The Strange Machine

On this "Junk Drawer" episode, Lee and Nathan look at some odd little stories that were interesting enough to discuss, but not big enough for their own episodes. On this edition, Nathan discusses the world's first mass media panic, Lee examines a time there was a conspiracy that almost an entire country was in on, and then Nathan looks at a UFO sighting with a twist.

On this episode, Lee and Nathan look at how the idea of the "witch" started to form in Europe in the 15th century. In particular, they look at one of the most influential books on how to identify, interrogate, prosecute and punish people accused of witchcraft - the Malleus Maleficarum, or the "Hammer of Witches". Humans are dangerous when they're frightened...

On this episode, Lee and Nathan attempt to go back in time to investigate the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century, and end up going all the way back to Ancient Greece to debate the nature of knowledge and the problem of evil.

Starting in 2016, American and Canadian embassy workers began to show strange and alarming symptoms. Could it be evidence of a new secret weapon? Lee, Nathan and special guest pod person Dr. Shelly Lesher from the "My Nuclear Life" podcast try to figure it out...

On this episode, Lee and Nathan hang out in 18th and 19th century Europe, where groups of fancy French people are at strange parties, gathered around a steel tank and collapsing into fits. This episode gets a little weird - listener discretion advised.

On this episode, Lee, Nathan and special guest pod person Dr. Shelly Lesher (from the "My Nuclear Life" podcast) discuss the possibility that microwaves could be weaponized into a mind control apparatus that could cause you to hear voices inside your head. Also, there's some discussion of irradiating monkeys, but no monkeys were harmed in the making of this episode.

Was Rasputin a depraved occultist charlatan who lied his way in to the Russian royal family, or a gifted holy man with the divine power to heal? On this episode Lee and Nathan try to answer that question, and also spend a surprisingly long time trying to establish how Rasputin smelled.

What if there was a third path, an alternative to official religion and scientific rationality? On this episode, Nathan and Lee start their exploration into the hidden world of the occult, and discuss some of the history and the practices that are associated with the modern occult movement. This topic is only going to get weirder from here...

One of the most important and interesting conspiracy-themed films ever is John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi masterpiece "They Live". On this episode, Lee and Nathan summarize the plot of the movie, and along the way get into Slavoj Zizek, Plato, ideology, and epic Greek poetry. They also ask the question: what's the appropriate amount of paranoia?

On this episode, Lee and Nathan take a look at the belief that the world is secretly controlled by reptiles from space that can mimic humans. Their conclusions aren't as reassuring as you might expect...