The Paranoid Strain

Part 2, better late than never. This episode covers Lee Harvey Oswald's desperate attempt to make his life matter in some way by murdering a President in broad daylight. We cover Oswald's crime, attempted escape, capture, interrogation, and murder by another loon. Then, it's an overview of the Warren Commission, and the subsequent official investigations over the years. See you soon with part 3. H...

Lo, we have entered the time prophesied--the time between episode arcs...the time...of the ARCHIVE! Seriously, though, we're once again breaking down one of our old, big, long shows into bite-sized chunks, to give you something to listen to while you wait for us to kick into year 5 of the show. Those new episodes will be here before you know it. In the meantime, enjoy this first chunk, of one of o...

We reach the end, with the last stretch of Masons and all of the Illuminati. In case you've been waiting days for the new stuff, and want to jump right to it, it's the last approximately 45 minutes. Wrapup, full versions of each of the Paranoid Strain Orchestra's custom-made soundtrack songs for this series, and the delightful easter egg outtakes of Ms. Dana Unicorn. See you in seven weeks or so,...

Covering plenty of ground, with details on both the Rosicrucians and the Masons. Final episode tomorrow! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is probably my favorite part, since it has the whole story of the Priory of Sion and all of that nonsense. Includes most of episode 7 through most of 13. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The complete Secret Societies series. Collecting episodes 1-6, plus a little bit of 7. Three more parts coming over the next three days. Enjoy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're not gonna believe this--but this is actually the final episode of the secret societies series. I know . Which means that next week, as promised, and almost a year to the day from when we started this thing, we will be putting out the full episode in as few segments as we can, one per day, starting Monday of next week. What we think is that it's gonna be about four sections of three hours ea...

Off-schedule, but on-topic, we bring you the first of two Illuminati episodes to wrap up this epic series. This one's the story of the actual, real-life 18th-century group whose brief but influential existence led them, through a bizarre series of twists and turns, to become the "big bad" of all conspiracy thinking. The final boss, if you will. The Kaiser Soze hiding behind the Masons' Verbal Kint...

Comin' in HOT! We just got Dana Unicorn's lines a day or so ago, and yet here we are, presenting a complete, piping-fresh episode right out of the oven. We'd say it's like your grandmother used to make, but we think it's unlikely that your grandmother used to be a conspiracy theory podcaster. We're doing a one-off--a book report show covering one of the most legendary conspiracy novels ever writte...

Just a quick check-in. Dana is briefly out of commission (but 100% ok and on the mend), so we're stopping by briefly to let you know what to expect out of the next year or so of your favorite conspiracy theory podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to “Disc 2” of what, as far as we know, is the first ever two-and-a-half-hour podcast episode that is actually a full-on rock opera. Please note there’s a first “disc”--be sure you download that one, and listen to it first. Otherwise, it’s probably confusing. We’ve been working hard on this thing for months now, and are incredibly proud to share it with you. Thanks to Hellfingers, we have...

Welcome to “Disc 1” of what, as far as we know, is the first ever two-and-a-half-hour podcast episode that is actually a full-on rock opera. Please note there’s a second “disc”--be sure you download that one, too. We’ve been working hard on this thing for months now and are incredibly proud to share it with you. Thanks to Hellfingers, we have both front and back cover album art, as well as simulat...

Just a quick teaser for our release on 1/6. Can't wait for you to hear it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've reached the end of the Masons section, which means we're covering the sad story of the masons versus the various fascisms that dominated the pre WWII period. The tale is super-interesting, but isn't quite what the freemasons of today might want you to believe it is. We've still got the Illuminati to cover, but they won't be the next episode, nor the one after that. We're not spoiling the sur...

Here we have perhaps our favorite of this Masons series, covering everything from the supposed coverup of the masonic murder of Mozart (alliteration!) to a Catholic-sponsored expose of Masonic evil that includes a ghostly, piano-playing crocodile. Oh, and we also cover Jack the Ripper. It goes places. Special appearance by Lady Jesuit made possible by special arrangement with her long-suffering pa...

Here's where the Masons story runs smack into 'MURICA! From the founding fathers' relationship to the Craft, to the very strange interplay between Mormonism (the most American religion of faiths) and Freemasons, and finally to the sad, yet inspiring story of how Black Freemasons carved their own unique version of the brotherhood out in the face of implacable white opposition, it's amazing the degr...

As you can probably tell by our episode art, this here is the episode where we find out why the Freemasons caused the French Revolution. Or rather, we find out why, just after the revolution, a whole lot of people began to think that. It's the first big, implausible conspiracy that was attached to the masons, and upon which a broader, still more ridiculous conspiracy scaffold would eventually be b...

In this second part of our dive into the world's most successful secret society, we go deep into the early history of the Freemasons, as well as the pageantry behind their initiation ceremonies. Plus, we BLOW THE LID off of all the most super-secret secrets this secret society protects. Which turns out to be "not much". But that's an interesting story, too. Hope you enjoy it--see you in a couple o...

So we've finally reached a secret society that surely every listener to this show has already heard of, the Freemasons. To be totally honest here, we approached this topic more out of a sense of duty than out of genuine excitement. It seemed, when we were planning this series out, that the Masons were going to be one of those groups that, yes, has been around for a long time, and yes is nebulously...

We're fourteen goddamned episodes into this seemingly never-ending cavalcade of secret society information, and there are, at minimum, seven or eight episodes to go. We'd apologize for how long this series is getting, but we're not going to, because it continues to be just a goldmine of interesting information, and we won't rest until we've shared it all with you. Today, we wrap up the Rosicrucian...

More stories of the best darned secret society that didn't technically exist,! We return to the weird and wonderful world of the Rosicrucians this time, with stories of those who tried in vain to join the ephemeral brotherhood, and a number of folks who had to insist to their contemporaries that they weren't part of this group that nobody had ever seen in the first place. And a conspiracy theory i...

If you, like Mike Schmidt, believed that our final statement at the end of last episode meant we were done with Secret Societies...well, I guess you had understandable reasons for thinking that. But it's not true. That just ended our weird tale of the sources of Dan Brown's madness. Now, we're back to a more orthodox secret society tale, albeit one that once again embraces a group that isn't quite...

And here we are--about to hear the final revelations of the misleading nonsense, con jobs, and pranks that eventually led to the edifice of bullshit that is The Da Vinci Code. We pick up with the story of Pierre Plantard (that's his gallic profile in the show art), and his bizarre scheme to make himself look like a king, how that misfired when he met Henry Lincoln, and how the whole thing intersec...

Another fortnight, another episode about silly men and their silly book. Once again, we're discussing the work of Messrs. Lincoln, Baigent,and Leigh, who apparently never met a historical counterfactual they didn't immediately embrace. This time, we get neck-deep in the many, completely unrelated story threads that they rip out of context and stitch together into an unholy pantomime of historical...

Episode 9 of the Secret Societies series, but also the second episode in our sub-series about the strange origins of the conspiracy theories that ended up powering Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Now, though, we actually move past that book to turn our attention to the primary source for Brown's ludicrous historical and religious claims--an apparently non-fiction book published to significant hoopla in...