QAA Podcast - John Murray Spear's Excellent Adventure Part I (Premium E343) Sample

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

This week, Jack begins the strange saga of John Murray Spear: Universalist preacher, abolitionist, prison reformer, anti-death-penalty agitator, spiritual medium, and eventual would-be midwife to a ��mechanical messiah.” Before Spear tried to build the “New Motor” (a living machine meant to channel divine electricity and inaugurate a new age) he spent decades pursuing radical reform in 19th-century New England. Jack traces Spear’s working-class childhood, his years in the Universalist movement, his “missions of love” to prisoners and the poor, his work against capital punishment, his involvement with abolitionism and the Underground Railroad, and the mob beating that nearly killed him in Portland. Then things get weirder. Enter the unfortunately-named Andrew Jackson Davis, Emanuel Swedenborg, the Fox Sisters, mesmeric trances, automatic writing, spirit healing, Benjamin Franklin from beyond the grave, psychometry, sulfur springs, and the “Association of Electricizers.” By the end of Part 1 of our story, Spear has been selected by a committee of dead reformers, scientists, and Founding Fathers to help remake the world through electricity, spirit communication, and one very important machine in a tower in Lynn, Massachusetts. Next week: Jack tells the tale of Spear’s mechanical messiah. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast Premium Episode 343. John Murray Spears' excellent adventure, part one. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Jack LaRoche, Julian Field, and Travis View. It's a cold April morning in Lynn, Massachusetts, but the uppermost room of high rock tower is sweltering with the heat of closely packed bodies.

The air is electric with anticipation, Or maybe it's the zinc and copper plates drawing the aetheric energy from the upper atmosphere. The hair on the back of your neck stands on end as the clatter of armor plates hits your ears. It's going to work this time. You know it's going to work. The armor-plated man strides into the room and you can smell ozone on the air. The sunlight glints off the jewels and minerals encrusted into his metal suit, casting a rainbow against the rock around you. There's a potent sexual tension in the air.

as he approaches it, the new motor, the electrical infant, new mode of power, a new machine, a new man. It sits on the table, potential vibrating within each of its electrical wires. This is a living machine, and every single millimeter of it speaks to that meaning. Male and female meat, the copulation of wires sending energy through it, powerful enough to imbue life itself into its metal body. Religion and science, heaven and and earth, spirit and matter, male and female, all are reconciled within the armature of this contraption, two become one in its circuitry. And a third, new thing never before seen is produced. The new age is coming soon. That is just as soon as everyone in this room adds their own vitality

into this mixture. The fluid of life and sexual energies birthing in the new age that Benjamin Franklin promised. Yes. Okay, right at the end, it's a request for come. I knew it was a request for come somehow. And Ben Franklin is asking this, this fluid of me? Of course he is. Dear sir, you ask, you ask this fluid of me, of my testicles? Yeah, I've not read that in any book. But that tracks. If like Benjamin Franklin came to the present time, he would be like he would just be addicted

to internet porn. That would be the rest of his life. I mean, he basically was back then. Let's be real. He's like, I've seen the cries. I've dreamed the strangest dream they fastened a helmet onto my head. One day I'll be able to fuck this. CD-ROM drive.

I mean, Benjamin Franklin would be all over cake farts. Just, I'm putting that off. Yeah, he'd be on some, he would be on some wig shit. Especially when you've got him on that syphilis level, uh, thinking. Yeah, he might not make the journey here, to be honest. So gather around, everyone. I would like to tell you about John Murray Spear, the agitator for the spirits. Have any of y'all heard this name before?

No. It's a nice. It sounds like somebody who can. killed a U.S. president. It does. Yeah, really. Yeah. Or killed somebody. Yeah. What he killed was the oppressors. Nice. You know, his life encompasses radical left politics, religion, and what the time referred to as crazism, and a way that feels shockingly modern, even though he was alive during the 1800s. Very few people know him, so I'm not surprised that his name hasn't really come across your feed. But today, a lot of people still consider him a prophet, which probably is not too big a surprise to you all.

Today, we're going to work to cover his early life and his efforts at political reformation. And next week, we're going to cover his later years and experiments, including his magnum opus, which was the building of a mechanical Messiah that was just full of calm. So join me on John Murray Spears' excellent adventure. Sounds, I can't wait. It's always funny when people get into experiments later in life. You know, it gives hope to me. There's still time. You could still have a mad scientist lab in your basement. And like, if you're listening, whatever you're inventing, whatever thing it is that you're coming up with, you can fill it with jizz. It might take a while.

I believe in you. You can find a way. Your vitality, it's just waiting to be in some machine. I feel like this is the big challenge for people who are making AI products. How jizz filled should they make the, the, you know? chatbots. Yeah, and why do I have to fill my Xbox with Jizz? Why can't it come pre-filled? These are all questions that Ben Franklin would be asking as soon as he stepped foot in 2026. I want to read his pamphlet on that so badly. How can I fill this with giz and farts? On not being able to play call of duty anymore.

A most bogus childhood. John Murray Spear was born on September 16th, 1804 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the second son of John Speer, who worked as a blacksmith, and Sally Corbett, whose entire job in life was just being a Scottish immigrant, according to biographers. His brother Charles was born in May of the previous year, and this family was largely working class like you would expect a blacksmith-run family to be. John Spears' own father was a fisherman, and he and his wife were extremely progressive. They converted very early on to the Universalist Church.

And likewise, John Murray Spears' family were also very, very dedicated to universalist beliefs. They even named John Murray Speer after their local pastor, John Murray. When you're looking into John Murray Spears' life, there are a truly shocking amount of people who are just named John Spear. it gets very confusing very quickly. So have you guys heard of universalism before? Yeah. Yeah, vaguely. Yeah, it's heyday was around the 1820s, 1830s.

It coincided with a labor revolution that overtook New England. They were a very unique denomination of Christianity that basically believed in universal salvation for everyone. There was no hell. There was no eternal damnation. You know, everybody's invited to this party. So this coincided with their beliefs that our existence here on earth could be made into something like heaven through angelic actions here on earth. Or mitzvahs, as the Jews say. Yeah, it's not too big a surprise that a lot of people who subscribed to this belief were extremely progressive.

In 1809, John Speer passed away in an accident. No matter how hard I looked to figure out what exactly this blacksmithing accident was, nothing was coming up. But his death thrust the family into immediate poverty. You know, don't pass, go. Just boom. You guys are now on the lowest rung. After your dad, like, severs his, you know, limb with a, you know, hot iron sword or whatever. I mean, a blacksmithing accident.

It can only be a handful of things. All pain. I know, right? Like, I was wonder if maybe a horse hit him in the head. Who knows? He could have gotten kicked. He could have tripped. He could have tripped on tools.

Back then, you basically died of almost everything. Anything and everything was out there to kill you. Yeah. So the boys were shipped off to their grandparents. And this was all right before the War of 1812 hit. So as soon as that hit, John and Charles, eight and nine years old, were taken out of public grade school and sent off to Dorchester Cotton and Iron Works. They worked in the Cotton Mill six days a week from four in the morning to 7 p.m. at night and made a total of 50 cents per week. Converting this to modern times, that's $14.50 a week.

That is really a bad deal holding shit. Wow. Yeah. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for you. for just $5 per month.

For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad,

plus 20 episodes of Trickledown with me, Travis View. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake.

We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe? That's not true. The part about be crying. Not me being grateful. I'm very grateful.