A Geek History of Time - Episode 153 - X Files are Crazy, Like a Fox Part II

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me that I love being and support numbers will go through. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, I'm sorry. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always had to sexual revolution.

It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh my god, you never understand the book, it's a school. Agra has no business being that big. With the cultists, what real big? This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurteree to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock.

I'm a world history teacher and sometimes English teacher here in northern California and Today I took my son to a soccer lesson for the first time in his life. Oh, I am not athletic Like it is it is not running is not something I do well and and running is not something I do well. And so it was very, it made me very, very happy to see how much fun he had. Like running non-stop for an hour. Um, and, and, yeah, and, and then, and then we came home and, and he napped for a solid two hours and did not move.

Like, like, he left it all out in the park. Like, he, yeah, and, and just seeing, seeing the grin on his face and, you know, chasing after the other kids, getting chased after by the other kids, kicking the ball. And yeah, it was, it was amazing. So yeah, that's, that nap, I mentioned I got to sand a couple of closet doors that we're going to be painting. And so I went from a really great morning to a really loud and kind of drudgy afternoon. And so yeah, that's kind of the duality of my life right now. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmon, I'm a Latin teacher and a drama teacher up here in Northern California. And I have a question for you. Yeah. You, I know your Catholic. Yes. Is there amish in your heritage?

Is there Amish in your heritage? Not that I'm aware of and oh God, where is this going? Well, I'm just thinking fucking they run Okay, yeah, okay, there you go. It's quick little letter Kenny reference. Yeah So have you seen the the the episodes with the Amish in them? I a couple of them. Okay. And so good. So good. In a way that makes me feel like I need to go to confession.

But yeah. Yes. Yes. Oh my God. So, but it's so good. It's incredibly funny. Yeah. Because the family's, you know, dodge and their last name is Dick.

So, no, no, no, Dick and I need to be Dick. And I know. I've seen the young Dick's. Yes. Have you seen? It's just so good. My boys, I go, both got into the insulation. And then another one fell into some dong.

So I had two in the pink and one in the stink. So good. Oh, you need I need to give you episode I need to you chapter in verse. So you can like that's wonderful thing about what letter Kenny is that you can watch them out of order. And while there are arcs and growth and stuff like that and storylines, as far as the brilliant bits of the jokes, you don't., and, and, yeah, it's just. Kind of like it's what I appreciate about you. Right.

You know, is that what you appreciate about me between putting it all the way in this breathe here or in the Swiss cheese? You know, it's so good. But yeah, okay, I will give you chapter in verse. Okay. We have to watch that episode. And I'm going to say as a veteran of two marriages, you have to watch that episode with your wife.

That's, that is. Yeah. Okay. Blame it on me after. But. And you know, I will. Yes. Yes. But I really, I want to hear that your wife heard it and okay, it's oh my god

So good. Okay, so here's what's happened with me lately. Okay Um, I went to a friend's house um and they were very grateful for some help that I'd given them previously Okay, and they know who they know who they are. They're listening. But I went to a friend's house, found something out disturbing about myself. These friends of mine are small. They're not little people, but they are small folk. I think a cat was at the door. I'm not sure. So if we pause, it's because my daughter is at the door. Okay. But they're smaller folk. Um, now, okay, I'm sitting here on the other end of an internet connection talking to you being, you know, five six. When you sit like, are they shorter than I am? She is, which is not uncommon. I think he's 5.7. Okay, but he might be 5.6. What?

If you added them together on a seesaw, it made them sit on one end and made me sit on the other. I'd still be on the fucking ground. Okay, yeah, I outweighed my friends. Okay, yeah. I outweighed my friends. Both of them. The couple of them. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It was, you know, I want to know. So, unlike me, they are in fact small, not just short. Yes. Yes. Okay. So that was, um, I mean, I, I, I get it, but like, but you realize maybe you need to get back into the intermittent fasting or like, well, that's obvious. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't need to, to, to be around them to notice

that. But, but it was just like this moment of like, when I was married, I outweighed at some points, I outweighed my then wife and her cousin, but they were both small and that was fine. But the fact that it's a couple, where sexual demorphism exists in our culture. Somehow, somehow this hit home in a different way. Yeah, yeah. And it was, unfortunately, it wasn't even the, all right, I got to get a bow flex. I got to start doing stuff.

No, it was just like, oh, that's a thing now. So it's like when my fingers started acting up, you know, my ring finger on my left hand, like it, it doesn't quite grip as tight. And it was like, oh, that's a thing now. Not I'm going to get that fixed or anything like that. It's just like, oh, okay. That's how that's breaking down. The second.

Yeah. So yeah, I am. I am. What do you call the living embodiment of entropy? Apparently. So we kind of all are. Yeah, some more obvious. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it is kind of like a. Yeah, some more obvious next level. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, it is kind of like along the lines of, uh, you're always starving to death.

It's just every time you eat, you reset the clock. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's that's what's new with me. Okay. Thank you for that existential crisis. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's fun. So when last we talked, there were some people that saw a TV show, but swore that they'd seen aliens. Yes. And then there was some guy who we didn't say he was a white supremacist, but I'm going to say that saying that everything that other culture did kind of ideas about people accomplishing things. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. kind of ideas about people accomplishing things. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you know, and here's the thing. I'm going to take it, I don't know if it's a step further or what, but the inherent racism involved in, well, you know, the Egyptians and the Mayans and the Chinese and all of these people,

they clearly hit into the, you know, they clearly hit the, you know, Easter Islanders, Polynesians, Melon Asians, whatever, you know, clearly they had to have extra hersteral help. I'm not even going to say that that I think, I think the the racism is the occult racism, the crypto racism, I don't know the the baked in. There we go. Late. Yeah. That's where I was looking for those. I'm not even going to say the late and racism is the worst part of that. What what makes me angry as a history teacher about it is that is that Vondana can look at all of that and instead of going, oh my god ancient people were fucking amazing. Right. It's, well, this, this had to be aliens. It's like way to sell literally your entire fucking species short ass hole. Yeah, it's instead of the what a piece of work is man,

how noble in reason. Yeah. Oh, infinite and faculty. Yeah. And instead, you know, and how like a God, it's what brown people sure got some help for some aliens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How can a bunch of primitive dipshits have accomplished all of this?

Number one, they weren't as primitive as you think. And number two, the fact they were primitive doesn't mean they weren't smart jackass Yeah, you know, this is one of those things. It's it's a kind of presentism on top of the racism Mm-hmm that that I continually have to have to like try to try to knock out of my student's head When I when I'm teaching is like okay,, yes, you have a cell phone in your hand. That is, you know, that is a handheld device that has thousands of times the computing power of the machines that got us to the moon.

Right. This is a marvel. This is something to truly, like if you ever want to blow your own mind, think about that for a second, think about the access that gives you to everything it gives you access to. That is absolutely amazing. With that being said, you are not inherently any fucking smarter. And as a matter of fact, in some important ways, you're probably dumber and less fit and lazier intellectually and, and, et cetera, from the people who engineered and built the pyramids.

I, okay, so I'm going to go there because I think we can do some, some cognitive offloading. Um, I don't have to memorize phone numbers and therefore I can focus on other things or more importantly, my math teacher friends can point to this. Students don't have to memorize formulas. We don't have to spend the class time doing that so we can get into more complex shit because we've talked them out of program their computer. They're their calculators. That being said, the people who got us to the goddamn moon using slide rules. Yeah. Are that much more amazing considering how much more computing power we have that we can share memes. Yeah.

You know, like it's that much more amazing. There's a thing called the Flynn Effect. Are you, are you versed in this? I familiarized me. It's the, I've heard it, but I don't remember it right now. If you take a standard, and again, I'm, I'm, I'm Damien phrasing here and, and forgive me if I, broad brush, skips over, screws up some details,

but essentially, if you control for intelligence, we are still going up by about three points per generation in the IQ. So if you if you Renorm it every time right so that the average intelligence is still 100. Okay, that's what it is We are still three points smarter than the previous generation and they then they from the previous and they from the previous And they from the previous to the point where if you really think about it, like if you have a great grant, grant parent, who would have been alive around the time of the first IQ test being administered, they would functionally be 15 points lower than you. That is more than a standard deviation. That is, you know, you're starting to get

down toward the needs and IP level quite honestly, cognitively. And by the way, IQ tests, I have huge problems with them to begin with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the least of which they value speed over everything. Now, why would I have a problem with that? I'm a very fast processor because not everybody learns that way. And I don't care if it took you longer to get there. You got there. So you know just as well as I do kind of thing. But part of it is because of public schooling and an emphasis on abstract thought, which I think absolutely has to do with post-war worry about democracy. And so you would have a question, what do a dog and a rabbit

have in common? Now there's several ways to answer that, right? They both have further, they're both by, they're both by pedal, Jesus. Quadrupedal. Yeah, quadrupedal. They're both mammals. Exactly, you know, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they along the lines of, well, I use my dog to hunt the rabbit. Yeah. Because I wouldn't think in terms of commonality between those creatures, because for them, a dog was used for hunting in a rabbit was the thing that you eat. And therefore, and that's the connection.

Yeah, apparently. Apparently, yeah, they would not even be able to answer the question in the way that you meant it when you asked it. Yeah. So that's the flint effect. So we are, you know, three points higher every generation, even when you adjust for intelligence. And so our dumbest phone starrer will still score better on an IQ test than your average hunter with a dog going after the rabbits 100 years ago. That doesn't mean that there's less intelligence earlier, but there is something that's changing culturally in us.

Now that being said, you could rewind the clock by 5,000 years. Yeah. You've got the pyramids or 3000 years. I forget how long. I guess close to 4,000, right? It's close to 4,000. Yeah, because Clio Patrick is closer to the moon than she is to the first pharaohs. Yeah. You rewind that far that far, fucked up thing to think about, talk about blowing your mind. Yeah. Yeah. The one against me is that the average American has one testicle and one over. Um, and I am woefully under average. I'm one of those. I am excessively I'm one of those. I am excessively above average on another. It just proves that there's lies, damn lies and statistics.

Right. But that was actually one of the things my dad had had the most trouble with when he went back to school to get his bachelors after he'd you know, been in the Navy and then come back and they said, no, no, if you want to hold on to your commission, you've got to actually go back and finish college. Right. And so he wound up, he looked at all the units that he had from back when he was in school

and he was like, okay, what's going to get me through this fastest? Okay, I can get a psych degree. And and part of getting that psych degree was some gut level sociology course that he had to take. Sure. And he could not, it was so hard for him to stomach the statistical part of the sociology stuff that like,, you know, you know, the average the average American home, you know, the average American middle class family owns, you know, 1.5 cars and has, you don't own half a car. Right. Like, what? Right.

No. No. That's okay. That's the, I use my dog to go hunting shit. Yeah. Well, it's not dumber than anybody in a generation later. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, yeah. And, and, and, and it wasn't, and, and, and here's the thing though, it wasn't so much that, that it was, he didn't, he didn't, like, have trouble conceptualizing that, okay, that didn't have trouble conceptualizing that, okay, that's the average figure. What he just had this visceral emotional reaction to was this just proves that all of the statistics shit is bullshit.

Instead of going, instead of going that extra step of going, okay, for every 10 people is shifting cars. Yeah. Instead of just saying, yeah, okay, I get that. Yeah. He's hanging up on the one half car asshole. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Which says an awful lot about A, him, and B, how I am, in fact, my father's son. Sure. Maybe because some of the conceptual things are what I look at and I'm like, fuck you. Right. Like, no, so come on. So anyway, so you go back to the pyramids. And those people would have been so functionally far behind us on an IQ test, which kind of just proves that the IQ test is very present.

Well, shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Presentest and is very much built around a very, very specific kind of definition of what intelligence looks like. Right. You know, and yeah, and it's such an ephemeral thing that like, yeah, it's hard. It's like trying to try to nail Jello to the wall. Yeah. You know, so, but yeah, so the whole the whole Vondanican theory about, you know, aliens, it's just it's it's broadly insulting on so many levels. And as somebody who wanted to be an archaeologist until I realized that no, I actually have to spend time in science classes.

And that was like, no, go for me. Sure. Oh, also, I'm not nearly detool oriented enough to do the job. Like, oh, I've got a drug grid, and I've got a marker where everything is on the grid. And I've got, oh, God. This sounds like home work. Oh, good. More roof tiles. Yeah.

Great. This sounds like homework. God. more roof tiles. Yeah, the sounds like homework. I'm supposed to be. You mean, you mean, I'm going to go into a job where I have to do homework for the rest of my life. Okay, fuck that. So that was, you know, but as somebody who loves what we learn from archaeologists, you know, it's just it's fucking insulting and Vandana Kinsen-Asshole. Like, yes. So however, with that being said, Vandana Kinsen important figure in pop culture, because even if you don't know his name, you're likely to have heard of the phrase chariots of the gods. Right. And even if you haven't heard of the phrase chariots of the gods, the idea of ancient aliens is one that has gotten its

fingers all into science fiction, like the whole premise of Stargate, the movies and the TV series is is Vondanican. You know, and it's it's everywhere in. Oh, it's that new genre. Yeah, aliens. Yeah. Right. Which my students repurposed to say the wolf was this big. But in Latin, that's pretty cool. So, so we have, we have in 68, we have Von Daniken. And, and then in the 1970s, we have found the foundation of Raylionism, which is a UFO religion, which teaches the humanity was created by alien beings

called the Elohim. Oh, Jesus, this is totally triggering me to my first marriage. Okay, maybe not as part of this broadcast, but I gotta ask you about that at some point. That'll be off camera. Okay, and then in the 80s, we have communion written by Whitley Streiber, who describes his encounter with entities that match very closely the description of the Graze. Right. It's an interesting kind of side note here that number one, Whitley Streiber is a horror author who published this book as nonfiction and who asserts that he's not sure

that they were extraterrestrials, but he does know that they were not human. And they might have been aliens, they might have been spiritual beings, it might have been some kind of psychic echo from the future. Like aliens are actually extraterrestrials. Like there's a lot. They're okay. So we ended last week with me talking about how you get fundamentalist religions, you get a lot of spiritualism, you get a lot of that kind of culty shit. And you get this increase in aliens. Now you're starting to see it in the 80s. All of them are intertwining. Oh, yeah.

The thing, you know, the Celestein prophecy type shit, like, Oh, yeah. The thing that we thought were angels. You know, all these religions, they for years have just misinterpreted it. Now we get it because it's the 80s. Yeah. The angels were the aliens all along. Yeah, angels, yeah, and look at, look at the background of the Mona Lisa. Right. There's there's a UFO and the background of the Mona Lisa.

And by the way, it all is hella racist because it ends up being like this guy came to fix my oxygen tank and he was clearly an angel and you could just tell by the way that his white hair was resting, King Tom, on top of his chocolate brown skin. And you're just like, fuck, get me out of here. Stop it with the magic Negro bullshit. You know, just so tropey. So, and so racist. Yeah. So, so what I was next going to get into is that over the course of all this time, the lore of UFO this time, the lore of UFOs got convoluted and weird. Like because what this turned into was this turned into the full religion of the dominant

culture of the United States, certainly. In the Middle Ages, there was the church, and when you weren't busy praying in church, you went out into the woods and you left an offering to the fair folk. Those were like the alternative that was hedging your bets. Right. On a spiritual level. In the modern era,

people stopped going to church. You had the scientific rational outlook. And then you had engaging in the folk religion of reading about, you know about alien abductions and the interrelationships of different extraterrestrial species with each other. The daylight belief in technological progress and scientific advancement then had the twilight

counterpart of, you know, in search of, which was a great series, I love it, and, you know, Leonard Nimoy was amazing. But, you know, that's kind of, that's the show that gathered all this stuff together, and all the secultism and all this alien crap. You know, was the hedging your bets emotionally, psychologically, maybe not spiritually in the same way, but you get what I'm trying to say here. Yeah, and I think that there's also a couple of other things that are coming to the 401 capitalism is really drilling down on this shit. And, and, you know, so you've got all these shops opening up, it's self crystals and, you know, the new age of all. Yeah, it's tight in with us and the business of the new age movement, which is a huge thing. Yeah. Which then leads to grifters finding new grifts and stuff like,

you know, the Russian psychics. like, you know, the Russian psychics coming over to me. Yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're, yeah, but he was from the 70s. And, but yes, I mean, certainly him, but I'm thinking of like the two women, the two sisters who could just look at someone's picture and tell you where they were in the world or, or, or, and so then tested them by showing them a picture of Ted Bundy. And yeah, so there's some debunking that happened, but by and large, you had all

these tabloid TV shows coming up to inside addition. Ripley's believe it or not, 2020 would run shit all the time. Oh, yeah. Unsolved mysteries. Yeah. Unsolved mysteries is more abductee like and not not alien to ducty just like, you know, this is a domestic. Yeah. Yeah. This is a domestic abuse case. Yeah. Okay. Good point. Same with Americans most wanted, but they're, I mean, those two fed the paranoia, but like the other ones were like, you know, there would be video of somebody getting exorcism and there would be a video of somebody channeling a long dead spirit of an angel named Merlin from the, you name the fucking star cluster thing. And that was on TV and not like, not like at a

weird times like, like, I don't know, like, oh no, prime time. Yeah, prime time, shit. I'm fine. Yeah, and all that going on. Yeah, and so, ufology itself, as a phenomenon, as a social phenomenon, and a movement developed its own kind of canonicity. Mm-hmm.

And you kind of wind up getting different denominations within UFology. You know, I mean, it really, it really turned into kind of a kind of an alternative religion or what is what is offer for two as new religion. And like different, different groups of UFO conspiracy theorist types would assert different motives to different groups of ET's. Well, these are so happy. Yeah, and they're part of the intergalactic federation and they exist. Right.

They're actually from the far future, but they come back in time to visit us to try to help us get ahead or whatever. but they come back in time to visit us to try to help us get ahead or whatever. And then what's interesting though is broadly, they all agreed on kind of what the different alien types were. And very broadly, getting back to one of your points, the Pleiadians, who are mentioning them, yeah, blonde, straight blonde haired tall white people aliens. Are most often seen as being benevolent guides of humanity, where the reptiloids, snake people, lizard people, some variation thereon, are most often assumed to be malevolent

and are in fact a major part of the conspiracy theories of I didn't put his name down but crazy ass motherfucker who's convinced who who makes an awful lot of money. I don't know if he believes his own, but I feel like he believes his own bullshit, but I don't know who who is convinced that the royal family of the United Kingdom and the Rothschilds, and basically anybody who's famous is either a lizard person, like the Bush family or all lizard people. The Clintons also are all lizard people. I don't know if he's been active enough

to have a theory on Trump, but you know, they're either lizard people or they're in league with lizard people. Which then all comes right back as you pointed out at the end of the last episode too, sadly, the protocols is the elders of sion. And it's like why? Right. Why can't you come up with anything original? Was that David Icki? Yes, David.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Who is a white like straight up neo Nazi? Yeah. Yeah. Also though he was like, okay, maybe not. Yeah, no, no, neo Nazi.

Yeah. Yeah. He said the protocols were real. Well, yeah, that comes to you to the front line for neo-nazi. But wasn't he like a football player or something? I don't remember what is what is the role in society was. And I mean, soccer player. I don't mean, yeah, because he's a bread. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, and the interesting thing is, you know, just like Yeah, no, and the interesting thing is, you know, just like Fox molder Or a lot of these folks it's you know if Jesus then aliens or you know if aliens then then

Loch Ness monster if aliens then you know and so of course If he's peddling an alien conspiracy of course he buys into the protocols of the elders' design, because if one thing is true, then naturally it all has to be true. And so we wind up getting this mischegos of conspiracy theories and weird, you know, folk-religion ideas that are influenced by 60s TV shows, you know, science fiction stuff, and, and, you know, just the UFO craze fed into and then fed from and then fed back into popular culture between the 1950s and into the 1980s. And all just hung there for, you know, 40 years. And our bulk myths of alien abduction and extraterrestrial forces who, you never knew when they

were going to show up and they were going to take an experiment on you and you were going to lose time. And depending on which stripe of it you believed in, they're all part of a galactic federation or they're part of a plot to take over the world. And like either they're going to save us and there's not really anything we can do about it or they're going to conquer us and they're way more advanced than we are

and there's not anything we can do about it. And all of this reflects our anxieties and our feelings of helplessness. Okay. And so that's that's I'm gonna put a pin in that. Okay. With with that is where we're gonna sit with okay, UFO culture and UFO lore. And now, at the beginning of the last episode, you briefly jumped to what I'm about to talk about here, because I got to get back to talking about, I'm going to say the ground level cold war. So the US and the USSR were in a position where we couldn't afford to do it out directly. Right.

And we still can. Even though it's not the USSR anymore, we're still in a position where, no matter how much we might daydream about being able to take direct action to stop things that are going on in the world, we can't afford to because we're still talking about the nation state in the world with the second largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. And so, you know, during the Cold War, it was even worse. And so instead of a long and destructive conventional war, it would be a very short apocalyptic exchange of city burning weapons.

Yeah. So, like the moment a Russian shot, an American soldier or an American soldier shot at a Russian soldier, the instant that happened, everybody was going to be dead, like everywhere. So, we couldn't do that, but we still on both sides still believed that they had this existential war they had to fight and they had to be trying to stop one another anyway they could. So they fought proxy wars instead. Sure. We talked about the space race kind of as a proxy war. We talked about the Olympics as kind of a proxy war. Absolutely. We're going to show off the superiority of our culture and try to win over people to our side, right? Mm, then there was just direct intervention in unaligned

nations, right? Like make them make a choice. Yeah, yeah, push them to pick a side. Right. And so trying to gain influence or outright control of client client states. Okay, we wanted we wanted to try to make everybody in the thorough rule the client right we we wanted them and the Soviets wanted them, you know, and so the USSR supported communist revolutionaries all over the world funneled money to them funnel political support to them did whatever they could to you know support that they could to, you know, support that. And in turn, the United States supported anti-communists. In a lot of cases, this meant supporting terrorists and or dictators. Yeah, very heavy on the crypto-fascist front. Well, yeah, because who's going to be more anti-communist than exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. So, I just real quick, the Soviets, I mean, Stalin canceled the third international. He was like, no, I'm not giving you all any money anymore because he cared more about Soviet security. Khrushchev did the same, Brezhnev did the same. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that they didn't fund various folks in different countries, but they very often would fund them only to a point, or they would say, hey, best of luck, you have our moral support, that's about it, and stuff like that.

But they certainly did support certain groups where they knew that it would like, like, niggle us in the ear, you know, kind of thing. But it just, I do want to quibble with your use of the words all over the world. It wasn't all over the world. They were much more pointed about who they would give money to and encouragement to. Same with China.

I mean, for instance, you had the Sinosoviet like dissolution of friendship there. Um, yeah, that a huge falling out. You know, so, so they're not going all over the world so much as they're, they're picking their shots to keep us barking at everything. Well, yeah, because Ben and the thing is, what they, their, their doctrine around that was, they could not, they knew that they could not afford to fight every battle. And what they, what they could afford to do, what they were going to get their best bang for their rooble doing

to do what they were going to get their best bang for their ruble doing was to keep everybody else on an unstable footing. Yes. Which is the primary lesson that the current president of the Russian Federation took away from his time working for the KGB. And so, yes, that is certainly true. But the perception of people on the policy making and here in the United States was that they were everywhere. Yes. And we had to be constantly fighting everywhere in order to hold them at bay., meanwhile they did what they could to give us that impression. Oh, yeah, they capitalized on it. Absolutely. And it's not like the United States wasn't Laosie with spies. Yes. And you know, that's also true in fairness. Everywhere else was Laosie with our spies. So, but yeah, but you know, the worst

thing for a conspiracy theory is to be proven right. Because then your your zeal was retroactively justified. Oh yeah. Yeah. No matter how wrong you are. The moment, the moment a paranoid actually finds out there is anybody who has done something to them right It reinforces all the rest of the paranoia right so that happened. Yeah, so now I'm gonna go through a a very truncated list of things that the United States did in order to prevent or in the belief that it was done to prevent communist takeover. 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom cooperate over throw the democratically elected Mossadeh government in Iran, strengthening the power of the Shah.

Now, here's the interesting thing. Mosadeh was not about, as far as we know, he was not about to ally with the USSR. He was not a communist, and even the CIA was like, well, no, he was a democratic socialist. Now, the thing is, however, his, uh, uh, not cabinet is parliament had voted to nationalize Iran's oil production because they were pissed at the brits. And then the Eisenhower and Churchill governments were afraid that Musadek was, was going to fall to communist forces or USSR friendly forces within his own nation. So the CIA decided well, then we better get in there and do something and they planned an orchestrated operation, Ajax,

under the command of none of the then Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Yes. Oh, he did. And Tom's son of TR. Yo, yeah, no, Roosevelt was like, the American version of James Bond. I was gonna say. Was a supervillain. Yo, yeah, no, Roosevelt was like the American version of James Bond was a super villain. Like, by the way, most of that wasn't just pissed at the British. He also saw this and a lot

of people in his parliament saw this as a chance to actually let Iran's resources work for Iran. Oh, yeah, I, yes, I oversimplified there. Yes, but, but the Brits were assholes. Yes, they were. Yes, I mean, the point I was trying to make was the Brits were assholes. Most of them was like, you're not paying us the money you owe us that check asses, right? You know, and, and so yeah, they nationalized, uh, AOA, I'm trying to remember the acronym, but anyway, the, the, the UK owned oil company that was which would have actually become BP. Yes. Yes. So in 1961, after the Soviet-backed revolution of Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista government, which had been propped up by the US and heavily

infiltrated by the way by the US mob, the CIA funded and organized the Bay of Pigs invasion, which went great, didn't it? Which failed spectacularly. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's spectacular. Yes. And then, and then, after that, the CIA spent the next 30 years engaged in a dizzying number of plots to assassinate Castro. Yes. And several of them involved cooperation with actively wanted members of the Mafia, like an arm of the US government, worked through third parties to contact people who were on the FBI's 10 most wanted list to try to get their help to kill Castro.

Oh, yeah. Like, really? Yeah. No, totally normal and tried to poison, yeah, tried to poison as cigars. He, of course, Castro for a very long time gave a, at least weekly might have been, might have been more frequent than that, but he had a radio studio that he did a broadcast where he talked to the people of Cuba from. And they tried to find a way to, like, introduce LSD into the broadcast booth. This was, like, seriously, was an operation they tried to plan out. Right.

They were going to try to get LSD into a system so he'd just start tripping balls in the middle of a speech to his own people. Oh yeah. It's like, well, you know, maybe it probably won't kill him, but you know, it'll be a huge embarrassment and, you know, reduces, reduces standing and whatever, whatever. They tried to poison a wet suit. Like, I mean, crazy. I already mentioned the poison cigars, but like, they actually tried to, this was the high watermark for wackass CIA spy shit, though. Like, they, shit though, like they tried to kill Patrice Lemumba by poisoning his toothpaste to make it explosive. And the only reason it didn't happen is because the guy that was tasked with doing

it had a conscience attack and couldn't bring himself to carry out the mission. Like, and that was in the Hadob in 1960, because Le Mumba was dead by the end of 60. Yeah. And I remember, and I don't know if this was true, but as a plot point in JFK, minor plot point in the Oliver Stone, love song to another conspiracy theorist.

But in it, Joe Pesci says, you know, oh, wow, we could put a chemical in there and make his beard fall out. Then he'd look really stupid talking about Castro. Oh, yeah. Which at least you're attacking. At least there's some rationale there because Castro was proud of his beard It was yes, an oath of the beard if you will and yeah, and and that was in fact one of the CIA's Ideas they they floated. Oh my god was actually trying to try to do that. Yes, that's that's not bullshit

So yeah, so so yeah, then in 1963, there's the bath party coup in Iraq, which installed the folks that led to Saddam Hussein. It wasn't immediately Saddam Hussein, but it was folks associated with him. So anyway, I'm already taking over a Shia majority country. Shia majority country and it's not confirmed, but highly suspected the CIA provided aid. Because that would also help balance out. Well, actually, at that time, you didn't need to balance that, I ran. No, because yeah, no.

And also in 1963, early in the proxy were being fought in Vietnam. Mm-hmm. The US gave tacit approval to the assassination of their own ally, Noden Dimm, who had engaged in active and brutal suppression of the Buddhist majority of his own country. He himself was a huge asshole. He is quoted to have said to a high-ranking military officer, make sure that the people you put in a high-ranking positions

are Catholics, you can trust them. Right. Not understanding that the officer he was talking to was a Buddhist. Well, 90% of the country was Buddhist because it's Southeast Asia. Right. Like, you know, want me to want to talk about a minority government. Well, and his wife even said after tick-quing, burned himself to death in protest, she said, well, if the Buddhists want to have a little barbecue, then what's the big deal?

Like she said it on wax like I I've seen the video per second was it was worse than that. She said I'm I'm I will be happy to contribute more fuel Yeah Like not not just well if they want to do it let it wasn't just let them eat cake. It was no No, I will take away more of their bread. Right. Like, I mean, holy crap. Yeah. Um, and so we, we backed a coup that led to a military junta that eventually actually overthrew itself. I'm kind of simplifying things to save time, but that military junta held on to power in South Vietnam until 75, but we let them take out the guy we wereotet in Chile. Between 1979 and 1987, the CIA provided material and financial support to the Mujahideen directly against the Soviets in their direct proxy war.

In Afghanistan, including, I hadn't known about this, we exported anti-Soviet propaganda into Southern Soviet republics, majority Muslim Soviet republics. We sent leaflets and all kinds of pro- that republic nationalist literature and anti-Soviet pro-Muslim, like who knew literature into those places. And so the phrase I use in my notes here is etc etc for 40 years. In the name of holding in the name of holding back communism, the US government allied itself with and actively worked to support all sorts of nasty bastards. And as long as we had the USSR standing in popular perception as a threatening monolith, armed to the teeth and ready to invade the West at the drop of the Nushanka, the dominant culture mostly operated under a lesser of two evils mentality when considering the issue or more often simply avoided considering it entirely. Yes, yeah.

And you left out about 35, 450 other countries. Yeah, long because I mean, you know, there's only so much time we have to record this thing. Yeah. But that was that was enough to make my point. No, yeah, yeah. I'm just to to make sure to just drive at home. Like he is literally just picking the surface ones that made the biggest news at the time. Kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, it works. So, so, okay.

So lots of paranoia. Yeah, we spent an entire couple of episodes talking about the corrosion of public trust and government during the 70s thanks to Nixon and Watergate when you did your episodes on possession movies. Also the Pentagon papers, etc. Then under Reagan, the dominant culture got a surface level shot of nationalist pride. And despite him being outwardly a hard-nosed cold warrior, Reagan actually agreed to arms reduction, while simultaneously spending the USSR into the ground militarily.

We just pumped so much money into so many military programs that like the Soviets couldn't keep up. Right. And I really, I want to take a moment to like focus on this for a second here because even at the time commentators looked at the estimations that were being given to Congress for military budgets and pointed out, like back in the, I want to say it was the 60s, 50s or 60s, there was fear of a missile gap, right? Right.

You know, the Russians, Russians are ahead of us and we got to, you know, this missile gap, missile gap. Well, then in the 1980s, the Reagan White House put out as part of their rationale for this hugely expanded military budget, this technical analysis of the weapon systems and military expenditures of the Soviet Union. And it had all this technical information about their ships, the battle cruisers that they were building with anti-ship missiles in there, and how many tanks they were building and the weapons systems and everything. And US estimations of Soviet military power always took the number of guns or launch tubes

or whatever at face value on a Russian, on a Russian weapons system when pitching budget to Congress. And they all made us look like we were hideously outgunned. But even back in the 80s, analysts knew that Soviet ships, and this is the example I'm most familiar with being a Navy kid, carried 50% more missiles than US ships, because their manufacturing and quality control were for shit. And they expected something like one in three missiles, just as an example, to visifier, right. And their and their fire control systems were not as accurate as ours. Right. Their radar technology was a generation behind ours.

You know, all of their electronics and everything else, like all of our shit was more sophisticated and an order of magnitude more reliable. And so the upshed is we were never actually meaningfully outgunned, but we spent so much money that eventually in 1988, suddenly the USSR just kind of started to evaporate. And here we were pushing against a wall that didn't exist anymore metaphorically. Or, I mean, by 89, 91 did exist actually, too. No, I'm getting to that. And we, but in the face of that, we suddenly had to face what we had done. And we had to try to figure out who the hell we were.

Right. Now, the X files started broadcast in 1993. Wow. I'm sorry, like I remember it in 1997. Yeah. Because again, I saw it at the Lipscomb's house. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So it always strikes me like, oh shit, I saw it at the Lipscomb's house. Yeah, you know, yeah. So it always strikes me like, oh, shit, that's right. It came out in 93.

Oh, yeah, and it ran for seven years. Yeah. No, like 11 seasons. Really? Yeah, but after about season seven, anyway, I can, yeah. So in 1993, Clinton was in office, or took office, 1993,

he replaced Bush after 12 years of GOP governance. The breakup of Yugoslavia started in 91, which led to ugly fighting in genocide. The Bosnian war started in 92. The USSR officially dissolved in December of 1991 with Gorbachev's retirement and the official statement that the his position ceased to exist. The Somali Civil War started in 91. February of 1993 was the first World Trade Center attack. Yep. Germany had reunified in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union in 1992. On the world stage, the United States was the lone superpower, but in a really weird way

and we saw that the rest of the world was starting to pay less attention to us. Right. They'd finally finished crawling out from the problems that World War II had created, like economically. We had a 40 year initiative bonus. Now they're finally getting to move. Like it's no longer a surprise round.

Yeah. Yeah. Domestically, here in the States, in 87 congressional investigations, I had revealed to the public the Iran Contra affair in which the CIA had sold weapons to Iran in order to fund the Contra is in Nicaragua against any where take his sand in East to government. Mm-hmm. Over and above the congressional, uh, bull end amendment, like they literally said by law,

you cannot give money to Nicaraguan reactionaries. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the, the, the Sandinista government, um, had been backed, um, by Cuba. Mm hmm. Um, and Samoza had been one of those anti-communist fascist assholes that we had been propping up. Right. So in 1992 Clinton took the White House, allowing largely to domestic disgruntlement over the recession in 1991.

We've talked about how the GOP and its voters responded to the loss of the White House. The short answer is destructively. So at home, even though we're the biggest baddest asshole on the block, we feel stymied and we can't entirely trust our leaders. And a big part of that mistrust is you have loved to point out comes from Thordet entitlement. I don't trust him because he's not my guy. Exactly. And into that environment of mistrust comes Chris Carter and his show about an FBI agent who is a true believer in literally everything paranormal, partnered with a determined skeptic. Together, they investigate the exfiles, FBI cases that involve weird, inexplicable phenomena.

Okay. Roughly two thirds of the episodes are what we call monster of the week. And about one episode and three on average is part of the overarching myth arc, which is Mulder's quest for the truth and vindication. David Duchovny plays Fox Mulder, who has reason to be credulous because at the age of, I want to say it was 11, he witnessed the extraterrestrial abduction of his sister. Okay, I do remember something about molder hunting down his sister. Yes. Yeah. Now, molder is a legacy agent of the FBI.

His dad was an agent too. Right. At the start of the series, he's an outcast within the bureau named Spooky Molder and mocked for his creduliveness. Mm hmm. Julian Anderson, please, Dana Scully, a medical doctor and skeptic who is specifically assigned to molders. It's been very clear to her in the very, in the pilot episode. We need you to reign him in. He's brilliant, but he's wacky doodle. Okay. And we need you to

bring him back down to earth, bring his crazy theories to heal. Show him that there's scientific explanations for all this stuff, you know, knock it off with the crazy shit. Over the course of the series, she reluctantly becomes a believer because she sees, because she actually like sees shit. Sure. Okay, no, that's an alien hitman who shrugged off, you know, eight large caliber

bullets. And like when when we finally took him down, he oozed like his his blood created a toxic gas that, you know, killed one person and knocked three others unconscious. And then, you know, when we went back to the morgue, his body had been stolen. Like, no, seriously, I saw this shit happen with my own eyes. Like, she doesn't have a choice, but... Right. Because, you know, because the premise of the series is that, no, no, the shit is real, right? Right. So the show touched on nearly every cryptid haunting psychic phenomena,

and of course, especially UFO legend from the prior 50 years. And the UFO stuff was what the myth arc focused on. And so the myth arc is his quest to find out what really happened to his sister, why, and who was responsible. So now I'm going to give a spoiler alert for a show that has been off the air for declares. Yeah, the short form of it is a shadowy cabal of high ranking officials in both the US and the USSR. And we get mentioned that it's also China. We're negotiating with extraterrestrials during the Cold War.

Molder's sister was an abduction victim. were negotiating with extraterrestrials during the Cold War. Mulder's sister was an abduction victim. Mulder discovers over the course of the first seven seasons of the show that his dad was part of the conspiracy. His dad wasn't really his dad. His mother had an affair with cigarette smoking man, the series is pretty big bad. Who's heavily hinted to be Mulder's biological father. Okay.

Mulder's not biological father meant for Mulder to be the one taken. Because he had to give up one of his kids. Sigarette smoking man intervened and the sister got picked. His sister was experimented on for literally years first by the aliens and then by cigarette smoking man's agents to try to figure out what the aliens had done with her to reverse engineer whatever for shit could be discovered. And then Mulder gets some closure by finding out that supernatural beings essentially helped her die painlessly several years before the series started.

Okay. The syndicate is the big bad shadowy group that are these people who've made these deals. And it was made up of individuals who were determined to hold onto power and wealth in a world where aliens eventually colonized the planet. The hill positions of influence throughout government and were found all over the world. Now this is broadly related. I mean, you can clearly see, you know, relations to the alien conspiracy theories

of, you know, hidden aliens amongst us, and all this kind of stuff. And this myth arc touched on nearly every aspect of UFO conspiracy theory lore. But the emphasis wasn't really ever on the alien colonization of the planet. Like that was that was the MacGuffin was the bad guys are all basically, you know, aliens made contact during World War Two. And the people in the syndicate basically decided they are advanced enough that they are eventually

going to colonize the planet. There's nothing we can do to stop them. So we are going to work with them. And so the focus was on the collusion and conspiracy by the powerful to hold on to their power. In the 1950s, the UFO movies were, you, war of the worlds. They're going to show up and we're going to have to fight them off in the streets and we're reimagining the battles in Europe at the end of the war. But instead of fighting the Nazis, we're fighting

the Martians. That kind of stuff was what was going on in those films. Here, the conflict is only very rarely like an action film. There are a few places where there is gunfire, Mulder and Gully only actually fire their weapons a few times over the course of the whole series, which I could talk a lot about the differences there between the X-Files and NCIS, which is also about federal agents, and they get gunfight every week.

Oh, really? Yeah, but that's a different episode. But this the point I'm trying to make here is that this is a shadow war. The whole quest that Mulder has is to discover and reveal and be vindicated by the truth. And the people he is fighting against, the people he in the scullier struggling with are people who are on paper supposed to be on their own side. So is the truth is out there,

is that also a tagline? Yes. That one I remember. Yep. OK. So, and that's not all. There's an episode in season two that is not a myth or episode but I think it's really important here

because we see the same idea writ small. The dynamic duo show up in a small town to the title of the episode is Dehensdir Verletzt, and I'm probably butchering the German. But they show up in a small town to investigate a series of cult murders. Only to find out that the cult is actually made up of the most influential and upstanding members of the community who are actively involved in a multi-generational deal with the devil.

Geez, literally. Okay. Mulder and Scully thwart the cult's continuation of a generation's long string of ritual murders. And the devil herself shows up as a substitute teacher, or in the body of a substitute teacher, it's an amazing episode. And more swamp. Yeah. And I love your reference that book. It's like, like, that was one of my

favorite books is a little kid. And then I became a teacher. And I'm like, I understand this so much. Miss Nelson's missing because the bitch needed like a mental health day because y'all are assholes. That's pretty much. And so the devil herself shows up. Murders the cultists leaving leaving our heroes a message on a classroom blackboard pleasure working with you. Now here's a fun thing. The word for devil in German is word for devil in German is a toy full. Yeah. The word for blackboard in German is to full. Oh, so it's kind of fun that the, not a cool devil left a note on the blackboard. I like it. Yeah. What's what's as as a as a TV nerd. Mm-hmm. Part of what's important about this episode within the arc of the overall series is the episode is written as a horror comedy. Like it is it is a dark comedy. Some of the stuff you're laughing at is like oh my god it horrified but a kid stopped laughing. It's one of my favorite

episodes from the whole series. It's a great example favorite episodes from the whole series. Okay. It's a great example of how amazing the show was when it fired on all cylinders and it was the first time that they wrote a comedy episode for the show. And it kind of proved that they could kind of do whatever they wanted to.

Within the mythology that they were building, they could, they could play around with the tone and they could do different stuff with it. Sure. There's another really great episode that my, I went to, I went to my friend Sean for some help with this because he is,

he is my guy for X-Files stuff. He was, he was a huge fan of the show. I asked him for, what do you think are some of the most important episodes of the show to look at and figure out how I could time into what I'm trying to say? One of the things he said was, there are some episodes of the show that make it parody proof. And Dehand Jervéletz is one of them. And the other one is Jose Chung's From Outer Space, which is a direct satire of... To one street, I'm leaving you love. Oh, nice but but of Whitley Streiber and communion. Oh okay. And and has yeah and and again it's one of my favorite episodes of the whole show and

is written as a comedy but manages to be scary in a couple of places. Sure. One of the people they wind up interviewing is a caricature of a nerd who's, I don't know, 25-26. And as as Mulder and Scully are interviewing him, you know, they ask them, well, you know, why did you do whatever thing it is he did? And they said, you don't play Dungeons and Dragons for as long as I have without learning a little something about courage. You know, sure. And so yeah, I mean, okay. Anyway, so okay, so you let me let me ask you this. Was there ever an episode in this where, kind of, where molder doubted all of his credulity? No, molder remained a true believer for a rever.

It was, I kind of want to say it was probably in the show Bible that we, molder is not allowed to have doubts. Part of what makes molder molder is he is a believer. Right. Now there are places where... Right. Now, there are places where, um, yeah, I'm sure there's times where he was wrong or he was chasing down a hoax. There are places, but what happens more often than that is somebody else brings a case to his attention because they're like, this is, this is Hinky and Weird, man, and this is probably something like you should look at. And he looks at it and says, no, I've, I've, you know, looked at looked at

what you gave me. And I came up with a, with a profile of whoever did this. And this is a human. This is a tough, tough human, but this is a human. Okay. There's, there's a, I want to say to two-parter about a, they use the phrase escalating death fetishist because the sensors wouldn't let them say necrophiliac. Okay. And so they have, right, you know, and somebody says, well, this is bizarre and weird like this,

you know, probably something you'd like. Just, no, this is, this is bizarre and weird like this, you know, probably something you'd like, just know, this is, this is, this is a, this is a really sick human. This is not an ex file. This is, this is not really an ex file. Right. Is there ever an episode where he crossed dresses? No, although I know where you're getting that from. Yeah, I was just David DoCovny and Twin Peaks. Exactly. Denise. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Who was also a brilliant FBI agent, by the way? Yes. Yes. In that context. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

All right. So what we see over the course of the series is this is where, you know, Mulder's whole quest is about the revelation and trying to find vindication of recognizing evil that had been done of recognizing evil that had been done by people in positions of power. Okay. And again, it's the myth arc of the series focuses on UFO lore and UFO abductions and all those kind of stories.

But the emphasis is always on, the bad guys aren't the aliens, like the big bads that we're focusing on. Aren't the aliens who intend on, trying to show up on our planet and repopulate it with hybrid human alien things. It's the people who are selling us out to them. It's the people who are allying with these evil forces.

And the story they give us when we have them at bay, they say, well, I have to do what I can to try to preserve humanity. The only way to preserve any part of humanity is to make a deal with them. We can't stand to preserve humanity. The only way to preserve any part of humanity is to make a deal with them. We can't stand up to them. Right. And there's not a lot of difference between that and well, it was either Pinochet or have this other guy

sell the country out to the Soviet Union. Yeah, even though I didn't get it. It was to do that. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, it was the false economy, but it's a dire dichotomy. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so it's interesting to me that he never loses,

never shakes in his faith about that. And then the other thing that I'm hearing here is that the aliens ain't the problem. Yeah. The leaders are. Yeah. Okay. Which again, let's talk about the 1970s. Right. Let's talk about the Pentagon papers. Let's talk about Watergate. I ran Contra. I ran Contra. Yeah, I mean more immediately. I ran Contra. Yeah, much more immediately. I ran Contra.

Yeah. It was not public knowledge at the time, but while the series, I want to say, while the series was running the CIA's involvement in crack cocaine. Right. Broke. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, like all of the dirty laundry, skull duggeries, skeletons in the closet, you know, that came to light during this time period. You know, And there's a recurring kind of theme within the series of old secrets getting brought to light, partly by the protagonist being plucky investigators who were out for the

truth, but also just by the very changing nature of the world around them. One of again, I think one of my favorite episodes, I think one of the best ones in the series is entitled Home Bug. And it takes place in and around a trailer park in Florida, populated by retired circus performers, by which I mean freaks. Right. And again, spoiler alert for a show that happened back in 98, I want to say, but the murders are being carried out by the, what everybody thinks is the not really functional half of a pair of conjoined twins. Okay. And the one, the one, the one twin that, you know, we talked to throughout the episode, you know, finally breaks down and confesses that, you know, his, his conjoined twin can

actually detach from his body. Okay. And the one that we can talk to is a raging alcoholic who's dying of cirrhosis of the liver. And so his, his conjoined twin is detaching and going out and trying to find somebody else to attach to. And in the process of doing that is killing them. Right. And, you know, Mulder and Scully figure out that that's going on. They rush off to, you know, try to, try to capture this thing, you know, before it can do that.

And are you familiar with the performer who goes by the name of the Enigma? No. Okay. The Jim Rose, if you heard of the enigma. No. Okay. The Jim Rose, if you heard of the Jim Rose circus. Oh yeah, I've seen them. Okay. The enigma is one of the, it has been affiliated with the Jim Rose circus.

He's a sword swallower. See the one that puts his body through a 70-style tennis racket? No. I don't think so. That might be, I don't know if Jim Rose does anything like, but Jim Rose does all kinds of self. Jim Rose did the, yeah, Jim Rose did like the hanging the irons off his body and she'll like that too. Yeah, yeah. And then there was another, there was another guy in the troop who,

who took that part of the act to an extreme, stuff off his genitalia and like, yeah. So anyway, the enigma has his entire body covered in puzzle piece tattoos. Okay. And he is kind of an omnifage part of his act is he choose up and eats anything. Okay. So the kind of punch line of the episode is the,

the we see him get attacked by the conjoined twin. Mulder and Scully shows up, show up and he's clearly wounded. And they think the monster got away the following day, they're leaving and the enigma looks poorly and they ask him how he's doing and he says, I don't know, it must have been something I ate. And yeah, yeah. But, but the theme of the episode is about old secrets being revealed. Old, old secrets, things that have been hidden for years, years coming to light. And Jim Rose in his character as the human blockhead in the episode says to molder and scully that, you know, the world is changing. And, you know, we have like the sheriff of the town had been a performer who had been a dog faced the way,

but he got treatment for the condition that caused his heavy hair cover all over his body. And he says, you know, with advances in medical technology and with the way the world is changing, in a few years, the only freaks who are gonna be left are self-made freaks like me and Enigma. Right. And so again, you know, things coming to light

in the world, the world changing rapidly, you know, paralleling the idea that, you know, these conspiracies and these things are all coming to light and we're seeing all of this stuff. So ultimately, that's my thesis is that the X files is the 90s response to UFO culture. And it focuses on us having, or it focuses on the grappling with the evil shit that was done in our names. And molders quest to find the truth and be vindicated by it is a way for viewers to kind of get catharsis about all of the shit that our government did during the Cold War. Yeah, it sounds very wish fulfillment. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. So that's kind of what I'm saying is on a certain level, that's a big part of the point of the X files.

Okay. So there we are. Huh? Yeah. That's kind of what I got there. It's interesting. I'm curious if there were any other shows that were akin to that that scratched the same itch at that time

that are going to bring us. Because normally when you see one gas station on a corner you see three gas stations on three corners Mm-hmm, you know, so and normally if you see one six person ensemble cast of Young 20-somethings trying to get laid in New York. You're going to see Six of those within a couple years.. None of which will make it, but still the attempt will be there. So I'm curious as to if there were any clone type shows or any other shows that kind of took on the same idea. I know that Outer Limits had another run in the 1990s,

specifically because I saw an episode one night I'd actually gotten home from work and Michael Dorn was in it. That was quite something. I know that there was an abduction episode in the next generation where four of the characters remember being abducted and experimented on from the ship and they're having trouble staying awake, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm wondering if there's any other shows that were of this ilk. Well, I do know of one right off the top of my head. Oh, okay.

In 96th, there was a UFO conspiracy theory show called Dark Skies. And it basically lasted a season, while it being rerun by Sci-Fi channel. Okay. Had 18 episodes. And it was NBC's attempt to try to capitalize on the popularity of the X files. So A Chicago hope to the X files is ER. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I know I know of that one to mind. Brisco County, Jr. Do you remember that one? Yeah, I do.

I feel like Brisco County, Jr. was a... It was a comedy and it was very tongue-in-cheek, but it was an old Western, but the first episode, they unearthed an unearthed foreign object, also known as a UFO. Nice, nice. And I think my comment about that would be the brisco candidate junior was a an attempt to try to recreate wild wild west.

Yeah. Okay. Only only bigger and broader and more 90s. Because that was what the 90s decade was kind of about. And that way is like we're going to take it. We're going to make it extreme. Right. Yeah. As we've talked about before. But at the same time, you have alien type shit in that as well. So well, I think that speaks to the pervasiveness of right. UFO, lore, and UFO culture, right, which here was your thesis. I'm just trying to find other intellectual properties to do that. Yeah. Talking about the ubiquity of UFO lore in 79.

I want to say no, wait, it was earlier than that. It might have been 76. There was a poll conducted in the United States. 97% of people knew about UFOs and the idea that extraterrestrial serviceted the planet. OK. UFOs and the idea that extra terrestrial had visited the planet. Okay. 95% responded that they knew who former President Gerald Ford was.

So in fairness, to give you an idea, iniquity, this is endominant culture. In fairness, how would they know about a man about whom they had zero votes when it came to his being president? All right, good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all right. So there we go. I think I think at the very least, I think Chris Carter, the shows creator, with his, you know, very hippie boomer kind of background It had some stuff he had to work out. And something about it hit a nerve. And this is my theory about what that nerve was. So, so based on that, I mean, aside from the question of three gas stations on three corners, what

do you take away, what do you think? The 90s were a time where people were looking for answers not in the realm that they were used to. You know, I mean, yeah, it's, yeah, you know, they're looking for answers outside of the norm because all the answers of the norm seem to have been the things that had killed them generations earlier, or had just lied to them ever. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there's an authenticity to an alien that does not exist with humans. And if you go back to the thing that you said

was the main idea behind X-Files, it weren't the aliens, it was the people selling us out. Yeah. The people are still inauthentic. Aliens? Authentic. And there seems to be something going on there. And I find that fascinating.

Again, related back to wrestling, related back to comic books, related back to whatever you want, and you still see a, whatever it is that's in the norm at A&IT. Yeah. You've got the clone saga in the comic books books. Yeah. You know, it's not what you thought it was. It's not, you know, you got sting coming from the rafters. You got Hogan turning heel. You got all this stuff of you cannot trust what you thought and the true

answer will come from outside of the ring. You know, and I'm trying to think of what Star Wars books, and let me just look behind me for a second. Unfortunately, I don't have them chronologically listed. Well, I know, okay, so I know that the Thrawn trilogy, that was 91, became a thing in the early 90s, yeah. Right. But I'm looking at like mid 90s stuff. Okay Only one I can think of is black fleet crisis

Okay, but that was much more about Black fleet crisis wasn't about anything like that. That was much more about Saddam Hussein daring us to enforce the no-fly zone. So. I can see that. But. Well, yeah, okay. So it didn't insecurity about whether the Soviets were really not a threat anymore.

No, because the UV things were a completely new group. So, yeah, no, the Star Wars one doesn't actually universe. No, it doesn't just tie in. So, no shame. Yeah, well, the Star Wars one doesn't actually universe. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. No, it's not. So, no shame. Yeah, well, still two out of three. Yeah, what I find interesting is what really struck me while I was doing the research for the second part of this episode doesn't actually have anything to do with my thesis.

It goes back to the myth of Russian military might and Russian firepower because at the risk of dating us while I was doing the research for this, I was also doomed scrolling through reports of what was going on in Ukraine. Yeah. As of this recording, it's, the Ukraine issue has not been settled. It could be that as of the release of this, it has been. But as of this recording, it has not been settled. Yeah.

And so as, as I was doom scrolling, I found a video on Reddit of Ukrainian soldiers having captured, I want to say it was a T-72 tank, which is the frontline main battle tank of the Russian army and post dates, by the way, the Cold War, the T-72, well, I don't know, I might be off, but anyway, the T-72 is what goes for the cutting edge of Russian armor technology. And the military analysts for years and years have been convinced that the Russian Army is the second best army in the world, second best equipped, etc. And these Ukrainian soldiers opened up the hatch on this tank and looked down at it and are filming the interior of this tank. And literally every other word out of this Ukrainian soldier who's given the

blow by blow kind of description of what they're seeing. Every other word out of his mouth is fuck. And not like, oh, fuck, look at that, man. Oh, fuck, they got they got fucking they got fucking look at this fucking like, no, not in tones of awe, but in tones of what a fucking piece of shit this is. Like, like we were scared of these fuckers, like our stuff is in better shape than this. Yeah. And you look in the interior of this tank and it's dilapidated and the paint is chipping

and, and you know, it's got steam gauges for fuck's sake. And like, you know, I mean, it looks run down and dilapidated and like they've been keeping it together with duct tape and bailing wire. And that immediately reminded me of the notes that I had literally taken like 15 minutes before. Right, right. Yeah. And it's like 15 minutes before. Right, right. Yeah. And it's like, we knew it then.

How did we forget about it in the ensuing 30 years? You know, I think you tend to project what you've got going on to others is part of it. We've gotten better. They must have. What's true. You better, they must have. Yeah, that's true. You know, but, all right, well, what are you reading? Well, I'm trying, I'm actively trying not to doom scroll in, in regard to current events, because it just makes me angry and,

and somewhat depressed. What am I reading? just makes me angry and somewhat depressed. What am I reading? Right now, I don't have any reading going on, but I will recommend a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with what we've talked about, but it will be a wonderful palette cleanser for anybody who hasn't seen it yet.

If you haven't had the opportunity, find a way to see and canto. Okay. My family and I sat down earlier today and watched it finally. And of course, it's been, you know, hugely popular in the songs been all over the internet. Right. But we finally sat down and we watched it. And it was, it is an amazingly emotional movie. Okay. It will almost definitely make you cry. Okay. But it is absolutely wonderful.

And I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Right. So that's my recommendation. How about you? Well, this will be a lot less jury. I recommend you, this is largely in advance of what we're about to do next week. We're interviewing author, interviewing Brim Tanahill, who wrote American fascism. Yes. How the GOP is subverting democracy. So go read that in advance of this show because we're going to interview the author and we're going to ask them the hard questions like

how come you used N-notes instead of footnotes. But in all honesty it's going to be because we're nerds like that. Yeah, but I do think it's going to be a good interview. So read that book in advance of that episode. So okay, you have homework. Yes, where can we find you on the social media? I can be found on the social media is at Mr. underscore Blalock on the TikTok. I can be found on Twitter at eHblalock. I can be found on Instagram at the same address, although I don't do much on Instagram. We collectively can be found at Geek History of Time on Twitter and www.Geek HistoryofTime.com on the internet directly in your browser.

Our podcast, of course, you're listening to us right now. So you must have found us somewhere. But if you're looking for another avenue for finding us, we are on the Apple Podcast channel. We are on Twitch and Stitcher. Are we still on Spotify? Find us on Spotify. Let us know. Okay, there you go. Look for us there. So, and then where can you be found? Good, sir. You could find me at the harmony. It's two inches in the middle on Twitter and Insta and thes. So, hashtag how I torture Ed.

Yes, hashtag how I torture Ed. So, yeah, those are the places you can find me. So. All right, awesome. Yeah, well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, the truth is out there. The truth is out there.