In March 1995 members of a doomsday cult released sarin nerve gas on subway lines all across Tokyo killing 13, and injuring more than 1,000 others. Shoko Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, taught that an apocalypse would return the world to a pristine state. This end-times ideology eerily mirrored the accelerationist beliefs of the present day technological elites who aim to break down present day economic and social systems to establish a techno-futurist New World Order.Aum Shinrikyo is a cautionary tale of how far independent religious organizations can go to carry out destructive ends. Still, few people know how far the group was really willing to go. Over the course of several years the group raised more than a billion dollars, recruited biological, chemical and nuclear scientists and set them to work developing truly catastrophic plans. They bought a ranch in the Australian outback dedicated to weapons testing. They eventually accumulated thousands of tons of both Sarin and VX. They used the gas in both subway attacks and in targeted murders.While those details are well-known, there is evidence to suggest that Asahara was working on even bigger plans — ones that seemed to be pulled right out of the pages of science fiction. In the early 1990s Aum Shinrikyo sent emissaries into the former Soviet Union to train their group with discarded military weaponry. Intelligence analysis reported that they also made efforts to acquire several of the hundred suitcase sized nuclear weapons that disappeared after the fall of the Berlin wall. The plan may have been to turn the device into a seismic weapons that would set off a cataclysmic earthquake in Japan which, they believed, would also begin the world down the path of nuclear war.In the video above I discuss the evidence, history and science behind tectonic weapons and show how Aum Shinrikyo was probably trying to make one work.While the world ultimately didn’t end, Aum Shinrikyo’s tactics and capabilities need to remain at the front of our mind. The barriers to creating world-ending technologies through gene-editing, autonomous drones, nuclear weaponry and biological agents get lower every year. As more groups adopt extreme ideologies it is easier than ever to find one who might take the next step.#cult #accelrationism #prophecy #aumshinrikyo

A crooked self-help wellness guru named Ashley Black sold a skin-detaching anti-cellulite device to millions of woman since 2014. When thousands of her former-customers joined a watchdog group that claimed her device detached their skin from the underlying muscle, Black did what successful bullies always do--she went on the attack. Black sued her former customers alleging that their truthful Facebook posts were defamation and undermined her bottom line. She lost every case--all the way to the Texas supreme court.

In 2015 Netflix aired a documentary about the seedy underbelly of the Miami porn industry called Hot Girls Wanted. Two filmmakers and executive producer Rashida Jones followed the stories of three 18 and 19 year olds who answered craigslist ads to have sex on camera. Over the course of the next three months the women were pulled ever-deeper into disturbing and even violent scenes in what is known as “abuse porn.”

I was horrified.

Statistics they showed by the Kinsey Institute showed that 40% of online pornography features violence against women. The average porn star barely lasts three months in the industry. The end credits reported that all three women left the business shortly after the documentary wrapped up.

Since principle photography began about ten years ago, and I wanted to know where the women from the film ended up. I reached out to all three filmmakers and never got a response. But I did manage to connect with Rachel Bernard the woman featured in the film poster who went by “Ava Taylor” at the time.

She recounted how the filmmakers had a very specific agenda behind their project that required her to look like a victim, when the reality was much more complicated. After the film’s release they flew her out to a university campus to talk about the horrors that she experienced, but unlike what the film reported, Bernard was still actively performing, and according to her, thriving.

During the meeting Rashida Jones asked her if she was “going to quit the industry” now, and offered to pay for Bernard to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer at the Art Institute of Chicago. Bernard was excited by the generous offer and accepted it on the spot. But once she began tweeting about her complex feelings about the film the tuition payments dried up.

In our interview, Bernard tells me how while the filmmakers Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer ostensibly wanted to expose the dark side of the porn industry, they also ended up exploiting the 18-year-old women who they were covering. In one jarring irony as the filmmakers were taking the cover shot for movie poster (and thumbnail in Netflix’s queue) the session followed the same scripted playbook of the actual pornography shoots she did for her day job.

“They told me to ‘pose a little more sexy’ and now look ‘sad’ while she sat in her own bedroom in in her underwear. The net effect was a series of compounding exploitations.

Not only were the women being pressured to perform increasingly violent acts on camera for actual pornographers, but the Bauer, Gradus and Jones used Bernard’s story to sell multi-million dollar film production deals at Netflix.

In this interview with Bernard we talk about how her life has moved on over the course of ten years, her thoughts on ethical porn consumption, the good and bad parts of the industry and the rise of OnlyFans where girls like her have more control over how they appear online.

And what she told me made me reconsider almost everything about my initial reaction to the show when I first watched it. Bernard speculates that Jone’s offer was really a ploy for the documentary crew to sell a follow-up TV series to Netflix that eventually aired under the title Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On. Bernard had to drop out of school and take a minimum wage job to cover her expenses.

It’s easy to get disillusioned with American politics. There’s a two party system that makes everything seem intractable, a general lack or transparency, and an overwhelming sense that corporate greed somehow controls everything. But it didn’t have to be that way.

This week I had the great privilege to interview investigative journalist David Sirota about his brand new limited series podcast Master Plan. In it he traces the roots of our current political deadlock back more than 50 years to Nixon administration where the destined-to-be-impeached president took a bribe on tape from the Milk lobby.

When the news came out that dairy farmers were funneling vast sums of cash into the Nixon campaign American politicians did something almost unheard of: they passed new laws on campaign finance that made this exact thing illegal. What could have been the beginning of a new era of transparency in government ultimately had the opposite effect. Frightened by the possibility of clean politics a soon-to-be supreme court justice named Lewis Powell cooked up a document that became the vision of corporate oligarchs to legalize corruption. Sirota and his team of talented journalists (which includes my wife Laura Krantz) follow the story from the infamous Powell Memo through a series of backroom deals, pivotal supreme court decisions and bad faith efforts all the way to the penning of the Republican manifesto “Project 2025” in this year’s election.

I don’t want to give too much away, except to say that the show elegantly covers a huge breath of American history and will make you think about politics in an entirely new way.

The Harvard geneticist sold a fake miracle pill to GlaxoSmithKline for $720,000,000, and now wants the world to believe that he has discovered a new immortality molecule.

A recent lawsuit by Peter Attia against his former sponsor OURA ring is a total bombshell--not because the outcome matters much one way or another, but because it outlines exactly how health influencers get paid to alter their messaging on behalf of companies and even alter the direction of scientific studies. Through the court filings I found out that he is sponsored by at least ten companies and is somehow also involved in a $200 Million "blank check company" in the Cayman Islands which does...well...who know's what?

Get Early Access and Support this Channel on Substack

In 1985 a scientist in France named René Peoc'h very nearly proved that love can alter the quantum state of matter with an ingenious experiment involving newly hatched chickens and a robot. If you think that sounds unbelievable, then just you wait until you find out what the chiropractor to the stars Joe Dispenza did with the results.

Get Early Access on Substack

Chances are that you have never heard of Feel Free before. It comes in a shiny blue bottle sold at convenience stores across the country as a social lubricant and substitute for alcohol. It proudly proclaims that it’s primarily kava—a south east asian tree root that has lots of traditional uses. But until recently, it was less forthright about its other, much more powerful ingredient: kratom.

Support this show and get early access on Substack

If you’ve listened to just about any podcast in the last few years you’ve probably come across a green slurry macro-nutrient shake called AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens). The supplement shake has garnered endorsements from the most influential people in science communications—from Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia—and just about every health and wellness influencer open to an affiliate deal.

Support this channel on Substack

Today we're going to talk about some hard subjects--adultery, violence, power, and psychopathy. During the last few weeks I've been in touch with many amazing people from all around the internet who are trying to understand how deep the problems with Andrew Huberman really go. One of the people I met was the sex and relationship counselor Kate Balestreri and I'm so glad that we had some time to sit down together.

Support this show on Patreon and get exclusive EARLY ACCESS and access to a private discord server: 

Read my Substack Newsletter

Scott Carney Investigates Podcast

Books:

⁠The Wedge⁠ 

⁠What Doesn't Kill Us⁠

⁠The Enlightenment Trap⁠

The Vortex

The Red Market

Social Media:

YouTube 

Instagram 

Facebook   

Twitter 

Bluesky 

©PokeyBear LLC (2023)