Podcasts about Secret history

EPISODE #640 THE INTERNATIONAL COALITION FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESEARCH PT. 2 Richard welcomes the USA Representative for ICER, a not-for-profit organization, comprised of scientists, academics and leading UFO/UAP researchers from 27 countries on 5 continents who are unanimous in their recognition that we are not alone in the cosmos.  Guest: Donald Schmitt is the former co-director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago where he served as Director of Special Investigations for 10 years. Prior to that time, he was a special investigator for the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek and the art director for the International UFO Reporter. He is author of hundreds of articles about UFOs as well as the co-author of five best-selling books UFO Crash at Roswell, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Witness To Roswell, Witness to Roswell: Revised Addition, and Inside the Real Area 51; The Secret History of Wright Patterson. He is also the author of Roswell, The Chronological Pictorial. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! C60EVO -The Secret is out about this powerful anti-oxidant. The Purest C60 available is ESS60.  Buy Direct from the Source.  Buy Now and Save 10% – Use Coupon Code: EVRS at Checkout! Strange Planet Shop - If you're a fan of the radio show and the podcast, why not show it off?  Greats T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and more.  It's a Strange Planet - Dress For It! BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER FOR LESS THAN $2 PER MONTH If you're a fan of this podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium Subscriber.  For just $1.99 per month, subscribers to my Conspiracy Unlimited Plus gain access to two exclusive, commercial-free episodes per month. They also gain access to my back catalog of episodes. The most recent 30 episodes of Conspiracy Unlimited will remain available for free.  Stream all episodes and Premium content on your mobile device by getting the FREE Conspiracy Unlimited APP for both IOS and Android devices... Available at the App Store and Google Play.

Since it's spooky season, I thought we could talk a little about a Memphis urban legend… What do you think is one of the most well known urban legends? I'd probably say, Voodoo Village.  That's exactly what I was thinking. And I think pretty much everyone who grew up here or has lived here for any amount of time has heard about or even ventured out to the community known to locals as Voodoo Village. So what are some of the rumors you've heard about this place? I've heard that when you drive there, they pull a school bus behind your car so you can't leave. They come out and chase you with bats and machetes. There are dead animals hanging from trees. There are weird yard art objects and masonic and voodoo symbols all around the property. It's all just very strange and spooky.  I've heard all those things too, and even believed them for a very long time. Admittedly, I was too freaked out to actually go all the way there to see for myself. I believe it was my friend Neeraj and I who ventured that way late one night, but we eventually turned around and came home.  But years later, I had read a little about the so called “Voodoo Village” and learned it was actually called St. Paul's Spiritual Holy Temple. I have also read it as St. Peter's, but I do believe it's St. Paul's.  As it turns out, the history behind St. Paul's is more complicated than we thought. To understand it, we have to start with Memphis's beginnings. But I promise we'll get back to it.  Most of the information I got for this episode was from a book by Tony Kail called, appropriately, “A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo”. This really is a fantastic book. It's informative and a quick read. It made me want to dig deeper into the subject, thus this episode's topic. It's a really cool book. I suggest checking it out. You can find it in the local section at Novel. Memphis is known by many names. The Bluff City. The Home of the Blues. The Birthplace of Rock n Roll. The Cotton Capital of the World. The BBQ Capital of the World. But it's also called Mojo City.  The word “mojo” comes from an object used within the practice of Hoodoo. Memphis's Hoodoo history is not extremely well known or frankly understood, that is of course, unless you're actually in the know.  So we started this episode talking about voodoo and now we're talking about hoodoo. What is the difference? Voodoo (Vodou), meaning spirit, is considered a religion or religious practice. It is similar to Hoodoo, and in one video I watched, it said that Hoodoo was born out of Voodoo. It was brought from Africa, through Haiti, and then to America during the slave trade. It is a blend of Catholicism and African cultural and traditional beliefs. The type of voodoo we are going to be talking about for this episode is what is generally practiced in New Orleans.  There is structure and hierarchy in Voodoo. There is one God, but they do not interfere with life. But there are numerous spirits that do, and they call these spirits Loa or Lwa. Each Loa has its own area of life that it is responsible for, for example agriculture or money. Practitioners connect with these spirits when they need their assistance.  There are priestesses and priests in Voodoo. A popular Voodoo priestess was Marie Laveau. She made a name for herself by helping people from all walks of life in New Orleans. She was a hairdresser by day, but her other “side hustle” was to help people achieve their desires through her voodoo practice. She was known to help black, white, rich and poor people.  And even in her death, she is still helping people. There is a rumor that if you make a wish on her grave, and your wish comes true, you owe her a present. I, admittedly, made a wish on her tomb, and while it took some years, that wish did come true. So I actually owe her a present the next time we're in New Orleans. I'm sure many people have heard of this famous Voodoo Priestess.

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public's understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war, from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government's strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. The Afghanistan Papers is a shocking account that will supercharge a long overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

In Episode 96, Susie Boutry (@NovelVisits) and I share some of our favorite debut novels and discuss why we gravitate toward debuts.  We also discuss our reading stats for debut novels, as well as exploring some sophomore novels...the good, the not so good, and those we're still awaiting. This post contains affiliate links, through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!). I also included Bookshop.org affiliate links. Highlights Why I like having debut authors on the podcast. A full breakdown of debut-related stats and our best year for debuts Debuts we love, divided into four categories: All-Time Favorite Debuts Sophomore Slumps — alongside the debuts that came before them Anxiously Awaiting — debut novelists who've not yet released a second novel Upcoming Sophomore Novels All-Time Favorite Debuts [9:35] Sarah The Mothers by Brit Bennett | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org[11:00] Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [16:35] & [41:05] Honorable Mentions Shelter by Jung Yun | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [10:00] Saving Ruby King by Catherine Adel West | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [10:16] Susie Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [13:22] The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [18:46] Honorable Mention Mudbound by Hillary Jordan | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [10:26] Sophomore Slumps [21:05] Sarah Debut: The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [21:20] Sophomore: Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [23:40] Debut: Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [29:46] Sophomore: We Went to the Woods by Caite Dolan-Leach | Buy from Amazon| Buy from Bookshop.org [32:03] Susie Debut: Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [25:04] Sophomore: Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [28:13] Debut: Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [33:14] Sophomore: The End of the Day by Bill Clegg | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [35:09] Anxiously Awaiting [36:25] Sarah The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [36:37] We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [41:13] Susie If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org[38:54] Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [43:57] Upcoming Sophomore Novels [45:40] Sarah Debut: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [45:55] Upcoming: Happiness Quotient by Angie Kim (TBA) [46:19] Debut: Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [48:51] Upcoming: Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (January 18, 2022) | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [50:02] Susie Debut: Girl at War by Sara Nović | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [47:04] Upcoming: True Biz by Sara Nović (March 15, 2022) | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [47:58] Debut: Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [51:03] Upcoming: Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett (April 12, 2022) | Buy from Amazon | Buy from Bookshop.org [52:39] Other Books Mentioned The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett [11:40]  Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi [13:53]  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins [17:21] The Secret History by Donna Tartt [17:24] & [39:31] The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer [17:26]  Rules of Civility by Amor Towles [22:18] A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara [34:06]  Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee [52:28]  Other Links Podcast Episode 93: Fall 2021 Book Preview with Catherine from @GilmoreGuide Podcast Episode 83: 2021 Summer Reading Special with Susie from @NovelVisits Podcast Episode 78: Deep Backlist Books with Catherine from @GilmoreGuide Podcast Episode 64: Catherine Adel West (Author of Saving Ruby King) If you'd like to track your own reading stats, check out my downloadable spreadsheet.  Learn more about the 2021 Rock Your Reading Tracking Spreadsheet here, or by becoming a supporter on Patreon and choosing the Superstar level, you'll get the upcoming 2022 Reading Tracker included with your membership.

Mike Stephen learns about a new local Black-owned brewery called Funkytown from co-owners Richard Bloomfield, Zachary Day, and Gregory Williams, discusses the loss of affordable housing in Chicago with executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University Geoff Smith, and discovers the Secret History of the local country rock band Ouray. And Mike recounts his standoff with a Chicago rat, since the city has once again been named the "rattiest" in America.

Ooze and III. 

Author Tom O'Neill discusses his book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties. https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Charles-History-Sixtiest-Sixties-ebook/dp/B07K6J273Q/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=tom+oneill&qid=1563829821&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Author Tom O'Neill discusses his book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties. (2019) https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Charles-History-Sixtiest-Sixties-ebook/dp/B07K6J273Q/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=tom+oneill&qid=1563829821&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Author Matt Siegel discusses "The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat."

Here in The Bookhouse, we like to take long long looks at the Twin Peaks books. We're starting before the beginning: everything outside Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Cosy up with the full episode over here. 

It's the groves of academe: Bennington College, the wildest and wickedest school in America. In the last great decade: the 1980s. Bennington class of '86, class of Bret Easton Ellis, future writer of American Psycho and co-leader of the literary Brat Pack; Jonathan Lethem, future writer of Motherless Brooklyn and MacArthur Fellow; and Donna Tartt, future writer of The Secret History and Pulitzer Prize winner. All three are, at various times, infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships stimulated and fueled by rivalry as much as affection. And all three will mythologize Bennington in their fiction—fiction that, as we'll discover, isn't always fiction, is often fact—and thereby become myths themselves. From the Peabody-nominated C13Originals studios and Vanity Fair's Lili Anolik, comes the latest installment in the “Once Upon a Time…” franchise, Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. This is a tale of money, murder, madness, and—of course—genius. This is, too, a multi-dimensional expose: the secret history of The Secret History revealed; the secret history of three of the greatest writers of Generation X revealed; and the secret history of Generation X itself revealed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Stephen learns about the Black Fives Era of basketball from journalist Ade Adeniji, discusses the passage of new climate legislation in Illinois with Colleen Smith of the Illinois Environmental Council, and discovers the Secret History of gospel musician Rev. Marvin Yancy. And in the OTL Wrap Party, Producer Collin says farewell and turns in his OTL ID before riding off into the sunset.

It's hard to imagine a time when food was more central to our collective imagination than it is today. These days, what and where we eat says as much about us as the clothes we wear or the places we live; meanwhile, social media has allowed us to project and share our private food experiences with the world as never before. But our fixation is not new. "As a species, we're hardwired to obsess over food," Matt Siegel explains in THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat (Ecco; On sale August 31, 2021; $27.99). But how much do people really know about the origins-and modern implications-of their favorite (or not so favorite) foods? In this fascinating and irreverent tour through history, he sets out "to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths." Are our taste preferences really ours, or were they influenced by the food our mothers ate during pregnancy? How did corn evolve from an inedible weed to a staple of the world economy and an ingredient in everything from gasoline to pan coatings-and did we really domesticate corn, or did corn domesticate us? Are our modern food choices emotionally satisfying us or making us miserable? And why are humans the only animals masochistic enough to enjoy the burn of chili peppers (a food that, ecologically speaking, specifically evolved to repel us)? Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths-and realities-of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality-tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis and how the nickname honey might be better suited for toxic ex-lovers than for people we care about. THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef's knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is essential reading for all foodies.

It's hard to imagine a time when food was more central to our collective imagination than it is today. These days, what and where we eat says as much about us as the clothes we wear or the places we live; meanwhile, social media has allowed us to project and share our private food experiences with the world as never before. But our fixation is not new. "As a species, we're hardwired to obsess over food," Matt Siegel explains in THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat (Ecco; On sale August 31, 2021; $27.99). But how much do people really know about the origins-and modern implications-of their favorite (or not so favorite) foods? In this fascinating and irreverent tour through history, he sets out "to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths." Are our taste preferences really ours, or were they influenced by the food our mothers ate during pregnancy? How did corn evolve from an inedible weed to a staple of the world economy and an ingredient in everything from gasoline to pan coatings-and did we really domesticate corn, or did corn domesticate us? Are our modern food choices emotionally satisfying us or making us miserable? And why are humans the only animals masochistic enough to enjoy the burn of chili peppers (a food that, ecologically speaking, specifically evolved to repel us)? Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths-and realities-of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality-tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis and how the nickname honey might be better suited for toxic ex-lovers than for people we care about. THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef's knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is essential reading for all foodies.

It's hard to imagine a time when food was more central to our collective imagination than it is today. These days, what and where we eat says as much about us as the clothes we wear or the places we live; meanwhile, social media has allowed us to project and share our private food experiences with the world as never before. But our fixation is not new. "As a species, we're hardwired to obsess over food," Matt Siegel explains in THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat (Ecco; On sale August 31, 2021; $27.99). But how much do people really know about the origins-and modern implications-of their favorite (or not so favorite) foods? In this fascinating and irreverent tour through history, he sets out "to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths." Are our taste preferences really ours, or were they influenced by the food our mothers ate during pregnancy? How did corn evolve from an inedible weed to a staple of the world economy and an ingredient in everything from gasoline to pan coatings-and did we really domesticate corn, or did corn domesticate us? Are our modern food choices emotionally satisfying us or making us miserable? And why are humans the only animals masochistic enough to enjoy the burn of chili peppers (a food that, ecologically speaking, specifically evolved to repel us)? Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths-and realities-of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality-tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis and how the nickname honey might be better suited for toxic ex-lovers than for people we care about. THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef's knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is essential reading for all foodies.

In this episode, Kendra and August share their favorite dark academia reads ('tis the season!). This episode is completely spoiler-free. Books mentioned in the episode: Bunny by Mona Awad (2019) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1842). Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015) Maurice by EM Forester (1913/1971) Portrait of an Artist by James Joyce (1916) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895) Dracula by Bram Stoker (1892) Howard's End by EM Forester (1910) Stoner by John Williams (1964) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890) The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (2021) Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (2019) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russel (2020) Vicious by V.E. Schwab (2013)

September 24, 1902. A new cooking school is set to open at Boston's 30 Huntington Avenue. The rooms will soon be filled with trainee cooks, who will watch in awe as the school's namesake and principal, Fannie Farmer, lectures on everything from boning meats to baking the perfect reception rolls. Farmer is an innovative cook, and a pioneer in a thriving women's culinary movement known as "domestic science." But her school stands at a crossroads of that very movement and begs the question, what is the purpose of food? Who was Fannie Farmer, “the mother of level measurements”? And how did she shape the way we cook and eat today?Special thanks to our guests, Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad; Danielle Dreilinger, author of The Secret History of Home Economics; and Anne Willan, author of Women in the Kitchen. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

National Investigations Committee of Aerial Phenomena, NICAP, Ufology, T. Townsend Brown, Donald Keyhoe, CIA, American Security Council, Economic Cooperation Administration, Consulting Services, Nicholas de Rochefort, Committee of One Million, China Lobby, Taiwan, Marvin Liebman, money laundering, anti-communism, Admiral Arthur Radford, Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Barney and Betty Hill, US Navy, CIA, Barry Goldwater, John Fisher, General Albert Wedemeyer, psychological warfare, Soviet Union, Mormons, Robertson Panel, NICAP's decline, Ernst Zundel, mailing lists, neo-Nazis, blacklisting

Sam and Emma host Craig Whitlock, investigative reporter at the Washington Post, to discuss his recent book The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Sam and Emma first touch upon the resounding victory for Gavin Newsom in the California recall election from last night, and discuss Newsom's nationalizing of the recall/pinning the results to the "shadow president" for the Republicans (Trump) as a telegraph of the political strategy going forward into 2022. Then Emma and Sam are joined by Craig, who starts out by discussing how him and the Washington Post obtained the Afghanistan Papers, the trove of documents the Post obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that serve as the basis for the book, and how the book timed up perfectly with Biden's announcement of the withdrawal of troops in August, as well as the context behind the "Lessons Learned" project run through a little known federal agency called the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that was the source of the lion's share of the notes and transcripts that comprised the papers. Craig goes deeper into describing the testimony from the interview transcripts of "Lessons Learned", citing how many past, present, and current military officials considered the war in Afghanistan "much worse than you think", and that "we didn't know what we were doing" in terms of strategic goals in Afghanistan. Craig goes so far as to report that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had no appreciable strategy for the war in Afghanistan beyond "chasing terrorists". Sam and Emma dive deeper into the idea that these transcripts and notes were intentionally hidden by the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, noting that the SIGAR reports that were publicly disclosed were significantly edited and sanitized. Craig then goes back to the early 2000's, stating that there was a pretty clear game plan for the first 60 days of the war, but that there was no recognizable strategy or timetable for what the United States was doing occupying Afghanistan, especially when George W. Bush made it clear that this was not a "nation-building" project to begin with. The emphasis was also very clearly on Iraq over Afghanistan, to the point where Rumsfeld asked Bush to meet with the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan as well as the commander in Iraq. Bush only wanted to meet with the Iraq commander, and didn't even know who the Afghanistan commander was, and didn't want to meet with him anyways. Craig then pivots to the Obama years, where the Administration very clearly wanted to continue the war without calling it a war, so as to not step on the toes of their allies whose presence in Afghanistan would violate some of their own war-making laws and practices if it was called a war by their allies. Not wanting to call it a war, but not being accurate enough to call it a "peacekeeping mission", the Obama administration landed on the clunky "non-conventional war effort" to split the difference. Afterwards, Craig discloses the combustible report that the Bush Administration furiously attempted to cover up, that former Vice President Dick Cheney was almost killed in a suicide bombing at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and how this pattern of attempting to spin every negative outcome into a positive one throughout the war persisted across every presidential administration in the 21st century. They end on the warped and strange arc of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's career, how he was a widely respected military official until his full throated embrace of Trump and QAnon stifled that perception, as well as Craig hoping that previous, current, and future administrations will learn from the mistakes of the past 20 years, but doesn't have too much hope because, well, Bush and Rumsfeld didn't learn from the mistakes of Vietnam outlined in, you guessed it, another trove of documents that made clear how badly we were losing a protracted war: The Pentagon Papers. In the Fun Half, Sam gives a brief primer on the fight over taxation between the House and the Senate Dems in the reconciliation mockups going around the Hill, the crew checks in on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings where in the House Ilhan Omar grills Secretary of State Blinken over the drone strike that may have killed a foreign aid worker instead of an ISIS-K operative, and in the Senate Idaho Senator Jim Risch gets to more pressing matters, namely: who the heck is pressing the button that controls when Biden talks? Then the crew check in on Ben Shapiro melting down over Cara Delevingne's "Peg the Patriarchy" look at the Met Gala, to which Ben feels the great need to describe what pegging means to him. 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Food writer Matt Siegel chats with Trey Elling about THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD: STRANGE BUT TRUE STORIES ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF EVERYTHING WE EAT. Learn all about the histories of: Vanilla (05:54) Ice cream (09:58) America's connection to apple pie (20:46) Cereal (22:57) Dildo bread (27:03) Corn (31:51) Honey (37:12) Fast food (45:24) Rebranded seafood like whore's eggs (49:12) Olive oil (51:27)

It's been 20 years since the attacks of 9/11.  Next month, we'll mark the 20th anniversary of the arrival of American troops in Afghanistan who toppled the Taliban regime and hunted down Osama bin Laden.  Now, as American combat troops leave Afghanistan, we sit down with Craig Whitlock who has pieced together the secret history—warts and all—of America's war in a land long-called “the graveyard of empires.” Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post.  He has covered the global war on terrorism for the Post since 2001 as a foreign correspondent, Pentagon reporter, and national security specialist.  In 2019, his coverage of the war in Afghanistan won the George Polk Award for Military Reporting, the Scripps Howard Award for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Freedom of Information Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for international reporting.  He has reported from more than sixty countries and is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today I speak with Earl Fontainelle of the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (SHWEP). I don't understand Plato. Partly this is because he never writes in his own voice and partly it's because I can't even always tell when Socrates is joking or even what he's talking about. The divided line? The Myth of Er? The tyrant being exactly 729 times less happy than the philosopher? These are all weird things in the Republic that are still mysterious to me. Earl suggests that perhaps the reason Plato is so difficult to understand is because he was writing esoterically. Perhaps the dialogues contain secret messages directed to an initiated few and the weird passages I complain about actually contain wisdom of a higher order. Perhaps. In this long and wide-ranging conversation, we talk about why so many readers of Plato believed he wrote esoterically, the secret meanings he may have been hiding, and a lot of the mysterious Plato math that I complained about in the Republic series. References:  SHWEP episode on the Esoteric PlatoSHWEP episode with Maya Alapin on mathematical structures in Plato's republicWiki on the divided line with diagramSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=35146517&fan_landing=true)

Mike Stephen celebrates 30 years of the wonderful Quimby's Bookstore with store manager Liz Mason, learns the Secret History of the late violin-shredder Johnny Frigo, and replays part of a conversation from 2019 about expectations for student success.

Author Brian Regal discusses The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters and Benjamin Franklin Created a Monster. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Jersey-Devil-Hucksters/dp/1421436353/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+secret+history+of+the+jersey+devil&qid=1631313932&sr=8-1

This week, Shannon sits down with Editor for the Style section of The Washington Post, Amy Argetsinger, to discuss her new book, There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America. Amy does a deep dive into the Miss America Pageant to explains the reasons why it is still an iconic event, and why the pageant doesn't deserve the slander and bad reputation that it has gained through the years.  Follow Shannon on Twitter: @ShannonBream 

Between September 1940 and May 1941, the German Luftwaffe relentlessly pounded British cities with bombs in an attempt to force the British to surrender. Ultimately whilst killing thousands and causing extensive damage the bombing offensive failed. The morale of the British public was largely undimmed and war production was never seriously impacted. The Blitz has become a key part of the British national psyche with many celebrating the 'Blitz spirit' with people coming together and helping one another during the crisis. But, as with much of history, the reality was much messier and complex. Spivs and looters profited from the chaos, people explored new ideas and sexualities, and there were new opportunities for women. In this interview taken from our archive, Joshua Levine author of The Secret History of the Blitz discusses the myths and realities of the Blitz and the social and political changes it brought about. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week's episode, we discuss The Secret History by Procopius. Let's dive in as Procopius spills the tea of prominent figures from the Byzantium era, and how they compare to us in the 21st century. Help us decide if it's fact or all cap. Join us on our website where you can join the conversation. https://bookshrinepodcast.com/ Don't forget to Subscribe, Rate, and Follow us on our social media pages. IG: @BookShrine Twitter: @TheBook_Shrine TikTok: @BookShrine --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bookshrine/support

The Miss America Organization celebrates its 100th birthday in September. What started as a local event meant to extend the tourism season past Labor Day turned into a heralded nationwide pageant and scholarship program that has survived its own history of sexism and misogyny. Washington Post writer Amy Argetsinger's retrospective book “There She Was: A Secret History of Miss America” takes readers on a journey through American feminist history, racism, the end of the swimsuit competition and the pageant's recent steep decline in viewership.

ABOUT MATT SIEGEL AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOODIt's hard to imagine a time when food was more central to our collective imagination than it is today. These days, what and where we eat says as much about us as the clothes we wear or the places we live; meanwhile, social media has allowed us to project and share our private food experiences with the world as never before.But our fixation is not new. "As a species, we're hardwired to obsess over food," Matt Siegel explains in THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat (Ecco; On sale August 31, 2021; $27.99). But how much do people really know about the origins-and modern implications-of their favorite (or not so favorite) foods? In this fascinating and irreverent tour through history, he sets out "to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths."Are our taste preferences really ours, or were they influenced by the food our mothers ate during pregnancy? How did corn evolve from an inedible weed to a staple of the world economy and an ingredient in everything from gasoline to pan coatings-and did we really domesticate corn, or did corn domesticate us? Are our modern food choices emotionally satisfying us or making us miserable? And why are humans the only animals masochistic enough to enjoy the burn of chili peppers (a food that, ecologically speaking, specifically evolved to repel us)?Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths-and realities-of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality-tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis and how the nickname honey might be better suited for toxic ex-lovers than for people we care about.THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef's knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOOD is essential reading for all foodies.ABOUT MATT SIEGELMatt Siegel has written about food and culture for publications including The Atlantic and the Paris Review. Previously an English professor, he now lives in Richmond, Virginia, where he writes full time and consults with brands in the food and beverage industries. His dog's name is Waffles.The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat:https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Food-Strange-Everything-ebook/dp/B08NPTHC14

View in HD at . What does the Command key symbol mean? Or the Option key symbol? Where is the Backspace key? How is Caps Lock on a Mac different than Windows? Learn a little bit about the keys on your Mac keyboard.

Humans have a complex history with food—some foods were even used as weapons! This week, I chat with Matt Siegel, author of a new book The Secret History of Food.  We discuss a range of topics including why most vanilla products aren't made with vanilla at all and how our food choices influence our emotions. Follow him on Instagram at @matt.siegel.author.

On this week's episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Mary are discussing: Bookish Moments: Pages at the Park and picking new curriciula Current Reads: following up on a series, going on adventures, and learning through reading fiction and non-fiction Deep Dive: back to school - our favorite campus novels Book Presses: a foodie memoir and back to school for non-school-age readers As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you'd like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don't scroll down!  New: we are now including transcripts of the episode (this link only works on the main site). These are generated by AI, so they may not be perfectly accurate, but we want to increase accessibility for our fans! *Please note that all book titles linked below are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*   . . . . Bookish Moment of the Week: 1:44 - Amy's Instagram @what_amy_reads Current Reads: 5:19 - Rock the Boat by Beck Dorey-Stein (Mary) 8:51 - Chasing the Thrill: Obsession, Death and Glory in America's Most Extraordinary Treasure Hunt by Daniel Barbarisi (Kaytee) 11:30 - Collected Works Bookstore 11:47 - Rush by Lisa Patton (Mary) 15:21 - Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar (Kaytee) 18:37 - The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson (Mary) 18:47 - Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson 21:44 - The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson  22:58 - Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey (Kaytee) Deep Dive - Back to School with Campus Novels 28:12 - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs 28:54 - Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston 29:24 - Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend  30:40 - Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld 31:41 - Admission by Julie Buxbaum 32:47 - A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallero  33:05 - Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum 33:15 - The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abbi Dare 33:53 - Dear. Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay 34:41 - Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia 35:13 - Carry On by Rainbow Rowell 35:29 - Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell 36:11 - Legenborn by Tracy Deonn 36:56 - Lobizona by Romina Garber 37:00 - Cazadora by Romina Garber 37:03 - Bookshop.org 37:38 - Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey 37:57 - Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo 39:11 - The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger 39:42 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt 39:49 - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 39:56 - The Magicians by Lev Grossman 40:43 - The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead Books We Want to Press Into Your Hands: 42:00 - A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (Mary) 44:52 - Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi (Kaytee) Connect With Us: Meredith is @meredith.reads on Instagram Kaytee is @notesonbookmarks on Instagram Mindy is @gratefulforgrace on Instagram Mary is @maryreadsandsips on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast.com @currentlyreadingpodcast on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast@gmail.com Support us at patreon.com/currentlyreadingpodcast

We all want to save energy and money - but does doing things like turning off lights or unplugging appliances really do much or are there other things you could do that have more impact? This episode begins with a look at what does and doesn't do much to conserve energy and reduce your utility bill. https://www.pnas.org/content/107/37/16054 Some people seem to excel under pressure while other choke. Why? Listen as I talk with Dane Jensen, a consultant and CEO of Third Factor (https://www.thirdfactor.com), an organization that studies the science of performance - and he is author of the book The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution (https://amzn.to/3gBeDrJ). Dane explains that there are different types of pressure we all face and how to best use the pressures of life to do our very best.  Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable? Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this question. This is just one of the fascinating stories about food that I discuss with Matt Siegel author of The Secret History of Food (https://amzn.to/2WhggE9). Listen and discover why vanilla is anything but bland and boring, how food has been used as a weapon in war, why breakfast cereal is so popular and much more.  Why do people blush? It turns out everyone blushes although some people show it more than others. Listen as I explain what causes blushing, how it helps and what Charles Darwin had to say about blushing. https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/humans-blush-happens-within-us-blushing-reason-behind.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really enjoy The Jordan Harbinger Show and we think you will as well! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes benefits like 5G in every plan. Visit https://T-Mobile.com/business JUSTWORKS makes it easier for you to start, run and grow a business. Find out how by going to https://justworks.com For more information on fire safety products, safety tips and educational activities you can do at home with your family visit https://firstalert.com/firepreventionmonth   https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Visit https://www.remymartin.com/en-us/ to learn more about their exceptional spirits! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The SBS was formed out of the Commandos during the Second World War to help counter Nazi domination of Europe. This small unit made up of regulars as well as maverick volunteers took on some of the most dangerous missions of the Second World War. Most famously Operation Frankton, where a small team who became known as the 'Cockleshell Heroes' attacked Axis shipping in Bordeaux harbour. But perhaps their biggest contribution to the war effort came in the run-up to D-Day where SBS reconnoitred the landing beaches in Normandy bringing back vital information that helped shape Operation Overlord and undoubtedly save many lives. Saul David is the author of SBS - Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History and had exclusive access to the SBS archives. He talks to Dan about how the unit came into operation, the oversized role they played in the war effort and the audacious missions the men of the SBS undertook during the war. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is part 2 of 2 on Sean Naylor's “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command”.  In April 1980, the U.S. military tried to rescue 52 Americans captured when Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran.  The rescue attempt was called Operation Eagle Claw and it failed.  Eagle Claw involved helicopters flying from a Navy ship and fixed wing aircraft carrying the assault force and extra fuel flying from another country.  All the pieces converged in the middle of the Iranian desert at night in a place called Desert One.  One of the helicopters collided with one of the aircraft during ground refueling.  Eight Americans died and seven aircraft were either destroyed or captured.  Even though the individual pieces of the Eagle Claw plan may have been capable of performing their part, the mission fell apart when the pieces came together.  According to the author Sean Naylor the U.S. answer to was to have all its counter terrorist pieces from different parts of the military in one standing joint task force.  The U.S. formed this counter terrorist task force in December 1980 and called it the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).  JSOC went on to play a central role in the Global War on Terror. 

Mike Stephen gets an update on environmental policy in Illinois with Colleen Smith of the Illinois Environmental Council, learns about Edgewater's local environmental work with Tricia Van Eck of the Edgewater Environmental Coalition, and discovers the Secret History of 1980s new wave rockers The Odd. And in the The OTL Wrap Party, Mike and Producer Collin remind us that we need to get on board with fighting climate change right now!

Our next guest is an award-winning Venezuelan composer based in Los Angeles, CA who specializes in film, TV, Interactive, and New Media music. His sensibility as a composer is evidenced in his lush orchestral scores, always infused with hints of his diverse upbringing and culture. His eclectic style is the consequence of his development as a musician, going from pop and rock bands, to a classical music education, to jazz and electronic influences from his studies in the US. ​He recently scored the film “The Secret History of Venom” for Marvel Animation, and has written for many feature films including the Venezuelan box office hit “Papita Segunda Base” and the Daytime Emmy Award winning Documentary “Out of Iraq”. His music can be heard on the feature documentary “History of the Emirates”, and on hit TV shows like Netflix's “Outer Banks” and “What/If”, AMC's “Dietland”, Bravo's “Girlfriend's Guide To Divorce”, Freeform's “Good Trouble” and HBO's “Adventure Time: Obsidian”. Other recent projects include the feature films “Christmas Comes Home”, “Farm to Fork to Love” and “Stranger In The Attic”, as well as the Venezuelan film “Plástico”. The composer is... Sandro Morales-Santoro --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/composertalk/support

The Latest Science on the Link Between Cancer and Cell Phones | This episode is brought to you by BLUblox and Paleovalley.Technology has done amazing things for us. It keeps us connected and can provide invaluable information about our health, but it could also be hurting our health without our even realizing it. Electromagnetic frequencies, or EMFs, are actually all around us in the natural world, like the build up of electricity during a thunderstorm or the Earth's magnetic field that animals use for migration. The problem is that man-made electrical devices like cell phones, Wi-Fi, computers, and microwaves, emit EMFs and have dramatically increased our exposure. EMFs have been classified as a Group 2B possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization and research continues to reveal their negative impact on human health, due to interference with our internal cell membrane function, resulting in free radical production, DNA damage, and lower antioxidant levels. On today's episode of The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Devra Davis an internationally acclaimed award-winning scientist and author of more than 220 scientific publications and 3 popular books, including When Smoke Ran Like Water, The Secret History of the War on Cancer, and Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation. Dr. Davis was formerly a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and was the founding director of the world's first Center for Environmental Oncology. She is currently the President and founder of the Environmental Health Trust, a non-profit scientific organization focusing on drawing attention to man-made health threats. Ehtrust.org is considered a major resource for those wanting to learn more about environmental toxins and about the current push to depend on 5G and 5G towers. In this episode, we dive into: -The connection between EMFs, cell phone radiation, and cancer (8:06) -EMFs impact on fertility (18:59) -How EMF exposure to kids is different from adults (29:03)-How electronic devices are tested for safety (34:28)-Speech delay acquisition and technology (37:37)-How the EPA, FDA, and FCC are being hijacked by the telecom industry (44:40)-What motivated Dr. Davis to get involved in this work (56:23)-How cellphones can cause brain damage to children (58:40)-What you can do to mitigate the damaging effects of EMFs (1:01:02)-The dangers of Bluetooth headsets (1:13:17) -Electromagnetic illness (1:19:02)-California and 5g infrastructure (1:24:37) Also mentioned in this episode:-Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/64581 -Evidence of Health Risks Linked to Electromagnetic Field Exposure - https://divisionofresearch.kaiserpermanente.org/pressrelease?Id=4467 -Safe and Sound PRO RF Meter - ​​https://amzn.to/3Devtq5 -Rat Park: How a Rat Paradise Changed the Narrative of Addiction - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.14481 -Americans for Responsible Technology - https://www.americansforresponsibletech.org/tool-kit -Patreon Group - https://www.patreon.com/ehtrust -California Telecom 5G Steamline Bills - https://ehtrust.org/policy/resources-for-policy-makers/letters-testimony-health-effects-cell-phones-wireless-radiation/ -Study: Wireless Radiation Exposure for Children Should be Hundreds of Times Lower than Current Federal Limits - https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2021/07/study-wireless-radiation-exposure-children-should-be-hundreds For more on Dr. Davis you can follow her on Instagram @ehtrust, on Facebook @ehtrust, on Twitter @saferphones, and through her website https://ehtrust.org/. Get her book, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation at https://amzn.to/3gtmqIb.For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at (302) 200-5643 or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit.Sign up for Dhru's Try This Newsletter - https://dhrupurohit.com/newsletter.Interested in joining The Dhru Purohit Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/.This episode is brought to you by BLUblox and Paleovalley.As someone who is on the computer a lot, I realized all that screen time was negatively affecting how well I slept. I started learning about blue light and how it disrupts the body's natural melatonin production, so I decided to try blue-light blocking glasses throughout the day to see if they helped—and they totally did. I love the blue-light blocking glasses made by BLUblox. BLUblox glasses reduced my digital eye strain and dramatically improved my sleep, and I have more energy throughout the day. Right now BLUblox is offering my listeners 20% off, just go to blublox.com/dhru and use code DHRU at checkout. If you're on the hunt for better snacks for you and your family, you should definitely check out Paleovalley. Right now they're offering my listeners 15% off their entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/dhru to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, Gary North, Ron Paul, "North-Paul Strategy," 2008 Ron Paul Presidential campaign, fiat currency, financial collapse, Federal Reserve system, Minutemen, Jekyll Island, '90s militia movement, Mormonism, Mormon Constitutionalism, Cleon Skousen, Ezra Taft Benson, Edwin Vieira, 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Tea Party, patriot movement, Obama administration, Republican Party, home schooling, nullification, "continental congress," Chuck Baldwin, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy the Fed, Civilization Preservation Teams, Fourth Generation Warfare, "David vs Goliath" concept, Sagebrush Rebellion, Battle of Bunkerville, Bundy standoff, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ken Ivory, Utah, Koch Brothers, Council for National Policy, Mormonism in the patriot movement.    Below are James notes' for this discussion. This is not the actual transcript, just the notes James put together for the show.    Questions Now, a major influence on the ideology of the Oath Keepers in your estimation was Gary North. Can you give us a bit of an overview of this guy and the world view he held? Gary North is a major strategist of the Christian Reconstructionist religious movement founded by Rousas Rushdoony. North was Rushdoony's son-in-law. Rushdoony was a religious forerunner of Fourth Generation Warfare. Rushdoony borrowed the idea of presuppositionism, that is, our beliefs are based on our presuppositions, and argued that Americans had two opposing choices: follow the laws of God or follow the laws of man. Following the laws of God meant building the Kingdom here-and-now earth and putting religious zealots in charge. It is a philosophy of theonomy and dominionism. This is the entire idea of making the US once again a Christian nation and the foundation for Christian nationalism. Christian Reconstructionism is the guiding philosophy, the driving force, of the Christian Right—though most people in the movement may never have heard of Rushdoony. If Rushdoony is the Karl Marx of the movement, Gary North may be its Lenin. North was both a political strategist—how to implement this religious philosophy—and an economist—how to bring the US economic system under biblical law, which, funny enough, was the gold standard, railing against fiat money of the Federal Reserve System, and an extreme libertarianism. As a strategist, he believed like Paul Weyrich and William Lind, in a centralized strategy executed through decentralized networks, which is exactly as Weyrich did through his ad hoc Arlington Group and Lind described for the militia. Alright, get into North's perception of the Federal Reserve system. This is crucial to so much of this stuff, so it warrants an in-depth explanation. North's notations of a pending economic collapse sounded outlandish to many normal Americans for decades. But in recent years, they've become harder and harder to ignore. Even many leading mainstream economists have expressed concerns in recent years, correct? The standard right-wing theory of how they will come to power is based on the Weimar model: catastrophically high rates of inflation and economic collapse. They have been pushing this idea since at least the 1980s, if not before. So, they believe in the Weimar model. And they push for a return to the gold standard, the abolition of the Federal Reserve System, and a balanced federal budget. The difference between, for example, the economic collapse conspiracy theory pushed by Oath Keepers and its libertarian allies and mainstream liberal economists, is that the former believes the elites will engineer a collapse. Gary North, on the other hand, thinks the economic collapse will be God's judgement for running an unbiblical and fraudulent fiat money system. Mainstream, liberal economists with impeccable credentials believe this economic system is inherently unstable and, if it does suffer a catastrophic financial crash—because it keeps growing larger and larger, with more opaque financial instruments, and ever greater global connectivity—it could take the US government down with it. For the mainstream, it is the system's inherent instability that causes a crash rather than the evil intentions of financial elites. You can find progressive analysts thinking a future economic collapse is possible. Indeed, it is possible to argue that both right-wing populists and left-wing populists believe the economic system is rigged by the political-economic elites against much of the American people, even if both populist wings differ on the causes, consequences, and remedies. But, whatever the cause of a future economic collapse or catastrophic financial crisis, the right-wing expects it and is prepared to exploit it to push their dominionist political agenda. Now, how does the militia movement of the 1990s tie into these notions of economic collapse? And what were some of the characteristics and hotbeds of the movement back then? New right-wing movements cannot be isolated from the dominant ideas of the conservative movement and Christian movements. These new movements may express the issues more starkly or in more extreme rhetoric, but they are not independent of these larger ideological schools of thought. The innovation of the militia/patriot movement was the idea of the New World Order. But this is rehashed, rebranded John Birch Society rhetoric about “insiders.” When globalization is the buzzword, the insiders become globalists. But “insiders” and “globalists” are sanitized code words for Jews. The Christian Identity movement believed the country was headed towards an economic collapse and racial civil war. They and the “patriot/militia” sphere trained in survivalism and borrowed from the “prepper” movement. The religious foundations of many right-wing movements are apocalyptic—they believe they are in the End Times or the end of the world. They then look for secular signs of the economic collapse. When the militias began resurging in 2004, one of their main ideas was that foreign or domestic terrorism could lead to an economic collapse. Let's talk Mormon Constitutionalism for a moment. What is it, and how did it serve as a bridge between the Christian right and the later patriot movement? I want to address this question in a broader context. I want to leave your audience with the idea that there are at least three religious movements on the right that have their differences and yet they also have some commonalities. And unless you put an individual or a group in its proper religious context, you may make some wrong inferences. Mormon Constitutionalism, according to sociologist James Aho, who published a foundational book on “Idaho Christian Patriotism” in 1990, noted that these “Christian patriots” believe in the organic Constitution—the original 1787 articles and the Bill of Rights that were ratified in December 1791. That the Constitution and the United States of America is part of God's plan and America is God's chosen country. Hence Americans, especially white Americans, are God's chosen people, not the Jews. That Americans must choose to obey and follow God or obey and follow Satan. And it follows that the Great Conspiracy is the Battle of God vs Satan on earth through their respective human agents. And those beliefs are consistent with the views of the Christian Reconstructionists, the Christian Right, the John Birch Society, and Christian Identity. Even if these religious movements put different emphases on the villains, they do share a common narrative structure that allows them to understand each other and cooperate. The Christian Right and John Birch Society tone done their anti-Semitism. They do not go for overt promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But their promotion of “Cultural Marxism” as a conspiracy theory is rooted in the Protocols and Pat Robertson's book The New World Order borrowed from anti-Semitic sources. They can signal to the hard right that they are on-board with the anti-Semitism without alerting watchdog organizations that they are anti-Semitic. They may get a wrist slap from these watchdogs, but that amounts to a nominal reprimand while the main show continues. Now, let us take a simple concept to show how one simple concept can serve as a bridge between four movement. That concept is “county supremacy” or sometimes expressed as the supremacy of the constitutional sheriff or simply as a constitutional sheriff. Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson believed there were three levels of legitimate government in the United States: the county, state, and federal government. Both Benson's and fellow Mormon constitutionalist W. Cleon Skousen placed great emphasis on the significant role and importance of the county sheriff. Skousen, collaborated closely with the John Birch Society, which in the 1960s, had a “Support Your Local Sheriff” campaign. Skousen founded the Freemen Institute which later became the National Center for Constitutional Studies. The latter organization became, through Glenn Beck's boosterism, the leading source of constitutional theory for the Tea Party movement. The Christian Reconstructionists also placed a great emphasis on county or local officials. In 1983, Gary North published an edited book, The Theology of Christian Resistance, which included a chapter on the “lesser magistrates” which was derived from John Calvin. Indeed, North also included Calvin's brief writing on the topic. According to the Christian Reconstructionists, individuals should not resist tyranny on their own. Instead, resistance to tyranny was the responsibility of “lesser magistrates” or local officials. “Lesser magistrates” could be the governor, a board of county supervisors, or the county sheriff. Some analysts suggest that the reduction of the Christian Right's “lesser magistrates” to the exclusive focus on the county sheriff is the product of Christian Identity and its related Posse Comitatus movement. That would give the concept a racist and anti-Semitic lineage. But prophet Benson wrote that in the “‘lawless West'” settlers came together to “hire a sheriff” and at “this precise moment, government is born.” The settlers “delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves.” Thus Benson gives primacy to the county sheriff “who now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves—nothing more.” Moreover, Benson viewed “defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude” as the only “proper function of government.” Logically, then, the county sheriff is responsible for community defense against tyranny. Thus, when we hear about “constitutional sheriffs” or “county supremacy,” the person or organization expressing those views may or may not have derived those terms from the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus. If that person lives in the West, in an area dominated by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, his or her views may be from Mormon sources, or even John Birch Society sources. The fact that there is consistency across three religious movements—Church of the Latter-Day Saints, Christian Reconstructionism, and Christian Identity—does not mean that the expression of a common term makes the speaker a racist or anti-Semite, especially an overt racist or anti-Semite like the Christian Identity and Posse Comitatus were. Okay, let's talk some Edwin Vieira for a moment. He had a considerable influence on the post-9/11 militia movement. Can you break his views down for us? Edwin Vieira wrote many papers on how the militias were to be properly organized under the Constitution. But he viewed all the unorganized, disorganized, and current militias as constitutionally suspect. The Southern Poverty Law Center, however, called him the “architect of the militias” for the central role he played in the 2009 meeting on Jekyll Island that led to the revitalization of the patriot/militia movement. He may have been, though I could be wrong, the first who linked the need to have gold and silver currencies for individual states as an alternative to fiat money and constitutionally organized militias as necessary to have to prevail during a catastrophic financial crisis. He believed it necessary to complete both actions—gold and silver currencies and constitutionally-organized militias—before the crisis occurs. Gary North, on the other hand, argued against the Federal Reserve System and expressed his sort-of biblically based proposals on the post-collapse reconstruction period. In North's 1986 book, Honest Money, he called for the elimination of the Federal Reserve System and “all central banking.” Vieira's “Purse and Sword” view linked Federal Reserve System collapse and Department of Homeland Security suppression. An economic collapse would require the political-economic elites to use DHS to remain in power. That was a major innovation on the right-wing. Thus, all gun control measures were not only unconstitutional in his view but served the larger purpose of tilting the battlefield in favor of DHS over the militias. Vieira also wrote that there was a right way and wrong way for a state to secede from the United States or the Union. Because he believed so many people were doing things wrong, he may not have been the most popular strategist. But he believed that the national security state was going to suffer a financial collapse. He advocated NOT for the return to the gold standard, but for individual states to have gold and silver currencies that would allow them to secede before or during a severe financial crisis. He was an ardent supporter of Ron Paul. Popular or not, Vieira was the deepest thinker on these issues, and he did have a direct influence on the Oath Keepers who promoted him vigorously starting in 2011 and up to at least 2014 when Vieira featured in two Ron Paul and Oath Keepers-linked videos. Prior to that Oath Keepers' promotion, Vieira's ideas were the foundation for the 2009 “continental congress” organized by Ron Paul's collaborator Bob Schulz. Vieira's ideas started to gain traction around 2008, as the subprime mortgage crisis began to unfold. There were two right wing movements that emerged around then as well, the Tea Party and the patriot movement. Do you want to go over those briefly? Progressives always miss a chunk of history. Starting in late 2004 and roaring to life in early 2005 was a strong nativist movement centered on John Tanton's white nationalist anti-immigration movement and the surge in border militias that went to our southern and northern borders to “stop the invasion” of immigrants. This movement picked up significant support in small cities and suburbs. This movement sunk President Bush's immigration policy in 2005 and by 2009 immigration reform in the GOP is on life support. It is now pretty much dead. Then comes the financial crash of 2008. Bush and the GOP elite are already ideologically suspect. The Tea Party movement, effectively a subsidiary of the Christian Right, jettisons the culture war issues of abortion and gay rights, and concentrates the extreme libertarian message of the Christian Reconstructionists, the Christian Right, and the libertarian strains of Ron Paul and the Koch brothers. The Tea Party movement attacks the mainstream Republican Party and the new Obama administration on taxes, spending, and deficits. Their large, nation-wide protests attract white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the white nationalist anti-immigration movement who all begin to network and try to influence this new batch of conservative, Christian activists. Organizationally, there is a centralized strategy—through the Council for National Policy and its various front groups in Washington, D.C.—and decentralized execution in the states. The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and the Forbes-funded FreedomWorks give the Tea Party movement its organizational coherence. The John Birch Society and Skousen's National Center for Constitutional Studies begin the process of indoctrinating these new members on their interpretation of the Constitution. The Oath Keepers, as part of a resurgent militia/patriot movement also began to network and indoctrinate Tea Party members on the importance of resisting tyranny the proper way at the local level, as well helping spread conspiracy theories into this movement. Both the Tea Party movement and the patriot/militia movement are the product of more than a decade of right-wing organizing through annual conferences. For example, Ron Paul participated in the Freedom21 conferences held annually between 2000 and 2009. This coalition of 17 groups were fighting the United Nations' Agenda 21 program for sustainable economic development. In May 2009, Vieira was a founding member of the “Jekyll Island Project Freedom.” Eric Cunningham, an Oath Keeper, was also a founding participant. The SPLC suggested this meeting “appears to have played a key role in launching the current resurgence of militias and the larger anti-government ‘Patriot' movement.” The Jekyll Island conference led to the November 2009 “continental congress,” held in Illinois. The organizing group, Bob Schulz's We The People, had been collaborating with Oath Keepers since at least October 2009. Among the “articles of freedom” published by the so-called “continental congress,” “asks [that] Americans treat county sheriffs as the highest legitimate police authority,” according to an SPLC summary. In a long, round-about way, we have the Christian Reconstructionists with their doctrine of the “lesser magistrates” leading the resistance to tyranny, William Lind's advocacy of militia units as local defense forces (aka “neighborhood watches”), and Edwin Vieira's “militias of the several states” all coming together to put Oath Keepers and the militias under the control of the local constitutional sheriff to contest the legitimacy and territorial claims of the United States government during a period of secession or severe economic crisis. The “continental congress” signaled that the broad right-wing as early as 2009 was preparing for revolution. This is a full-blown Fourth Generation War, particularly when you add in the Disinformation and Propaganda Machine of the right-wing. When did these movements start embracing Vieira's ideas? It is hard to answer this question. Vieira participated in the Jekyll Island Project Freedom and his writings informed a good deal of the discussions at the “continental congress.” From 2011 to 2014, Oath Keepers made promotion of Edwin Vieira's voluminous writings, his own videos, and videos promoted by Oath Keepers a centerpiece of their outreach. Alright, let's get into Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign and the "North-Paul strategy." Before we get into the Oath Keepers proper, take us through some of the other militant groups that came out of the Paul campaign. There are four groups that come out of Ron Paul's presidential campaign. First, a homeschooling project in association with nullification advocate and secessionist proponent Thomas Woods. Second, the National Precinct Alliance to capture the Republican Party at the level of precinct captain. Third, were Richard Mack's Save Our Sheriff and The Sheriff Project that eventually became the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), which was aligned with Oath Keepers and is the vehicle for putting militias under the rubric of “sheriff's posses.” Fourth and last, was Oath Keepers itself. Now, there were some other movements, such as those dedicated to homeschooling and nullification, that came out of the Paul campaign. What were their relations to these more militant groups? Ron Paul is a bridge figure between the Christian Reconstructionists and Christian Right via Gary North and to the neo-Confederates and secessionists through Thomas Woods. The neo-Nazis saw him as a “friendly.” David Duke and Stormfront raised money for his campaign. The idea of nullification is widespread across the right-wing. It is not advocated just by the neo-Confederates. The Catholic journal First Things advocated nullification of Supreme Court decisions to provoke a constitutional crisis in 1996. What we are witnessing now is not the fringe with extremist ideas attacking the center. No, we are seeing fringe ideas promoted by the Republican Party and the Christian Right attacking the legitimacy of a secular constitution and an economically shaky neoliberal economic regime. Let's briefly touch on this coalition's efforts to remake the Republican Party and drive out the "RINOs." Political scientists have known that the Republican Party and the conservative movement have been organized around the principle of orthodoxy. Sam Tanenhaus in his 2010 book The Death of Conservatism argued that the “modern liberal worldview is premised on consensus. Movement conservatism emphasizes orthodoxy.” Tanenhaus further argued that the “primary dynamic of American politics…[is] a competition between the liberal idea of consensus and the conservative idea of orthodoxy.” Numerous political scientists since 2010 have published articles on the Republican Party rejecting the legitimacy of the federal government, the legitimacy of the Democratic Party, the use of constitutional hardball tactics, and the winking toleration of political violence. I am not talking about mass murder events. The GOP for decades has done nothing and said nothing about anti-abortion violence. They gave a winking tsk-tsk. It therefore stands to reason that a political party driven by orthodoxy, appealing to authoritarian Christians with an apocalyptic worldview, and viewing its political opponents as either “traitors” or “satanic agents” would not tolerate dissenters, heretics, and apostates. The Tea Party used secular economic issues. But right-wing movement activists have used immigration issues. They have used abortion and gay rights issues. They have used church-state separation issues. They have used the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public schools. For decades, the Republican Party has been transforming itself into a Leninist combat party or a fascist combat party—pick your favorite model. Alright, let's start getting into the Oath Keepers. So first off, let's go over Stewart Rhodes' background. Can you get into his military career and pre-2008 activities? He graduated from Airborne school in 1983. He completed the first phase of the Special Forces course. In 1985, he was medically discharged from the Army after having been injured making a night jump with the 9th Infantry Division as a long-range reconnaissance scout. After the Army, in May 1998 he graduated from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas with a BA in Political Science. He graduated from Yale Law School in June 2004. He held a variety of jobs in public and private law offices. From May 2007 to January 2008, he was “counsel for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians.” He lectured at Stanford and Yale. He does not seem to have stayed in any position for very long. In April 2007 he began writing for SWAT magazine. So, how did Rhodes become involved with the Ron Paul campaign? Stewart Rhodes was a staffer in Ron Paul's House office from June 1998 to February 1999. In November 2007, Rhodes made his first donation to Ron Paul's presidential campaign. Gary North had been a Ron Paul staffer in 1976—so that relationship goes back decades. Rhodes' most complete biography is taken from his personal website. He claimed that he of “Hispanic decent [sic]” and “part American-Indian.” He claimed that his “great grandfather…rode with Pancho Villa.” On his mother's side of his family were “migrant farm workers.” Now, the Oath Keepers made good use of pre-existing networks to build up their membership circa 2009. What were some of these networks and how did the Oath Keepers hitch their cart? The first thing to recognize about the movement conservatives and the Christian Right movement is that despite its belligerent rhetoric and policies, very few of the elite and rank-and-file in Washington, D.C. have ever served in the military. In fact, very few Americans have served in the military. For example, when veterans stand up and salute for the “Star Spangled Banner” at Blue Wahoos games in Pensacola, very few people stand up. So they are in awe of military people. Since the Oath Keepers came out of the Ron Paul presidential campaign, Stewart Rhodes had access to various movements supportive of Ron Paul. The fact that Oath Keepers came out of the semi-secret Paul-North strategy meant that Rhodes had access to the Christian Right and the Council for National Policy. I do not know how much access he had or how much support he was given, but while Rhodes may have been a political nobody in 2009, he was connected to a few political somebodies. Rhodes connected with Richard Mack which opens the militia/patriot movement. Gary North could connect him with the Christian Right. Ron Paul could connect him with the neo-Confederate movement. The Oath Keepers distinguished themselves in two ways. One, Rhodes claimed that Oath Keepers was not a militia. Two, Rhodes was recruiting active and retired military and law enforcement. Hidden in their scrambled ten orders they will not obey was the obvious, which Chris Matthews nailed Stewart Rhodes on: defending a state's right to secede from the United States. There are other movements that Oath Keepers could connect with. There was the anti-environmental movement or the Wise Use movement. They could connect with the Reagan-era county supremacy movement that existed among Western county commissioners. They could connect with Larry Pratt and Gun Owners of America and the absolutist gun rights movement. They could connect with the nascent Three Percent movement. They could connect with the white nationalist anti-immigration movement. When did the Oath Keepers first discover Vieira? The first promotion of Vieira on the Oath Keepers' blog came in January 2011. They promoted his 8-hour video The Purse and the Sword. The same article also promoted two other books that make up the trilogy of right-strategy: The County Sheriff by Richard Mack and Nullification by Thomas E. Woods. By trilogy of the strategy you can see how in an economic collapse, or, now in a highly contentious dispute over the validity of an election outcome (h/t Bruce Wilson), you have the idea of resistance by lesser magistrates, constitutional sheriffs imbued with a sense of county supremacy, and the sheriff's posse consisting of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, the militias of various flavors, and other right-wing street fighters. In May 2011, they promoted a Vieira article on the twin dangers of a financial collapse and the suppression of rebellion by the Department of Homeland Security. Vieira argued for the creation of an alternative currency based on gold and silver, not simply backed by gold and silver. They pushed Vieira's articles on the formation of properly constituted militias. They also promoted Vieira's view that all gun control laws constituted “treason.” What are the ties between the Oath Keepers and Ron Paul's "continental congress"? The most obvious physical tie between Oath Keepers and the “continental congress” is the fact that Eric Cunningham, represented Oath Keepers at the meeting. Cunningham and the other “Project Freedom Keepers” described by the group as “leaders of the growing freedom movement.” William Taylor Reil from Pennsylvania and David Helms from Arizona were Oath Keepers and delegates at the “continental congress.” Helms was on the national board of Oath Keepers. Reil was pushing the Sheriffs program in the civic actions to be approved. But the “continental congress” was put on by Bob Schulz and his We The People foundation. Schulz has long-standing ties to Ron Paul. Edwin Vieira's documents were part of the foundation of ideas considered and voted upon by the “continental congress.” The fact that two years later Oath Keepers is the most important proponent of Vieira's ideas I think ties the Oath Keepers tightly to the “continental congress.” How about the connections between the Oath Keepers and Pastor Chuck Baldwin? In 2008, Ron Paul endorsed Chuck Baldwin for president running on the “openly theocratic Constitution Party” ticket. In 2004 Baldwin was the Constitution Party's vice-presidential candidate. In the 1990s, Baldwin had been pastor at Pensacola's Crossroads Baptist Church, a radio talk show host, a militia proponent, an ardent anti-abortionist. Baldwin was also connected to the racist Council of Conservative Citizens, a prominent neo-Confederate group. In 2013, Baldwin became the national chaplain of Oath Keepers. But between 2007 and 2013, Baldwin was involved in the “Black Regiment” organization that recruited pastors to support an upcoming American revolution. In late 2013 Baldwin preached and asked if “secession time is coming again?” How did the Oath Keepers approach Occupy Wall Street? The Oath Keepers put on a false front regarding Occupy Wall Street. Initially, it endorsed the idea of the 99 percent against the 1 percent. But sociologist Spencer Sunshine, who studied the infiltration of Occupy by right-wing groups noted that Oath Keepers was among 20 right-wing groups, some like the LaRouche movement, white supremacist groups, as well as Ron Paul supporters and Alex Jones. That is not to say that Oath Keepers operated in concert with these white supremacist groups. What Oath Keepers did underhandedly was push the Ron Paul idea to “End The Fed.” But given that Rhodes and Paul and North are all extreme libertarians, they do not actually advocate for helping the American people on economic issues. It is hard to figure how cutting taxes on billionaires, cutting environmental and other regulations on corporations, and working to transfer hundreds of millions of acres of public lands to billionaires and energy/mining corporations helps the ordinary American. Okay, let's get into their concept of Civilization Preservation Teams. This was kind of their sneaky way of getting around being labeled a militia. So, what of them James? In October 2013, Oath Keepers launched their “Civilization Preservation Teams” based on the premise that the Great Collapse was coming. These CPT were based on a Special Forces “A-Team” or Detachment Alpha concept. Twelve Oath Keepers would link up with existing veteran's groups and organize a local resistance to an “oppressive regime” in addition to disaster preparation—the kind FEMA already does. The SPLC commented that it was “the first time the Oath Keepers… has moved in the direction of actually establishing any sort of militia or fighting force of its own.” US News & World Report reported that local Oath Keepers “preservation teams” will “‘draft and introduce militia bills, posse bills, and nullification bills, among other items to support liberty.'” In fact, that Oath Keepers statement is exactly what the semi-secret North-Paul strategy called for. In January 2008, Gary North explained the semi-secret part of the strategy. The homeschooling of children would prepare future Christian libertarian radicals. The National Precinct Alliance would produce local GOP organizations controlled by Christian libertarian radicals. The constitutional sheriffs would command and operate the local militias as part of his or her posse. And Oath Keepers teams would be the glue holding this local resistance together. North explained this openly: “When checks from Washington no longer buy much, there will be a monumental political transformation…. The primary goal is to get positioned locally with numerous officials to present a united front against the Federal government when it begins to falter.  When the Feds' money buys nothing, the hard corps needs to be influential locally to block all attempts of the Feds to impose controls over the local economy. This has been known historically as the doctrine of interposition.” Inevitably, the Oath Keepers follow Fourth Generation Warfare. They have an interesting concept in regards to conflict, which is dubbed David and Goliath. Can you get into that a bit and how it plays into the Civilization Preservation Teams? Let me start with Gary North explaining the Fourth Generation Warfare strategy that was embedded inside the semi-secret North-Paul strategy that informs Oath Keepers' overall strategy. Keep in mind that Gary North as early as 2004 was using William Lind's writings on Fourth Generation Warfare to explain Osama bin Laden's strategy. Middle East scholar Michael Ryan noted that Abu Ubayd al-Qurashi, a highly probable advisor to Osama bin Laden, “might have been influential on the topic of fourth-generation warfare” because his second article in Al-Ansar, the online military strategy journal of al Qaeda, was “Fourth Generation Warfare” which cited Lind and other 4GW strategists. North wrote in January 2008, before Oath Keepers was established: “The central issue is legitimacy. The supreme goal is to undermine the legitimacy enjoyed by the prevailing central state. This task is doable. We have the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve System working for us: a debt disaster to be funded by fiat money. When the dollar dies, political legitimacy dies with it. This is the central premise of my recommended strategy.” The David and Goliath example is easy to understand. We understand that David represents a weaker opponent, but a highly moral opponent. Goliath was large, a brute, and on the side of the enemy of the Israelites (and God). William Lind used this concept to explain why US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq a small footprint should have, use nimble infantry forces, use force sparingly, and not become a Goliath—thus depriving the insurgents of a strategic level moral victory. A Goliath is inherently illegitimate. What Oath Keepers wants to do, borrowing from Lind and North, is label the federal government as a tyrannical, illegitimate government like a Goliath. Alright, I want to start getting into the centerpiece of this discussion, the Battle of Bunkerville. This event has a very deep background. In fact, it's considered to be the third Sagebrush Rebellion. The second one is most relevant to our discussion. So, how about that, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the so-called "Cowboy Caucus" of the 1990s? Paul Weyrich founded The American Legislative Exchange Council. Weyrich is the same Christian Right leader who helped formed the Christian Right by the mid-1980s; he founded the Heritage Foundation; he co-founded the Council for National Policy; and he was instrumental in forming the Moral Majority. He was a key strategist. ALEC takes the needs of the Christian Right, the GOP, and Big Business and translates them into pieces of model legislation. These legislation models are then transmitted to state legislatures for passage and signing into law by the governor. In the 1980s, personnel formerly with the Reagan Administration and Coors money help launch the Second Sagebrush Rebellion. ALEC is involved. The Heartland Institute is involved. Both would remain highly active in the 1990s and to the current day. ALEC is helping attack environmental regulations and the Endangered Species Act, one the most prominent federal laws used by environmentalists to halt mining and energy drilling, as well as ranchers misusing federal lands. During the 1990s, the Christian Right formed the Wise Use movement to oppose the environmental movement. The militia/patriot movement's opposition to the New World Order aligns itself with the Wise Use movement, the county supremacy movement, and the Sagebrush Rebellion. The goal is to transfer about 750 million acres of public lands in the Western states to energy and mining corporations, and billionaire landowners. Alright, let's get into the Council for National Policy's role in the Second Sagebrush Rebellion. What were the moves made by ALEC and the CNP in the run up to the Third Sagebrush Rebellion? The Council for National Policy operates at the strategic level of the movement. It brings together operational planners, communication companies, and funders. Once they decide on a strategy or a campaign, that campaign is executed through other networks or movements. Recently, the CNP has begun forming an action group that attracts other action groups from different movements, like bringing together the Tea Party movement, the anti-immigration movement, Americans for Prosperity, and a major border militia group. The CNP's influence is indirect, though not always so. But the fact that the Koch brothers have a representative seat on the CNP's executive board demonstrates how influence works. In the 2010s, ALEC and the overall Sagebrush Rebellion are pushing for local control of public lands. The Koch brothers become more involved. The aim is also to rollback environmental regulations and defund the Environmental Protection Agency. The Bureau of Land Management is the central object of attack. It has one of the most difficult jobs in the federal government: managing and balancing the competing economic, political, and environmental interests trying to maximize their use of public lands while conforming to federal law and being subject to intense political pressure by conservative politicians operating at the county, state, and federal levels. And periodically subjected to violence by militias and lone wolf terrorists. The Council for National Policy is not directly involved. What the Christian Right had formed is another anti-environmental movement, the Cornwall Alliance, which sought to delegitimize the environmental movement as socialist and satanic. These operations are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. Let's talk some Ken Ivory for a moment, a onetime rising star in Utah's state legislature. This guy has a lot of interesting ties. Ken Ivory does not become a state representative in Utah until 2010. He is a Mormon. In 2011, he is pushing Edwin Vieira's gold and silver legislation in the Utah legislature. Utah became the first state to authorize gold and silver as a legal currency. That was a civic action recommended by the “continental congress.” From there he moves into the Koch-funded speaking circuit of Americans for Prosperity. He then becomes a proponent of transferring public lands to the states. By 2014, the national Republican Party is supporting the transfer of public lands to billionaires. Also in 2014, state-level representatives from several Western states are starting to coordinate their political demands and actions regarding such transfers and concocting false histories to back their claims. By 2014, Ken Ivory and Americans for Prosperity are making connections with Oath Keepers, the constitutional sheriffs head Richard Mack, and the opponents of the Agenda21 movement. He eventually becomes director of the Koch-funded Americans Land Council. That organization is instrumental in bringing together elected state officials to push for public land privatization or county control of public lands. Now, let's talk about the role of Mormonism in all of this for a moment. The bulk of the support for ALEC came from Western states, many with large Mormon populations. The first formal effort to seize federal lands came from Utah. The Oath Keepers featured a lot of support from the same states, and featured more than a few Mormons in their ranks. Cliven Bundy was a Mormon, as were many of his supporters at the standoff. Is this an element that's been overlooked? The Mormon background of these participants tends to be glossed over or not given very much weight. What missed by many is that the Church of the Latter-Day Saints is one of the largest landowners in the West. I am not saying that the LDS supports Cliven Bundy and various rebellions. They did not. But they certainly have an economic interest at stake or in play. If we can return to our previous segment about Posse Comitatus. There is no doubt that in the West over a period of decades you have the Silver Shirts; the Klan was active in the West; Posse Comitatus was active. So the white supremacists have influenced political discourse in the West. But the Mormons were also active. While the LDS was not officially aligned with the John Birch Society, leading members of the LDS were. And the Mormons had their own take on county supremacy, their own interpretation of the divine nature of the Constitution and America. Mormons see themselves as saving America at a time of dire need. So you cannot omit the religion or the religious ideas of participants from the analysis. As James Aho wrote in the 1990s, the Christian patriots came in different flavors and not all were racist anti-Semites. That is not to say they had great positions on race or Jews, but they were not overt racists like the Christian Identity movement which gets far more credit than it deserves. Alright, take us through the onset of the Battle of Bunkerville and how Rhodes became involved. The Battle of Bunkerville is really about the Bureau of Land Management trying to enforce three court orders that Cliven Bundy, a Mormon rancher using federal lands, requiring Bundy to pay his grazing fees to the BLM. At the outset I want to remind your listeners that in 2018 a federal judge dismissed all the charges against Cliven Bundy due to the DOJ withholding evidence and other misconduct. And in 2020, the 9th Court of Appeals dismissed the case with prejudice. The Department of Justice, the FBI, and the BLM made the Bundy clan heroes in the West and the right-wing in general. To enforce the last court order, the BLM decided it was going to seize Bundy's cattle. Bundy put out a call for help and hundreds of militia personnel and other supporters turned up at his ranch in Nevada. The Oath Keepers and Rhodes personally are part of a gaggle of unorganized militia that show up to protect Bundy and prevent “another Waco.” Security at the Bundy ranch is a three-ring circus. Bundy hired his own personal protection as the inner ring. The ad hoc militia is the second ring. They were more a danger to themselves than the federal law enforcement that showed up. The outer ring was the Oath Keepers who patrolled the perimeter. The Oath Keepers thought the ad hoc militia in the second ring were nutjobs. When Rhodes thinks you are crazy, you must be out there. Eventually there is an armed standoff. The BLM backs down. The cattle were released. And then starts the long legal fiasco of the DOJ, FBI, and BLM becoming the Keystone Kops of federal prosecutions. How about the Oath Keepers departure? That ruffled some feathers, right? Rhodes loves to portray the Oath Keepers as active, retired, and former military who are professionals. He touts that some members are Delta, Special Forces, Rangers, or Marines. Rhodes himself was only an E-4, an airborne qualified specialist. So during the Battle of Bunkerville, Rhodes claimed that the Obama administration is planning a drone strike on the entire Bundy Ranch compound. He claims there is a source inside the Pentagon. This source in the Pentagon comes via a source in Texas who called Rhodes. Rhodes took this “intel” to the head of security for Bundy. The Texas source and the security chief talked. Then Rhodes claimed that he had an Oath Keeper in Texas who had the same background as the Texas caller: ex-CIA, ex-Delta. The Texas Oath Keeper confirmed that the Texas caller had a verifiable background in Delta and the CIA, but the information could not be corroborated and could be disinformation. Rhodes then claimed that he had a second source in the Nevada governor's office who had previously given them “intel” that had been deemed to be true. And so with that inconclusive reporting that shades towards at best an unfounded rumor and at worst disinformation, Rhodes pulls out of the Battle of Bunkerville and becomes the laughingstock of the right-wing. His reputation is saved by Three Percent founder Mike Vanderboegh who concluded in his after-action review: “Their failure was not one of cowardice as has been alleged…. The failure was one of lack of hard-headed analysis and an equal lack of hard-hearted decision taking.” Looking back, what do you see as the long term legacy of the Battle of Bunkerville? I think it has only emboldened the right-wing. After Bunkerville, the Bundy clan then seized the Malheur nature preserve. The DOJ and FBI prosecution was again bungled, and Ammon Bundy walked out a hero. He is now leading his own militia against any sensible COVID policies to end this pandemic. Of course, the strategic position of the United States has changed since the Battle of Bunkerville. The West is being ravaged by massive forest fires, life-threatening heat domes, and growing droughts. The idea that climate change is not responsible is growing less tenuous by the day. There is much less urgency to transfer public lands to billionaires, but much sharper, fiercer battles out West are coming. People in the West are facing an existential crisis. I lived and traveled in the West. Water is the most precious resource. People kill for water. And water resources are shrinking. In 1982, the RJR Tobacco company commissioned a strategic report on the nine nations of the United States. Much of the West was called “The Empty Quarter.” Ironic that Big Business would call a large portion of the West the “Empty Quarter” while right-wing groups are fighting against the mythical Agenda21 they believe will empty the West of people. The strategic report warned that “Enormous conflict is anticipated over water supplies, electric power, pollution and physical destruction of national wilderness areas. Most of the U.S. portion of the Empty Quarter is controlled by the federal government.” It concluded that the major battle over water would pit the cities against the oil companies. In that regard I do not think much has changed. But there is one other legacy of Bunkerville relevant today. Bunkerville and Malheur demonstrated that the Department of Justice and the FBI are very capable of blowing slam dunk prosecutions through their misconduct and incompetence. The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys conspiracy cases related to the January 6 insurrection are going to be fascinating. This will be the probable end of Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers. Let us hope that the DOJ and FBI do their jobs properly.

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How close did we come to a Batman/Spider Man Crossover by Frank Miller & Todd McFarlane? With Joker & Kingpin! What role does Captain America play in Jack Kirby's DC creation, OMAC? Untold Tales of comics revealed! Plus Hot Topics provides a deep dive into the high-end collectible incentives driving today's comic book sales! What will they think of next?

American forces are leaving Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting the country's longest war. Following a hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Taliban now controls most of the country, including the capital of Kabul. The U.S.-backed government has fled, leaving many civilians desperate to find a way out. How did things get so bad so quickly? Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist. Kaplan is the author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American forces are leaving Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting the country's longest war. Following a hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Taliban now controls most of the country, including the capital of Kabul. The U.S.-backed government has fled, leaving many civilians desperate to find a way out. How did things get so bad so quickly? Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist. Kaplan is the author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American forces are leaving Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting the country's longest war. Following a hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Taliban now controls most of the country, including the capital of Kabul. The U.S.-backed government has fled, leaving many civilians desperate to find a way out. How did things get so bad so quickly? Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist. Kaplan is the author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist and the author of many books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War (Simon & Schuster, 2020), and Kristen Rouse, president & founder of the NYC Veterans Alliance and board member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, discuss the latest updates on the situation in Afghanistan.

Hear the all-new episode of the Secret History Of Hollywood episode - Cary: Part 2 - right now, by signing up at www.patreon.com/attaboysecret You'll also gain access to the Classic Movie Library, receive weekly Film Club invitations, exclusive Blueprints episodes, weekly review shows movie commentaries, and receive your very own secret private podcast feed, containing hundreds more hours of audio entertainment, including TEN MORE SERIES of The Secret History Of Hollywood!Sign up now at www.patreon.com/attaboysecret and don't forget to reach out to Adam using the Patreon messaging feature if you need any help, or just want to say hi!

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