EPISODE 147 | Man Out of Time: The Comte St. Germain

He composed and played music, spoke several languages, was versed in alchemy and the early sciences, and hung around with the likes of Mozart and Casanova, yet no one even knew his real name. Voltaire called him the “Wonderman”, though that may have been sarcasm, but most came to know him as the Comte, or Count, St. Germain. One of his many wild boasts and claims was that he was more than 500 years old. Perhaps even older than that.

Just who was this mysterious figure who showed up in 18th century salons? Was he more or less than what he claimed to be?

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EPISODE 146 | The Bicameral World of the Zizians

One striking thing about the many stories that have appeared about the Zizians and the crimes they are accused of committing, is that each one starts at a different place. Some start with the attack on a Vallejo landlord that resulted in his being run through with a samurai sword and then work backwards and then forwards. Others begin their tale with the shooting of an older couple in Pennsylvania. Still others kick things off with the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent up near the Canadian border. 

As a result, it can be a bit difficult to get a handle on exactly what happened when and what the several people currently in police custody are accused of. 

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EPISODE 145 | Trumpspiracies: What a Tangled Web

Ever since Donald Trump first decided to run for the highest office in the United States, he has promoted an astonishing number of conspiracy theories. It’s almost as if a New York real estate baron famous for lying to clients, not paying his bills and exploiting loopholes for his own benefit had learned, somewhere along the way, that “truth” is a slippery subject. And because he’s not a very deep thinker, he has, like many people, confused truth with facts.

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EPISODE 144 | Unwell and Unregulated: The Militia Movement

The United States has always had a certain comfort level with violence, or at least the idea of it. Throughout its history, groups of armed citizens will threaten to use, or actually use, force to get their point across, either to effect change or to prevent that from happening.

But in the 1990s, something changed, and groups formed around new ideologies that sometimes had little to do with objective reality. The Militia Movement was mainly rural, white, far-right Christians who’d been nurtured on conspiracy theories and half truths which they had chosen to believe because these made some sort of emotional sense to them, and because they had an unerring sense that they were right and everyone else was wrong. And some of them were willing to go to great lengths to achieve their aims.

This is the breeding ground for the modern conspirasphere.

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EPISODE 143 | Paranoia Is Forever: Disney Conspiracies

Walt Disney’s goal was to make the “Happiest Place on Earth”, and to delight and inspire both children and adults through the ages. Many would say he succeeded beyond even his own wildest expectations. Others might say that Disney is, and always has been, a place of evil. And when you get as big as Disney has, you are naturally going to attract some rather wild narratives. 

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EPISODE 142 | Project 2025: The First 180 Days (World Is Weird 15)

Donald Trump said he didn’t really know much about Project 2025 except that they sure liked him. And yet, of 313 specific Project 2025 initiatives, he’s already enacted 108 of them, and another 63 are actively in the works as of this recording. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

Project 2025 put a lot of importance of a sort of blitzkrieg if their boy won the 2024 election, a flurry of activity to define the first 180 days of his presidency and hopefully create so much change that, no matter what happens in future elections (if there are any) many of the changes they want to see happen will end up sticking around. That benchmark date was July 19. 

So, let’s look at Project 2025. What they say, and some of their own justifications for why they say it. And we’ll also see just how much Trump has actively assisted them in realizing their vision for a very different America than the world has ever seen. 

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EPISODE 141 | Spirits in the Material World: Mediums and Spiritualism

The late 19th and early 20th were rife with claims of contact with spirits of the departed, and plenty of people made a pretty penny convincing the grieving or the curious that they had the right stuff, the special connection to the Other Side. But it has continued past then, and even today there are those who would prey upon people to make a fast buck, supercharging the woo space in the process.

We’ll look at mediums, magicians, seances, channelers and more, including some of the tricks these con artists use to ply their ignoble trade. And we’ll also examine what’s up with the Ouija board.

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EPISODE 140 | Rock On: Freemasons (Big 'Uns 7)

Who are the Freemasons? People sure freak out about the them, even though many don’t even know what they get up to. What the heck do they do at their meetings? Why all the secrets and secret handshakes and code words and the like? Are they weird, scary, evil or just harmless?

Let’s take a look and see.

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EPISODE 139 | A Numbers Game: Mathspiracies

Guest: Gary Arndt, writer and host of the Everything Everywhere Daily podcast

We aren't really very good with numbers, so naturally we've come up with a lot of wacky ideas about them. Gary Arndt talks about numbers of all sorts, like why Pi is stupid, why prime numbers are cool, why the Fibonacci sequence isn't all that, when math leads to murder and much more.

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EPISODE 138 | Midnight Sun: Arctic Tales

The Far North is a region of extremes and stark beauty, and it is also trying to kill you if you’re a human. And yet we still live there, around 4 million of us call the Arctic our home, and we still weave stories about it, often quite fanciful ones. 

It’s a land of adventure, danger, murder, mishap, giants, ancient aliens, the origin of white people, secret tropical paradises, political talking points and even an overly generous fat guy in a red suit. It all depends on who you talk to.

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What is the Alaska Triangle, where 20,000+ people have disappeared and never been found

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