Historaholics Podcast

This week C.J. talks about Bethlem Royal Hospital, in London. As this one of the oldest psychiatric facilities in the world and by discussing the history of this hospital we can see the shifting views on mental illness through the centuries.

This week C.J. discusses a handful of ghost stories from history, including an account from Pliny the Younger and a poem from World War One.

This week C.J. talks about a real-life Dr. Frankenstein, Jean César Legallois, who performed experiments on living animals to find the part of the brain which seated life, at what point death occurred, and what role the spinal cord plays.

This week C.J. talks about blues musician Robert Johnson and the myth that he sold his soul at the crossroads to the Devil in order to get good at the guitar; he also touches on the effect that Hoodoo had on Johnson and his music.

This week C.J. tells the story of the battle of Osowiec fortress and the so-called “Attack of the Dead Men”. This was a counter-charge in which around one hundred soldiers, suffering terribly from the effects of chlorine gas, managed to push back seven thousand advancing Germans.

Join C.J. as he gets a little spooky with it by discussing the Carver grant, Petersylvania, and Summerwind, three topics rife with fraud. The Carver grant was a supposed land grant given to Johnathan Carver, the first English-speaking explorer of the Wisconsin region, Petersylvania was what one man sought to make out of the land granted, and Summerwind was a mansion supposedly haunted by Carver and within which the physical copy of the Carver grant was said to be stored.

This week C.J. and Zak continue their discussion about MK ULTRA subproject 68, in which the CIA covertly funded the research of Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron at McGill University in Montreal.

This week C.J. and Zak talk about MK ULTRA Subproject 68, in which they covertly funded the research of Doctor Donald Ewen Cameron. That research entailed a technique known as psychic driving, which was torture masquerading as therapy.

Due to unforeseen circumstances (the lock on my apartment door breaking) there will not be an episode of Historaholics this week. We will, however, be back next week.

This week C.J. and Zak discuss the death of Frank Olson, whether it be by suicide or homicide, after an LSD-fueled CIA retreat.