Failed Utopia

It's Failed Utopia's inaugural fiction takeover! I’m doing something a little different for the next few episodes and talking not about real world stuff but about a fictional utopia. And what better place to start than with the book that gave us the modern meaning of the word: Thomas More’s Utopia. The book is a discourse on a fictional island called Utopia. Not only did Thomas More coin the phrase, this 16th Century work is widely considered to be the ancestor of the entire utopian and dystopian fiction genre.

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Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

It's Pride month, and today I'm bringing you a story about a trans and queer haven in southern Colorado. It's an alpaca ranch founded by a group of trans people who wanted to create a little utopia where they could thrive away from persistent discrimination and hostility they faced as trans people out in the world. While they just want to live their lives and exist, they aren’t willing to hide in order to be left alone, and unfortunately, just being who they are, where they are has led to some backlash that threatens their safe haven.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• Trans Lifeline:

US (877) 565-8860

Canada (877) 330-6366

• LGBT National Hotline: (888) 843-4564
• Tenacious Unicorn Ranch website
• 9NEWS’ video Tenacious Unicorn Ranch a safe haven for trans community – and 180 alpaca
• ADL’s write-up on the Three Percenters
• HRC’s report An Epidemic of Violence: Fatal Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People In the U.S. in 2020

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

Today I’m filling you in on something you might have seen in the headlines recently—the death of Love Has Won leader Amy Carlson, also known as Mother God. The bizarre circumstances reported by the media have put the spotlight on this group for the public, but for cult watchers, this group has been on their radar for a while now. What is this group all about, and what could have led to the remains of its leader being discovered decomposing in a house in Colorado, decorated with glitter and string lights, and the arrests of seven cult members?

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• Rising Above Love Has Won support website
• Live Science’s Mummification: The Lost Art of Embalming the Dead
• Stimmel Law’s Rights and Obligations As To Human Remains and Burial
• Frazer Consultants’ Grief and Loss: How Long Can You Keep a Loved One’s Body at Home?
• FDA and FTC warning letter to Gaia’s Whole Healing Essentials, LLC
• Season Two of Up and Vanished

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven was one of many cults operating in Southern California in the 1920s. It was also known as The Great Eleven or the Blackburn Cult. Botched resurrections, cultists pissing off an Italian organized crime syndicate, possible poisonings and mysterious disappearances, and ritual sacrifices . . . of puppies.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• Samuel Fort’s Cult of the Great Eleven

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

Merchandise www.failedutopia.com/shop

Our planet is awash in garbage, especially plastic. Our land, oceans, lakes and rivers are choked with plastic. It’s even been found in the Marianas Trench 6.5 miles under the sea and all over Mount Everest. It has permeated the food chain, and the air we breathe, and it falls in rainwater. For decades, recycling was billed as the panacea that would save us from our garbage. Why didn’t it work?

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• NPR’s Is Plastic Recycling a Lie? How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
• The Atlantic’s Is This the End of Recycling? What Happens Now That China Won’t Take U.S. Recycling
• Kurzgesagt’s Plastic Pollution: How Humans are Turning the World into Plastic

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

The Weimar Republic was the prosperous, post-World War I period in Germany, which lasted from 1918 to 1933. It was during this time that Germany transitioned from a monarchy to a republic. It ended when Hitler ascended to power as a dictator. How could a golden age of economic prosperity and cultural renaissance possibly have failed so miserably that it gave way to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust?

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• Anti-Defamation League
• Facing History and Ourselves: Weimar Republic
• Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

This is the story of a dream about Black pride and religion that turned into a reality of corruption, fear, and murder: Nation of Yahweh and its leader, Yahweh Ben Yahweh.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• www.yahwehbenyahweh.com
• An article about Arthur McDuffie

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

Today you’ll hear about The Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, addiction, science, wacky graham crackers, jazz, prison, unethical medical experimentation, and a weird diversion about William S. Burroughs that I really didn’t plan on talking about but that made me feel very indignant.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

Addiction Help:

USA

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) findtreatment.gov or 1-800-662-HELP

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) can also help with drug and alcohol abuse.

Faces & Voices of Recovery

The Partnership at Drugfree.org for parents of teens (1-855-378-4373)

NIDA’s DrugPubs Research Dissemination Center 

UK

A list of UK resources 

Canada

A list of helplines for provinces and territories in Canada

Australia

Alcohol and Drug Foundation 1300 85 85 84

Mental Health Help (USA):

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection 

• Official website of The Narcotic Farm documentary and book 
• BBC’s Hitting the High Notes (Dr. Sally Marlow’s excellent program about jazz musicians, addiction, and The Narcotic Farm includes interviews, footage, and some recordings of jazz concerts at Narco.) 
• Claire Clark’s The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States
• William White’s Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

Big cats, colonizers, the slave trade, cannibalism, supernatural strength-granting rituals, and a whole lot of blood and entrails.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• Britannica’s Cannibalism: Cultures, Cures, Cuisine, and Calories

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

1970s dudes claim a reef, turn it into an island, declare sovereignty, and get chased off by the King of Tonga.

Connect on Facebook or at the Failed Utopia website.

Links & Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741 741

Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-800-799-7233

VictimConnect, a referral helpline for victims of crime: 1-855-484-2846

For veterans, Make The Connection

• The New York Times 1976 South Sea Reef Proclaimed A Republic by 3 Americans
• Wired’s The Quest for a New Tech Land of the Free

Written and produced by Anna Roberts

Burning palm tree artwork by Perry Vasquez

Intro music by Elliot Middleton

"Stringed Disco" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/