Strange As It Seems

Rick and Stephen go looking for Aleister Crowley in Hollywood and find him there in November 1915. It has been claimed that the "wickedest man in the world secretly ran Hollywood." But Dr. Spence presents a much stranger and grounded story: a broke magician hunting for a vehicle [a studio, a lodge, a mail-order religion, anyone!] to carry Thelema to the masses. What Crowley found within the raw company town of film studios and empty hills, was only a small group of loyalist and a majority of tagalongs that mostly came from the party, not the religion.
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Rick and Stephen go inside the case of Erik Jan Hanussen — the most famous mentalist in Weimar Berlin, a Jewish entertainer who passed as Danish nobility. He held séances for senior SA officers, loaned money to the men building the Third Reich, and predicted the Reichstag fire one night before it burned.  One month after the fire he seemingly foresaw, his bullet-ridden body was found in a field outside Berlin.
 
The "Hitler's Rasputin" version of the story is the easy one. The real case is stranger: a study in access, leverage, and what happens to useful people when they are no longer useful.
 
Previously referenced in Episode 19 — The Green Dragon Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39SLO2D8H3k&t=160s
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Rick and Stephen move beyond Epstein to explore a deeper and more elusive question: is there a hidden structure of power that transcends governments, ideologies? Is there a modern Illuminati? Or something more complex—what is the Occult Octopus?
 
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In this episode, Rick and Stephen turn their attention to Jeffrey Epstein and the deeper structures of influence surrounding his rise and fall. Was Epstein merely a criminal opportunist? A node in something larger? Or a symptom of structural forces that extend far beyond one man?
 
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In this special episode, Rick and Stephen explore Dr. Spence’s own teenage experiments with a Ouija board in the late 1960s. What began as harmless curiosity soon yielded a mixture of absurd messages, uncanny hits, and an alleged manifestation that continues to raise questions about what, if anything, was truly encountered.
 
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Rick and Stephen unravel the murky story of Soviet influence and Senator William E. Borah, tracing rumors of covert networks, document mills, political subversion, and an alleged conspiracy that placed one of the Gem State’s most celebrated politicians at the center of international intrigue.
 
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Rick and Stephen dive into the bizarre case of the “Gulf Breeze Six,” a group of U.S. Army intelligence analysts who deserted their post in Germany in 1990—traveling to Florida in search of divine instructions, secret knowledge, and perhaps the end of the world.
 
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Rick and Stephen investigate the life and career of Basil Zaharoff — the “Merchant of Death,” one of the most influential arms dealers of the early twentieth century and a man long rumored to be connected to the secretive Green Dragon Society.
 
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Rick and Stephen explore the murky origins of the so-called “Green Dragon Society,” a rumored occult order said to unite mystics, spies, and power brokers with a singular goal of world domination.
 
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It is a Halloween special, so naturally Rick and Stephen discuss Margaret Murry, Montague Summers, and Witchcraft!
 
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