did some like just absolutely we would have

absolutely them people have done. Yeah, if if a MiG had buzzed like Washington, d C, we would have ended all humanity. Yeah, we share would have they fucking knew that. God? That has to be so frustrating. Yeah, Like not a lot of sympathy for the U S s R in my book, but just being like, well, this is unacceptable. But if we do literally just what they're doing to us,

so I guess we have to be chills here. It's like yeah, well, and speaking of doing things, there's also there's also an incredible Bay of Pigs connection, which is that Richard Bassell, who's the guy who did Bay of Pigs, was the guy who read one. And one of the reasons why it fails is that so remember I talked about how the CIA piste off Curtis LeMay by not

telling him about every one. So, uh, the May is supposed to send a bunch of B fifty two bombers to support the Bay of Pigs and he doesn't do it. And this defense is that he sucked like He's defense is that he sucked up the time zones, which I've missed. Hey, we've all missed meetings because of that I'm late all the time because at time zones. It's that that you know what, Curtis Lamy did nothing wrong. Yeah, it's amazing.

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

that's not even a joke, that's just true. Yeah, all of these things that is being sold for fake money. So yep, by products. And this is when Garrison goes on a rant about Fiat currency. We're back and we're talking about the the Fiat, which is certainly a car. I lost all I lost I lost with all the Fiat. Please everyone everyone sent me, send me what you can. I'll reinvest and give you back your money in a

few days. You're gonna buy one of those fucking one of those eight bit illustration and f T s that costs two million dollars, aren't you Garrison? Oh you bet see? I heard, I heard now that they're making physical copies. This is a brand new phenomenon, making physical versions of an n f T so you can actually like have something. Yeah, it's basic, there is there's nothing else like this. It's like art, but you actually can have it. It's the

first time. It's really Robert. You guys, you can't. You can't tell the public how are how how how how we funnel all of our money around for our black projects. You're not allowed to explain our money laundering schemes on air?

You know. One one surprising thing about all of this, like Air one stuff is honestly the degree to which the government does not deflect stuff by using alien ship more often, because if they were smart, they could just use alien ship more often to deflect any suspicion about what's actually happening. So they I don't know, they go back and so so part of what's going so they go back and forth on this, and part of what's going on is the CIA when when when people start

first reporting UFOs like they have to like concerns. One of which is that it's just going to cause panic in the US public and they don't want that they're doing this sort of like elite panic thing, and they're

afraid they're once they will go insane or whatever. But the second thing that they're worried about is that they're really concerned that the Soviet Union is going to block out the U s IS early warning system by sending a bunch of a QFO reports, which would be very Funnyeah, it would be very funny, but you know, but so so they their initial line on UFOs is like they're they try, They spent a lot of time trying to get everyone to like not believe in them, because they're like,

this is this is treading a sterea and it's like damaging our early warning capacity because people keep reporting, and also because people just keep seeing their spy planes and so they're just like, guys, there's no UFOs. Yeah, well, we'll get to in a little bit of some more about that, because there's a lot of very weird stuff going on there. But first we have to almost end

the world. All right, Let's let's just do that at first, and then in six two the CIA flies, It flies a YouTube over over Cuba and they get a bunch of pictures of nuclear weapons and this this is basically the thing that starts to cube At missile crisis. Although I also I also we need to talk about LeMay one more time because before they get these pictures, Lemy

is convinced there's there's no nukes there. And LeMay wants to do a preactive strike on Cuba to stop the Soviets and bring missiles in, which again literally would have killed us. All yeah, yeah, but but let's let make us voted down. So the CIA, you know, sends the youtubes in and this this is the thing that starts to the starts to Cuban missile crisis, and you have the Soviets and Americans like staring each other down at sea.

And but again because these people are just like like because there are if you do want people to see how people are just nuts, they keep sending UFOs and if they keep sending you twos over Cuba, and they they're sending youtubes over Cuba, and and the Americans like lyne on the you Tuesday sendever is if they shoot down a YouTube, we're going to invade. And so the

Soviets actually do shoot shoot down a YouTube. But for like the only time ever in history, uh, the US is like, wait, maybe we shouldn't end all like literally end all humanity, and like we we got this because this moment, we're just like, you know, you get to actually so you have all the like just horrific leadership stuff that has got you here, but you get a moment where like the soul of humanity is tested in like a very small number of people, and it's like

if any one of these people on either side flinches or like decides that they want to end all life on earth, everyone is going to die. And for one of like this is you know, this is like this is like one of the only times ever that it has actually mattered that we're not all just like terrible pieces of ship. And we didn't do it, and we didn't end all humanity, and eventually the whole, the whole

thing is wound down. Alternatively, the people in charge realized that if they were doing this, they could no longer do whatever fun stuff they didn't their spare time. And it's only for selfish reason. Oh yeah, I mean, because yeah, the lead let me say, it's like the leaders get

no credit here at all. The people who do get credit are just like the random assholes on a ship who like got sent over to the other side of the world and had to just like sit there knowing that they could be destroyed in any moments and then didn't panic and like held and kept kept everyone on Earth from dying by just not just like holding it together in a situation that would have just like destroyed most people. So so good good on, good on like

the cruise of the ships for not killing us all. Yeah, yeah, depending on how I feel now. Part part part of what's happening here is is the you tu is getting shot down. It makes the area fifty one people go, we need to build a faster plane. Sure, And so there's their solution to this is the A twelve ox cart. And the l oxcar is interesting because this is another thing that everyone thinks is the UFO but actually isn't.

And I mean there's a very famous UFO picture of like one of NASA's like X fifteen rocket jets, and in the very like in the very corner of this rocket picture of the rocket jet, there's there's an A twelve and everyone is like, oh, this is UFO. Is the UFON is like, no, it's not, it's this. But you know, the CIA keeps doing these like halfass cover ups, but like like you can just see these out of passenger planes, like if you're in a plane, you just

see it. It's like, oh, this thing looks like a cigar's flute past and they they do looking they do look incredibly weird. Yeah, and it just doesn't work. And eventually, in the mid sixties, Walter Cronkite like goes on TV and tells the American public at the CIA have been doing a UFO cover up, which is true, but everyone assumes this is about aliens. But it's not about aliens. Nothing you with aliens. It has everything to do with

the fact that people keep seeing this biplanes. And so the Air Force gets put in charge of an investigation of UFOs. But the problem is that only a few top Air Force generals know about the A twelve. Yeah, they only a few people know what the existence of this aircraft. Yeah yeah, And so the low level investigators are like, oh, the Air Force is doing a uh cover up, which they are, but they assume that it's

about aliens. And so a bunch of these people like turned into aliens like UFO conspiracy theorists, and yeah, because this is you know, and we're getting to see this the the US basically through it sort of like the secrecy on these programs, it just it keeps creating UFO conspiracies. And yeah, there there's some Okay, there's some question as

to how to liberally they're doing this. Um So, the head of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, which is like the uf U s IS UFO Study Group in nine is taken over by Joseph Bran the Third, who, Joseph Brian the Third was the CIA's first chief of Political and Psychological Warfare. He seems like a solid dude

to hang out with. Yeah, so I have no idea what that means does And there's there's some reports that there have been a couple of like books and documentaries and a lot and in the last like ten years that have repared that. Yes, but it basically reported that that people in the CIA deliberately fed like fake UFO information to people to cause people to like go even

deeper into their conspiracy. Absolutely believe, Yeah, I would. I will say this, Okay, so, like this is the kind of thing the CIA would do, but the people who are giving the evidence are sketchy, and I mean, of course, yeah, like that that is yeah, that is kind of how that mean they probably feed it to a lot of people, and the people who talk about it, well, I mean so that the people were testifying a bet are people

who allegedly did it, Yeah, which is interesting. But but the thing that well, the probably is weird about those people also just sort of they're like, oh, I spread this conspiracy, but like they they also want to get into the UFO scene. And so the question it's it's weird and it's a lot of weird conflicting interests going on. And this is this is one of the problems with the CIA, which is that like, okay, so there's there's there's a couple of there's like some important things you

need to understand about the CIA. They're bad. You don't need conspiracy theories for that. They're just they're bad. They do a lot of bad things. Um, the CIA having done something is not in and of itself proof that they did another thing. So for example, like you can say that you like you know, you says think like the CIA is a mood base, right, and someone asked you for evidence that you can go, oh, well, they did Operation paper Clip and they're involved in development of

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

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

India was doing tests at all. And then they yeah, so these news would go off and they would learn that the India was doing tests when Indiana of renounced on TV. So like they're they're not actually omnipotent. I think,

I think what is this interesting. I'm not sure if you're in a type I'm not sure if you can bring this up shortly, but like this sort of thing is definitely is still happening in terms of like like air force pilots seeing weird stuff in this guy and then going to talk about it be like you know, it's just like this is some other aircraft. Usually it's it's usually usually we're able to actually like prove what

these things are. Um, but like you know, military or people see stuff, they talk talk about the news, and the time, it was always weird. It's always been like some other like like civil arrest is happening when like we get some weird piece of information about UFL is

like oh really, what a coincidence? And it's it's it's an interesting thing to be though, because like there's this kind of like weird interplace because like a lot of like like like senators and presidents like actually believe that there's UFOs and and this is like I mean the weird things, but like the different do you mean like

UFOs are do mean like aliens? Well, like like aliens like this like that there are there are a lot of people in the government who do believe in aliens, and and and it's it's this weird tension because and a lot like everything is like like I don't know, Like Harry Read for example, was a big alien dude, right, but Harry Reid, like, I mean, I know he's very powerful in Nevadas, like maybe he knew, but like Harry Reid is not someone who knows what's happening in these

black projects because they don't tell. They don't tell Congress, right, I mean he he might know because of how powerfully is, but like again, it's up in the even even the people who are supposed to be in charge, I don't know what's actually happening. And that means they fall for conspiracy theories because yeah, they felt conspiracy theories. And at this point, it's more of a it's more of a fandom than anything else. It's really easy to get sucked

into a fandom. Like so I can't I mean, I don't trust any Congressman on any level specifically around this issue, because this is solely a fandom issue. It It's like it's like it's like taking their opinion on like religion. It's like I care zero amount because it's only a fandom, and I think I think that the thing that is very dangerous about this stough is that again, Area fifty one is like the existence of Area fifty one is like an atrocity to anyone who thinks you live in

a democracy. They have almost killed us, like multiple multiple times, and everyone is like, oh, it's the Aliens. Was like, nope, they they literally almost ended life on Earth like four times, and and yeah, you know what we're gonna get into they they you know, will get into the other horrible stuff they do at a second. But I do want to talk about the one cool thing they did, because okay,

they did one thing that was incredibly awesome. That was the greatest thing the American Empires ever produced, which is they made the SR seventy one. The SR seventy one is fucking sick. This is this is the coolest airplane anyone. It's like, just like, go google a picture of it. It looks so cool. It could hit it could hit Mock three point four. Like it's just fast. It's faster than bullets. Uh it is. It doesn't any weapons on it, and it's it's it's defense strategy, so missile is to

outrun the missile. Yeah, it's what's the man It does look just like the X Wing and it does look just like the X Men's Yeah, well yeah, it's specifically there modified. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's shiitest thing ever. And it's like from that was like that was the pinnacle of the American empires when they made this, this one just absolutely incredible machine, and then they used to do war crimes in Vietnam and then they were like, oh,

it's too expensive. Dick Cheney, who is a demon in human form who will one day returned to the Hell that spawned him and spend the rest of his days between an apport by Satan, has the program killed because he wants to make B two bombers, and he's like, oh, we've got to be able to drop nukes from weird triangle planes. We can't run the coolest plane of all time ever anymore. So he kills it, and it's depressing and it's it's everything is bad now, and he will

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

worse that plane looks than the SR seventy one. Like if I success flying around in FT, they're so wet, they're so bad because Professor Xavier has has fucking style unfortunately. So there's the other things they're building there are horrifying. Um. One of the most important ones that I think people have sort of like forgotten the real impact of is is that the F one sevent Night Hawk and so so uh Eric fifty one is basically where American steuth

technology is developed, which really does on the conspiracy. But like no, this is actually like yeah, this, this is this is what they're doing. They're doing, Yeah, they're doing seuth technology and the Nighthawk. The night Hawk is really bad. And the night Hawk is really bad because it fundamentally changes the balance of power between anti A weapons and bombers.

And this means that the US can just like I don't know, for example, just obliterate an army of fleeing Iraqi conscripts without having to like worry about someone shooting down their planes. To be fair, I do think I do think the night Hawk looks way better than the previous plane we mentioned. That's for so many one. Now that's not a bad looking plane, but the night beautiful plane, it's a it is a horrible killing machine. It's all designed for and it looks like it. It looks like death.

Like the plane looks like It's true, it doesn't look like well that's why I likely there's only one because seventy one just looks like it looks like looks like death, yeah, whereas where this one looks like like. This one looks like like like like like yeah, like a government put into a plane that is death, that is and that is what it looks like. And so yeah, this is this is this is part of a transition the night Hawks actually is there's an interesting tansition that's happening here,

which is that so a night Hawks. Uh, the Nighthawk is tested at at Airy fifty one. But this is the first plane that like can actually drop bombs that Airy fifty one ever made, because up until up until this point they've been doing Becconnissance aircraft and be doing the YouTube that seventy one A twelve, which is like they're just capable of accidentally ending the world, these deliberately ending it by dropping bombs. Yeah, and and this this this is when is that the CIA gives control of

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

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

of UFO sightings they produce. So, like they said, they start flying, they start flying at night because it's actually really hard to see a black airplane at night. Yeah. But but you know, the the other thing that they're doing in air fifty one, and they've been doing this really since the sixties is Air fifty one is where

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

joone is sick. Like that's like that's just like a cool thing. Yeah. If it wasn't used for killing people, then all these things are designed to people. Well yeah, but the thought about the ram Jet things, they had to stop using it because it kept it kept just like like cutting the airplane that kept cutting the A twelve and a half. Okay, well to the ram Jet drone. But yeah, and I think that the last thing we should talk about is that, Yeah, so Area fifty ones.

The latest thing that we know that they did that is horrifying and awful is so up up until nine eleven, there had been a line in the U. S. MILT and that line was you do not put weapons on unarmed drones. After after oh what a time? Yeah, and every note eleven, uh, the Air Force in the CIA basically get together and they're trying to draw up a plan to kill Ben Laden and so their their plan to do this is to put health fire missiles on a drone. And this is this is this is the

origin of what a horrible series of event. Drone like the few decisions that have impacted the course of humanity for the next century that are being responsible for so many and and this thing, you can you can see where this is going in the initial thing, because so when when when when they're testing the missiles on this right in Airy fifty one that they set up like a mock version of like Ben Lawden's house, and they're setting it up so that they can figure out how

many children they are going to kill when they blow this thing up, and yeah, that's that's that's that's that's been, that's been air fifty ones modern. No, the worst, the worst thing to come from places like this is putting guns on robots and drums. This is like the worst thing, almost almost almost ending the world with nuclear weapons, and then now drones deciding to put deciding to put bombs and weapons on little tiny things that fly and little

and little robots that crawl around. This is the worst thing imaginable that we could have We could have just not done, but we're like, nope, let's do it. And now because the things about it, even even though like seventies c. I A Was like, this is a bad idea. I know, it's one of one of the first laws of like one of the first laws of first of robotics, the first lave of robotics. Yeah, but we stopped talking

about that years ago, and now we have those. Now we have those fucking robot dogs with that fucking like five five six rifles SI even worse, even worse. Yeah, and that's the episode and yet more, a rifle a little go right through a robot yeah, I'm really excited for the Robot Wars and then it's gonna suck so bad. We're already in the Robot Wars. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's well, it's happened. Well, but you know what will

never happen. It would have been so much it would have been so much better if it was just Aliens. God what no not? Yeah, you know, I would though, if we ever do Stomry, we should just destroy it like that. That's just that place. That place should be raised to the ground and like left as a monument to the people that killed, because that should be most of the states. Yes, specifically, we fill every inch of it with concrete and we top it with a statue

of Fox Molder. You know. You know what we do is we do the thing like for the theoretical, the theoretical nuclear waste disposal site. Yeah, that is what we do. It is also still sort of a radiant and also it is still also radiant. So yeah, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing of value is kept here. Turn to turn away. Yep, yeah, well I wish it was aliens. Aliens. All right, Well, see that's the episode. You can follow our cia exploits that that happened here upon on Twitter and Instagram. Gotta

hate social media. All right, that's the episode. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills, and you just kind of fell into it, and you know, it's like totally fine, just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do. If you've got something to say.

You could, I don't know, start up podcast with spreaker from my heart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler, I'm an explorer spreaker dot com. That's spr e a k e er hustle on over Today. I'm Jake Halbern, host of deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.

We controlled the courts, we controlled absolutely everything. He broughbed judges and even helped a hit man walk free, until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There's got to be

something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He looks like a little scum, big liar stool Pidgeon, you looked like what he was or at I can say with all certainty I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time, my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me. In the heartbeat, listen to deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. When P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show.

So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who were at the center of it all in a place where spectacle was king. We will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye. So step right up and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mile Presents now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim and Mild dot com. Slash presents a spooky All right,

We're done. Um, Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show that this is on the week that this is, which is the spooky week of the year where things are spooky. Today, my guest Katie Golden Katie sit say hello to the audience. Hello, audience, now say goodbye. Okay by audience, now tell the audience that acts of industrial sabotage are always morally justified in

defense of the climate. Uh acts of Wait, okay, so are you do you guys have a team of lawyers that I can access or absolutely they say it's fine. They say it's fine. If you tell people that, then you know, industrial sabbatui or whatever he said, it is cool. I love it, all right, everybody. I wouldn't have made that kind of claim, but but you heard Katie, so you know, there you go. Full We've now made a full throated defense of the Niger Delta Avengers. That is true.

That is an upcoming episode of Chris Um Katie, What do you? What do you do? What do we? What do we? What do we? What? What are we? What are we? What are We're? All star dust Robert? Okay, well that sounds soothing. Actually well well first, Katie of of of the Goldens is the host of Creature. You right for some more news. You're the host of Creature feature Jesus Sophie, you gotta remember these things. Yeah, um m, everything's always beautiful. What are we? What are we doing today?

What do you got? What? What are what's happening? I mean, this is your podcast. But I thought, all right, fine, it's my podcast. Now, welcome to it could happen? We are hosted by Katie Golden. I thought we could talk. I thought we could talk about animals because I like animals. All right, you got a spooky thing about an animal

for us? Yeah, I thought because the theme of your podcast seems to be, you know, sort of the future and how things could get pretty fucky in the future, and I thought there are some examples of things getting fucky with animals in the current present. That seems to it could maybe be a bit of a crystal ball for things that could happen in the future with climate change. That is kind of spooky. All right, let's do it.

Have you guys heard of this? I get antelope. I mean, I've heard of antelopes, and I've heard of the saiga, and I guess I'm not surprised that there's antelopes in the Saga. Do me a quick favor and just google siga antelope and just take a gander. Take them on in as I I'll describe them to the aud Wow. Yeah, they are kind of some of the cutest, dufiest little in the world. Little little they have the best little face. I know, it's weird. It looks it's like just too

it's just a big nose. Yeah, it's just a big, ridiculous nose. My god, that looks silly. They must be endangered because they look they look like they're terrible at staying alive. Their their faces all nose. It's like someone's whole face was just a nose like someone stuck an ant eater to like an They look delicious. I'm just gonna say it. I would hunt and eat them. They like incredibly with Voldemort's nostrils in the Harry Potter movie. But like long, Yeah, they look ridiculous. Yes, they like

a Star Wars animal. Yeah, some of them. They're patterning makes it look like they have tear drop tattoos under their eyes, which I think means they've all killed someone in prison the hard correctly. Yeah, anyways, are you going to tell something that is happening with them, Katie? Yes? Are they raist? Are these racist antelope? Katie? We're gonna milkshake duck these antelopes. Yeah, they're They're all um as far as I know, they're not too racist. They have

some problematic views on like, you know, gender abortion. Yeah that's I mean, all antelope have really regressive attitudes towards women's reproductive healthy I mean frustrating. Yeah, yeah, it's a but these guys look like Star Wars animals to me, they kind of look like a Star Wars anal named like a grass honker or something. Yeah, they look extremely fake. It's a like a guy you'd meet at the bar

where the Aliens played jizy. Yes, that type of music that Katie's doing is canonically and and if you and if you are, if you are, if you are a musician who plays jiz, you are a jiz whaler. And the best thing about that is that I know all of the thought that George Lucas put to that was, Oh, someone asked what the type of music they played in jazz? Jazz is a real kind of music. Let me just

put an eye in the vowel. Now, well, that's gonna be the day for me put an apostrophe in which it could have it could have, it could have been so even the effort wasn't there because these are okay, sorry, no, I can talk about this for hours. I just the differences between J. K. Rowling and and George Lucas as creators who both made very popular fiction franchise is and want people to think they thought about them more than

they did. Is absolutely hysterical because J. K. Rowling does that by creating all these convoluted backstories, and George Lucas replaced the A and jazz with an eye and didn't realize that, right, what an incredible person. It is pretty good. Sorry, Katie, No, it's fine, it's fine. So these saga antelope a k a. Jizz whalers are found in the grasslands and semi deserts

in Central Asia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. They actually used to have a much wider range, but because of all the Roberts out there wanting to taste their delicious delicious, uh just that nose on a plate, their population declined and is now limited to a small territory. So yeah, so there's still enough for meat to eat a couple. No, Robert, if you try to kill one,

I'll kill you first. Antelope hunting, we have to. We have to protect the look they look stupid as shit. It can't possibly be good at stuff. Actually what that knows? I bet their senses are. They could do a lot of interesting things. Yeah, anybody, let Katie tell the story. You interrupting, Fox go sorry, we all got jiz pill now not so it's okay, it's I understand the excitement about these guys. Um. I do want to paint a mental picture for the audience, just so they get like

why people are freaking out. So they have this elephant, Like imagine a little antelope and they're they're small. They're about two three ft tall, about six pounds. Yeah, they're little babies. And it looks like you took like a cute little deer and just glued like a big elephant nose to it. It's not as long as an elephant trunk, but it's sort of a like a it curls under like an elephant seal nose stuck to a little deer

and that's out. Is called a proboscis, And yeah, it's a they're kind of a they have sort of a light tan white coat. Uh, they can get really fluffy in the winter. Uh. They have these really huge tubular nostrils on that nose and that gigantic conquer helps them filter dirt as the huge herds sort of trample on the ground and kick up dirt clouds um And it can also act as an ac unit that cools the

syga antelopes blood. So as blood flows through it, you have this spacious chamber and it cools the blood and it recirculates. And then in the winter it can act as a space heater that warms the air before they breathe it in so ac heater. Yeah, filter system. It's really a cool nose, which is why it was absolutely horrifying when entire herds of the Saga antelope started dropping dead on mass within like days of each other, just

like a biblical plague. So there are photos. What's properly unbelievable. You're so embarrassing sometimes, Katie, I'm so sorry. No, it's it's it's fine. Um, I'm I mean, I don't know how else to sort of add levity to just the most adorable little antelope in the world just all suddenly dying. Uh. There. So there are photos in Kazakhstans of in Kazakhstan of these fields just littered with these white lumps, and when you zoom in you realize they're all Saga antelope corpses

just covering the ground. It's pretty bone chilling. It kind of looks okay, this is a little bit, uh. It kind of looks like a cult death, a mass cult death, like jonestown antelope. Oh boy, I was going to say, when you go grenade fishing, but yeah, the same kind of idea grenade fishing. Yeah, what did you drop a grenade in a lake and then it kills all the

fish and they float to the top, so you can. Okay, I thought it was like you were fishing for fishing, like running around a field going like it's that if you go fishing in a lake where people go grenade fishing, you may in fact catch a grenade. But but two grenades with one stone, well kind of I'm having this image of bobbing for apples. But like above, the apple pareful with lakes in Iraq? Is it because they've got

grenades in them? Yeah? Really that's how you fish? Yeah, okay, yeah, if I'm still obsession looking at these pictures, Okay, so what what caused all this? This this nightmare plague that killed all of the all of the weird nos the gonzo antelope, right, the gonzo antelope. It was kind of a mystery. So in two hundred thousand siga died off in that year alone, and like literally not that many.

So yeah, it was like the it wiped out the majority of the global population because they were already endangered. Um yeah, they just like keeled over died without explanation, and so researchers were obviously horrified and confused and slightly curious and started that's more than left. Yeah. Yeah, so

they're like a hundred thousand left. Um. And so they started investigating the mass deaths and they found that the cause was a bacterial infection of pastor Ella multosita type B bacteria, which is a really catchy name um, and it caused hemorrhagic sceptics simia um, which is a horrible I looked up the symptoms. It's like internal bleeding and just it's like the worst cold ever, but also with

your organs bleeding inside, which doesn't sound great. It sounds and honestly looks like Captain trips, like the plague from Stephen King's The Stand that killed all of the people. Like just this horrible plague that makes everybody bleed out and drop where they're standing. Yeah, that's essentially what it happened. What happens also with a lot of snots, like a lot of ye that's also very captain trips. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

I mean maybe that yeah yeah, so meat fun. So yeah, what is thought to have happened is that basically this bacteria, pastor Ella has often been found in siga antelope large noses. They're also found in other like a yell at noses that have big, these big sort of proboscus noses and it lives in there. But it's normally not a problem because the immune system is able to fight it off fine and maintains this balance. But the climate, I don't know if you guys have heard, but climate is kind

of getting weird. That is something I've I've heard of, yeah, learning about it. It may be it may be changing from what it used to be a little bit. Yeah, it's called change of climate kind of on a global scale, everything getting slightly warmer. Yeah, usually it's climate hottening. Climate hottening. Because of climate hottening, this bacteria it had much more ideal, uh,

kind of of an environment to grow. So inside the beautiful proboscis of the antelope, you can imagine, it's moist, it's warm, it's great, it's moister, yeah, with fester inside

the nose right exactly. And so when it gets more humid on the outside, more hot and humid, that nose increases in temperature as well, and it became the perfect incubator for hosting this bacteria such that it overwhelmed the antelopes immune system and literally they just started dropping like flies from this infection, like an entire herd dying within a couple of days. When when we first mentioned this, you're talking about how they can use their nose as

like an air conditioner. I was thinking like, oh, maybe maybe these animals will be like well adapted to climate change so they can stuff regulate. But no, of course not. Of course it's not a good story. Um yea. Now I think that's what's so creepy about climate change to me is there's like the obvious effects are things like more fire, we get real hot and we die because it's too hot. But things like oh, this means bacteria loves loves living life and like starts eating us from

the inside out. Like that's not a really I guess in two of consequence of global warming, but it is one of the things that seems to be likely to happen. So it's really creepy. Well it's fun is when you started this and talked about like a whole herd of of of these antelopes dropping at once, I thought it was going to be like, oh, another one of those like horrible sulfur bubbles that killed like a city's worth of animals in a matter of seconds. Because a bunch

of ice melted um and I'm not sure which is creepier. Actually, this is worse, Like they died in like horrible pain. Yeah, I don't think the sulfur wasn't painful. But yeah, they're both horrifying, the sulfurs at least faster. They're both very frightening. And it's also both things that like, oh yeah that could that could they that could drop some people that could just jump right across. There's there's a couple of ways this could go bad for us. This is the thing.

And Robert was looking a little bit into to put together the first five scripted episodes of The Daily Is we In a few books we read, there were there were there were section, like large sections about this is gonna basically just make plagues be a thing forever. Now, Yeah, this is gonna be hard for people to really get their heads around. But imagine a plague hit in in in the twenty one century. How scary that would be, just really trying to get your head around that global plague. Yeah,

people drop into frightening, you know. So the coronavirus coronavirus is technically it's not a plague, right because it's not it's not bacteria. It's yeah, it's like it's it's it's both both both Like vitral pathogens, bacterial pathogens are with with globalization, can spread it much faster, right, and now with global warming there's gonna be more breeding ground for literally new bacterias. And this is and with with stuff melting in the ice caps and all that kind of stuff.

There's just a lot of reasons to just assume that, yeah, we're just gonna kind of live with plugues constantly being a problem now, Like it's that's just the were there there. There never is going to be a post COVID nineteen world. It's just this forever. COVID was just the first plague that really got through the defenses that we're never going to hold up to the damage we're doing to the climate.

Like there were a couple of plagues beforehand that like we we were able to kind of cat tamp down on get a lit on, and COVID was just the system actually finally shattering and it's never gonna get fixed and the plagues are just gonna get plague gear and uh, it'll be fun. But on the other side, on the upside, here's some mats. Okay, Yeah, on the upside, capitalism, we are back. I've I've unfortunately, I've got to the point where I'm scrolling through these pictures where I've now found

the mountain of dead animals. Yeah, it's real, fucking the stand ship. Yeah, it's a lot of them, a lot of them dead, just in a giant pile. Like imagine the cutest Sesame Street character, cuter than snuffle Off, I guess, just lying in heaps, and that big nose has to make him extra vulnerable to fucking how horrible nose bacteria. That's what we were just talking about. It's literally that's just what we said. Katie just explained that. I know.

But it's so sad. It is very sad. It's very sad, and there's this is not an isolated case that will never happen again. Researchers warn that it's very likely stuff like this will keep happening with climate change, and they're warning that reindeer populations are at risk because reindeer actually also have a really even though it doesn't seem like they have a huge boss, because they have a very

impressive nose. It's very spacious. It also actually works like a little space heater and warms up the air as they breathe it in. It's pretty amazing. But those same characteristics that are so beneficial to the reindeer now could actually become very dangerous for them with climate change if

this bacterial growth happened. So we're looking at potential, um, you know, risk to reindeer population, and there's also a lot of risk to farm animals as well, like for something similar have to happen, where this bacteria can infect farm animals like cows and other types of ungulate farm animals. Uh. And so you know, even if people don't care about the adorable psyched antelope, which I guess would be just psychopaths, murders,

you know. Uh, But like you know, we also have very important species like you know, reindeer that are keystone species and also you know our farm animals that you know, Yeah, they're very for a lot of people to basically how they live their lives are based around cultivating these animals and hunting and raising it. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, in my opinion, every species, even if no matter how obscured it is, it is typically something very important for humans.

It's just it's sort of the like seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. It's like you don't have to get too far away to realize that Kevin Bacon, like his survival is really important to the planet um. Except instead of Kevin Bacon, it's like any animal. And that is basically all animals and all ecosystems, no matter even if you feel like they're not super important the way our world works and how it doesn't work, they're all incredibly intrinsic

and reliant on each other. So even you know that's that we're seeing stuff about, like why don't we just like turn entire deserts into solar fields and be like, well, no, because the desert equisystem actually, like if they serves a very important purpose, Like you can't just be like, oh, deserts are important, Like no, like they have an actual

egoistm that's actually very important to the surrounding areas. We can't just bulldoze it and turn into a solar just sand garrison, which is coarse and irritating and it gets everywhere. It's everywhere. It's an actual quote from from episodes episode two, Attack of the Clones by hearing Christensen playing Anakin Skywalker the Padawan with with the rat tail. Yeah, yeah, classic that Yeah, his rat tail amazing. The courage they used to the courage of two three stunning. Yeah, How could

pad May not How could she not want that? How could you resist? It's like that Ween song Every girl wants a guy with a rat tail. Yeah, I'm just assuming if that were a song, it would be by Ween called it's called a like a love Lover. I think that's right, that's right. So what's up with these animals? Yeah, you want some more animals because I talked about how those animals mostly all died. Oh I'm I'm just thinking, like what's like, what's what like? Do you know, like,

what's happened with them since they all dropped? A whole four thousand of them left alive? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, they're not currently all dying of this bacterial infection. I think, like some of them are. They apparently outside of the danger zone. I guess outside of the area where there. Yeah, that's about the best you can say for any species. Some of them aren't in the danger area occurringly, but obviously that's going to change as global warming progresses. So yeah,

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

We would be nose deep in a big old pilages. Oh wow, yeah, how would How does the Bible quantify jizz? Um cubits? Okay, that's what Noah said, but he wanted to get the j on the ark. God's like, you must two jis of every kind. Well, Noah was big into Now we're just like drawing that it was ever

about music? All right? Sorry, Katie, No, that's all right, I asked, so, h yeah, I mean I thought another thing we could talk about is how animal folklore is really important to pay attention to and to kind of listen to as both information and warnings for the future. Um, because we often dismissed folklore as like, oh, you know, these are just spooky stories that we tell around the campfire. They're just legends. They don't mean anything. We're especially dismissive,

I think when it comes to indigenous peoples. It's like, oh, your folklore, Oh that's so cute and quaint. But yeah, we listen to it. We we look at it as we we like really like infantilize it as like, oh, look at you primitive people still doing folklore, which is extremely extremely disrespectful and also like very naive about how things work when you look at how heavily engineered all of like the forests were in the entirety of the America's like from the Amazon of the up to the

Pacific Northwest. It's a little like like the architect of a building comes in and says, hey, you can't knock out that retaining while the building is gonna collapse, and we're gonna be like, oh, Mr architect with his magic walls, and then the building. You know, there's there's a bunch

of paintings. You're like, there's like these drawings from like this is like the early sixteen hundreds of people like in North America, and and it will be the drawing and it's all these European guys standing on a tree and what they're watching is like it's it's one of one of the I forget exactly what tried. This is

one of one of the people. Like they figured out how to have like a fire that's like it burns it like exactly, like like perfectly in this ring around the tree does not catch anything else inside of it. Like and it's funny because it's like you look at this and it's like, okay, like the people, like the people who are drawing this painting cannot do this. And it's like it's very clear that they're just like incredibly

befuddled by this. But it's like you know, and just it's it's just sitting there and then all the people who paint, who paint that, you like, all the European artists who like do this each like no, no, not, it's fine. We don't know how they're doing this fire control stuff. But we're Europeans. Everything we every ignoring everything other people say is gonna go fine and great, and we're not gonna like turn half the country into a

dust bowl. What do they got to hs? We figured out how to make boats that only kill half the people on them, only half barely. I mean that, I mean that is a really good point. Uh. Controlled burns have been practiced by a number of civilizations for millennia. But when European settlers came and colonized North America, were like controlled burns. But we want to sell the timber

and that sounds dangerous, so let us handle it. But this is all immortalized in the biographical song Timber Bye Bye pit Bull, which which which tells this story in in lyrical version please continue, and in uh and in uh Timberland boots, and in Timberland boots. That's right, every Timberland boot has a piece of the story. Yeah, and timberwolves. The I'm gonna say, a hockey team. Yes, the hockey team is yeah, okay, yeah, Sophie is shaking your head.

And I'm sorry, Sophie, Minnesota Wolves. I'm sorry everyone, but yeah, I mean so in North America, especially in California. Uh, Indigenous American tribes practice controlled burns for thousands and thousands of years. Uh. The europe Carrack and Hoopa tribes of California did controlled burns, which, in addition to preventing larger, more dangerous wildfires by getting grid of dead brush. It also promoted new growth of vegetation like really important plant

species like oak and hazel. It even had unexpected effects like supporting the salmon population because as you did these controlled burns created a block from the sun so that the ash clouds and then that would cool down the temperatures of the streams. And I know what you're thinking, that, hey, to counter global warming, we should burn everything so that I cooled down. Um, the problem with burning everything like

these uncontrolled burns is they also kill living vegetation. And it's just like it burns everything in sight and leaves basically nothing, and it burns off a huge amount of carbon stores. So the great thing about controlled burns is it very slowly burns off these carbon stores in this dead wood, and then it gives it time to re grow so that you recapture the carbon rather than just like burning all this carbon at once, releasing it all at once, and then it's like trying to play catchup.

It's like if you still like a little bit of milk on the table and you use a paper towel and wipe it up, it works. But if you just like pour out the entire milk jug on the table. Uh, you know, on like a sloppy Saturday, just pouring out that milk. It's like a paper towel is not gonna do anything. That's like trees carbon you know what I'm saying. Yes, yeah, I do, I do, I do. I do pick up what you are putting down. They say, although I still think melk analogy, we should try a controlled burn on.

Let's say Boston, see how it goes, right, I didn't care for it. I didn't care for Boston. Don't see how we need it? Even North End, Yeah, I didn't care for it. M hm. They've got good Canolis there, though, I'm sure they do. You know where else has good Canolis? I don't because I don't care for Canoli's either. Okay, well, all right, that's uh. I'm actually living in Italy, and so if they find out I've been on this podcast, I'm going to get kicked out of the Oh you

need to be yeah, very careful. It's filled with Italians. They're everywhere. If you can get up to the Alps, there might be some Swiss nearby who can protect. Yeah, but it's you're in dangerous territory. I didn't realize their Italians here, that's scary. Yeah, it's one of the main

problems that Italy has. Yeah so uh yeah so. But when basically um indigenous tribes had a pretty good system of controlled burns in California, and then when you know, colonizers came to North America, we were like, hey, stop that. In fact, we're gonna make it illegal to do controlled

burns because that seems dangerous. And they focused on fire suppression and protection of timber stores rather than you know, paying attention to the way people had been doing this for thousands and thousands of years and how it kind of worked. And so they just thought like, hey, if we just stopped fires from ever happening, they'll never happen. But spoilers they just started happening still happen and it's worse and they're out of control and they're big problems

every year. And yeah, learned nothing, yep um. But another thing is that we could have learned about controlled burns much much earlier if we had decided to listen to the Aboriginal people's in northern Australia UM about fire hawks. So fire hawks are raptors. That is like birds of prey who seemed to either accidentally or intentionally spread wildfire by picking up smoldering twigs and sticks from a burning

area and dropping them elsewhere. And then once they start that fire, they watch for all the little scared mice and rodents and lizards and just feast upon the fleeing animals. It's extremely metal. It does sound like that does sound very fun, yeah, uh, And so research published in eighteen uh detailed about how three species of birds of prey

in Australia seemed to do this. But of course this is not news because aber original people's have known about this for thousands and thousands of years and have documented this in their own folklore. There's uh even a ceremony called yabada in which people act out birds carrying smoldering branches, which sounds amazing, but essentially they are teaching this uh sort of naturalist history of sorry of how they have seen these uh, these hawks, these fire hawks, carrying these

burning sticks and distributing it. And if this, if we had listened to this, you know, earlier, we may have had more research on how you know, maybe these birds of prey have been terraforming the Australian out back for thousands and thousands of years, and that's really cool and it may be really informative, but unfortunately we kind of really only decided to start researching in and those researchers started doing it because they listened to, uh, these stories

from the Aboriginal people. So yeah, yeah, I feel like everyone should. I feel like everyone should be more okay with understanding why folklore exists and what purpose it serves.

This is this, this is something I got into years ago because of the because of the Lower podcast, learning about just how folklore influences culture and politics and a whole bunch of really interesting and weird ways, And that is something I wanted to talk about more because it's it's a thing, and folklore is different for us now in terms of how we have like a cultural stories, but it's it's it's still the same, it's still the same purpose and we just couldn't deny it in a

way that is kind of silly. Yep. Yeah, I think there's often this idea of there is a clear distinction between fact and folklore, and well, it's true, like we can't necessarily just take folklore for at its exact word because like it's sort of like a telephone game throughout years and years. Folklore is going to take on new shapes every generation. But we really should take it seriously as a part of very important data set of like

this is human observational history. Maybe some of it has been sort of uh turned into myth, but a lot of it could be genuine observation that people are relaying over many, many generations, which I think is really important. Well, thank you Katie Golden for talking about those those very silly Gonzo things that are unfortunately dropping dead at the little Gonzo climate change genocide. And then and then the other climate change issues are on folklore. Um where where

can people find you on the old internet in interwebs? Yeah, I got a podcast. I don't know if you've heard about those. Uh, it's called Creature Feature. And I talk about stuff like this all the time about animals. It's not always about animals dying in horrible ways, but sometimes it is. It's a good mix, you know, it's like sometimes animals being alive, sometimes animals being dead. Sometimes some animals making other animals dead and interesting way animals, Yeah,

you can never predict them. Uh, And you know, uh, You can find me on Twitter at Katie Golden. That's ka E T I E G O L D I N uh yeah where I just you know, just posted on the Twitter doing that to creature feature. Find Katie on Twitter and uh shoplift Sure what's up guys on my shop allowed and I am Troy Millions and we are the host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where we break down business models and examine the latest trends and finance.

We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean our alumni lists expansive. Listen to as our guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you

want to know. We talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly, how they make their money. Earn your Leisia is a college business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about the real estate game? Unclears how the stock market works. We got you interested in starting a truck and company or vending machine business. Not really sure about how taxes or credit work. We got it all covered.

The Earnier Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier Leisure on the Black Effect Podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What grows in the forest trees? Sure you know what else grows in the forest. Our imagination, our sense of wonder, and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect from this and connect with this, we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest

near you and start exploring. I discover the Forest dot Org, brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council. It's spook all right, I didn't so if I'm done for the day, taking the rest off, we sure do. Uh. So, you know, normal, This is a show about collapse, all that good stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA, But fucking it's Halloween week. So we're we're we're, we're we're making sure all of our stuff has a little

bit of an extra spooky twist. It's like when you you make a Martini and you decide to actually put vermuth inside it, as opposed to just kind of waving it nearby. That's what we're doing this week with Spookiness being the vermouth and mixing up our martini. Today is Margaret Killjoy, Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so clearly this will be very good now Margaret today for this very special episode of it could happen here on

spooky week. You have written us while you've written a short story, and you're going to read it and and and we're all gonna enjoy it. Is that is that accurate? Um? I hope at least I can I can testify to the first parts, and I hope for the last part. Excellent. All right, Well with without further ado or with minimal further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's you know, with

the with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret with the stuff. Well, this is great because this is actually a short story that you start reading of Oh ship, Yeah, where's that link? You tasted it to me? But I don't have my phone on me. Okay, let me put it in the chat here. Um. Based impressive, to say the least, based in fiction. Pilled. Okay, I start reading the italics. Yeah, it's the first, a couple of paragraphs of introduction, and

that you're you're interviewing me. Alright, motherfucker's let's get it started. The Northern Host, for all it's lingering horror and misery, the wake of a war is rich to reign for a folkloreist like myself. More people report more supernatural experiences during times of war than times of peace. Some of my peers have argued the stress and shock of battle leaves our brains more susceptible to mass delusion. Others claim that the veil between worlds remains thin when so many

are passing from life to death. The Second American Civil War has been no exception. Most famously, of course, soldiers from each of the three armies present at the fifteen day Siege of Saint Louis reported a wailing man who walked among the wounded, healing some and ending the lives of others. On the Cascadian Front, rebel forces spoke of black bears, who in effect stood sentry for their guerrilla positions.

During the White Army's occupation of Washington, d C. Civilians and soldiers alike reported apparitions pouring out from the Pentagon Crater every new moon. Of all the various myths and legends to spring up in the wake of the recent conflict, however, I find myself most strongly drawn to the stories of the Northern Host. Never have I heard a myth recounted in such detail by such a wide variety of people. My favorite telling comes from Private Sarah Dollar in the

Battle of Asheville. This interview was recorded in the spring of twenty thirty five and lightly edited for clarity with permission of the subject. Note that the subject refers to the White Army by pejoratives throughout. These have been left intact for the historical record. Could you introduce yourself and tell me what you saw. Yeah, my my name is Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old. I live in Asheville and the Appalachian region of the United States of

America on stolen Cherokee Land. My u S military rank was private. They made us all privates when they incorporated the irregulars into the army, but I only served in the Union to fight the White Army a year later. I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't think the reconfiguration goes far enough. I never fired a gun in my life before the Irregulars, and I hope I never fired another one again. By temperament, I'm neither a lover nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans girl who

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

that battle from a bullet to the thigh. Does that bother you? Yes? No, I don't know. I don't lose sleep over it, but I think about it a lot. I look at the docks on both of them. The first guy was a true believer, a real blood and soil type. It doesn't bother me that I mingled those two things for him. The second man, though I'm not so sure he signed up because his son signed up. I don't have any kids myself, but I could see myself doing that. His son survived the war. Have you

been in contact with his son? No funk. That guy that kids a fucking Nazi, and I don't know he talked his way out of the tribunals. Can you tell me what you saw at the Battle of Asheville. This was during the Fascist Spring offensive last year, you know Hitler's birthday April. By that point, the White Army was pretty much done, but they weren't about to go down without doing some major symbolic damage. So there were about forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders, no

army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned, common sentiment in the South. I was on the street out in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was half rubble at that point. Only the library was standing because symbols matter and all that bullshit. So that's where we were making a stand. Neither side had artillery really by that point, the brass had just commandeered even our RPGs for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming, not

for them and not for us. Really, the Battle of Ashville was was like nothing to the rest of the world, and we knew it. So I was doing the rounds, thinking about my ship luck, thinking maybe I was going to die, and how so many people had died, and what's another dead girl to add to the pile. I was thinking about how at least this dead girl is going to die surrounded by or in defense of books. And then I heard dogs from around the side of the building. One barked loud and near, the other sort

of distant and echoy. I went to check it out. Turned the corner and there was this naked guy. He was pale as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like I said, he was naked as the sun. I stared at him, he stared at me. I got so distracted trying to figure him out that it took me a moment to realize there were nine others behind him, or

maybe they weren't there at first, I don't know. Most of them were men, mostly of the tall, Norse looking variety, but there was a Middle Eastern man and three women, including one who by my read was Latin X. No dogs anywhere that I could see. The man closest to me, he asked me something in a language I didn't know. I just kind of stared. He asked me another question in another language. What I asked? Who are you? Who are we fighting? He asked? His accent was thick, and

I couldn't place it for the life of me. I mean, I know now, but I sure as ship didn't know it then we I asked what I was due back out front, because I was a century doing the rounds and this sure needed reporting. But what the hell was I going to tell? People? Who were we fighting? Where are we? You're in Asheville? Who are you? Ah? The American conflict, the man said behind him, others nodded. Their

movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk. I later realized one of them had dried blood running down from her lip onto a not insubstantial belly. You're fighting the nationalists, the first one said, We're here to help you. Who are you? I asked this third time he actually answered, my name is bell Gear. We are the dead. We are the Eynhyar from Valhalla. Every day we are sent to a battle to fight, and we die. The others

behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now, I know there were good folks on our side who were into European paganism, but you have to understand that a lot more of

the fashion were into that ship than anybody else. If they hadn't been naked and drunk, I might have mistaken them for the enemy and shot them Valhalla, I said, reciting the tiny But I knew that's where Vikings go if they die in battle, feast every day and fight every night in Odin's hall until the end of the world, where you like also fight and die but wolf feeds the sun or something close enough, Belgar said. I mean, Odin only gets half the battle dead, and Viking isn't

a good name for us. But sure, and you're here because we are to take arms alongside you, fight your enemies and die today, and are going to die today. Only the seers and the gods know that. I've been calling myself a witch half of my life, but honestly that was mostly because I like taro and astrology and panagrams and ship. I've never been someone who took the supernatural all that seriously. But nothing in the world made

sense like it used to. Fascists had just been driven out of d C. Cascadia had not only succeeded, but was in a civil war of its own. Now Mexico was gone and replaced by self governing states of almost every stripe in the political rainbow. China had backed white supremacists and other nationalist types, and in Amry in civil war and anti government leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like me in the damn u s Army. I can't say those things were as weird as naked dead don't call

us vikings talking to me in the street. But somehow all of that was just comparably bizarre. Come let us arm ourselves and fight together. You and I belger said. So that's how I met the Northern host. Most people don't believe me, assume it was just some kind of drunk wing nuts, maybe some irregulars I've never met before. But I saw what I saw, and I believe it. The rest of us who survived they saw it too. And how did it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How did it go? We got the inn here yard into

irregular's garb and armed them. There were plenty of guns at that point in the forgotten hellhole up front, Bullets not so much but plenty of guns. They were all comfortable with firearms. The one fellow groused about what he wouldn't do for an axe and shield, and another said what we had was fine, but monofilament web guns were better than any combat shotgun. To hear them, tell it, funk it? Why am I pretending like I don't believe them? I believe them with every bit of my soul, and

damn what people think of me for it. The Northern Host fight every night and every night. They are in a different time and place. Most battles in human history were in the past, they said, which sounds optimistic, doesn't it. But they said they fought in every century up to nothing happens after the century Ragnarok most likely the end of the world, wolves eating the sun and the moon. All that. They stood guard out with me out front. Around midday we got hit with an e MP. We

knew that was coming. It didn't screw us up much. We had a hardened phone in the basement, and all our weapons operated just as well in dumb mode a smart mode, including our own e MPs. The White Army showed up maybe a hundred men, all men. That's their whole stick. They came in on motorcycles and a t v s and horses more stick, Like, how fucking folksy they are. We hit them with the m e mp s anyway, level the field, took out the a t v s, the bikes were retrofitted, no electric and a horse.

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

old Basilica. Then we waited. We should have mined the church. That old thing was blown half to ship. Anyway, It wouldn't have made the world any worse if we'd either leveled it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical war or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled every mosques, synagogue and quote heretic church. They got their hands on, not to mention libraries and universities and even

the goddamn Statue of Liberty because they had immigrants. But we were supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war. Those two words don't got nothing to do with one another, and everyone knows it. So they hold up in the basilica and we pulled back into the library and we had one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people die slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's when Laura got shot right in the head because we missed a spot when we bullet proof of the facade.

She's dead. She had natural red hair, but she always died at redder and her favorite show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she liked to drink water out of long stem glasses. She was I think she was thirty seven, way past rafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement. She was only there because she loved books, had plenty of time to avoid looking at her corpse while she

was in there with us dead. Dwight was another one of my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people, hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with that Viking ship in Dark Ages in general. Both his parents had come over from Sweden, though his dad was originally from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies in another African history, and I I can't tell you how many times during basic run down the details of this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa.

If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it. But if there were swords and armor or spears and shields, he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings. First thing. He was the first person to believe them, to to really believe them, and his faith was contagious. While we were pinned down, he asked them everything. Mostly they were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing they were very insistent on and that I overheard them talking about Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not?

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

the heterosexual side, the Christian side. They worship a bastardization of our God, a bastardization first created by a nationalist Christian eight hundred years ago that's only gotten further afield since our Odin practices women's magic, the magic of these sexually penetrated. We also worshiped female gods of war, and male gods of the hearth, and gods who change their gender when they're bored. Nazis don't understand that any of it.

In life, we raided, sometimes traded, other times. We also did all sorts of things that won't fit your modern sensibilities, things that were I alive you might kill me for. But we're not Nazis. And people who worship a Christian version of our God most certainly do not go to Valhalla. It was as if the man had used up every word allotted to him for the day, because I don't believe a one of them spoke again before the battle began in earnest And how long was that another hour?

Maybe the sun was still right overhead when the white army rushed us. It was a bullshit move, rushing us one part over confidence in one part desperation. If you can imagine that they knew they were losing the war at that point, but they had us more than two to one, and we all know that KKK commanders don't give two ships about the lives of their men. That's when I put a bullet on a man's leg while he was in the street running. It was a good shot.

He was running, and I led the target and everything. I've been aiming for center body mass, but but still at least a hundred yards against a moving target. I was proud of that shot at the time on a technical level, even if I'm not sure i'm proud of it anymore now that I know the man's name. We expected the charge. What we didn't expect was the ordinance that knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But that happened, and almost all the fighting happened right there on the

first floor, among the empty shelves. The whole thing felt like it lasted half an hour. I've looked it up since, from the time of the first blast at the time the last shot was fired, we're talking about three minutes. In twelve seconds, we thought they were going to pour in through the door after they blew it the funk off. So James got in there with our one functioning automatic and he took at least ten of the fashion down

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

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

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

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

We pushed them back onto the pavement, And when I say we, I'm honestly not being fair because I didn't do much of it myself. We had them scattered and running, most of them. Dwight was out there waving a pistol in one hand and swinging a wooden stock rifle like a club in the other. A Viking with a shotgun stood beside him. I think the same fashy little ship killed them both, maybe in the same three round burst. I tagged Fashion in his belly, and his friends helped

him get away, and the remaining Nazis ran. He survived his wound. Why do we have so much information about the war? Does it do me any good to know who I killed and who I didn't? And Dwight. Dwight lay alone in the concrete, face down. There wasn't much blood, but he was dead. Two ravens sat atop him, one on each shoulder. I've never seen a raven in Asheville in my life, not before, not since. There were two of them, as big as people say those things are.

They barked and they sounded like dogs. One was loud, like it was right where I was. The other was distant, echoing. Then they flew away, directly up and towards the sun, and I tried to watch to see where they went, but you can't look directly at the sun like that. I looked back down and Dwight was gone. Okay, so his body was still there, but there was there was something about him that was gone, and I don't know how to tell you what it was. That that was

that we won sort of. They didn't storm the library, guess means we won. But sometimes I'd think I'd burn every single book in that place. It would bring back Lord or Dwight or any of the rest of my friends. The war was over at that point, even if we didn't know it yet. So what did they die for? I guess for symbols. Maybe symbols matter that much. I don't know. I deserted after that. Half the survivors of the Battle of Asheville died less than a week later

up in Pittsburgh. And I suppose I'd be dead if I had gone, And it probably makes me a coward that I didn't. It's not that I was afraid of dying. It's that I was afraid of dying in battle because I believe in Odin. Now it's hard not to believe in a god without venerating him. I don't want to go to Valhalla. I don't want to fight ever again, let alone every night. I don't want to serve with the iron and yard at the twilight of the gods

sometime in the twenty fifth century. If I don't want to do that, then I don't want to die in battle Dwight, though I expect he's happy. I expect he dies every day with a smile on his lips and meat in his belly. He won't have to fight alongside the monsters of the human race either, because, as I learned in Nashville, Nazis don't go to Valhalla. All right,

that was awesome, Margaret, Thank you. Yeah, thanks Dan. I'll put a bunch of applause noise here because translating over yeah as an end and and uh an air horn stick an. I don't think the air horn is going to be that as Garrison air horn. Thank you, Thank you Garrison. Margaret, Um, how long ago did you write that? I wrote that I believe in seventeen maybe. Yeah, Well it's not gotten less relevant. Yeah, man, I uh, there's definitely some times where I've I've wished for a platoon

of vikings uh to deal with some ship. Yeah. Uh, well this has been it could happen here and this has been spooky week. I hope you enjoyed this scary story that's also relevant to our theme. Of collapse, Margaret, you want to tell the people where they can find you. Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm on Instagram at Margaret kill Joy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Margaret Killjoy, where this story and many other stories are available for anyone who sponsors me at a

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

sad and how about how war is horrible? Um, and so A Country Ghosts is such a book and this story will eventually I'm excited to say I just signed a contract for a K Press is going to put out a story anthology of mine which will include this. Yeah that sounds incredibly rad Yes, great publisher. Yeah, not biased at all in that. No, no, no, nor towards stories of the Second American Civil War with superior I've been introduced to just today. UM, all right, we'll check

out Margaret's book Parentheses. S uh and and UM check out this show when it comes back someday one day. You'll never know when, but you'll hear a whisper on the wind, and there will be where it will be the next weekday after one of those two. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen

Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening. I'm John Gonzalez, the host of s i

s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly. Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the best storytelling in sports for seventy years, and now that continues. On our show. Each week, we'll dive deep into the best stories from around the sports World Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Subscribe now. I'm Colleen with join me the host of Eating Wall Broke podcast while I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers and Sela pritties over a meal they once eight when they were broke. Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of Compton, Asia Kindink and Asia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating Wall Broken. Today, I'm gonna break down my meal that got me through the time when

I was broken. Listen to Eating Wall Broke on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they paid the bills. Of course, there is something else you could do. If you've got something to say, Start a podcast with Spreaker from my heart and unleash your creative freedom, maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your

old bus hey, I'm no settler, I'm an explorer. Spreaker dot com spr e a k E R Hustle on Over Today