[originally published on Patreon Dec 29, 2021]

You're premium subscribers, you already know the score. Yes, Ira Levin and William Peter Blatty were both spies, but What Does It Mean?

I go through the careers of both authors and flag the times they worked for US intelligence, then how perhaps their writing was affected by that fact, and then the reverberations their work has had on society. With Levin, we meet the Ayn Rand circle, Malachi Martin, the weirdness of Rosemary's Baby, the Stepford Wives, the Boys From Brazil, Son of Rosemary, and so on.

With Blatty, we discuss USIA, the Groucho Marx connection, the Ninth Configuration, the Exorcist, Mark David Chapman, the Zodiac, the Exorcist III, Dahmer, and I cite the great pd187 and Christopher Knowles on the Exorcist film. 

To wrap it up, I discuss the "less well-known" David St. John, who weirdly corresponds with Candy Jones, and how the saga of Tom Dooley III shows that religious psyops are not exactly new. And the songs are pretty great this episode too, lol.

Songs:

Black Sabbath by Coven

Pact with Lucifer by Coven

Wicked Woman by Coven

excerpts from the Exorcist soundtrack

Room 213 by Church of Misery