Behind the Bastards - Part Two: A Complete History of the Illuminati

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

We conclude the story of Adam Weishaupt and talk about how the Illuminati went from nerd club to the USAs favorite conspiracy theory.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. It's behind the bastards. Sophie, I'm going to do that many more times. You know, I think the audience likes that just like they like my flawless Boston accent. They also like updates from my life. So I want to let them know I finished decorating my living room.

Ever since I got my house, I've been wondering what to do now that I have a TV with this huge screen in the middle of my life. It didn't feel right for it to only exist for TV. I wanted it to be kind of a perpetual art project. So I found on the Internet Archive a complete repository of every episode of Walker Texas Ranger. And I have it set up so that they're just always playing on my television even when it's off. So anytime I turn on my TV, there's just automatically Walker Texas Ranger happening. Just a low res. It looks like TVs from the 90s used to look. And it's really done wonders for my mental health. Just that's a little health hack for all of you people.

I don't know if wonders is the right word. It's had an impact on your mental health. It sure has had an impact. I've learned how to do roundhouse kicks, which I've come to support as like the primary method by which society should be organized. I think that's my Illuminati. It's all going to be roundhouse kick based. I mean, honestly, it would be an improvement. Yeah, it's pretty good. Some of the most racist things I've ever seen. There's an episode that's like set in the past when they're all cowboys. And like Walker's partner in the TV show is like in the normal show is like a black Texas Ranger.

And in the episode in the past, he's a former slave who was taught how to be a doctor by his master. And when he tells the Mormon missionaries, they're hanging out with it. He used to be a slave. They're like, oh, that's so terrible. And he's like, no, it was fine. It is. It is wild. The things you used to get away with on 90s TV. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Margaret kill Joyce. Have you ever created a secret society? God damn it.

You were just telling us about this. So I know you have. I know. Okay. So I was like maybe 10 years ago. I would have lied for you and backed you up, Mack Pie. You have no obligation to tell this story. No, no, it's fine. The consequences of starting a secret society have already happened. We started a secret society. We put out a pamphlet. We claimed to have been around for several thousand years. We distributed it at a few places.

Yeah, you pulled an atom. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I was like laughing so hard at this. Like, I was like, what an asshole. Why would you do that? And in the back, it had this, you know, if you would like more information, please write to the following physical address. Because we decided that that was like spookier than an email address, you know. And then within six months, the house that was at the address burned down. Do you know why?

I don't know. I have no idea why the house burned down. Oh, okay. Curious. Huh. Huh. Interesting. Yeah. Should have bought a P.O. box, huh? Yeah, it was an amateur mistake. Yeah, that's why people cannot currently send us anything. A fan posted on the subreddit that their package got sent back. It's because we need to get a P.O. box set up, but that would require me leaving my house.

This is secret society advice 101. Get a P.O. box. Get a P.O. box or use the address of an enemy. Maybe someone who you think is like at risk of losing their mind and just have them suddenly receive hundreds of letters from strangers around the world who think they're the center of a conspiracy. That's actually where the story will end in like three or four episodes. That tracks very clearly. We're talking about the Illuminati,

which has just been formed by Adam Weishaupt and he has decided the way to save the world is to lie to a bunch of rich people and make them think they're wizards so he can buy nice books. That is the center of the actual Illuminati conspiracy theory. So there is a conspiracy theory. It's just a lot funnier than I think most people tend to believe. So one of the things that's interesting to me is that kind of like as the organization changed over time,

the main thing about it because Adam goes through some ideological shifts himself. The main thing that's consistent about the Illuminati is that he's lying to nearly everyone in it, right? That's like the most like the part of it that carries through the most. So he recruits a couple of dozen people successfully but then kind of like stalls out and can't get more people and he gets some advice that like, well, maybe if you join the masons, you could like recruit people from within the masons

and that would allow us to like get some more blood in the organization. So he joins a masonry organization like a Masonic Lodge in Munich and his plan there is he wants to like rise up high enough that he can get his own official lodge and start it in Ingolstadt and then kind of move the Illuminati into this Masonic Lodge that he creates and just have this Masonic Lodge actually be the Illuminati. So he's basically trying to like incept a secret society within the free masons because it will help him recruit.

I mean, it's entryism. It's like the yeah, the communist tendency of entryism. This sort of thing happens a lot with these like esoteric groups and these secret societies and orders like this. This style of growing your own little weird cult is very consistent. Like this is this is a technique that gets used like even, even, even till today but across a lot of the different kind of orgs that popped up that were like inspired by the Illuminati and by the free masons. This this thing happened a lot.

This style of all of conspiracy society. Exactly. Exactly. And like joining joining one group to like feed off their members and start your own branch off organization. And it's like it's very, very consistent. Yeah. Nothing says this is a popular idea. Like there's only a tiny number of people who are going to do this.

So we have to steal from another. We have to. We have to. Is it is it actually a magpie? That's that bird that like lives in the nest of another bird. We have to do that. Oh, no. That's like, isn't that the cuckoo?

Is that the cuckoo? I'm not good at birds. Magpie steals shit. Welcome to behind the podcast where we get into where Robert where Robert lists the two facts about birds that he knows. So one of the it brings in this works really well. And the fact that like he is now recruiting through a Masonic lodge for the Illuminati and everyone knows who the Masons are.

This brings in hundreds of new members. And one of these new members is a 28 year old diplomat from Hanover named Adolf Knig. Can I it's really weird K and I GGE. I'm just going to pronounce it the way that that feels best to me. I don't care. So secret societies and fraternities had been the coolest organizations in Knig's world when he was a little kid.

He was he is a secret society nerd. And so as a teen, he's reading everything he can about these new fraternal organizations spreading around Europe. He describes himself as a child as stricken with our era's greatest disease, a yearning for secret connections and orders. As a little boy, he'd actually created his own secret society and invited his friends to join. They'd worn silver cross pendants and drawn up a list of bylaws.

I think I'm certain they excluded girls. There's a very like Calvin and Hobbes aspect to this guy's childhood. I hope they used a P.O. box. Yeah. This child's house burned down after distributing a book amongst its neighborhood claiming to be in a lineage of secret mystics dating back to the Gnostic period. So Knig had maybe Knig was a Gnostic.

So Knig had joined his local Masonic lodge and risen as soon as he could, right, because he's big nerd for this stuff. And he and me pretty very quickly, as quickly as possible, rises to the highest rank within his lodge. And then he's like, oh, really? Is that all there is? Yeah, I think it's a conite. He is. He is a conited.

Yeah. And Knig is like, was that all there is? Because this is just like... I looked up how to pronounce it, but I really don't think you should say it. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was part of part of my thinking on the matter, too. But I'm checking so you don't seem stupid, but I think we should go with that bit after. No, Knig is going to be less problematic.

Yeah. Oh, my God. So... Why do we call him by his first name, huh? Yeah, I've never thought of him. Yeah, book on Adolf. Yeah, that's not problematic. There's no bad history with Adolfs. So I still have such a common name. Oh, we should put him in this.

It really is. This is all taken, Sophie. There's not a lot that's funny about Hitler, but it is kind of funny that he just torpedoed the German equivalent to, like, Bill. What? Yeah. He just nuked it. Oh, man. Oh, good stuff. Good stuff.

Every now and then, when you're reading about, like, particularly, like, German-Jewish communities pre-Holocaust, you run into, like, a German-Jewish Adolf and be like, oh, man, what an unfortunate name for you to have. In, like, 1931. Yeah, geez. So, yeah, as a little boy, Knig is all into these secret societies

and he joins his local Masonic Lodge. He gets as high as he can. And then he's like, is this really just, like, a discount club for rich people? This is basically Costco with costumes. Yeah. So Adam gets very disappointed. And he's hanging out in the lodge one day, kind of bumming out.

Adam gets disappointed? Oh, so not Adam. Adolf gets disappointed. But young Adolf. Little Adolf. And he's hanging around this lodge one day, kind of bumming about the fact that the Masons are silly. And then one of these dudes,

because by this point, Adam Byshop has sent agents of the Illuminati out as recruiters to other lodges. And one of these people walks up to Knig and is like, you seem like you're kind of bored with the Masons. And Knig is like, yeah, it's a little silly. And this guy's like, you know, there's a real secret society that's hidden in the Masons that only a small number of people

get to join. And so, yeah, he makes his pitch. And yeah, Knig is like, that's exactly my shit. And he goes to a bunch of his friends who are in the Masons and he tells them, this guy, and he says, there's a secret society inside the Masons called the Illuminati. And I should join. And his friends are like, I don't know, dude,

it's probably bullshit. And Knig boldly does not listen to his friends. My shop sends him a letter later that year where he thanks Knig for his interest. And he's like, you must be a super smart guy to have figured out that the Masons, there's nothing there, right? You're so smart. We think you're ready for our little organization.

This is like so... This is so pedantic. This is like the secret truth. You know what's really funny? It's the group of suckers. Yeah, exactly. You go to the group of suckers to get suckers. What's going to be really funny is when you learn why we know all this.

So Knig ends up promising or Adam ends up getting Knig to join the Illuminati in part because he promises to fund Knig's experiments in alchemy. Because he wants the guy to act as a recruiter. Knig is very charismatic. He's very connected. He's a diplomat. So he's good at talking to people who's really respected. And this proves to be probably the best administrative decision

that Adam's going to make. Because in a very short order, Knig is brought in more than 500 new members. Wow. Oh, shit. Yeah, he's very good at this. At the same time, Weishaupt succeeded in pushing changes to the Masonic bylaws that allowed him to establish additional Illuminati lodges in the larger organization. In time, the Illuminati grew to around 2,500 men,

although there's debate about whether there were ever more than like 6 or 700 active at a time. Which seems reasonable. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, pretty good size for a secret society at this period of time. So the problem is that Knig rises through the ranks, as he had with the Masons, basically immediately. And he is not a dumb guy. He is at least intelligent enough to realize something's up.

And I'm going to quote from the book The Illuminati by the Charles River Press. The recruits began to raise their eyebrows, badgering Knig with questions about exactly who it was that they were serving. Up until this point, no one seemed to have an inkling as to who the other members of the supreme superiors were, apart from Weishaupt. And when Knig failed to produce these names, many began to grow wary. Knig approached Weishaupt on a number of occasions, and he grew even more discouraged when Weishaupt cododged his questions.

In an effort to distract him, Knig was tasked with composing pamphlets about recruiting guidelines and constant updates featuring the most minor of changes. By the next year, Knig's patience had worn thin. It was only when Knig threatened to walk that Weishaupt finally came clean. To Knig's horror, Weishaupt admitted that the supreme superiors, the ancient texts behind the topmost level of the Illuminati pyramid, were entirely made up. So, Knig learns there's absolutely nothing here. Now, at this point, Knig is balls deep in the Enlightenment.

He is very obsessed with these ideas of truth and openness that are kind of revolutionary in a Europe that was still largely run by Catholicism. He's offended by the fact that Weishaupt had lied and basically recreated this kind of system of secrecy and lies just in a different form. Adam realizes that Knig is going to be a problem because he's got these kind of principles, and so he begs him not to tell anybody. He instead tells Knig that, I've been waiting all this time, all this time I've been building the Illuminati

for a worthy collaborator on the great work of creating this organization, and, quote, I have found none other than you who penetrates into the spirit of this system as deeply as I do. Meaning he's the only one that can smell the bullshit. Yes, you're the only one who's realized I'm lying to everybody. So, to keep Knig from leaving, he offers to let him write the curriculum for the inner mysteries of the Illuminati. I mean, yeah, that is the right call at this point.

Yeah, that's a smart move. It's kind of like if L. Ron Hubbard had taken an apprentice to help him write about like Xenu or whatever. Knig takes the deal, but he's not thrilled with it. He is devastated when he realizes the Illuminati is younger than him, but he's recruited all these guys, so a big part of why he doesn't leave is like he doesn't want to tell all of his friends that he got conned and that they all got conned too. Yeah.

So he's like, he's like in too deep. It's the sunk cost fallacy. He now has to like make it real now. Yeah, and he does. He writes a whole curriculum filled with the kind of elaborate magical rituals and ceremonies that were all the rage in Central Europe. Now, this was the right thing to do for the Illuminati, but this really pisses off Adam Weishaupt because Weishaupt hates all that stuff

and is only doing it to take money from rich people. The two fought constantly and after four years, Knig resigned. Sources dissent on exactly why this happens, but there are claims he left in the middle of a loud fight, starting that Adam was a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. So it ends the way all radical political organizations end. Knig would later write his version of events out in a pamphlet, basically a zine, which remains our best source of events.

It is funny how all of this has never changed. That's good stuff. Yeah. So as an aside, I should note here, because we've used Massimo and Troveen as a source for a couple of these quotes here. One of the problems when you go to research the Illuminati is that it is a bitch to Google. I have used also a couple of different chat systems or search systems, including an AI-powered one. But one of the problems with researching this is that a lot of the people

who legitimately are experts on the Illuminati are also cranks themselves. So that brings me back to Massimo and Troveen, because I have quoted him a few times and because this is interesting, we got to talk about him just a second. Now, I have cross-checked his write-up with other sources. His write-up on the Illuminati is extensive and accurate. It's geared towards dispelling conspiracy theories, and it does this well. However, Massimo is, as I stated, a sociologist of religion.

He's also an intellectual property attorney, which is interesting given the connection between that and secret societies. He is very knowledgeable about the history of secret societies. He is also the founder of the Center for Studies on New Religions, which mostly exists to defend cults from governments trying to stop them from hurting people. Massimo has spent much of his career defending the Church of Scientology in court, and he is described as a cult apologist by his critics. Although I believe he's a Roman Catholic. Whoa, that's interesting.

Yeah, he's an interesting guy. You run into a lot of dudes. He's one of the less sketchy people who writes about the Illuminati, because at least he's doing it from a historic basis, but he's also a professional cult apologist. It's very strange. Yeah, while working for the largest established cult in the world. It's awesome.

It's fun. You keep running into shit like that as you go through books and articles, and they're like, who is this guy who seems to know a lot about Adam Weishaupt? Oh, he's a crank, too. It's certainly interesting because stuff like Scientology does have a direct lineage back to this Bavarian Illuminati. It sure does, yes. Especially through the Golden Dawn and Alistair Crowley, which I assume we'll get to at some point. We sure will, Garrison.

But speaking of Alistair Crowley, you know what Crowley would do if he were here right now? Buy one of these products and services. Make money by selling it. I mean, our podcast is supported by gold. And if you move all of your investments to gold, it will let you weather a financial crash so that your investments can live to see the next dawn. Dawn. There we go.

There we go. Okay. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse were like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. Good stuff. The greatest form of flattery is the sigh of recognition. Yeah, that's true. I find the greatest form of flattery to be people giving me gold. I would like to say that once I get the PO box set up. Send gold. Send gold.

I'm going to argue with you both because I think the greatest form of flattery is becoming a cult apologist Roman Catholic who builds an entire website to defend the fallen gong from the Chinese government. What is the fallen gong, really? Oh yeah, Garrison. That's where his write up on the Illuminati is hosted. No. The fallen gong is such like boring as a cult. I know, I know, I know. It's disappointing. Have you met the Bavarian Illuminati?

Yeah. All right. So Knig leaves, and despite his absence, by this point, he's helped get the Illuminati to such a size that it's become quite large and influential. And Roman breeds a sigh of relief because they no longer have to pronounce his name. Yeah, nobody has to deal with the problem of trying to spell. Oh boy. What's called by his first name? It's called Adol.

So by this point, as the Illuminati has actually grown somewhat influential, including a number of like moderately prominent thinkers and some political people in Central Europe. Adam's own ideology has grown ever more radical. In letters to his followers, he expressed political attitudes that were adjacent to anarchism. Quote, when man lives under government, he has fallen. His worth is gone and his nature tarnished. So he has he has gotten pretty radical by this point. And Massimo, our cult apologist friend, notes in his write up, one element that distinguished the Bavarian Illuminati from other German Masonic systems continued to be its politics. Again, up to the degree of Scottish knight, the rituals preached submission to the authorities. But in the more secretive degree of priest, there were illusions to the advantages of replacing monarchy with Republic, such as if the king is not the best of the citizens, let the best be king.

So it's a little problematic. There's like elements of we should tear down the system and also we should build a system whereby most people don't know that we want to tear down the system because we can't trust them with that knowledge. And yeah, this is this is moving right along. But as with Nick, there are a few people who grow disillusioned with Adam's leadership. And one of them is a former member who starts popping up in bars and public places in Ingolstadt, getting drunk and telling stories of the Illuminati's initiation rituals. Now, these are based off the Masonic ritual. You're sitting in this like blind room alone for a while, blindfolded. And then at some point, the blindfold is taken off and you're kind of like wandering around this space that's been set up to be kind of mind altering. His story includes like an empty red throne with a bunch of ceremonial robes, a skeleton lying on a table with a crown and a sword at his feet. And then at a certain point, the initiate is taken to his feet and asked questions and he's hit in the face whenever he answers them wrong. So you've got that aspect of it, too.

And there's, you know, that's probably broadly accurate to what the initiation rituals were. But more lurid stories than that start to spread both from former members and from people who were just lying in that way that people do. And this starts to provide fuel for a movement directly opposed to the Illuminati. And now we're going to talk about the Rosa Crucians. Now, we've mentioned them before. And I think I kind of derivatively referred to them as a fake secret society. I did. I did get kind of upset in your in your Blavatsky episodes when they are a fake secret society. Okay, not that way.

So the Rosa Crucians are an intellectual movement that's bubbled up in the early 1600s. And like the Illuminati, it began with a con, a bunch of anonymous pamphlets that claimed to be the writings of a man who definitely did not exist. And were published again, zine-like, claiming that a secret group called the Rosa Crucians were working to reform Europe's political order and use science to advance mankind. Now, again, the person that was supposed to have written these never existed, but an actual movement in philosophy and theological thought evolves as a result of this and kind of in its wake because of how well it spreads. And so there are different secret societies that are like the order of the Rosa Cross that call themselves Rosa Crucians. They're not necessarily connected in most cases by anything other than ideology. And they're not there's not like a central one that is the original one that we can specifically name. But there are different Rosa Crucians societies up until the present day, where I just read an article about how the Rosa Crucians, now that they don't need to be secret, are recruiting primarily on Facebook.

Yeah, that makes sense. In terms of viewing, in terms of thinking about their organic spread, chapters and splinter groups start the same way like different Food Not Bombs chapters start around the country. That is the style of growth when it's this decentralized zine format of pamphlets being passed off between weirdos who are reading in the late 1600s. Well, and like Food Not Bombs, the primary motivation in forming chapters is less a desire to be a part of a specific organization and more adherence to a set of values and beliefs like it is. And there's a there's a. So what are their beliefs? The Rosa Crucians. They're broadly they're they're not a secular organization, but they are broadly like pro science and pro kind of natural like using kind of natural science to gain more knowledge about the world.

But there are they're also there are elements of religious mysticism to it as well. So they are kind of like a Christian religious mystic tradition that is also pro science would be the broadest way of describing it, I think. Again, most of like if you if you read like historians who are experts on this, they'll say that like, well, there were there are Rosa Crucian chapters, Rosa Crucian societies. More than anything, the accurate way to view it is as a an intellectual tradition that takes off across Europe. And the Rosa Crucians are very influential, not just in their own societies, but within masonry. A lot of masons are Rosa Crucians. And one of these Rosa Crucian masons who's in Bavaria is a guy named Johan von Volner, who starts to organize a campaign against the Illuminati based on some of these rumors that are spreading in bars. He accuses why shopped not an accurately of promoting atheism.

In 1783 for Illuminati members, all professors are arrested and interrogated. They broke basically immediately, testifying that the organization existed to disavow Christianity. Furthermore, they said the Illuminati and this is the thing that really pisses off everyone supports the right to commit suicide. Interesting. Yeah, that is a huge part of the campaign against them that they are pro people having the right to commit suicide. And also they're they're pro abortion. Like this is this is very I mean, this is not uncontroversial today. Yeah.

So you can see why a bunch of dudes talking this kind of shit in the late 1700s are going to piss off the powers that be. And one of those these these university elites are talking about having bodily autonomy and voting and and and and not liking any kind of deity. They're they're they're closing themselves off from the great blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very because it's the it's complicated because they're all a bunch of like they've created this like very weird like series of lies. To hide it. But like the core of Illuminati ideology is people should be autonomous over their own bodies and maybe voting is better than Kings. Yeah.

Which up until about seven years ago was not a particularly controversial thing to preach in the West. So word gets out about all of these these scandalous deeds to the King of Prussia, who orders the Berlin Lodge seized by police. In this in the Berlin Lodge are files and files of White Shops political and social theories, all of which are deeply heretical. So this pisses off everybody even more. And an order is issued to the Freemasons by the King to cut all ties with the Illuminati. The the Mason swiftly disavowed the Illuminati and Adam Weishaupt, you know, finds himself kind of cut out and left in the cold. Right. But his cred goes through the roof.

Imagine all of the discourse going on at the time. It would be fascinating stuff. If all these people that had Twitter. It's so interesting to go to Twitter threads and just like random people complaining about what's going on. Yeah, I hear they let you. I hear they believe in the right to kill yourself. It would have been quite a time. So by 1785, the Illuminati has been banned in Bavaria and all across Prussia.

Weishaupt attempted to carry on. And this time he's kind of truly underground because it is now an illegal secret society. And for a while, they're able to like keep up contact between the different parts of the Illuminati. They've got like writers traveling between these hidden lodges, bringing like correspondence and books between them and stuff. And one of these guys, who's also one of Weishaupt's closest advisors is a man named Jacob Lans. And he is traveling from one cell in Bavaria to another Illuminati cell one day with like a big bag full of books and paperwork. When he gets struck by lightning. Whoa!

Okay, that's cool. There's a bunch of detail that I've given in in this story about like about like specific conversations people had. We know that because this guy gets struck by lightning and his corpse is found by the cops and being German police, they take it all into evidence and it's preserved to this day. That's why all this is known, right? Like all of these papers were taken into evidence and like people who do care about the actual history can go read them. Like it's still available. This is like this is like this is like getting arrested when you're like scrolling on signal and now the cops have access to all the chats.

It's a big problem. Except for your chats or a sack full of papers. And you got smited. Yes, and you were clearly killed by God. They fight your body with your phone open to signal. And they're like, sweet. It's like some discworld shit and discworld no one's an atheist because the gods go around and fucking murder you. I'm going to read a quote from the book Illuminati again.

Most damning of the indictments were the set of instructions drawn up by Weishaupt and address to the ostensibly active Illuminati members in Silesia. The members in Silesia were ordered to spy on the officials, engage the authorities knowledge and opinions of the order. They were also asked to provide input on who it was they believed had ratted them out to the authorities. So like literally it is he's open with a signal for his like crime loop being like, hey guys spy on the government. No, this has gotten considerably more cool than like the past development. So obviously the police don't like this and neither does the government. So there are more raids on more Illuminati safe houses because now they know where all of them are. They find more documents in the home.

Which is the problem with this style of organization. Let's just be honest. Yeah, it is. And another problem is that again Weishaupt has continued putting out propaganda lying about the real nature of the Illuminati. So when they raid this dead guy's house, they find all of these these like pamphlets about how the Illuminati secret leadership has total mental control over its members. And like they can't they can be commanded to do anything in office. This is why you never shitpost on Twitter because it's going to be used in court against you. They were shitposting. It gets them in a lot of trouble. There are also other documents found order arguing in favor of the right to abortion, the right to commit suicide and in favor of atheism.

All of which is dope. And now I'm going to read another quote from that book. That's very funny. You're going to like this. Most eye catching of all with a blue prints for unscrupulous machinery and devices. Each diagram was given its own description. For example, there was one for printing knockoff official seals. Another showed a safe of sorts equipped with multiple locks, which would be used to stash classified documents. The last showed a device that produced false receipts, which could be used for underground abortions. In one of the folders, there was even evidence found of Weishaupt procuring an abortion for his sister in law. Which is like that's dope. Yeah. Now they're not just advocating abortion. They're literally helping create the infrastructure to allow abortion. It kind of seems like what happens because again, Weishaupt's motivation is like, I want to trade and like push illegal books on scholars.

And once they get actually banned as an organization, he's like, well, I guess let's create an underground abortion railroad. Yeah, which is based. What we're doing is already a crime now. We may as well just do other crimes. Yeah. Unfortunately, the lightning guy. But you know, it was a good effort. It was a noble attempt. So the media at the time goes into overdrive at this point, painting the Illuminati as a conspiracy to overthrow all of the governments of the world. Now, this is true. They hadn't gotten that far yet. They didn't want to. Okay. That is fair to say. They weren't pro overthrowing the governments of the world.

They just didn't really and probably never would have had the ability to actually do this. And of course, it's also worth noting most Illuminati members knew very little if anything of this. Yeah. In 1787, the same year the United States got its constitution, the Elector of Bavaria prescribed beheading for anyone found associated with the Illuminati. They are it's interesting because they don't kill anyone over this. They arrest a bunch of people. There are a number of folks, including White Shop are forced out of Bavaria. They have to like leave. But the folks who are like charged and like getting trouble and stay in Bavaria, they're allowed to keep living their lives. But they have a bunch of prescriptions placed against them. One of them is that they can never communicate with anyone else who was in the Illuminati, even if they're like at a bar having a beer.

Like they can be punished for so much as communicating with anyone who had ever been in the Illuminati. I mean, that still happens. I've had friends be like, you can't talk to any other earth first or including your boyfriend ever again. Yep. It's another tragic piece of continuity and radical history. So Adam flees the country. He winds up kind of holding up in a nearby city called Regensburg where the local government offers him a yearly salary if he promises not to make any more secret societies. Whoa! Whoa! What? Yeah, they put him on retainer like, Adam, we'll give you money. Stop doing this. That's wild. You created a huge problem for everybody. That's wild. It's like a government pay you not to write any more anarchist text or something. Don't make any zines. We'll give you a salary if you stop making zines.

That's so funny. As far as we know, he takes it. Now, there are conspiracies that he basically goes underground and either sends agents or travels to the US and starts spreading Illuminati values there. But yeah, as far as we know, he obeyed the edict. We have a pretty good idea of what he spent his life doing just because he writes a shitload more books. Basically, he spends the rest of his life writing books and pamphlets defending the Illuminati against allegations against it. He's basically having the 18th century equivalent of a flame war for the rest of his life, which is like 35 more years. Or 45 more years.

He kind of never gets over this and he's always angry that people have unfairly judged the Illuminati. But he dies around 1830. Dr. Tony Page, who translated one of Adam's defenses of himself, summarized the man's life this way. Weishaupt's plan was to educate Illuminati followers in the highest levels of humanity and the morality based on his teachings on the supremacy of reason, allied with the spirit of the golden rule of not doing to others what one would not wish done to oneself. So that if the Illuminati alumni subsequently attained positions of significance and power, they could exert a benevolent and uplifting influence upon society at large. His project was utopian and naively optimistic and he himself was certainly not without flaws of character. But neither he nor his plan was evil or violent in and of themselves.

It is one of the deplorable and tragic ireties of history that a man who tried to inculcate virtue, philanthropy, social justice, and morality has become one of the great hate figures of 21st century conspiracy thinking. And that is that is kind of sad. Yeah. Yeah, that is not the legacy that you would want as like a guy whose goal was to kind of spread enlightenment and and knowledge in a more open society that like you become sort of the central figure of obsession for the people who work to destroy that society once pieces of it get built. That is I can't really think of another story that's bleak in exactly that specific way. The whole the whole the whole lineage of this Illuminati thing has such an interesting like backfire effect. Yeah. It makes you like contemplate what what types of tactics are worth are worth using when in this type of like long term, long term strategy of like passing down knowledge.

Yeah. And I think an argument could be made that like, well, probably part of why this backfire so much is that as much as he was committed to these enlightenment virtues of openness and like reason, he did it by lying and pretending to be teaching people magic. So maybe the fact that maybe that's part of why things went so bad. It's probably not a non factor. Yeah. I mean, and it's like there's a reason that say, at least leftism, at least anarchism does a similar or does this trajectory where you start off with like Bakunin is really into secret societies. And then eventually anarchists start moving away from sort of conspiratorial work and towards this like open organizing still of crime. Right. Like in the in the 1920s, I think in Germany, the main people who were providing abortions were syndicalists and syndicalism is literally just a method by

which to do crime at scale. But it's like open instead of closed and it uses different types of things in order to provide safety. And it's interesting because I think, you know, he's a vice-shopped a little early to be calling. There are very few people in this period calling themselves anarchists. No, I don't think anyone is at this point. Yeah. But I mean, like just in terms of radicalism, but people did it is interesting. People did like elites in Europe who were angry and opposed to the Illuminati did accuse him of being an anarchist.

Oh, interesting. Not unlike the because again, it's not that that's not a term with much political meaning at that point. But it sort of means terrorists. Exactly. Exactly. And I think he if he'd been a century later, he might have been. I don't think he would have been a syndicalist. He was kind of no very fundamentally an elitist.

Right. Yeah. That's why the Illuminati is what it is. He would have been belong key. Oh, I don't know much about them. Is the French guy who kind of predates the Lenin in some ways? Yeah. It's kind of like a vanguardist.

Yeah. Very vanguardist, right? Yeah. Like you have to have this party and they have to hold power in certain ways to themselves. And yeah, part of the story here is that we are still dealing with the side effects of how problematic that can be. Because all a lot of this is going to echo on through the ages. But you know what will echo on through the ages most? The the the dulcet tones.

Gold. These messages trying to get you to buy gold. The products and services that support this podcast are like those pillars in the desert that are built to warn future people away from nuclear waste sites. But instead, they're there to tell future people where value is and what promo codes they can use to get access to truly quality products and services. So have a have a gaze at that. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right.

I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. So the Illuminati, they fall apart in kind of the mid to late 1780s. And not all that long after the Illuminati gets banned and threatened with beheadings if they try to reform. Right around the time they start to be purged, the French Revolution starts and not that long after, you know, it all comes to an end in 1799. That's when the French Revolution kind of comes to its end, right? After about a decade of pretty gnarly shit, it would be fair to say.

And the nature of the French Revolution, the fact that it comes so suddenly, the fact that it is so bloody, that it is so radically up in the power balance in Europe. It's one of these things that, like, particularly elites in Europe cannot believe could happen organically. Now, obviously, if you actually look at the history of the French Revolution, it makes total sense. Everything economically that's happening, the measures that the government takes kind of as resistance to it, to it spreads like the different kinds of austerity that people are asked to endure. It makes total sense that there's a revolution and it makes total sense anytime there's a revolution, there's a pretty good chance it's going to turn into a killing spree. But people in Europe are like, not normal people, like elites, particularly rich people in like England are like something this can't have happened organically. Like, there must have been some sort of conspiracy behind this. And so they start looking at like, well, what are these French revolutionaries?

What are these people, especially at the early stages, like, what are the three things they're all shouting for? Liberty, Agility, and Fraternity, right? Well, those are the same things the Illuminati advocated. Yeah, we've just purged this thing in central Europe that came out of the masons that are speaking for this. And then there's a revolution just a few years later once these guys go underground in France. That can't be just a coincidence, right? Yeah, I'm sold. I now understand the connection. Thank you, Robert, for doing this podcast to explain how the French, the Bavarian Illuminati caused the French Revolution.

Oh, yes. A problematic number of people are going to become convinced of that, Margaret. And one of those guys was an abbot. Again, all these Catholic motherfuckers is always... Yeah, it's an abbot named Augustine Berwell. And another guy who gets convinced is John Robinson. And Robinson writes a tract with a banger title. Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and reading societies. Serious banger of a title.

I love how literal titles used to be. I want to kind of go into some detail about how wrong he is, especially when he connects the masons and reading societies to the overthrow of the French government. Because the Freemasons are, as we've talked about, influential and spreading Enlightenment ideas, particularly in France. But one of the things that's happening in France with the masons is that pretty much alone in the rest of Europe, in France, the masons admit women. And this is because France is just a lot more advanced. And this is before the French Revolution, right? They start taking in female members and they are female Masonic lodges, which doesn't really happen anywhere else.

This is going to be an extended digression, but I think it's worthwhile because what happens here is fascinating. I'm going to quote again from Janet Burke's paper in the Journal of the History of European Ideas. Quote, as they ascended to ever higher degrees, always after having mastered and lived the ideas and feelings of the preceding degree, the women were exposed to the Enlightenment concepts of liberty, equality, and even a budding, uniquely 18th century form of feminism. They were taught to understand their rights as women and demand them from the world dominated by men. Yet the force of fraternity remained strong in each degree. Bonds with both their Masonic sisters and their sisters outside the lodges were solidified through the ritual process. The powerful rituals, the emotional bonds of sisterhood, the assertiveness of their incipient feminism,

and the novel feelings of friendship as a union of virtuous souls made their impact on these women and altered the way they faced their day-to-day tasks. From the wives of judicial mobility heavily populating some of the provincial lodges of adoption to the glittering court lodges in Paris, powerful women worked both alone and with their husbands to alter environments outside the lodge just as they had done behind the closed doors of their temples. An intense spirit of independence, strong dedication to charity, an interest in new ideas and profound loyalty to friends characterized many of these women. So, contrary to this conspiracy theory, the Freemasons in France are part of the ruling class. Now, there's a contribution that is made to the revolution in that any time you have a revolution, it often is preceded by an authoritarian regime slightly opening up aspects of society in an attempt to release steam. This is a thing that has happened in a number of cases. There's a piece of that going on here,

but it's interesting to discuss kind of how integrated to the power structure female masons often were. Princess Marie de Limbal, superintendent of the household of Queen Marie Antoinette, was one such of Lady Mason. She was outspoken, a reformer who got in constant trouble for her refusal to throw the kind of giant, expensive, hideously wasteful parties that the French royal family was known for. This is a problem when you're the superintendent of the Queen's household. Eventually, she gets fired because she's protesting against the wastefulness of this kind of lifestyle that the court has. She's pushed out of court until the revolution breaks out in 1789. Now, when that happens, all of the Queen's friends abandon her, right? All of these kind of courtly friends who'd been attending the parties.

Marie de Limbal, she's very much invested in these Masonic attitudes of fraternity, which for female masons, a big part of what the female like Masonic lodges are pushing is not just solidarity with other female masons, but cross feminine solidarity in a society that's male dominated. So even though she'd gotten fired by the Queen for her beliefs, de Limbal comes back after the revolution breaks out to stand by her because of this kind of attitude of radical solidarity that she feels like she has to show for the Queen. Interesting. She stays with her until the end. And in fact, when they are all captured by revolutionaries, Marie de Limbal is beheaded.

Her corpse is mutilated and it is left directly in front of the Queen's cell. So she has to look at it while her head is paraded around Paris. Now, that's a bummer of a story. But I bring it up because it is also shows another really weird continuity to modern day. Conspiracy theorists starting in the 1790s claimed the masons and the Illuminati had started the revolution. In reality, a good number of the people massacred in the terror were masons. And this is kind of the start of a long pattern and conspiracy culture of blaming victims for their complicity and some sort of convoluted scheme that they were actually the victims of rather than the perpetrators. That goes back pretty far too.

Well, that's what's always so funny about all of this is like, you're like, oh, the connection to QAnon and stuff, which I'm excited to hear more about later. But it's like the cranks are not the conspiracists. They're the conspiracy theorists. The conspiracy is the people conspiring about the conspiracy. The conspiracy is Marie de Limbal coming to the conclusion that it is important to show radical solidarity with other women and then dying for it. That's the conspiracists in this case. Right. Anyway, none of what actually happens in France matters because by this point it has become a conspiracy theory.

And in very short order, Barrowl and Robeson's tracks traveled across the pond to a little place you might have heard of called the United States of America, where a Massachusetts minister... Oh, I don't like that place. I'm not gonna like it anymore as the story goes on, Margaret. A Massachusetts minister named Jedediah Morse comes across them and he grows obsessed with the Illuminati, which he decides is still out there and was clearly responsible for why things in France went so bad. So he dedicates... He starts preaching and writing tracks about how the Illuminati is out there trying to, quote, root out and abolish Christianity and overturn all civil government. Jedediah Morse is a textbook author as well as a preacher. So he had a lot of influence and his shit spreads and it spreads and it spreads.

On May 19th, 1798, President John Adams had proclaimed a day of solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer, but Morse did not give a lecture on any of those topics from a right up in Slate, quote, In that day's speech, Morse unspooled a bizarre conspiracy theory alleging that a shadowy cabal of villains called the Illuminati, an offshoot of the Freemasons, were aiming to destroy everything that Americans held dear. This group of philosopher zealots, according to Morse, had secretly extended its branches through a great part of Europe and even into America. Their goal was to abolish Christianity, private property and nearly every foundation of good order around the world. According to Morse, they opposed marriage, encouraged people to explore all kinds of sensual pleasures, and proposed a promiscuous intercourse among the sexes. Time is a flash. Oh, shit. This is just your average 2023 Senate hearing.

Yeah, he is a normal Republican member of Congress. Yeah. So. Whereas like a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, I know that, but just, but not with pretending like it's bad. Yeah, yeah. But that's all fine. Yeah, that's all like normal stuff. Yeah.

I'm going to continue that quote. Morse told his congregation that the Illuminati hoped to infect the people of America through a kind of cultural warfare. Reading and debating societies, the reviewers, journalists or editors of newspapers or other periodical publications, the booksellers and postmasters. I bet those people protecting drag shows are the Illuminati. Now, one of the things that Morse also points out is that there are even some influential members of the founding fathers who were Illuminati. Uh-huh. You want to guess who he names? Franklin.

No. Jefferson? No, neither of those guys are based enough. Pain. Pain. That's exactly right. He's a famed Illuminati, which is nothing but a compliment to Thomas Paine. The only truly based founding father.

Franklin kept wanting to be based and they kept being like, or I could buy people. And his friends were like, no, you were against that. He got a, well, I don't know. Yeah, he became an abolitionist. Yeah, he just was not like one of the things that one of the reasons Paine gets picked is that Paine is very, especially by the end of his life, very anti-Christian. He writes a book of critiques against Christianity in a way that's like, which is like, you know, again, this is the 1800s. Yeah. No, this is not a frayed, like writing a fucking book against Christianity in the 1800s.

I'm willing to take a stand against Christianity in the year 1800 and fucking dot. Yeah. It's, yeah, he's a bold man. And again, Morse is a piece of shit, but solid pick for member of the Illuminati among the founding generation. Yeah, yeah, totally. He's the Bernie Sanders of the fucking. Yeah. Everyone's like, oh, that guy.

He's a little different. That crank. Yeah. Now, other notable figures in America at the time who jumped on the Illuminati conspiracy bandwagon included the president of Yale. And the attitude like this guy's attitude, the Yale president's attitude is that Americans have to come back to God to defeat this satanic conspiracy. Where religion prevails, Illuminism cannot make disciples. A French directory cannot govern. A nation cannot be made slaves, nor villains, nor atheists, nor beasts.

He reminded his readers that if this dangerous society succeeded in its plans, the children of evangelicals would be forced to read the work of deists or become concubines of a society that treated chastity as a prejudice, adultery as a virtue, and marriage as a farce. Yeah, uh-huh. It's just all the same. Yeah. Specifically that their religious freedom is to not let their children read stuff. That is their religious freedom that they need. I mean, it's interesting because it gets framed a lot as like, look at how crazy the GOP has gone.

But the only thing religious freedom has ever meant in the context of the United States of America is the freedom to stop your children from learning things. This is the only supportable conclusion by the actual evidence. That is what people who talk about religious freedom primarily mean in a political sense in this country. I want the freedom to stop my kid from encountering ideas other than what I believe. Yeah, totally. Which is cool. Anyway, homeschooling's good. Um, so the mania over the Illuminati spread as far as the former president of the United States, George Washington,

who stated that he was satisfied that the Illuminati had in fact spread to the United States in an attempt to destroy it. Abigail Adams recommended Robison's book, which was basically an unhinged conspiratorial screed to all of her friends. America's founding fathers and mothers bought into the Illuminati conspiracy theory so hard that some scholars argue it helped set a tone for the new nation that has remained with it ever since. In his infamous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which is probably the single most important piece of reading anyone can read in order to understand the American right wing in a meaningful way, Richard Hofstadter describes how the anti-illuminati conspiracy hysteria of the 1790s merged with a broader anti-masonic movement in the 1820s and 30s. At first, this movement may seem to be no more than an extension or repetition of the anti-masonic theme sounded in the outcry against the Prevarian Illuminati, but whereas the panic of the 1790s was confined mainly to New England and linked to an ultra-conservative point of view, the later anti-masonic movement affected many parts of the northern United States and was intimately linked with popular democracy and rural egalitarianism.

Although anti-Masonry happened to be anti-Jacksonian, Jackson was a Mason, it manifested the same animus against the closure of opportunity for the common man and against aristocratic institutions that one finds in the Jacksonian crusade against the Bank of the United States. The anti-masonic movement was a product not merely of natural enthusiasm, but also of the vicitudes of party politics. It was joined and used by a great many men who did not fully share its original anti-masonic feelings. It attracted the support of several reputable statesmen who had only mild sympathy with its fundamental bias, but who, as politicians, could not afford to ignore it. Now, what does that sound like? I mean, it's just all of it. The thing I was thinking of when you're reading that is just how much of the current stuff we're dealing with now

will be viewed in this same way in like 200 years, like all this stuff around like like like drag shows and COVID and all like all this type of thing is like, that's it's like this will be viewed in this same weird like weird like conspiratorial lens in the future as there's like, you know, groups of Antifa defending these drag shows and there's people in the government talking about organized efforts to blah, blah, blah, blah. It's all the same style of conspiracism that just it's always interesting to think that you're like that you actually are like living through history and what you're experiencing now will be reminisced on the same way we reminisce on these weird like these weird anti-mason movements in like the early 1800s. Yeah, optimism about the continuation of society. I think the future at some point, the future version of a podcaster, which will probably like be a guy sitting around a barrel fire in the ruins of Chicago will tell all of this story, but with like an extra couple of chapters.

Yeah, totally. Ah, good stuff. Margaret, how do you what's the best way to start a barrel fire? Is it lots of gasoline? I mean, that's the fastest way to start. The fastest way to start almost any kind of fire is you take you take the mystery gas can because there's always a mystery gas can. Yeah, the one that's been there for a few years past, which you want to try putting in your car. Yeah, and it's also like you're not you don't remember if it's diesel, you don't remember if it's gas. You don't remember if you added some oil to it.

It might have been the one that you did like one to five. Maybe where you live floods a lot and there might have been like water might have gotten into it and you're not sure. Yeah, the untrustworthy gas can. The untrustworthy gas can is how you start a barrel fire in my experience. That is the best way to start a barrel fire. That's why you got to rotate out your good and bad fucking yule cans. Yeah, or label them. No, no, no, that's never going to happen.

I don't know. I'm like 80 percent good at tasting the difference between diesel and regular fuel. You see the people who, you know, the there was that campaign, you can't drink oil or you know, like, so then all the right. Which is a lie. Yeah, well, that was the I mean, kind of reasonably in some ways, the right wing people who go on YouTube and then drink motor oil like clean motor oil, not use motor oil and be like, look, it's it's kind of neutral. It's so funny. I think that we should have just gone harder with that and like basically tried to do like the gallon of milk challenge,

but with, I don't know, like diesel fuel. Just see what we can get them to do. Yeah, we're never. The Libs need to accept that we are never going to argue our way out of this. You cannot convince people of anything like about the irrationality of any of these movements because they are based in irrationality. But we could probably get them to drink diesel fuel if we all work hard at it. And that would be really funny. This is what I'm going to read in the transcript.

The the Bard who has this as a transcript to read around the barrel fire got it from court transcripts. Yeah. After the entire state of Florida dies in a diesel accident. Yeah. A freak diesel drinking accident. The remnants of Florida. Well, thank you for being a part of of passing off this arcane knowledge to the to the future generations. You're all in a secret society.

Tell anyone who asked that this podcast is just about, you know, Hitler or whatever. That'll that'll get him. No, tell him it's true crime. Tell him tell him some broad got murdered and we're going to like spend 30 hours talking about it. Anyway, the broad who got murdered was civil democracy. Yeah. Margaret got anything to plug? Yeah, I have a podcast.

I don't know if you're listening. If you like podcasts or not. But if you do, maybe you like history podcasts. And if you do, I've got a podcast for you. It's called cool people did cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. As long as cool zone media is still exists and has not been sued into oblivion by the remnants of Florida.

Up until we go down taking out Florida like Gandalf fighting the Balrog. Yeah. Just falling into a bit together. Okay. As someone who lives in West Virginia, I have to be a little bit careful when you blanketly make fun of people of a state. But that said, Look, man, I grew up in Texas. If there's one thing that entitles me to do, it's make fun of Florida.

Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And then also, if you want to make fun of a bunch of other people, you can read my book escape from Insel Island, which is about making fun of in cells and then feeling sort of like trolls remorse halfway through writing it and actually start talking about what's wrong with the prison industrial complex. And that is available from tangled wilderness.org. You can get it wherever you get books probably.

I don't know. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Well, be strange in a tangled wilderness and we'll continue to be normal. You're in not a tangled wilderness. Do you want to ask Garrison if they have anything they'd like to plug? Wow. Or is this just clear Garrison or are you sure happening right now?

Bold. Garrison is so secretive about what they do. Would they want people to know? Would they want to spill the beans? I don't know. Why don't you let them speak for themselves? I can't believe I'm facing this. I can't believe I'm facing this type of oppression.

Gen Z discrimination? You're trying to silence my enlightened knowledge. But no, if you want to hear about a collection of people who the Georgia government, that is the state of Georgia, alleges is a secret coalition of organized people who are fighting against the government. You can listen to my recent series on the Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement and the different types of state repression that they are facing using very similar conspiratorial group association type language to try to hurt the people that are actually trying to stop a forest from

being cut down. A batch of four episodes just came out on It Could Happen Here. That is most of what I've been doing the past month. So go do that, check out those episodes, which should be out by the time this airs. We'll certainly be out by the time this airs. Again, I really can't advise you enough. Go weld galvanized steel without wearing a respirator. It will reveal to you hidden truths from the secret masters of the world.

They're hidden in galvanized steel. It's like a genie's bottle. You got to break it open. And then you can fuck a genie like that new Frank Miller movie, which was pretty fucking dope in my opinion. Wait, what's the movie where they fuck a genie? Oh, it's like it's like 3000 years of solitude or something like that. I forget the exact title, something of solitude.

But it's like it's Tilda Swinton fucking an Idris Elba genie. It's pretty dope. All right. I think you should you should tell people that not specifically the liberals don't want. Biden is coming for your right to talk to you about a respirator. Oh, yeah. That too. Yeah.

Joe Biden just said during the State of the Union, the late part in it that you didn't hear that he wants Americans to stop welding galvanized steel without respirators. First they came for our gas stoves and now they come for our gas steel. A real alpha male doesn't wear a respirator. Is it cooked? Oh God, don't let that be the last word of the podcast. It's cooked. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.