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Phantom Cosmonauts... in Space!
35 Plays6 years ago
This week Josh and M discuss phantom cosmonauts, discuss Brett Kavanaugh for possibly the last time, discuss a taxpayer's onion, and check in on the Seth Rich saga. Oh, and there's a reminder to go watch M's new web series, "Conspiracism."
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
and learn more about their academic work at:
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Transcript
Introduction and Web Series Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, it's time to get a little bit real. Real and sexy. No, just real. But real in an 80s heartthrob kind of way. Look, last week we told you about my new web series, Conspiracism, and told you. No, they'd you. To go watch it. Which apparently you didn't.
00:00:19
Speaker
We know how many of you listen to this podcast. We've got the stats. Well, we know roughly the lower bound of those of you who listen to it every week if we just go by the Podbean stats. There's probably even more of you who subscribe via iTunes or any number of podcast aggregating services. And we like how everything works that way. It means we don't worry too much about how we come across.
00:00:42
Speaker
Anyway, we know that not a lot of you went and watched my new YouTube series, Conspiracism. There was a link in the description and everything.
00:00:50
Speaker
Now, most of you probably aren't aware that contractually you were obliged to watch that first episode. You see, you signed a contract when you started listening to this podcast.
Revisiting Soviet Russia
00:01:02
Speaker
Now, you aren't aware of that movement fact because we used mind control lasers to wipe your memory. Lasers. They can do anything. Also, post-fact of ignorance of a contract doesn't get you out of having to fulfill your legal requirements.
00:01:14
Speaker
Don't blame us. Blame the legal system. So, you signed a contract, and that contract requires you, amongst a lot of other things... Some of them thought to be physically impossible to watch or listen to anything we tell them to. Luckily, you have another week to uphold part of the contract before M begins the process. And remember, we do love you. We're not saying that because clause 4 of the contract requires us to. We mean it.
00:01:44
Speaker
But enough legal matters for the time being. This week, we're going back to Communist Russia, which can mean only one thing. More Yakov Smirnov jokes in Soviet Russia podcast list- I was going to say more Russian names for you to try to pronounce. Oh, that's almost as good. Better than the alternative even. Me trying to pronounce them.
00:02:13
Speaker
the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. It's a spring evening, I guess, here in Auckland, New Zealand. Spring technically has sprung. It has. Where I, and Josh Addison, and sitting directly next to me, it's Dr. M.I.R.X.Tentive. This is true. I will not refute any of these statements. To do so would be a lie, and I would never lie.
00:02:43
Speaker
if I was being nominated to the Supreme Court. I would not say a single I am front of my peers or a Judiciary Committee. I'm that kind of person and I do enjoy beer. I don't enjoy beer. I don't like it anymore. Well you can't become a Supreme Court Justice. Fine! I won't become a Supreme Court Justice. I really dislike beer. I feel like it's a horrible taste. And that's the end of the podcast. This guy's conspiracy has been a wonderful run. We almost got to 200 episodes but there are considerable differences. We're going to cut the
00:03:13
Speaker
lamps in half, divide up the children, subdivide all of the properties and build a tunnel to the sun. But before we do that, we're going to talk about rum goings on in Soviet Russia for the second week in a row.
Soviet Space Race Secrecy
00:03:29
Speaker
I was about to say this is a bit of a Russian-themed podcast at the moment, but there's no collusion. There's no collusion with Russia to put Russia first and forefront
00:03:38
Speaker
those works in this podcast. No collusion, no collusion. Robert Mueller, don't look at us. And we're going back to that sort of
00:03:46
Speaker
50s and 60s anyway, when a good old Putin would have been knee-high to a grasshopper. And also fashion was very fashionable. So we got the requisite publicizing of your new video series out of the way in the intro, so we probably don't need to do it again. No. But watch the new web series. It is good.
00:04:09
Speaker
Otherwise, I will be coming with the secateurs. The process cannot be stopped. In fact, for some of you, it has already started. So with that in mind, shall we get on to the main topic of the insert? Indeed. Let's go into space. Allegedly. It's time for Russians in Space! How was that for an intro? It was a pretty good one. Yep. Yep.
00:04:36
Speaker
Or not, as the case may be. Now this is a story which I actually read about in the 14 Times many, many moons ago. It's been around a while. So there is a claim that before Yuri Gagiyama made his famous launch into space, and in the same as return from space to the Earth, that Russia had sent up into the upper atmosphere, and also the bounds of outer space,
00:05:04
Speaker
Cosmonauts who basically went on one-way missions, or cosmonauts who thought they were going on two-way missions but never came home. And this was then covered up by the Soviet Union Space Agency, so that people wouldn't be aware of just how treacherous or dangerous the Soviet space program actually was.
00:05:27
Speaker
Now the article that was in the Fortean Times basically presented this as a case of Russia is quite definitely covering up cosmonauts they've never admitted to. But we're going to talk about that and see whether the Fortean Times was right, or whether the Fortean Times was wrong. Yes.
00:05:49
Speaker
I think this was prompted by a more recent article called The Enduring Myth of Phantom Cosmonauts from Discover magazine, which I have to say, it's worth a read, but it's more just an overview of the topic and I found it a little bit frustratingly low on details. They're very much against the idea that this happened.
00:06:08
Speaker
But the article does tend to have a lot of, a lot of people think this happened, but it didn't. Moving on. So we'll try. You may think X, actually it's Y. So, nevertheless, there is a claim. The claim is that Yuri Gagarin was only the first official person into space. In fact, he did enormous, didn't he? He orbited the Earth and then came back down. He had a good look around the place and went, yep.
00:06:34
Speaker
It's definitely my home. Which was a massive coup for us at the time because, of course, remember this takes place in the context of the space race. World War II was over, the Cold War was in full swing, and the space race between America and the USSR became this sort of proxy war, really. It was a propaganda war who could be the first to essentially first get into space and then land people on the moon. I also want to point out that space race is the worst episode of Stargate SG-1. Is it? It's really, really terrible.
00:07:09
Speaker
So while we know that America was eventually victorious, they were the first people to, and indeed only, nation to land human beings. Allegedly. Allegedly. Nazis on the move. For a lot of the space race, Russia seemed to be in front. If you've ever read The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, which was made into a film as well, which sort of chronicles the space race and the astronauts who took part,
00:07:29
Speaker
We'll speak no more of it. No, we should talk about the space race, but it's not that bad.
00:07:38
Speaker
There's a lot of talk of the inscrutability of the Russian space program. We knew so little about it. All that they would ever publicise internationally was after the fact, or just before the fact. It would be, we are launching a rocket right now. Go and have a look at how clever we are. Which is quite different from the way that the Yanks were doing things, which they would
00:08:04
Speaker
Publicize their launches months in advance, schedule things. Whilst Russia would go, oh, we've been a rocket on the pad up. Let's send it up now. Or at least that's the way that Soviet Union kind of presented their space race. Everything was done under utmost secrecy to the point that we know there were launches.
00:08:23
Speaker
that weren't successful, but what they would do to cover up these unsuccessful launches was basically rename the launch. So you'd go, that was not our first attempt, that was attempt upmost.
00:08:38
Speaker
The first attempt is actually tomorrow. Yes, we'll have our successful first attempt tomorrow, or that will be a different name tomorrow, and our first attempt will be in three days' time. Yes, yes. The failed missions had a different designation, or were given a different designation from the successful ones. In fact, even, I didn't write it down, the term for the person in charge of their space program was like
00:09:04
Speaker
the master engineer or master something or other. There was no person was ever named. It wasn't even known if it was a single person or a group of people. There would just be these proclamations of the genius thing that the master engineer has managed to achieve this time.
00:09:20
Speaker
And it was proving quite frustrating for the Americans, I think, because their failures were public, their struggles, the massive work they were doing was all very public. And then as you've returned, Russia would just turn around and say, oh yeah, we've done that. Oh, look how we've reached to it. There goes our rocket. And you wouldn't hear any of the background.
00:09:38
Speaker
With that background to things, and indeed knowing how Russia did operate at the time, all of Stalin's notorious disappearings and historical erasures, people being airbrushed out of photographs and so on, it's certainly not inconceivable that Russia might have covered things up and made certain potentially embarrassing incidents just sort of disappear. Especially since the Russian space program
00:10:07
Speaker
wasn't as conscious of health and safety as the American Space Program was. There were a lot of safeguards built into the NASA launches, and it's fair to say
00:10:22
Speaker
there weren't as many safeguards for the Soviet cosmodrome, cosmonaut system. Yes, so I mean we do know that there were accidents in the Russian program, we do know that there were deaths due to these accidents, and that these were covered up at the time generally, it didn't come out until sometime later. The question is though, were there any human beings sent into space before Yuri Gagarin
00:10:47
Speaker
who died in the attempt and who were covered up. And that's where things get a bit more murky. Yes, because there are people who claim to have evidence about this. And this is the source of the 14 Times article I read many moons ago, which were basically about Italian radio operators who were detecting what they thought were launches from Soviet Russia.
Phantom Cosmonauts: Fact or Fiction?
00:11:14
Speaker
where they had radio signals which appeared to be receding or moving away from them, and tones that they associated with those signals to be life support systems. So as the signals got further away, the tones became weaker and then eventually the tones, the tones, the tones would completely disappear. And they took this to be evidence that these were launches of cosmonauts into space
00:11:44
Speaker
and basically one-way missions. Yes, this was the Judica Cordiglia brothers, Italian amateur radio operators. I'm almost certain we've mentioned this idea in the past on a previous episode, because eventually it was more than just signals of life support systems. Supposedly they were picking up actual audio radio transmissions from the cosmos themselves and supposedly
00:12:14
Speaker
catch in numerous instances of people either talking about how they were in trouble and then things being suddenly cut off or indeed sort of screaming or shouting about how everything's going horribly wrong, oh my god, I'm going to die, that sort of thing. And we may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. I think this, whether or not, these were sort of the
00:12:40
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a more appropriate term than money shot, but I can't write at the moment of when it comes to evidence of destroy of dead cosmonauts. But there were other fishier, but less drastic things that happened beforehand. Tell me about the fishy, non-drastic things, Joshua. Right. Well, I mean, first of all,
00:13:04
Speaker
there were some of the information that was made public outside of Russia included lists of cosmonauts and photographs of cosmonauts, which at times didn't sync up with the actual known numbers of cosmonauts. There were instances of where we knew there were these four cosmonauts, and yet photographs only ever showed three of them. So where was the fourth one? There were instances like that, which made people suspicious.
00:13:31
Speaker
But when it comes to your phantom cosmonauts, there are some instances which were known to be hoaxes. But they're the least interesting to talk about. There were very, in some cases, very specific claims. The one that comes up a bit is this Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Ilyushin.
00:13:51
Speaker
Supposedly he went into space before Gagarin and the mission went horribly wrong. Some people have claimed there was at the time a British Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, they reported that there had been some sort of technical mishap which had left evolution deranged, quote unquote.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so he survived, but was disappeared because he was no longer in any sort of estate to be providing any sort of publicity. They couldn't very well wheel him in front of the cameras. Which does make me think of that Simpsons episode. Again, tell them about the monkeys that were in space. No, I don't think we'll be doing that now. Yes, there we go. Maybe he actually turned into a hyper-intelligent monkey. The Simpsons does seem to reference a lot of things that happened
00:14:39
Speaker
in the guise of comedy. The Dan Brown of animation. Now that I think of it, a hyper-intelligent monkey would kind of be a filling description for a human being anyway. But anyway, other people claimed that his re-entry went wrong and he landed in China, where he was held for over a year before they
00:15:02
Speaker
sent them back. The whole thing apparently when you look into the facts doesn't head up. For one thing, and this will be a theme I think that comes up a little bit, Russia and China, though they were both communist states, they weren't super buddy-buddy at the time. The relations were a little bit tense between them. So had China actually captured a Russian cosmonaut after re-entry, that would have been a propaganda win for them. They would have made a big deal about that.
00:15:28
Speaker
This is something we've seen, for instance, we've talked about moon landing hoaxes in the past. One of the main things against those theories are just that Russia would have known, and if Russia knew, they would not have kept quiet about it.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yes, people seem to kind of underestimate the infiltration of foreign governments, the superpowers in the Cold War actually engaged them. So, if you were aware, there'd been a whole bunch of failed attempts to get into space. And you were, say, an American operative sending information back to your handlers in the US.
00:16:05
Speaker
You probably would want to use that information and go, well, look, Russia's space program is nowhere near as successful as ours, because look, we get up the first time. Took them 17 times to get up. Ooh, we're indeed missing them.
00:16:23
Speaker
Apparently, the fact that Ilyushin supposedly was a pilot but wasn't actually involved in the space program, looking into it, I've seen a few conflicting stories. Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to think, but most people seem to agree that he wasn't a pilot and that indeed he'd been badly injured in a car accident some time beforehand.
00:16:46
Speaker
that could be possibly some sort of mangling of reports of a pilot being injured, turned into a cosmonaut, having something there. And given the way the information transferred from the Soviet Union to places in the UK and the US, you can imagine a report getting mangled and arriving on the desk of the editor of the daily worker, and then inferring something that didn't actually occur, but you read it in the paper, it must be true.
00:17:15
Speaker
Also, let's record this particular point in time. Communist newspapers in the Western world were still pretty much pro-Stalin, so anything that came out of the Kremlin, or was thought to be associated with the Kremlin, had to be true, and casting doubt upon that made you cast doubt upon the entire Communist project. And that was a cricket. Interesting.
00:17:41
Speaker
So we have cases where the hoaxy cases, the other cases that appear to have been people misunderstanding things, then there were actual cases of accidental deaths during the space program, but not of the sort that we thought they were. So I mean, officially, before we start, I suppose, Vladimir Komarov is officially the first person to die on a space flight.
00:18:09
Speaker
He died in 1967, which was six years after Gagarin went up. This certainly isn't a case of Phantom Cosmonauts before the first successful orbit.
00:18:26
Speaker
He successfully got into space, but then things went roll on re-entry, and he died as his spacecraft was coming back into the atmosphere. Actually, this might have been the one I mentioned in the past. Supposedly, again, transmissions were picked up that
00:18:45
Speaker
had him crying with rage and quote cursing the people who'd put him inside a botched spaceship. Supposedly the story goes that Komarov, who was obviously a colleague of and a friend of Gagarin's, knew that the vessel they were sending up had some severe flaws in it which could make the flight severely dangerous.
00:19:06
Speaker
But he went in over Gagarin, and nobody wanted to, because Soviet Russia at the time, nobody wanted to pass these worries back up the chain. Certainly nobody wanted to say to the higher-ups, actually, I don't think we can go ahead with this launch. And so because no one was willing to get in trouble by denying it, the launch went ahead, but their fears were realized, everything that Roland Komarov died.
00:19:36
Speaker
But, where that was obviously a fair amount of time after Gagarin's first successful orbit, just a short while before his orbit, again back in 1961, in fact I think it was only a few weeks before Gagarin's successful mission, the body of a severely burned man was brought to a Dr. Vladimir Golichovsky. This man was identified as one Sergei Ivanov,
00:20:02
Speaker
which turned out to be a pseudonym. It turned out he was actually a man called Valentin von Larenko who was a cosmonaut in training and his body, I think when he arrived at the doctor's place he was already dead. I think if not he died shortly thereafter. He was severely, horribly, badly burned. And this was a report that was jumped on, that has subsequently been jumped on as
00:20:27
Speaker
Look, here we go. Here's someone before Gagarin's launch, part of the space program, died a horrible death. This must be one of their phantom hospitals. It sounds like that's a death caused by bad re-entry. I don't try not to snigger every time you mention re-entry. I've succeeded so far, but it's just a matter of time.
00:20:50
Speaker
No, but supposedly he did not die as the result of a failed launch. He died during an endurance experience in a low-pressure altitude chamber in an institute in Moscow. The chamber had a high level of oxygen in the air.
00:21:06
Speaker
He accidentally started a fire, he was cleaning himself with an alcohol-soaked swab, threw it away, it landed on an electric heating plate or something, started a fire, oxygen-rich atmosphere, obviously made it a very bad fire. Also, because it was a low-altitude thing, he was sealed in there quite securely and in the time it took them to actually unseal the chamber and get him out, he was horrifically badly burned and died shortly thereafter. But again, this is something we didn't find out about until the 80s, apparently.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, so even if we don't think there are phantom cosmonauts, there's a lot of cover-ups going on in the Soviet space program at that particular point in time for this year's fact. The Soviets and the Yanks are in a PR war to be the first people into space and the first people to do successful space mission X, Y and Z.
00:21:57
Speaker
So maybe now it's time to get to our suspicious radio signals, because all this sort of stuff could lead a person to say, well, covering up the deaths of cosmonauts in their program is the sort of thing Russia
Soviet-Era Cover-Ups and Culture
00:22:13
Speaker
would do. It certainly sets a precedent. But when it comes to actual evidence of actual cosmonauts dying before Gagarin's successful mission, the main thing are these radio signals.
00:22:24
Speaker
Now, there's one particular one that I've seen highlighted a couple of times, and yet every time it's mentioned, it's never made it clear if it's one of the ones made by the Italian brothers or if it's a separate one instead. But on February the 4th, 1961, Gugara's launch was in April,
00:22:40
Speaker
So if it's announced the launch of a Sputnik payload that supposedly in the West people monitoring radio transmissions listened to what sounded like a human heartbeat moaning and a Russian translated Morse code that ended suddenly at the point at the, what do they call it, the staging point I think when the bits of the rocket were supposed to separate.
00:23:01
Speaker
So that was thought, oh, OK, there we go. A human sound cut off, strangely, what's going on there. But a lot of people said, well, that's actually not the dying cosmos. It isn't actually the only explanation of what this sort of thing could be. Some people thought maybe it was a hoax. I mean, that's one explanation for a lot of these things. It was just playing a hoax. Another thing people pointed out is that
00:23:30
Speaker
Russian did apparently include in their launches, and some of their launches did include pre-recorded broadcasts of human speech or human vital signs to test their communication stuff. We know about one instance where they actually did do that. I forgot to write down the name. It was Ivan Ivanovich or something like that. Sounds like a good Russian name. Well, a suspiciously good Russian name because it was the name given to a dummy
00:23:56
Speaker
that was sent up in one of the earlier test launches. So they said John Johnson. John Johnson, basically. It was something like that. Ivan Ivanovich or Sergei Sergayovich or something like that. And so they sent up this dummy in preparation for sending up humans. And as part of it they also included recordings of a human being making noises to test that when they sent up a real human they'd be able to receive back any transitions that they made. And also certain beep beep beep sounds
00:24:25
Speaker
may well have been related to timing mechanisms and derogatory, as opposed to, say, being the last of all systems. But so we get to the Judica Cordelia brothers. They claim to be monitoring Russian transmissions from the late 50s and onwards. They, over time, eventually released nine different recordings
00:24:47
Speaker
of what they claimed were Soviet space missions from the 60s resulting in tragedy. So as we see, they had sort of heartbeats stopping. They had actual people crying or saying that things were going horribly wrong. They supposedly captured things exploding, things re-entry going wrong, causing people to veer off into space and be lost in space and never coming back down.
00:25:15
Speaker
But people who've analyzed these recordings have raised a few issues with them. First of all, these supposed cosmonauts, they don't use proper air force communication protocols. And these cosmonauts, they are members of the air force. I guess the Russian air force was what the space program came out of.
00:25:35
Speaker
I assume that's where it came out of in the US. I assume that's the state of Russia as well. They were definitely Russian military in any case. So they were highly educated, highly trained, and yet in many cases we find them not using the proper protocols. So even things down to supposedly any transmission should start with the person identifying themselves and that didn't happen in some cases. In some cases they didn't use the correct terminology and again a highly trained
00:26:04
Speaker
Cosmonaut would always, you would expect, use the correcting law. Now I should point out, the counter to this, which was the counter that was in the 14 Times article, was that these initial launches were being controlled from the ground and the people in the capsules themselves were political prisoners. So that would suddenly explain why they're not using the right protocol. They don't know the right protocol.
00:26:31
Speaker
they've been coerced into these launches. Well, there you go. That does make it a little more suspect. I mean, I don't know whether or not to say sending political prisoners into space sounds a little extreme for Russia. I suppose it kind of doesn't. No, unfortunately, given
00:26:51
Speaker
kind of purges that Stalin and also Stalin's successors engaged in, there were a lot of political prisoners being locked up in various locations, many of whom no one even knows what actually happened to them.
00:27:06
Speaker
Some of them disappearing into space is not beyond the realms of possibility. I mean, admittedly, when I mention this to Russian colleagues, they go, no, no, no, we know a lot about what happened to political prisoners. They're often kept in prison because the whole point of a political prisoner and keeping them alive is it gives you leverage over their family.
00:27:28
Speaker
And so you need to keep your political prisoners alive because they're more useful to you alive than dead. But at the same time, Stalin also didn't make a lot of people just die. He sure did, yes. Now another point against these supposed transmissions was the talk of
00:27:48
Speaker
of launches going wrong and the people veering off into space and being lost forever. Supposedly that wasn't possible at the time, that in the early 60s the Russians just didn't have the capability of launching something harder.
00:28:04
Speaker
hard enough and far enough and fast enough that it could have even got into outer space even if things went wrong. It's if you've ever played Kerbal Space Program, which is basically a sandbox game of sending rockets into space, it's actually quite difficult to get your rocket
00:28:22
Speaker
past the Earth or the moons of gravity failed. And in the 60s, that was really, really difficult given the kind of fuel that was being used at the time. You just weren't getting the right weight to thrust ratio.
00:28:36
Speaker
uh, thrust re-entry. It's fairly clear that the whole rocketry thing was invented by, well, it was Alistair Crowley in his lot, wasn't it? Jack Parsons, one of Alistair Crowley's devotees, who was heavily into sex, was often penetrating the atmosphere with his dildo-shaped rockets. No denying the space program was founded by Horny men. Anyway, so we have
00:29:05
Speaker
We have hoaxes that we don't have time to go into, but trust me, they exist. We have misunderstandings. We have radio transmission evidence that is at best dodgy. I think, as we talked about with the moon landings and as we talked about before, possibly the most persuasive thing that it comes down to is, if these things really happened, how come, given the stakes of this propaganda war,
00:29:32
Speaker
How come nobody caught onto it and nobody publicised them? Was Russia's secrecy just that good? Yes and no. I mean, Russia was very good at controlling certain parts of the information. Russia was actually particularly good at ensuring that journalists who worked in their Moscow bureaus and the like
00:29:59
Speaker
If they weren't initially friendly towards Russia when they arrived, they were friendly towards Russia by the time they left. And we see this today with North Korea. Journalists who get invited to North Korea to see what North Korea is like on the ground do tend to see a slightly different North Korea than
00:30:20
Speaker
escapees from North Korea actually claim. And that's a traditional thing in autocratic political systems. You want to control the flow of information, so you want to make sure that the obvious links, journalists and the like, are going to be the ones who get the best possible version of your culture. That being said,
00:30:42
Speaker
things did escape from the Iron Curtain, and it is interesting that the Phantom Cosmonaut thesis continues to be a conspiracy theory with very shaky evidence, as opposed to a clear-cut case of a cover-up. Yes, I mean,
00:31:03
Speaker
There are certain things, it hasn't been disproved entirely, but we certainly haven't seen anything like a slam dunk, any totally conclusive proof that these cosmetic cosmonauts existed. Indeed, and now I have great regret, because now I'm thinking about it, what I should have done was rehearsed singing Phantom of the Cosmodrome. A lot.
00:31:24
Speaker
And Andrew Lloyd Webber-Pash days. Fat of the opera of it. And a mob that calls the broom. Not sure I see that working to be honest. Still has enough work, who knows what could have been.
00:31:38
Speaker
And we'll never know now. Now, I have one bit left here on the notes, which I believe you have added, which is my Soviet space dog story. Could you fill in a little detail on that, please? In Culver City in L.A., there was a place called the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
00:31:56
Speaker
And the Museum of Jurassic Technology, if you're ever in Culver City, is well worth going to. It's actually much better than going to this Sony studio tour, which I went to before I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Now, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a museum where half the exhibits are true, or at least based upon real things.
00:32:19
Speaker
and half the exhibits are fictional or largely fabricated. And the whole point of the museum is there are no signs to tell you, which is which you're strongly told not to use cell phones and the like, so you can't just go around trying to look things up. And on the top floor of the museum there is a room which has eight or nine oil paintings
00:32:44
Speaker
of the dogs the Soviets sent up into space, so Barker, Lyker and the like. And you go into that room and you look at these oil paintings, and they're quite big oil paintings, they're fairly standard portrait size oil paintings of dogs, and you're going
00:33:04
Speaker
But I don't know whether this is real or not. I mean, it's actually quite conceivable in the Soviet space program that they would have commissioned portraits of these brave heroes of the revolution who gave up their lives to test rocketry out. It's also quite possible that someone has gone, wouldn't it have been great if the Soviets had made oil paintings or just mocks them up for this museum?
00:33:28
Speaker
Now, I have never found any evidence that they're fake, and indeed a lot of stuff disappeared from Russia after Perestroika, and there's no record of it, so it's quite possible these are authentic oil paintings from the period. And if they are, they're oil paintings, and they're big oil paintings, and oil paintings are expensive to create, elaborate to make, and take a long time to cure. So if they're fakes, they are incredibly elaborate fakes.
00:33:58
Speaker
And it just speaks to the mystery around the Soviet space program that you can walk into a room, see nine portraits of dogs and go, this could be real. It really, really could. So that is my Soviet space dog story. Well, there you go. Soviet space dogs. I was going to say there should be a movie about that. There's definitely been a movie about space dogs.
00:34:22
Speaker
the buddies, I suppose. Yeah, so I'm actually trying to remember more details about it. I'm not looking at you condemningly, I'm looking at you to refresh my age and memory. I haven't seen it either, but I do have young children. Remember the earbud?
00:34:39
Speaker
I do remember, the basketball dog. The dog plays basketball movie. So then there were a bunch of other bud movies and then that spawned the Buddies movies, which were the puppies of this dog. And so they go off and get them adventures. And by this stage, CGI technology had moved on to the point where the dogs can now talk and they can like CGI their mouths. So it looks like their mouths are moving and stuff like that. And they thought, well, I do think it's going to be more like Talos, the mummy, where they CGI guts onto poor Christopher Lee in the worst way
00:35:08
Speaker
way possible but yes so there's these these charming talking puppies and of course obviously they eventually go to space. I really hope Christopher Lee never saw that film because that CGI scene of his guts is really pre-vis CGI. We'll fix it up and oh wow we kind of forgot to fix that but that entire film feels as if they
00:35:35
Speaker
I think if you wanted to test whether or not Christopher Lee has seen it, did any of the directors or special effects people die mysteriously when they were stabbed through the lungs with a stiletto by a person who melted into the night? And was also six foot eight. If that has happened, then yes, Christopher Lee has seen that film, but hasn't, he probably didn't.
00:35:57
Speaker
And he's dead now, so he probably never will. Well, he's quote-unquote dead. That's true. I don't know that Christopher Lee actually can die. No, no, he's just waiting until the second coming of Peter Cushing, and then it's going to be Vampire and Vampire Hunter all over again.
00:36:16
Speaker
Anyway, the fact that we were ever to know about popular culture is generally the sign that the main part of this episode has come to an end. But that's not the end of the episode, because now we go straight to the news! The news! News! It's everywhere! Conspiracies abound and we're here to report on them. Indeed, I've been looking over it really recently.
00:36:44
Speaker
And here are some of the top headlines from our conspiracy and our conspiracy theories. Elon Musk was created by the Large Hadron Collider. Schizophrenia is the result of time travelers tinkering with the timeline. 9-11 occurred to commemorate the breaking of the ground for the Pentagon 60 years earlier.
Current Conspiracy Theories Update
00:37:04
Speaker
And Christine Blasey Ford created false memories of the sexual assault using her own research.
00:37:13
Speaker
Meanwhile, the case of the murder of Seth Rich continues unabated. Seth Rich, you'll recall, was the former Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered back in 2016. While authorities concluded his death was the result of an attempted mugging that turned into a struggle, which turned into a shooting,
00:37:32
Speaker
Right-wing conspiracy theorists started trying to tie him to the embarrassing leak of DNC emails from earlier in the year, suggesting his murder was some form of retribution. Now, these theories gained traction. Indeed, the Washington Times published an article which included the claim that, quote, it is well known in intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by WikiLeaks for that information.
00:38:00
Speaker
I often know proof of this claim, a claim that turned out to be, what's the word? Not true. False! False! False! That's the one.
00:38:10
Speaker
American intelligence agencies believe that Russia is behind the email theft and claims that Rich's laptop was taken by the FBI and found to have the stolen emails on it have been denied by the police. Aaron Rich, understandably unhappy at being named as a criminal so soon after the loss of his brother, followed a defamation lawsuit against the Times, amongst other outlets. And this week, the paper settled with the living Mr. Rich, removing all traces of the offending article from his website
00:38:40
Speaker
and publishing a retraction and apology. This hasn't killed the conspiracy theories though, although he's settled with the Times. Richard's lawsuit named other conspiracy theorists against whom he is still pursuing legal action. And now for your weekly dose of the Supreme Court nomination saga. Which might be over by the time you listen to this podcast. Yes, everything we are about to say might be relevant in just a few hours' time.
00:39:07
Speaker
In news which really is both conspiratorial and evidence of perjury, it seems very likely that Scooter's nominee Brett Kavanaugh knew of at least one sexual assault allegation at least a week before the hearings and set him motion plans to downplay or dismiss the allegation whilst denying at the hearings themselves any knowledge of any such a claim against him.
00:39:31
Speaker
According to a series of text messages between two friends of Kavanaugh, Yale classmate Kerry Burchin and Karen Yarasavage indicate that Kavanaugh was aware of Deborah Ramirez's accusation before it was published. The texts also indicate that Kavanaugh was friendlier with Ramirez than he has claimed and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they were both at a wedding nearly a decade ago.
00:39:59
Speaker
Now this is important because not only does this show collusion between parties to control the narrative of the story, in this case a claim of sexual assault against a Supreme Court justice nominee, Kavanaugh said to the jury committee under oath that the first time he'd heard of the accusation was in a New Yorker story. And yet these messages indicate he likely knew ahead of time and thus committed perjury.
00:40:24
Speaker
This is not the only perjury Kavanaugh has committed during the hearings, as has been chronicled extensively in various US publications. Indeed, even prominent conservatives have come to agree that Kavanaugh has told some porkies during the hearings, but apparently this is okay as he's stressed by what is going on, and so he's allowed some leeway. These same conservative voices did not extend the same courtesy to one Hillary
00:40:53
Speaker
Clinton, when she was grilled over the whole deleted email saga. That's a fun fact, isn't it, Justin? But wait, there's more. You see, given this might be the last week we talk about Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justice nominee, I thought we should also talk about the death of Vince Foster.
00:41:10
Speaker
But we did that the week before last. Ah, but two weeks ago we talked about Kavanaugh's role in promoting the ludicrous theory that Foster had been murdered. This week we're going to talk about how Kavanaugh promoted the ludicrous theory Foster committed suicide.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yes, we are now at the point that Cavanaugh has been accused of peddling conspiracy theories about the death of Vince Foster from both sides. Earlier this week, Empress Evans Pritchard penned an article in which he detailed his dealings with Cavanaugh during the White Warfare investigation.
00:41:47
Speaker
This is the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who was the telegraph's Washington correspondent? The very same. During the reopened investigation into Foster's death, Evans-Pritchard discovered an eyewitness to the crime scene who had never been questioned by Ken Starr's team.
00:42:04
Speaker
This witness had given a statement to the FBI at the time of Foster's death, but also claimed that the version of the statement the FBI wrote up was not what they had seen. They had seen evidence of a gunshot in the side of Foster's neck, which contradicted the official account of the crime scene.
00:42:25
Speaker
The witness was subpoenaed to the grand jury, whereupon he was aggressively questioned by Kavanagh in a manner which Evans Prichard calls character assassination.
00:42:38
Speaker
as if Cavanaugh did not want any evidence which contradicted the official story coming out. Evans-Prechard says Cavanaugh decided to act in a partisan way rather than support the truth coming out, and this makes him unfit for office.
00:42:55
Speaker
So, Kavanagh promoted conspiracy theories about Foster's murder, but then covered up evidence Foster was actually murdered? And if both centre stories are true, then that is the long and short of it. How delightfully confusing. Isn't it just?
Scandals and Conspiracies in Politics
00:43:11
Speaker
And now some local news. Right-wing faux union, the Taxpayers' Union, had been found to use false identities in order to request official information via official information access requests.
00:43:24
Speaker
Now what the Taxpayers Union has done is in no way illegal. Turns out that there is no requirement that you request information under your own name. However, it has been branded suspicious and unseemly and reflects badly on the Taxpayers Union and its lead.
00:43:40
Speaker
Unionist, I guess, Jordan Williams, who was suspected of dirty politicking earlier this year when one Raquel Ray registered website in favour of MP Judith Collins becoming the leader of the National Party. When people sought to find out who Raquel Ray was, the only information they could find was that Ray had an IP address associated with the taxpayers' union, and Ray's account
00:44:04
Speaker
just happened to use the same recovery email account as William's. Now, William's denied all knowledge, and intimated that he had been hacked by forces who were out to get him. At the time, virtually no one believed him, and this seems like evidence that said disbelief was warranted. This counts as a scandal in Asara, New Zealand, you know? Someone registering a website for no seeming reward under a pseudonym
00:44:28
Speaker
all in order to promote an MP becoming leader of a political party. Still, it's one of those little conspiracies if Williams has denied the probable fact that he used a pseudonym to advance the cause of his friend Judith Collins, which makes you wonder what else might be going on?
00:44:45
Speaker
Fun fact, most people refer to the taxpayer's union as the taxpayer's onion, because no one really takes them seriously. And talking about taking things seriously, in our Patreon bonus content, we discuss another Kavanagh story involving alcohol and mistaken identity. We once again talk soft power in China.
00:45:05
Speaker
and puzzle over an anti-vax billboard which had a short life outside a hospital in Auckland. All that and Josh chiding me on having not yet watched the first episode of season 3 of The Good Place coming up. Or patrons. Otherwise it's time to say goodnight sweetheart. Till we meet tomorrow. No, the other version. Goodnight sweetheart, goodnight. Okay.
00:45:30
Speaker
Good night, sweetheart. Well, it's time to go. I hate to leave you, but I really must say... Good night, sweetheart.
00:45:39
Speaker
Good night.
Episode Conclusion
00:45:40
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. It is written, researched, and performed by Josh Addison, aka monkeyfluids, and MRXtenteth, aka Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean, and Stitcher. It can also be watched on YouTube.
00:46:07
Speaker
Just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, or, if you happen to be technophobic, consult the auguries. You can support the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy via our Patreon page, as listed in the podcast description, or just by searching for us on Patreon.
00:46:28
Speaker
You can also support us via the Podbean patronage system, if that is more your style. You do you. If you want to get in contact with us, why not email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com, or find us on Facebook. And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.