September 15, 2019
EP. 309 — How The CIA Quest For Mind Control Drove The World Insane
Sidney Gottlieb is a name you do not know. If you did, you’d know about decades of CIA projects ruining countless minds with drugs and torture. You’d also know about the CIA’s secret San Francisco bordello, collaboration with Axis Powers war criminals, and borderline wacky fixation on turning drugs into brain-controlling weapons. On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with scholar, journalist and author Stephen Kinzer, diving into astonishing stories from Stephen’s new book ‘Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control’. Discover the most important and powerful government agent you’ve never heard of, and how he pioneered everything from global “black sites” to 1960s counterculture, all with zero oversight and a hell of a lot of LSD.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/how-cia-quest-mind-control-drove-world-insane/
Recent Episodes
January 26, 2020
Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/
January 19, 2020
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Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think
January 12, 2020
Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/