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This week Josh and M discuss a 1977 NSA memo detailing "PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPONS" from the "STARGATE" section. Startling enough, M doesn't talk at length about their love of Stargate SG-1, and the predicted talk of "Akira" ends up being very perfunctory.

Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ

and learn more about their academic work at:

http://episto.org/

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https://www.patreon.com/podcastersguidetotheconspiracy

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You can contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com

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Transcript

Introducing a new cartel member

00:00:00
Speaker
As is customary on this podcast, we reveal the plans and plots of the ubiquitous them in order to quell their dastardly plans. Yes, and this week we have a doozy for you. You see, due to our exemplary research and our ability to read emails, we have the name of yet another member of the evil cartel
00:00:21
Speaker
who seek to control our, and by extension your, enjoyment of this very podcast. Yes, it's come to light that one Robin, if that is his real name, has decided to patronise this very podcast for what we can only surmise are reasons. No good reasons. Indeed, who for good reason would fund this? Anyway, Robin,
00:00:48
Speaker
We're on to you. You might think that slipping several dollars a month might mean we won't keep an eye on you, but we will. We will. Our vigilant is legendary. Yes, except we haven't responded to that email from Nat yet. Okay, our vigilant is subject to availability. But enough vigilance, it's time to talk psycho weaponry.

Hosts and podcast introduction

00:01:17
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:01:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Hello! We have one Josh Addison, a single Dr. Emdenteth. And a whole lot of whiskey. That's a better one than I was going for. Yes, so we're practically reeling this week with popularity. New patron, an email. I was thinking we can finally build the Scrooge McDuck.
00:01:52
Speaker
Oh, the money pit. Yeah. And then we can, we can die by diving in. Diving head first into a pile of valuable coins. Yeah, it'll be great. There's fun and hairy tails here in Duck World. Don't, don't. God, that's one of those ones. I, somebody mentioned that in a tweet once three years ago, and it got stuck in my head for a couple of months. But anyway. It's a duck world. It works though.
00:02:18
Speaker
I'll rewrite history, DuckTales. Oh yes, but interestingly as a fan of a good mashup, it mashes up perfectly with Beyonce's if you like it then you should have put a ring on it. It does, it spreads quite clever. Yes, I thought you responded to Nat's email, did neither of us? Did you think I had? Okay, well we got your email Nat, thank you very much.
00:02:42
Speaker
And in case you haven't listened to the podcast for a while, we will respond eventually. We're going to use it as a kind of... Well, we're responding now. Yeah, and we kind of use it as part of the joke for the intro. Now, Josh, what is this podcast about? For people who might be listening for the very first time or watching, which is why I'm pointing towards the camera. What's this podcast... This podcast is aboot Canadians and they're... no.
00:03:05
Speaker
Sorry, your wacky word linguistics just messed with my mind. It's about conspiracies, it's about conspiracy theories. It's a bit of a laugh sometimes, except for when we're talking about conspiracy theories that are horrible and depressing.
00:03:20
Speaker
I think we've got a bit of the Catholic Church child molestation stuff queued up, so that's less lighthouse of that stuff. It's not really a jape when you get on to child sex abuse. But at any rate, we have a look at a different conspiracy theory, a set of conspiracy theories every week.
00:03:38
Speaker
We both, I believe, buy into Dr. Dentiff's approach towards... Well, I'm pretty sure you buy into your own approach. I do buy into my own approach, yes. Which is that conspiracy theories should be treated like pretty much any other theory and evaluated on their methods, which isn't to say that we don't think the wacky, your tin foil, your haddy ones are bollocks.

Cardinal Pell's conviction discussion

00:03:57
Speaker
They pretty much generally are. And by methods he means merits.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yes, also merits, methods and merits, both of them. And you just completely killed my train of thought. I did indeed. Let's readjust our train of thought by moving straight into the news. Yes. Breaking, breaking, conspiracy theories in the news.
00:04:22
Speaker
Only one bit of news this week, although it is a bit of a doozy. The guilty verdict against Cardinal George Powell, the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in Australia, who has been found to have committed sexual abuse against minors back in the 1980s. Yep. Powell, who until recently was heading up the anti-corruption investigation in the Vatican, was found guilty of abusing two boys in a sacristy.
00:04:46
Speaker
He is appealing the conviction, but as it stands, Pell is the most senior cleric in the Catholic Church to be successfully prosecuted for sexual abuse. Given there has been a long history of the Church covering up said abusers, and Pell had been previously implicated in simply moving priests from one parish to another after complaints, rather than dealing with the actual problem, Pell in this case appears to be both conspirator and perpetrator. So I...
00:05:15
Speaker
Bit of a shocking story, actually. Yes, a slightly more depressing way to start off the episode. Now, when did you hear about Cardinal Powell's conviction? His conviction? I don't know, when did it happen the other day? It was announced the other day, the trial against Powell.
00:05:31
Speaker
actually came to an end in December of last year and of course was the subject of an injunction to stop his name from being released in part because there was thought that he was going to be prosecuted for sexual abuses also in the 1970s so he didn't want to potentially
00:05:48
Speaker
impair a jury by having a guilty conviction announced at the time if they were about to start a new trial. And this, of course, led to a situation where people in Australia officially didn't know about what happened to Powell, and some of us overseas kind of did. Which is kind of the reverse of other situations, we heard, hasn't we? There was a case here in New Zealand a little while ago, the murdered backpacker woman, whatever she was, and the identity of her murderer was
00:06:18
Speaker
stifled here in New Zealand, but was being... Yes, that's right. Her name was... his name was printed in the press in the UK. I actually think he might still be under an investigation now. I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny how law works sometimes, but there you go. Now, of course, some people claim the author's part of the cover-up to make sure that people don't find out about what's going on with the Catholic Church.
00:06:42
Speaker
But as people in the media and also in the judiciary in Australia pointed out, no, it was about protecting a possible trial into the same kind of thing from a different time period. So it wasn't covering anything up, it was trying to make sure that they could get a pool of jurors if the second trial actually went ahead.
00:07:00
Speaker
And indeed, in the case here, when people started naming the guy on social media and stuff, the police were like, for God's sake, stop doing that, because you could end up prejudicing the trial and you could end up getting away with it.

Conspiracy theory updates

00:07:11
Speaker
And indeed, there are people talking in Australia that the fact that the news did get out might be used by Powell's defense lawyers to say you have to throw out this conviction and start the trial again.
00:07:25
Speaker
But enough horrible child abuse cases. Have you seen the Michael Jackson business? No, I thought we might talk about that in the bonus stuff actually because I want to know your opinion on Removing Michael Jackson from our airwaves, but we'll say that we will bonus episode No, so we said that there was all the news we have this week But that doesn't mean we don't have a bunch of updates to previous news stories So maybe we better pile into them straight away indeed updates and retractions
00:07:57
Speaker
So, last year we talked about Surefire Intelligence, the group headed by a photograph of Academy BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Christoph Waltz. As we uncovered at the time, said photo was actually just a mask for the real mastermind, and we use that term loosely, won Jacob Wall,
00:08:15
Speaker
who was also one of the people behind the attempted smear on special counsel Robert Mueller. Well, in what can only be a set of coincidences, Wall told USA Today that he intended to use fake Twitter accounts to help Trump win the 2020 election, only to find that he's been permanently banned by Twitter for, let me see, using fake accounts.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's almost like if you're conspiring to help bring about the desired end, you shouldn't alert the press to what you're doing. Did seem remarkably stupid. Yes, well that seems to be his modus operandi, really. Yes, as I say, the Christopher Waltz stuff really kind of speaks to, can't actually organise a conspiracy inside of a conspiracy. Yes, so, schadenfreude Rehoy, quite frankly. Indeed. Didn't have happened to a nicer guy.
00:09:00
Speaker
And talking about nicer guys, our own local Jacob Wahl, Cameron Slater, aka Whale Oil. We mentioned recently that he is being sued by a large number of people largely because he has run smear campaigns about them on behalf of their political or business enemies. News came out earlier this year that he has suffered several strokes. Now he's also declared himself bankrupt. The conspiracy angle here is twofold.
00:09:27
Speaker
The first is that it's very convenient for Slater to be bankrupt now when there are still two defamation hearings to go on his legal

Cameron Slater's bankruptcy and business reorganization

00:09:36
Speaker
docket. If he's bankrupt he can't pay out, should he be found guilty? The second is that people are beginning to doubt he's really ill at all, or at least he's not as ill as he claims to be post the strokes.
00:09:49
Speaker
According to a post on his own website, he's barely functional for a mere 15 minutes a day, but Matthew Bloomfield, who I referred to as Blomfeld last time we talked about this, who recently secured a legal victory against Cameron Slater, has disputed this characterisation.
00:10:06
Speaker
Plus, Slater recently reorganized his various companies and shell companies, including his online meat business, in order to move his wealth and assets into the custody of others. Something he did after declaring himself too ill to function. Not that this is likely to escape the court's attention, but that they can always reverse any such changes if they look as if they were designed to avoid paying out to its creditors. Yes.
00:10:33
Speaker
I'm a little bit uneasy with some of these conspiracy theories because they seem to be a little bit... sort of people seem to be eager to believe them simply because whale oil is a horrible human being, which he definitely is. Is there, like, evidence either way, or is it just so many people that are saying it's quite convenient that he happens to be declaring bankruptcy just when he might be liable for a whole bunch of...
00:10:57
Speaker
So there is the convenience angle where there's also the fact that if he's only functional for 15 minutes a day, the several hours that he would have had to have spent one night moving all the companies in and out of ownership indicates he's functional for a lot longer than he claims to be. But once again, that is a
00:11:15
Speaker
convenient aspect here. People go in and out of illness and their ability to function on a day by day basis. But there is the convenient aspect here of has kind of made it hard to pay out as creditors. Although, as I pointed out, the courts may not care because they do have the authority to go, yeah, you are changed ownership to avoid paying out your debts. That's just not on. See, I thought you're going to be more concerned by the fact he's an online meat company.
00:11:43
Speaker
He has an online meat company. Yes, he sells meat online via his website. I'm quite happy to be able to say that I had no knowledge of whale oils and meat. And now you probably never will. Good. Let's move on quickly before disturbing images.
00:12:00
Speaker
Start to form. Jerome Corsi and Infowars have issued a startling update in the whole Seth Rich was murdered story by admitting that their story claiming Seth Rich was the person behind the hack of the DNC emails in 2016 was fake news. Corsi has admitted that his source, retired Admiral James Lyons, was wrong to finger Rich for the DNC hack and that Corsi had no independent information to support his own claims about the matter.
00:12:25
Speaker
Not just that, but of course he made a special point of saying he had not been pressured into making the retraction. Which probably won't satisfy the denizens of InfoWars, but it certainly removes one plank from the Seth Rich was murdered conspiracy theory.

InfoWars and Seth Rich conspiracy

00:12:37
Speaker
I'd heard the stories supporting it were still on InfoWars though. Had they been taken down? Or was it only his stories had been taken down, but other stories on InfoWars around the conspiracy? I also believe that InfoWars had taken down all of the Seth Rich did the internet hack.
00:12:52
Speaker
aspect of the story. I see, but possibly not that Seth Rich was murdered by Hillary Clinton.

Milo Yiannopoulos visa denial

00:12:58
Speaker
Yes, I believe that story is still ongoing, but we've now said one of the planks in that story. Seth Rich was murdered because of the hacks, going, well, it wasn't the hacks, at which point you go, so why did Hillary Clinton order his murder?
00:13:12
Speaker
Well, why did they order the murder of most of the people on the Clinton Death Watch list? Did they order the murder of most of the people on the Clinton Death Watch list?

Exploring psychic warfare origins

00:13:22
Speaker
Well, probably no. When you actually look into them, but still. That doesn't stop people compiling Clinton Death Watch lists.
00:13:29
Speaker
It's true, but shall we talk about psychic warfare? Yes. Yes. Oh, wait, wait. We have breaking news. Scripted breaking news. Milo Yiannopoulos has been denied a visa to visit Australia for a speaking tour for character grounds. Basically, I've got to stop gesturing with my tablet because then the screen goes sideways and I can't read it anymore.
00:13:48
Speaker
And also rotating screens. As you jester, move your head. Yes. No, so he's been denied due to character grounds, including his claims of anti-Semitism. Yiannopoulos, for example, sent a Jewish journalist $14.88, which was referenced to 1488, the set of numbers neo-Nazis use to symbolize their neo-Naziism. 14 refers to the 14-word long, isn't it?
00:14:13
Speaker
mantra of securing future for white children. 88 represents Heil Hitler, because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, HH88. Yiannopoulos claims he was just trolling, which is ironic because he also thinks people should take personal responsibility for their actions.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah. But he's a wakey fellow who probably doesn't deserve the attention that any of us give him. No. And once again, Australia's visa system is a magic eight ball. For every milo they deny entry to, they also deny entry to Chelsea Manning. And let in a southern emollinee. Yes. So, frankly, it's a magic eight ball. You just don't know what the Australian Immigration Minister is going to do next. Kind of exciting, really. Well, no. So you know the opposite of exciting. Terrifying. Kind of terrifying.
00:14:55
Speaker
But not as terrifying as... Psychic warfare! Now, Josh, I'm thinking of something. I'm going to try to broadcast it to your brain. Can you tell what I'm thinking about at this particular point in time? I don't know. What I've got at the moment in my mind is very specific pornographic images. So yes, I guess.
00:15:37
Speaker
Now, actually, you tell me, where did we get this article from? Was it once submitted to us by a keen listener, or was it when you came across in your genes? Well, I have a feeling it was one of the things I came across in the being emailed once a week by that conspiracy theory website in Aotearoa, New Zealand, which once a week seems to a digest of stuff they've talked about. And I'm pretty sure it was a link from there. Because as you point out, actually, the story's old. It's a little bit old, yes.
00:15:46
Speaker
Can you describe who they're of? Not without breaking several injunctions.
00:16:05
Speaker
So basically, our attention was drawn to an article from 2017 about an NSA memo from 1977, which was declassified and released in 2016, getting the dates there. But we're going to talk about it now, because why not? The original thing was 1977, so we can't be accused of being any more out of date.
00:16:30
Speaker
So this memo is titled Parapsychological Weapon. It's from the Stargate section of declassified documents. Now Stargate, among other things, was one of the code words for the
00:16:47
Speaker
U.S. military's remote viewing program. Indeed, and also a latter-day reference to a TV show, Stargate SG-1, based on the film Stargate, which of course took its name from precisely this kind of thing. Oh, that I did not know. Yeah. Well, there you go.
00:17:04
Speaker
So I mean your remote viewing being the people trying to psychically see stuff, you know. The classic experiments like Bill Murray and Ghostbusters where a person's holding up a card and you're trying to read what's on it without being able to see it. Although what the US military was interested in was getting maps and locations for Soviet missile installations. Yes, yes.
00:17:26
Speaker
Curiously enough nothing really seemed to come of that I think but we're talking about the 70s back when when governments were kind of taking this stuff seriously if only because other governments were taking this stuff seriously and Nobody wanted to risk getting left behind in some sort of parapsychological arms race So in that context

Parapsychology during the Cold War

00:17:50
Speaker
This memo was released by the NSA, which basically is just a rundown of three specific events in the field of parapsychological research, followed by a bit of speculation on how one might weaponise this parapsychological research to further the field of psychic warfare.
00:18:13
Speaker
Now, for people who don't know what parapsychology is, Joshua, what is parapsychology? Well... And don't just say a bunch of quackery. It is that, but yeah, it's sort of the attempt to scientifically study psychic phenomena. So your remote reviewings and your telepathy and telekinesis and mind control.
00:18:35
Speaker
A bit of your Manchurian Candid stuff in there, perhaps? And just generally sort of mental powers, Yuri Gala features in there from time to time. Although he's been quite comprehensively shown to be a fraud, hasn't he? Although he has TV appearances, makes large amounts of money, so you can be shown to be a fraud and also be very, very successful. Yes, but um...
00:18:57
Speaker
So I guess let's just go through it in order. It talks about three particular events, which happened sometime in the 70s in the field of parapsychology. The first one was a report from the CIA on the KGB's parapsychological research. And if nothing else, I mean, while the parapsychology stuff might be bunk, it does give an interesting insight into the whole sort of information, disinformation, sort of mind games type stuff that was going on in the Cold War.
00:19:24
Speaker
probably really still going on now, isn't it? And actually, it's probably useful to talk here about whether the Russians or the Americans believed in the research they were doing, because there were kind of two hypotheses here. One is that it might work, at which point, if you know the other side is doing it, so if you're an American, you're worried about the Russians. If you're a Russian, you're worried about the Americans. You're both going, well, there's a thing called parapsychology, and we're not convinced it'll have any weight.
00:19:53
Speaker
But if it turns out to be true, we need to have the upper hand. So you do research into it anyway, despite the fact you think there are going to be no results, because if it turns out it does have results, better you have the game changer than the other side.
00:20:09
Speaker
The other way people look at it is it's a really good way to get the other side to waste large chunks of money. So if the Americans look like they're taking parapsychology seriously, the Russians will take parapsychology seriously. They will then waste a large chunk of their operational budget researching something that the other side thinks is wacky and woo.
00:20:34
Speaker
And because of that the other side is investing in say cruise missiles or satellite launches. And there's some evidence that maybe this was the American perspective because when you look at the allocated budgets for these programs in the US military they really were only spending a very very tiny amount of money
00:20:57
Speaker
But they were engaging a lot of PR about the research. Almost as if they were going, we're not going to spend much, but we're going to make a big noise about it. Yes. And are there similar details known about the Russian research? Do we know if they were spending a lot of money or could it be possible that it was just sort of a bluff, double bluff, triple bluff sort of thing going on where they were both trying to trick the other into spending large amounts of money while in fact neither of them really were?
00:21:24
Speaker
The problem with the Russian side of the story is a lot of the documentation is still under wrap, so we don't really know. But there's a lot of, a lot of the sort of ten-dimensional chess that people tend to roll their eyes at a little bit, but I mean some of that does go on sometimes, doesn't it? It does, yeah. Anyway, so as to the specific report, apparently it's important to the fact that the KGB
00:21:50
Speaker
was researching parapsychology and doing so by using rather than using sort of government scientists by using like hobbyist scientists and non-governmental researchers who could who would find a lot easier to talk to Western possibly scientists you know parapsychological researchers without raising attention and so it it was supposedly it was this plan where they could the the
00:22:18
Speaker
KGB or the Russian government couldn't wasn't necessarily in danger of sort of revealing stuff because these scientists weren't privy to class any whatever classified information they may be. But they might be talking to Western scientists who were who could deliberately or inadvertently leak details, which would then be fed back to the Russian government. So supposedly, according to the CIA, according to the NSA, no, sorry, the other way around, this tactic yielded, quote, high grade Western scientific data. So they claim
00:22:49
Speaker
parapsychology. My grade here is a intelligence term as opposed to an academic term. Yes. As you can tell we're really keen on parapsychology. Indeed. So the next thing in this declassified memo is the case of the arrested journalist.
00:23:08
Speaker
supposedly sometime in the 70s, an American journalist was arrested in Moscow on charges of receiving a Soviet paper on parapsychology. So supposedly this paper had been leaked to the journalist, but the other journalist was picked up when he took receipt on it.
00:23:25
Speaker
In this case, even at the time, there's a lot of conspiracy theory, counter-conspiracy theory stuff going along as people are thinking, is this legit? Is it disinformation? What mind games might the Russians be trying to pull here? It all gets quite twisted.
00:23:45
Speaker
Well yes, especially since we're in the midst of a cold war at this particular point in time, so each side is trying to make the story fit their own particular agenda. So even if it turns out it was, say, a threat by the Russians, the Americans could turn around and re-describe the same events to their own populace by going, oh no, this was a clever double bluff on our part. And it's quite hard to tell,
00:24:10
Speaker
Even in the situation where you've got these official reports, because in some cases people write official reports to fit particular narratives. So I mean, from the article that some of the theories that came up around this event were that they might have been trying to provoke radio chatter, which the Soviets could trace to get a better idea of whether or not the US was interested in this kind of research.

Teilhard de Chardin and psychic research

00:24:35
Speaker
Just lose a light there. Something went off. I hate it when that happens. Yeah, I'm not quite sure. It's almost always that one there. It's for our podcast audio listeners. Every now and then we'll sort of be recording here with lights on and then something will get dimmer, but because there's a bunch of them, unless it happens directly in front of you, you can't see. No, I'm assuming it's not these three here. No, I'm assuming yes. Or possibly that was just the effect of the Russians.
00:25:01
Speaker
That's maybe the bug they've planted in them, activating and draining the platform. It could be anything. Possibly this whole journalist being arrested story was there to maybe just get the US talking about it and then maybe if the Soviets are monitoring their communications, maybe they could pick up on something to either find out what they're doing or simply if there's something they're interested in or not.
00:25:28
Speaker
Some people thought it was sort of a warning to the West, stay away from our sensitive research, parapsychological or otherwise, or we'll start arresting your citizens. And then the third theory was that it was, and here I'm quoting,
00:25:43
Speaker
a double-think ploy to pretend interest in a clumsy manner to make us think that this was really just a deception to trick the West into believing there was interest when there really was none. I don't quite think I understood that even as I was reading it. Clever double bluff! Basically. Yeah, so there's a lot of, as we talked about before, if you have sides trying to basically provoke the other into wasting a whole lot of money, then they want to sort of
00:26:11
Speaker
be constantly feeling each other out as to, are you interested? I don't know, are you interested? No, I don't know. Well, I'm interested in, if you're interested, well, are you interested? I don't know, are you? I don't know. I mean, you seem a bit interested. No, no, you seem a bit interested. No, no, I'm only interested if you're interested. Well, I'm definitely only interested if you're interested. Oh, well, I'm...
00:26:29
Speaker
Oh, you are. Someone to break. No, you hang up first. No, you hang up first. No, you hang up. I'll have the last word. No, I'll have the last word. So, I mean, it gets into the...
00:26:46
Speaker
the ten-dimensional chess theory and is it really or not when you get to the sort of the, you know, this is what I think, aha, but that's just what they wanted you to think, ah, but thinking what they wanted to think is what we wanted them to think about what we think, about what they think and it just, yeah, gets into a massive tangle and you almost sort of- And now I've turned out to be double aging because I've thought my way into it. And then possibly the 11th dimensional chess on top of that is that by muddying the waters like this so much nobody knows the truth of anything and then maybe that's...
00:27:14
Speaker
And then, Donald Trump becomes president. And this was satire. The paper itself was apparently a paper on the existence of PSI or PSI particles in living cells. Supposedly this was a paper claiming that they actually had found scientific proof of psychological phenomenon. There were these special psychic particles in living cells which could be manipulated to generate psychic phenomena. Like midichlorians. Like midichlorians. George Lucas was right!
00:27:43
Speaker
If you remember back in episode 180 when we talked about Falun Gong and whether or not the Chinese are harvesting the organs of prisoners, spoiler they probably are but we can't prove it.
00:27:56
Speaker
We talked about how back in the 1970s, again, the Chinese were into this stuff a little bit, and supposedly scientists in China in the 70s thought they had come up with scientific proof for the existence of cheese, the sort of Chinese equivalent. Scientific existence with proof of cheese. Cheese, yes. Well, I don't know. How much do we really know about cheese? As I don't eat it, nothing at all? Ah, well, there we go. The Chinese have got my step up on you there already.
00:28:25
Speaker
So yeah, it was interesting. This one in particular is just so murky that it's hard to know what the hell is true or not and whether or not it was the case that people were genuinely interested in scientifically investigating this, whether it was being taken seriously at all, or if it was just bluff upon bluff upon bluff to try and get people talking about stuff that nobody actually in the end was really interested in.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, and because it's a whole Cold War thing, we'll probably never really find

NSA memo on psychic abilities

00:28:54
Speaker
out what was going on, because A, a lot of the stuff is still being kept secret, and B, a lot of the people who are doing the research are now dead. Yes. So the third bit.
00:29:04
Speaker
And maybe you might like to talk about this a bit more, because I believe it touches on one of your favourite topics, one, Te ad de Chardin. So yes, apparently, the third point is that some physicists, in quote marks there, they don't really go into any more detail than that,
00:29:22
Speaker
Actually, no, sorry, that's not true. They will in a moment. I retract that. Some physicists along with the famous evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin see the universe in terms of a great thought rather than a great machine. Quoting from the NSA's memo here, in this view, the unified field on ground of reality is awareness.
00:29:40
Speaker
Will, within awareness, impels and focuses energy. Energy condenses into particles, which concentrate into atoms, compounds, etc. The telekinetic experience in the US, Dr. Kripner in New York, so here we go, Europe, Dr. Hans Bender in Freiberg, West Germany, and the USSR Sergeiev tests of Kulagina, Kulagina, all seem to show that even human awareness focusing with will can evidence a new form of energy that moves and perhaps alters matter.
00:30:08
Speaker
And here we go with Yuri Gala. The British scientists who tested Yuri Gala complained of poltergeist phenomena. Objects left the room, some appeared later, some never did. Scientists for many years have observed poltergeist phenomena in which objects go through solid walls or disappear. Physicists commenting recently on such things indicate little surprise. They say that they routinely detect particles emerging from energy and dissolving or disappearing back into energy. Why should we be surprised at large objects displaying the same behavior? So they seem to be a little tangled up into quantum
00:30:36
Speaker
physics there at the end, and the whole... Let me just pause you there. A Dr. Bender... Oh, there's another light. So, all the talking, it's like phenomena that's affecting our visual field here. A Dr. Bender and a Dr. Freiburg. Bender and Fry. Bender and Fry. Well, actually, it was Freiburg was the city, but...
00:30:58
Speaker
the city of Christ. Definitely a Futurama episode. So you can ask me about Pia Taha. I was going to say, basically, how was it that we've got 200 odd episodes into this podcast? I don't think we've mentioned Te Adeshadan. Because we haven't really talked about New Age conspiracy theories to any large extent. So Pia Taha Adeshadan was a Jesuit priest who was the first Catholic and arguably probably the first Christian to try to synthesise evolution by natural selection with some kind of theory of guided evolution.
00:31:27
Speaker
and Talhard has the notion that the evolutionary series goes from simplicity to complexity so he goes look the beginning of the universe was hydrogen and that was pretty simple from hydrogen we get styles they're more complex from styles we get planetary matter that's even more complex planetary matter gives away to biosystems that's even more complex
00:31:49
Speaker
Biosystems give way to multicellular organisms. That's even more complex. Multicellular organisms become bodies like our own. That's even more complex. And he goes, look, there's a direction to this evolutionary series, which is the development of thinking animals.
00:32:08
Speaker
One day we will think universally in a kind of new sphere, a kind of mental sphere around the earth, we'll then learn to think as one, which would be the most complex thing, that will then incarnate the Godhead,
00:32:23
Speaker
The Godhead will have the property of being able to transcend time, so when God gets instantiated, God will always have existed, and then God will kick off the process again from the beginning. So we create God to become God, and God has always been. Which, as you can imagine for many Catholics at the time, was a
00:32:44
Speaker
fairly controversial thesis, which led to a lot of trouble. Although, Taha has been largely, I think it's fair to say, has been largely rehabilitated within the Catholic Church with respect to talk of this kind of guided evolution notion. But in the 1970s, talk of the idea of a shared mental field, and that we could all access certainly would have been a grist for the mill of psychic phenomena.

Proposed psychic chain reaction

00:33:14
Speaker
But enough of this. Let's get to the good stuff, damn it. Because after summarizing these recent developments in the field of parapsychology, the memo goes on to say, how could we turn this into weapons?
00:33:26
Speaker
psychic weapon a la Akira. Yeah so first of all they start they start their thinking small they say that you know one thing you could do or first of all it's suggested the idea that you can enhance or even sort of create psychic or telekinetic abilities in a person so one idea they have is of abducting key members of the
00:33:55
Speaker
opposing government and then using these techniques upon them to give them psychic abilities of some kind, telekinetic abilities or what have you, which they wouldn't know they have, but which had been programmed with some sort of, you know, to come out in stressful situations, the idea being that you then plonk them back
00:34:12
Speaker
in their natural habitat, as it were, and then should everything go pear-shaped and they find themselves in this weird stressful situation, their telekinetic abilities will suddenly manifest, causing all sorts of chaos in whichever command centre they happen to be in, and disrupting communication and what-have-you in time and energy. Oh, so it's not a curer, it's scanners. Oh, it's not a curer yet. But yes, so we start with a bit of scanners.
00:34:35
Speaker
But that's their first one. But then they decided that's small potatoes. We can think bigger. So even referring back to Dusharan and how he predicts a major change of consciousness gets the idea that these changes that he foresees will quote here, alter the direction, time, space, and energy, matter, relationship of our world. And so then they bring up the idea that, well, you could
00:35:04
Speaker
sort of bringing in the idea of a sort of shared mental field. What if you got a bunch of these people with telekinetic abilities and got them all together in one spot and possibly set off some sort of psychic chain reaction which could cause massive psychic waves emanating and altering matter and reality in a sphere all around them, possibly even on a citywide scale. Now that's your Akira right there.
00:35:29
Speaker
Now, for people who don't know what Akira is, tell the audience. If you don't know what Akira is, you're a goddamn liar. Everybody's heard of Akira shortly, but just in case... I actually don't know that they have... Because the heyday of Akira was our teenage years. Yes, it's possible. Josh, I've put it to you. We are in our 40s. That's a lie. Why would you say such a lie? Because I cut your leg open before the podcast started and counted the rings. Well, you've got me there.
00:35:56
Speaker
OK, so on the off chance that you haven't heard Akira, Akira started life, it's a Japanese manga, Japanese comic book, which was first published in 1982, so it's after a lot of this talk was going on. And some of us were only five at the time it was published. Well indeed, yes. Which is my emphasis, it's really, really old.
00:36:18
Speaker
And then in the late 80s, early 90s... No, it must have been early 90s. There was a very famous anime cartoon version of it, which begins with this psychic explosion destroying Tokyo and then works its way through to another psychic explosion that destroys a bit of Tokyo.
00:36:41
Speaker
But in between, there's cool bikes, psychic things, giants. And a lot of people shouting, Akira! Tetsuo! Akira! And so on and so on. It's a classic. It was sort of the pinnacle, I think, of cell animation, really. They never really managed to top it before things went to CGI.
00:37:05
Speaker
And it's a classic and it is it is it is possibly the the canonical example of the possibilities of psychic warfare You have these psychic kids who? The the strongest among them Akira and then lately then not like yes, sorry Akira And then the character Tetsuo eventually managed to manifest these city destroying explosions So much a rumination on psychic warfare as it is a rumination on the bombings of Hiroshima

Global Frequency and psychic themes

00:37:33
Speaker
and Nagasaki
00:37:33
Speaker
Well, obviously, yes, yes, you could quite understand the fact that having two of your cities vaporized would have left quite an imprint on the Japanese psyche. So, yeah, the destruction of Tokyo in Akira and indeed in various other Japanese cartoons of the time is probably not that surprising from a cultural standpoint.
00:37:53
Speaker
No, not at all. I was wrong. It's not Akira who keeps getting shouted before. It's Kaneda, who's the main protagonist. Kaneda and Tetsuo shouting the names at each other for minutes at a time, like half an hour. Just Kaneda, Tetsuo. Kaneda! Yep.
00:38:09
Speaker
It's very good. If you haven't watched Akira you should. Today you can probably get much better versions of it than we watched on VHS back in the day. Or maybe with reach better dubs as well. Apparently there are several quite high quality dubs that have been done of it over time.
00:38:28
Speaker
I thought I was going to have like we took. I mentioned this last week and figured we're probably going to segue into Akira references fairly quickly. We actually managed to get most of the way through it and then got onto Akira. And I didn't even really get to mention global frequency at all because they never quite touched on that. But if you've seen
00:38:43
Speaker
the first episode, the first issue of Global Frequency by Warren Ellis. And that's a 12 issue series? Yeah, very good. I recommend it heartily. But the first issue is about the idea of a Russian sleeper agent who was programmed with psychic abilities and given the there's sort of a nuclear bomb waiting somewhere in Russia and he has this chip in his head that
00:39:07
Speaker
magnifies his telekinetic abilities and when his abilities, so he was sort of sent to America to be a sleeper agent and when his abilities were triggered he would teleport a nuclear bomb into the middle of which American city he was sitting in and then the whole point of the story is that while that never happened he gets old, the chip in his head sits there slowly degrading and eventually starts going off on its own and they have to go in and stop him.
00:39:30
Speaker
And then they briefly made the pilot for a TV series, which was very good. And it happened just slightly too soon, because there was a whole bunch of politics. A new head of the network came on. And apparently, whenever a network head comes in, a new network head comes in. One of the things that usually happens is they... It's clear the slate. They clear the slate, cancel all the projects in production so that the head can start off his own pet ones.
00:39:59
Speaker
So it was already on the outs, and then the pilot got leaked onto the internet, and everyone who saw it said, wow, that is really great, why don't they make this TV series? It was a pretty good pilot. It was a really good pilot, but apparently this enraged the studios even further, so they made sure it would never happen. And then only a couple of years later they were doing things like leaking the pilot of Arrow quite deliberately to spread hype for it.

Teaser for bonus content

00:40:21
Speaker
slightly ahead of its time. Indeed, indeed. So we didn't get to talk about it that much, but it's probably for the best, because I think we're about at our time limit now. But your homework is to track the planet down online and watch it, and then go, that would have made a really good TV series. And then you can just rail against the air because there's nothing you can do about it.
00:40:43
Speaker
So there we go. I think we're at the end of another episode. We've got to have a bit of fun now. We started with the child money station and the horribleness. But every now and then we ended up with faking psychic technology. Destroying cities. So it was a work of fiction. There was more horror to existential dread about the future of our society. Well, yes.
00:41:04
Speaker
But that's all we have for you now. If you stick around, what happens if they stick around? Well, if you stick around, you'll be finding out about what's happening with the UKIP in the UK. Not good. The fact that Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, might be about to be expelled from party grouping in the EU
00:41:23
Speaker
The fact that Roger Stone loves Instagram so much he might have to go to jail over it and something Josh added at the last minute. Hidden tunnels under Alcatraz. Could this be the new North Head? So, but in order to hear that you have to be one of our special super patrons. Much like, much like new patron Robin. If that's your real name. If that is your real name. And I happen to know it is your real name because we follow each other on Twitter. But for the sake of the joke, is it your real name? Is it?
00:41:53
Speaker
Real name or not, you're one of our favorite people and as such get to access the bonus content. But for our regular listeners, you might not be our favorite people of our listeners, but you are our favorite people out of all of humanity. So that's something, that's not nothing. We'll just leave you now and talk to you this time next week, probably.
00:42:15
Speaker
Here in Duckburg It's a duck blur. For God's sake, it's such a catchy tune with the worst lyric ever. He's like, what rhymes with duckburg? I don't know. Blur sounds a little bit like it. I don't even care anymore. Let's just throw that in. You're duck blur. Good God. It's not quite there with the Gummy Bears theme song, but that one,
00:42:43
Speaker
That really got, that really sticks to you as well. It's a talk world. Right in the dead, eh? Goodbye. Makes all the mystery. Oh rewrite history. Don't tell.
00:43:08
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron, via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:44:09
Speaker
And remember, Soylent Green is Meeples.