1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 [Music] 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:12,000 Monster House Presents 3 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:17,000 It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. 4 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:22,000 A giant airing creature, a body, a mask. 5 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,000 In Loch Ness, a 24-mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland 6 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:30,000 gets a creature known as the Loch Ness Monster. 7 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:51,000 [Music] 8 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,000 Monster Talk 9 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:59,000 Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm Blake Smith. 10 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000 And I'm Karen Stolzner. 11 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:07,000 For at least a decade, I've been trying to understand how ideas transfer and mutate over time. 12 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:13,000 One reason for this is that like many who dive into the supernatural, the conspiratorial, or the parapsychological, 13 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,000 you start to notice unexpected connections everywhere. 14 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000 Humans have an exceptional ability to find patterns in meaning. 15 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:28,000 Those science shows these abilities exist in other species. We stand out in our capacity for abstract thinking and planning. 16 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:32,000 But finding explanations doesn't always mean finding the truth. 17 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:36,000 When ancient people saw lightning, it was easy to attribute it to angry gods. 18 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:41,000 Eventually though, we began to direct our suspicions that others in our community 19 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,000 and conspiracies became a way to explain events. 20 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:50,000 While some conspiracies do exist, many are rooted in fantasies, often fueled by hate, 21 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:54,000 and a march contempt for evidence-based reality. 22 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Karen and I believe in responding to conspiracies with critical thinking and evidence. 23 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,000 Not all conspiracies have equal merit or plausibility. 24 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:09,000 Some, like the idea of a second shooter on JFK, are not impossible, just unsupported. 25 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:13,000 Others, like reptilian shapeshifters drinking a dream of chrome, 26 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:16,000 fall apart with even the dullest application of Occam's razor, 27 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,000 if anyone takes the time to wield it. 28 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:22,000 This stuff used to be fun for me. 29 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:26,000 I would read through French zines and weird publications and indie bookstores 30 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:33,000 and marvel at the insane, hyper-connected ideas that bubbled up in the minds of readers across the country. 31 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:36,000 In college, friends turned me on to the Illuminatus trilogy, 32 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:40,000 but none of them ever made such a compelling case for its contents 33 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,000 that I bothered at the time to try and read it. 34 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:49,000 Also, if I had read it, I would have been shocked at the detached quasi-pornographic bits 35 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:52,000 and probably would have been embarrassed at a finishing it. 36 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:54,000 But I've changed. 37 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,000 In the mid-1990s, I encountered Steve Jackson's card game, 38 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:00,000 Illuminati New World Order, or Inemwo, 39 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,000 a strategic game of secret overlords vying for world control. 40 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,000 It was fun, occasionally disturbingly plausible, 41 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:12,000 but still just a game, and the trilogy was just some books. 42 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:17,000 But then, recently, I saw the Adam Curtis documentary series, 43 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,000 I can't get you out of my head. 44 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:22,000 In the UK, you can stream it on the BBC's iPlayer, 45 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:25,000 and I'll put a link to a YouTube channel that has all six episodes. 46 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:29,000 But those type of channels tend to evaporate in a puff of copyright smoke 47 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,000 when too many people notice them. 48 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:37,000 The documentary postulates many things about how a world more connected than ever before 49 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:41,000 has degraded into clusters of ideological factions, 50 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,000 often guided by dark conspiratorial thinking. 51 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:51,000 It's a very trippy and depressing journey, but full of very, very thought-provoking ideas. 52 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:53,000 Now here's the thing. 53 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,000 When you look at some of these conspiracies, like the Bloodlabel, 54 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:00,000 the Freemasons, or the Illuminati, you can get overwhelmed. 55 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:02,000 It's so much. 56 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,000 If you start to question each idea, 57 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:07,000 any of them can take a lot of reading and a lot of work to figure out 58 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:11,000 if it's plausible or is it just nonsense. 59 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:16,000 Our sincere hope for Monster Talk is that we introduce enough critical thinking tools along the way 60 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,000 that you become armed in figuring this stuff out on your own, 61 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:22,000 that you become inoculated against nonsense and default to doubt 62 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:25,000 before falling down these rabbit holes. 63 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:28,000 There was a famous creationist named Dwayne Gish, 64 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,000 who would lay out so many wild ideas at once 65 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:35,000 that it was impossible for anyone to respond to all of his claims during a debate. 66 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:39,000 We get overwhelmed when too many ideas are thrown at us 67 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,000 and we don't have time to think them through. 68 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:44,000 That's one thing. 69 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:48,000 And another thing is that these conspiracy ideas don't always get transferred 70 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:54,000 from one person to another intact, conceptual bits break off and glom onto another idea. 71 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:59,000 The In-Wall game played in this space beautifully. 72 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:02,000 In his 2013 book, A Culture of Conspiracy, 73 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:08,000 researcher Michael Barcun warned about improvisational conspiracy theory. 74 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:15,000 But by 2016, we were seeing QAnon turn this same stuff into a horror show with real world implications. 75 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:21,000 What began as a playful, intellectual romp through these theories in the 60s and 70s 76 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:27,000 somehow became enmeshed in dark and serious takes that ended up with situations like pizza gate. 77 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:34,000 People want to understand the world and conspiracy sit out there as an easy explanation for why bad things happen. 78 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:40,000 Maybe it's an angry god, maybe it's a curse, or maybe they have everything stacked against you 79 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,000 if you could just figure out who they are. 80 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:48,000 I don't want to overstate the significance of Operation Mindfuck. 81 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:51,000 Yet, I don't want you to be ignorant of it. 82 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:54,000 The players were tricksters in the mythic sense 83 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:59,000 and the people who opened the can with the spring-loaded snake are all the rest of us. 84 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:06,000 Only somewhere down the road, somebody replaced the silly fake snakes with deadly real ones. 85 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:09,000 In religious studies, there's a concept called syncretism, 86 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:14,000 wherein two or more concepts get merged into one cohesive doctrine or idea. 87 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:16,000 It happens often. 88 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:21,000 Consider the West African religion of Vudon, which became secretized into Vudu in Haiti, 89 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000 incorporating elements of Catholicism with elements of Vudun. 90 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:30,000 But any long-lasting religion will pick up ideas and incorporate them over time. 91 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:35,000 The Illuminatus trilogy, while a work of fiction is what I would call "kitchen syncretism." 92 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:39,000 It throws in everything with trickster whimsy. 93 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:46,000 It's a novel, it's fiction, but somewhere along the way, for many people, these beliefs became true. 94 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:52,000 This is part one of our two-part interview with Adam Gorightly, on how the creators of Discordianism 95 00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:00,000 and the authors of the Illuminatus trilogy created a whimsical, improvisational, trickster, counter-culture, web of ideas 96 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,000 that turned into something darker decades later. 97 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Maybe it was inevitable, but like the aforementioned documentary, I can't get it out of my head. 98 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:16,000 [Music] 99 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,000 Monster Talk 100 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:25,000 Adam Gorightly is an author who's written extensively on topics that will be of interest to all our listeners. 101 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:36,000 And these include topics like the Manson family, the history of 60s counter-culture, UFOs, Neo-Paganism, and many other cultural weirdness topics. 102 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:43,000 And today, we're going to be talking about some stuff that has both, well, to be honest, delighted and appalled me over the course of my life, 103 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,000 and I expect you'll find it to be a wild ride. 104 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:49,000 So, welcome to Monster Talk. Adam Gorightly. 105 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:51,000 Thanks for having me. 106 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:55,000 So, this is kind of a sprawling story we're going to be talking about. 107 00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:01,000 And I'll just go ahead and say, part of our topic here is a thing called Operation Mind Fuck. 108 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:11,000 I'm going to do my best to bleep that for the free listeners, but we're probably going to say F-bombs all over the place as this goes along. 109 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:14,000 Just if I miss one in my apologies, but here we go. 110 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:17,000 So, you can use shorthand, call it O-M. 111 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:22,000 Yeah, do you think that was intentional to sound like "OM?" 112 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:27,000 I don't know. It'll save you some editing, though. 113 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:33,000 That's true. Okay, so we could try that. We'll try it. Although I do love saying Operation Mind Fuck, sorry. 114 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,000 He does, yeah. 115 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:42,000 So, because I guess as Karen and I were kind of discussing before we started the interview, there are all kinds of countercultures, 116 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:49,000 but I think of a big capital C, capital C counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. 117 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:55,000 But what is that counterculture and what was it reacting against? 118 00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:58,000 Are we talking about the Discordian movement? 119 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,000 Well, we will, but yeah, absolutely, absolutely. 120 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:04,000 And it seems like that fits in there, right? 121 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:14,000 The Discordians were part of the counterculture movement for sure, and they kind of, it's odd. 122 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:23,000 I guess we should talk about the origins of the Discordian society and how they fit into the counterculture. 123 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:32,000 Well, it really started in 1959 after these teenage kids, Greg Hill and Carrie Thornley. 124 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:44,000 And they were both very inquisitive, or they visited the understanding the UFO group, you know, so they were interested in those type of things, UFOs and paranormal, 125 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:54,000 but also a lot of the emerging politics that started in the late 50s. 126 00:09:54,000 --> 00:10:01,000 Thornley had an interest in Iran, an objectivism, which kind of turned into libertarianism. 127 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:08,000 So early on, he was interested in libertarianism and anarchism. 128 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:16,000 And he said libertarianism, you know, what that kind of represented back in the late 50s. 129 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:25,000 I don't even think they were called it then into the 60s was quite different than what we think of as libertarianism today. 130 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:41,000 Anyway, Hill and Thornley and another guy, a kid named Bob Newport, they used to meet in Bowling, Ali in Whittier, California, around 1959 actually found this bowling alley. 131 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:49,000 Today it's been turned into a Bev Moe, but they've kept some of the original googly architecture. 132 00:10:49,000 --> 00:11:07,000 And so what the reason they met in Bowling, Ali's was basically it was a, believe it was Greg Hill, at least what Bob Newport told me, Greg Hill looked old enough to order alcohol, so they could drink. 133 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:23,000 They could have these philosophical discussions about everything under the sun and one of those discussions evolved into why there's so much chaos in the world. 134 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:49,000 And eventually they make the long story short, they decided, you know, since you've had all these patriarchal religions over time that haven't worked out so well, maybe they should use a matriarch and in specific the Greek goddess of chaos in the score, the iris or in the Greek known as dyschordia. 135 00:11:49,000 --> 00:12:13,000 So they basically started a spoof religion and their own society called the dyschordian society in 1959. It was just kind of an in joke between these guys, kind of just a platform for them to riff on spoofing, you know, major religions, etc. 136 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:23,000 themselves and this goof that they were members of this religious set called the dyschordians. 137 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:39,000 So this was just an in joke between two or three, you know, those three guys back in 1959. So we move into the 60s. God, I don't even want to get into the Thornley Oswald connection yet. 138 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:53,000 Sure, sure, although it is interesting. Yeah, we can put a pin in it that, yeah, Thornley, Thornley, new Oswald in the Marine, that later really plays into the story. 139 00:12:53,000 --> 00:13:05,000 But jumping ahead to like the early 60s after Thornley got out of the Marines, he was the first person to edit. 140 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:18,000 Well, it wasn't the first person, but he was the editor of the first libertarian newsletter. I think there was an editor before him, but it had only been existence in a couple years for a couple years. 141 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:25,000 And so he was interested in those things libertarianism and archism. 142 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:52,000 He identified himself one time or another is an anarchy libertarian, they call them in there was a lot of that in that mid 60s period, a lot of these folks that were identifying themselves as libertarians also became part of the hippie movement back to the land counter culture that, you know, started experimenting with 143 00:13:52,000 --> 00:14:21,000 psychedelics and different types of art forms and kind of trying to break free of the status quo, you know, so that that was all part of they seem, you know, how Thornley fit into all this and you'd be surprised how many of these folks during that period, you know, were into libertarianism as well, which was back then more of like 144 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:40,000 telling the government to stay out of our business, you know, our sex lives, what we can do to our own consciousness, whether it was through meditation or psychedelic drugs, you know, those type of things. 145 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:54,000 So that's where it kind of fit into all that and around that time, Thornley, and this is like 65, 66 is when he made contact with Robert Anton Wilson. 146 00:14:54,000 --> 00:15:08,000 Wilson at that time was the editor of the playboy advisor, which was a letter column to the playboy, there were there was two letters to the editor's columns. 147 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:25,000 And the fourth one, which dealt with kind of the sex stuff and then there was the advisor that dealt more with civil rights issues, political stuff, even getting into the realm of conspiracy theories and these type of things. 148 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:51,000 And he started interacting during this period, you know, because Thornley was editing that libertarian newsletter, they were sharing their thoughts about different anarchists and different systems, you know, discussing things that are topics nowadays, like alternate forms of money, 149 00:15:51,000 --> 00:16:05,000 private postal systems that people started, you know, that was part of this, the anarchy libertarian things they were interested at that time. 150 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:21,000 And he was also in Wilson was introduced by Thornley to discordianism around that time. They had started like in 64 after Thornley got back from the Marines. 151 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:50,000 He and Greg Hill wrote the so called Bible of discordian, Principia, discordia and started sharing that among friends in the counter culture and this evolved over time that there's different additions of the Principia, discordian it became kind of a group art project, pranks, spoof thing they would have these what they called groovy packs, which they would send to one another somebody. 152 00:16:50,000 --> 00:17:06,000 Get an envelope and maybe you would stick a joint of marijuana in there, but also something funny they found in a newspaper some artwork, some collage stuff and they send it to the next person on the list. 153 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:23,000 And they to add their own jokes or whatever to it smoke the joint maybe put another joint in there and a lot of this material contributed to different additions of the Principia, discordia. 154 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:35,000 Hey, if you know how was this distributed like when the Principia was it like, memographed or like how did they or was it just yeah, how did that work? 155 00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:44,000 I inherited the discordian archives when was that back in 2009. 156 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:55,000 And the original I say that because what I found in there was the original addition of the Principia, discordia, the holy grill. 157 00:17:55,000 --> 00:18:13,000 Originally there was five copies made of the Principia, discordia and all of those were lost apparently until I got to what were great hills, discordian archives and in there was the first addition of the Principia, discordian. 158 00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:42,000 It was just there's a bizarre story about that too that they, thoughtfully in hill basically created that, put it all together during a period there were living in New Orleans in the early 60s, 61s, 62 and they had a friend who worked in Jim Garrison's office who used their copy and machines after hours or memograph machine, whatever it was. 159 00:18:42,000 --> 00:19:00,000 Create those five additions oddly enough another one of those bizarre synchronicity so over time, yeah, it was like the second addition it started to change quite a bit it got more of the there is is in jokes and 160 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:21,000 drugs jokes and different people like Robert Anton Wilson some of his material ended up in it like Camden Beneris is another name they were exchanging all the different ideas and thoughts about and so 161 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:46,000 changed over time to more of this kind of free form collage kind of 60s counter culture type jokes and hill made like the second addition was a maybe a hundred copies that he produced and the third addition was like 300 copies but it was 162 00:19:46,000 --> 00:20:05,000 basically just a handful of people you know a few hundred people across the country found this for whatever reason whatever networks they were dialed into until in 1975 the illuminati was published and the 163 00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:22,000 illuminati mentioned this book called the principia discordia and you know the illuminati was in a fiction fictional work so a lot of people read this assume that the principia discordia was the something made up that they were 164 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:34,000 talking about in the illuminati trilogy before we get into the the mate of this that seems like there are somebody players in this story and you really 165 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:37,000 And answering a lot of the questions before we've even had to ask them. 166 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:42,300 But there's just one other player that we've heard about. 167 00:20:42,300 --> 00:20:46,980 If you could tell us a little bit about them, Robert Shay, who was he? 168 00:20:46,980 --> 00:20:54,180 - Shay was also an editor at Playboy and he and Bob Wilson became friends. 169 00:20:54,180 --> 00:21:03,400 And it had to do with Operation Mine Buck partly. 170 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:07,800 And Shay became a player in this discordian network. 171 00:21:07,800 --> 00:21:12,640 And they all used different, they all had their discordian, different discordian names 172 00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:17,640 and they started their own discordian caballs and they were all doing different pranks 173 00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:19,160 and stuff. 174 00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:23,200 So Shay was Josh the deal. 175 00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:29,600 And Wilson was, Mordeky the foul was his discordian name. 176 00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:34,000 And then, Shay Kyl was, Mel Eclipse the younger. 177 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:37,200 Kerry Thornley was Omar Kiam Ravenhurst. 178 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:41,920 And so they all started, they all used these different names for a lot of times when they 179 00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:46,200 were writing these prank letters to each other and sending to other people. 180 00:21:46,200 --> 00:21:52,080 And they started their own different caballs, discordian caballs. 181 00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:58,440 And where I was going with this was so Shay and Wilson got involved in that. 182 00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:06,160 And that kind of played into what Wilson was doing at Playboy. 183 00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:13,840 This was around the time that Thornley was started getting harassed by Jim Garrison and 184 00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:15,320 his investigation. 185 00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:18,880 Garrison was claiming, I'm jumping around here but all. 186 00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:19,880 - No, you have to. 187 00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:20,880 It's a crazy story. 188 00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:21,880 - I'll make sure. 189 00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:25,080 - Yeah, I'll try to make this make sense. 190 00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:36,040 - Well, I should say Jim Garrison is a key figure in the JFK, like a secondary JFK investigation 191 00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:39,800 and the heart of that JFK movie, right? 192 00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:43,280 So people will know him, yeah, from that, I imagine. 193 00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:49,280 And so you don't really don't see Kerry Thornley in the movie but he was one of the key people 194 00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:56,680 that Garrison went after and he claimed that Thornley, who knew Oswald and the Marines for 195 00:22:56,680 --> 00:23:02,840 a brief period of time, was basically the second Oswald who was going around pretending 196 00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:07,000 to be Oswald prior to the assassination. 197 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:16,080 Thornley wrote a really the first book on Oswald after the assassination was this kind of 198 00:23:16,080 --> 00:23:25,160 this quicky tabloid book called Oswald that Garrison claimed it was designed to set up Oswald 199 00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:29,200 after the fact to paint him as a Russian, etc. 200 00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:38,440 So that was some of the charges that Garrison had Garrison claim Kerry was a CIA agent. 201 00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:43,040 And one of the things that came out of that, they had a bunch of, Garrison had a bunch of 202 00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:49,760 bald people, uh, feeding him information and one of them was a guy named Alan Chapman 203 00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:57,840 who's described to the theory that the Illuminati was involved in the JFK assassination. 204 00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:03,240 Now, when Thornley heard this, he thought it was pretty hilarious and he shared that with 205 00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:05,240 the other discordians. 206 00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:09,960 And that started one aspect of Operation Mindfuck. 207 00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:20,320 They decided to, uh, prank Garrison and some of the other people promoting some of these, 208 00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:22,720 wild stories about Thornley. 209 00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:29,760 And so, they, and I, she has some of these letters in my book, the, the, the story of 210 00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:32,680 the story of the origins of the discordian society. 211 00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:40,800 They were writing these letters, Wilson, for instance, pretending to be a member of the 212 00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:48,520 Illuminati contacting Garrison's different Garrison people claiming he'd heard the stories 213 00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:58,080 that had, uh, about the Illuminati connected to the assassination and Wilson under his 214 00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:07,920 guys and Maliklips, the, or, um, uh, more to kind of the foul claim this was false that the 215 00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:14,560 Illuminati were actually the good guys here and they were, uh, here to enlighten mankind, 216 00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:22,280 you know, he's just, just to basically blow people's minds and maybe just to, uh, get back 217 00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:26,240 at Garrison for, uh, out of the shenanigans he was involved in. 218 00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:32,960 But they were contacting other people to, uh, during this period, the John Birch society 219 00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:41,440 or different people aligned with the John Birch society were promoting these stories about 220 00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:51,520 the Illuminati that were, they were basically, um, the hidden hand behind communism and the 221 00:25:51,520 --> 00:26:00,800 racial unrest of the, uh, 1960s and that they had been involved in the, uh, JFK, MLK, RFK 222 00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:01,800 assassination. 223 00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:07,200 A lot of, a lot of these things were flowing around at the time too and what Wilson did is 224 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:09,280 part of the operation mindfuck. 225 00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:14,840 He, uh, dictated it kind of a fake letter. 226 00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:21,920 He, uh, sent it to, uh, Playboy, which he then answered is the, the, the, basically the 227 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:28,080 theme was it the person writing the letter and was really Wilson was asking the editor, 228 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:35,240 the, he had heard these rumors about this ancient, uh, group that was connected to the, uh, 229 00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:41,400 Hachishan, you know, the, uh, the old man on the mountain, the old man of the mountain, 230 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:42,400 yeah. 231 00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:47,080 They were connected with the Illuminati and now there's rumors that they are behind these, 232 00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:53,720 uh, major assassinations and so Wilson went ahead and answered this letter and he actually 233 00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:59,320 got some, by this time, Thornley had kind of become an expert on the Illuminati too, they, 234 00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:05,800 so they kind of shared notes and this became a kind of a famous letter in Playboy over 235 00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:15,880 the years that helped revive the Smithology of the Illuminati and let me talk briefly. 236 00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:23,400 Well, Adam, if I can interject, um, we were just wanting to, uh, you've talked about, uh, 237 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:28,880 operation mindfuck or, or, um, several times now, could you tell us a little bit about 238 00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,880 what it is and how it came to be and, and when? 239 00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:38,760 So we talked about how they, you know, started forming this network, they had collaborations 240 00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:47,640 with, uh, kind of sending stuff to the mill, art projects, uh, etc and sharing different 241 00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:54,920 ideas and one of these things initially is what they called a Jake, J-A-K-E and I don't 242 00:27:54,920 --> 00:28:03,120 know where that came from specifically, but what the deal was, uh, for instance, if there 243 00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:11,160 was like some newspaper columnist that they liked something he did that they got to kick 244 00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:18,480 out of the, uh, Grey Hill, for instance, would send out a letter to the Discordian list 245 00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:26,720 and tell them on such a, such date, we all need to write a letter during, uh, under our Discordian 246 00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:33,280 personas and bam, bomb, bombard whoever this is and so the individual would get, you 247 00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:39,480 know, a dozen different letters over the course of the week from across the country by people 248 00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:46,560 with names like Mordeky the, uh, Fowl attached to some strange Discordian cabal riffing on 249 00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:52,520 whatever they came up with, you know, and they did, they did this as well and see the letters 250 00:28:52,520 --> 00:29:01,520 in my book, uh, Discordia or Historia Discordia reprinted a lot of these original letters where 251 00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:09,120 they were, would also send letters to Robert Welch with the John Birch Society, and some 252 00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:18,440 of the extreme Christian anti-communist, uh, people during that period, just a tweak with 253 00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:25,360 them, you know, and create this, uh, weird feedback loop. 254 00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:36,680 So that was part of what Operation Mindfuck was just to, uh, kind of prank, uh, to, uh, 255 00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:45,720 maybe raise the consciousness or get people to see a different, uh, way to, uh, kind of, 256 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:51,920 tweak, tweak with their own realities to get them maybe to see another aspect or a 257 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:59,040 nor humorous angle of, uh, something or just to confound them with all the chaos, Hell, 258 00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:08,160 or, er, er, um, very 60s. Yeah. And so that was Operation Mindfuck became, you know, those 259 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:14,640 were, they called those shakes, but that became Operation Mindfuck and they kind of geared 260 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:22,000 that towards, uh, Garrison as well. Now over the years, this is kind of weirdly evolved 261 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:31,440 into people still invoke Operation Mindfuck and Discordianism and it started manifesting 262 00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:39,720 people were using these terms like in 2015, 2016 when you had all this stuff like, uh, 263 00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:50,120 Peppy the Frog and this chaos magic type stuff that was tied to, uh, kind of white supremacist 264 00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:56,600 alt-right, those type of things. And a lot of people who were traditionally identify as 265 00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:05,080 Discordian, as Discordians were kind of taken a back that had been appropriated. Now, 266 00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:10,520 it's not to say a Discordian can be whatever they want to be, you know, and that was the 267 00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:17,840 famous Discordian mantra, we Discordians must stick apart. There was really no rules 268 00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:24,560 to it all either, you know, monster tall. You've been listening to Monster Talk, the 269 00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:30,600 science show about monsters. I'm Blake Smith. And I'm Karen Stolzner. 270 00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:34,620 You just listened to part one of our two part interview with Adam Gorightly. I'll put 271 00:31:34,620 --> 00:31:39,000 links to Adam's books in this week's and next week's episode notes and I'll also link 272 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:44,880 to some of the books and writings of the characters in this crazy story. Obviously, the Discordians 273 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:50,120 and the Illuminatus trilogy are not the only vectors these ideas had into the counterculture. 274 00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:55,120 The John Birch Society, the Theosophists, and any number of other fringe and radical groups 275 00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:59,960 were tapping into anti-Musonic and anti-illuminati ideas that stretched back to the founding of the 276 00:31:59,960 --> 00:32:05,880 United States. But the playful tricksters were helping to mainstream the fringe. And one 277 00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:09,940 of the phrases you'll hear throughout the Illuminatus trilogy is the idea that these 278 00:32:09,940 --> 00:32:16,300 conspiracy groups want to "imminitize the Eskitan." That's fancy words that mean they believe 279 00:32:16,300 --> 00:32:22,300 the end of the world is coming, so why not hurry at the hell up? In the book, it's amusing. 280 00:32:22,300 --> 00:32:28,140 It's played for laugh. In the present, they're called accelerationists and they are very, 281 00:32:28,140 --> 00:32:34,420 very real. So we will continue our conspiracy romp next week. Stay tuned! 282 00:32:34,420 --> 00:32:38,980 We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each episode we strive to bring you 283 00:32:38,980 --> 00:32:43,700 the very best in monster-related content with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism 284 00:32:43,700 --> 00:32:49,220 into the conversation. If you enjoy Monster Talk, we now have a variety of ways to support 285 00:32:49,220 --> 00:32:59,840 the show, all with convenient links at monstertalk.org/support. That's monstertalk.org/support. 286 00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:04,220 We have links there to our Patreon page as well as the donation button. 287 00:33:04,220 --> 00:33:07,820 Another great way to support the show is to buy books from our Amazon Monster Talk 288 00:33:07,820 --> 00:33:13,460 wish list, which directly helps us with our research. 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