Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to the Journey Conversations with publisher Chris Milligan.
Speaker 1: I am your co host Adam otherwise known as aw Finnigan.
Speaker 1: Today we will be talking to Jay Dyer. Jay Dyer
Speaker 1: is an author, comedian, and TV presenter known for his
Speaker 1: analysis of Hollywood, geopolitics, and culture, and co writer for
Speaker 1: the Sam Hide Show. His graduate work focused on psychological
Speaker 1: warfare and film, and he is the author of two books,
Speaker 1: Esoteric Hollywood one and two, with a third coming out,
Speaker 1: and the co creator and co host of the television
Speaker 1: show Hollywood Decoded. He has been featured on numerous popular
Speaker 1: shows and podcasts and in debates with some of the
Speaker 1: world's top debaters, and a fill in host for some
Speaker 1: of the largest US radio shows. And now you're in.
Speaker 1: Now your host, Publisher Chris Milligan.
Speaker 2: Thank you Adam very very much, and thank you Jay
Speaker 2: for spending some time with us here. You know, these
Speaker 2: are interesting times, to say the least. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot going on, a lot to look at. And you know,
Speaker 2: I guess I didn't realize your dissertation was about psychological warfare,
Speaker 2: because you know, that's been one of a very main
Speaker 2: interests of mine ever since my daddy and a professor
Speaker 2: took me in a room and blew my mind, told
Speaker 2: me stuff that it took me twenty years to understand,
Speaker 2: but led me on an interesting path. So, Jake, psychological warfare.
Speaker 2: What got you interested in psychological warfare?
Speaker 3: I didn't know what that was until probably college. I
Speaker 3: remember I'd watched a lot of movies that I liked
Speaker 3: growing up in high school. And I remember, you know,
Speaker 3: enjoying Oliver Stone films and you know, stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and conspiracy movies like Vic Donner's Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson.
Speaker 3: And I remember when I got to college, I took
Speaker 3: some classes on the connection between Hollywood and the history
Speaker 3: of Hollywood, some film classes as well as straight up
Speaker 3: history classes, and I remember that coming up in some
Speaker 3: of the classes. And I remember somehow I got a
Speaker 3: hold of one of the Trying Day books back when
Speaker 3: I was an undergrad, and I remember reading Sutton's You
Speaker 3: published Sutton Skull and Bones book, and I remember you
Speaker 3: published the Lavenda trilogy, and I got a hold of
Speaker 3: that trilogy. Somebody bought me that, I think for my birthday,
Speaker 3: and I read that whole trilogy and I thought, this
Speaker 3: is this is crazy, this is wild. So that got
Speaker 3: me interested in psychological warfare. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: I was taking these you know, college classes, and I
Speaker 3: had a professor who was an old old school leftist.
Speaker 3: Uh he was a history professor, and he told he
Speaker 3: taught us a lot about uh CIA operations, Latin South America,
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. So that was kind of my
Speaker 3: introduction was undergrad college. I didn't I still you know,
Speaker 3: I don't consider myself an expert, but that got me
Speaker 3: interested in just this whole domain of the overlap of
Speaker 3: what the military and what intelligence agencies and what corporations
Speaker 3: are interested in. And then you've got this other realm
Speaker 3: over here of you know, movies and Hollywood and even
Speaker 3: fiction writers, British intelligence fiction writers they did the same
Speaker 3: stuff where they would you know, put their some of
Speaker 3: the some of the elements of their operations into the
Speaker 3: novels that they wrote. So that was what got me interested,
Speaker 3: was just a combination of books and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: some of your materials that you had published back in
Speaker 3: the day, and college classes and movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean psychological warfare comes from the
Speaker 2: German term meaning you know warld world view warfare in
Speaker 2: other words, you want to get people in, you know,
Speaker 2: invested into your worldview and different things. And we've had this,
Speaker 2: you know, geopolitical things have been going on well before
Speaker 2: we were all born, you know, and now it's very
Speaker 2: interesting too. You know. I had the the executive producer
Speaker 2: of twenty four, you know, call me up one day
Speaker 2: and say, hey, you know, I think that our you know,
Speaker 2: this series is being used to propagandize the American people.
Speaker 2: I mean, those were his words to me. And and he,
Speaker 2: you know, he had felt that, and so he went
Speaker 2: out on the internet and started looking around and he
Speaker 2: found a bunch of our books and and so you know,
Speaker 2: he tried to make him into movies and he was stopped. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll tell just a little bit of the story.
Speaker 2: I mean he called me up one time and you know,
Speaker 2: he said he was being chased around town by a
Speaker 2: white suv and he couldn't he couldn't shake it, and
Speaker 2: he was this guy was driving a Ferrari. Another time,
Speaker 2: he calls me up and says, you know, we've got
Speaker 2: to redo all of our banking things because most of
Speaker 2: their money was coming from a Mexican national and so
Speaker 2: because of some laws. They had to really change it,
Speaker 2: but they kept on working on these books. Michael Rupert
Speaker 2: walked into their office and said, you can't make these movies.
Speaker 2: And we hadn't even talked about it, okay, and says,
Speaker 2: you got to make a movie about me? Okay, Rupert.
Speaker 2: And then and then he finally calls me up one
Speaker 2: day and says, you know, well, another time he called
Speaker 2: me up and says, they're trying to get me fired.
Speaker 2: They're saying that, you know, I'm out on sunset that
Speaker 2: selling OxyContin at night. My boss knows that's not true.
Speaker 2: So they kept on working on him. Finally he calls
Speaker 2: me up and says, well, I've got to go on
Speaker 2: a sabbatical for two weeks. And I say, okay, what's
Speaker 2: going on? He says, somebody met his wife on a
Speaker 2: street corner and said, you know, if you don't stop
Speaker 2: what you're doing, we're going to kill your husband. And
Speaker 2: then you what are your children going to do? Okay?
Speaker 2: And I said okay. And he went on a sabbatical
Speaker 2: and called me back up in about two weeks and said, well,
Speaker 2: I guess we're just making Will Ferrell movies. So obviously
Speaker 2: there are some people that have some vested interest on
Speaker 2: what comes out from Hollywood and what comes out from Hollywood, Jay.
Speaker 3: A lot of propaganda. I think you summed it up
Speaker 3: right there. I didn't, of course, you know, most of
Speaker 3: us didn't know this growing up. I know you had
Speaker 3: an oss you know, father or is there father or grandfather,
Speaker 3: I don't remember what it was.
Speaker 2: It was father. He was C O I O S
Speaker 2: S G C I A.
Speaker 3: Did you You probably knew a lot of this before
Speaker 3: everybody else.
Speaker 2: I would assume, well, I had an inkling. I mean,
Speaker 2: he told me about his intelligence career and and he
Speaker 2: basically he gave me some information that that led me
Speaker 2: to look into the subject I call C I A drugs,
Speaker 2: which then led you to all kinds of different places
Speaker 2: because those people were involved in a lot of the corruption.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had a similar situation. I know this is
Speaker 3: not on the topic of the question, but my uncle
Speaker 3: had a really interesting career. He was an Air Force
Speaker 3: intelligence person. And my family didn't tell me this until
Speaker 3: way later on, and they told me all this stuff
Speaker 3: he was involved in, which I had an inkling of
Speaker 3: that too, but they didn't tell me until I was
Speaker 3: much older about I think I was about age thirty
Speaker 3: five before they told me all that, but there was
Speaker 3: some you know, similar things there with I don't know
Speaker 3: about drugs, but there was definitely some operations that were
Speaker 3: being done that he did in the Cold War out
Speaker 3: of Turkey in regard to the Soviets. But regardless, when
Speaker 3: you go back into the forties and the fifties, one
Speaker 3: thing I learned more recently that I think is really
Speaker 3: fascinating is a lot of these A list people were
Speaker 3: recruited into the OSS, especially you know, famous Hollywood people
Speaker 3: working in different capacities and doing different things with the OSS,
Speaker 3: and you then obviously into the CIA as well. So
Speaker 3: when I learned that, that kind of shocked me. I
Speaker 3: was kind of surprised by that. And that's maybe just
Speaker 3: one element of the angle of the propaganda. You know,
Speaker 3: you've got people within Hollywood spying on each other during
Speaker 3: World War Two and then into the Cold War, and
Speaker 3: then you've got people at the production level working with
Speaker 3: people from the OSS and CIA as well.
Speaker 4: The OSS help.
Speaker 3: For example, John Ford, if I recall, win some of
Speaker 3: his awards, he would not have won those awards if
Speaker 3: he had not had such such help from the OSS.
Speaker 3: So that's an element of excuse me, a propaganda that
Speaker 3: was going on there. I believe it was Burnet's that
Speaker 3: said Hollywood is the greatest engine of propaganda the world's
Speaker 3: ever seen. And then of course you've got a lot
Speaker 3: of influence from foreign countries. We could imagine what foreign
Speaker 3: countries Israel, in other countries as we get into the
Speaker 3: Cold War, they have a lot of influence in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: especially when it comes to productions about the Cold War.
Speaker 3: I'm not pro Communist or Soviet, but I definitely think
Speaker 3: there was exaggeration going on. So, you know, World War Two,
Speaker 3: you've got Corda Circle, You've got Hitchcock, You've got those
Speaker 3: guys putting out propaganda, You've got Cold War, You've got
Speaker 3: you know, CIA putting out consulting on movies, recruiting actors.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no end to the propaganda. And corporations
Speaker 3: as well. The corporations of course, have a lot of
Speaker 3: influence and interest as we get closer to you know,
Speaker 3: where we are now, more so maybe than governments, even
Speaker 3: determining what themes films will will have, what narratives, what
Speaker 3: product placement. You know, think of something like the CIA
Speaker 3: consulting on Ben Affleck's Argo, which you know won the award,
Speaker 3: the Academy Award that year, and that was of course
Speaker 3: based on this CIA operation to have a fake movie
Speaker 3: being filmed during the nineteen to what is seventy nine
Speaker 3: hostage crisis in Iran. So these are just windows into
Speaker 3: you know, the propaganda at different levels that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Right. So now it's it called Lookout that studio that
Speaker 2: was up at the top of the canyon, and you know,
Speaker 2: that was an obvious facility that they were using to
Speaker 2: produce and then also to uh, you know, integrate the
Speaker 2: Hollywood people in there. And I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 2: very interesting that you know, Ronald Reagan all the like
Speaker 2: the training films for for World War two and whatnot,
Speaker 2: he was basically the narrator for those, okay, which gave
Speaker 2: his voice, you know, into a lot of people, so
Speaker 2: they would trust him in blat of blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And then you had, you know, for the CIA films,
Speaker 2: who was the narrator for that but Moses Heston you
Speaker 2: know and whatnot. So what do you know about that
Speaker 2: facility and what is it doing today?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Of course, just from an artistic perspective I enjoy.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever watched a Ronald Reagan movie,
Speaker 3: but I definitely enjoyed a lot of those Trump Hess
Speaker 3: movies growing up up. But I wouldn't be surprised, you know.
Speaker 3: I think he was friends with doctor Jillian West, which
Speaker 3: is an odd connection, but I think, you know, Charlton
Speaker 3: Hesson probably had some of those ties, shall we say,
Speaker 3: as do many A listers still to this day. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you're talking about Lookout Mountain Studios, which was if you
Speaker 3: drive up Wonderland Avenue up into like if you're coming
Speaker 3: from LA and you drive up into Tepanga Canyon, you
Speaker 3: can go up up that route and you get up
Speaker 3: to the very top. We've gone up there many times
Speaker 3: since I wrote the first book, and you can still
Speaker 3: see some of the elements of the old Air Force
Speaker 3: stuff that the different owners I think has passed from
Speaker 3: various Hollywood celebrities have owned this facility now, the last
Speaker 3: being Jared Ledo. There's still some of the old Air
Speaker 3: Force memorabilia there that you can see over his fence.
Speaker 3: I wasn't stalking him, right, but you can peek over
Speaker 3: the fence. You can peek over the fence and see
Speaker 3: like some of the old Air Force stuff there. But yeah,
Speaker 3: this was the most cutting edge studio of its time
Speaker 3: back in fifties and sixties, and all of these Hollywood
Speaker 3: executives had access to it. Walt Disney, starlet's like Merilyn
Speaker 3: Monroe could go there. We don't even know all the
Speaker 3: films that they did produce there, what always produced there,
Speaker 3: but some of the things that have come out you
Speaker 3: can still find on YouTube that we have some of
Speaker 3: the propaganda movies that Jimmy Stewart did. He boy did
Speaker 3: all of the voiceovers he's in a lot of the
Speaker 3: those were pro FBI type films. He actually started in
Speaker 3: a few of those FBI propaganda films back in the day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, that's that's a great one to
Speaker 3: demonstrate just this key tie in between corporations and Hollywood,
Speaker 3: the studio system, the deep state government system, and you
Speaker 3: know what they're churning out, and you know, you've got
Speaker 3: basically the top people at the time driving up here
Speaker 3: to that and then driving back to you know, the
Speaker 3: other studios. So it's a big complex that's all intertwined.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the key ways to prove that
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, you you do a lot of uh
Speaker 2: explot well, I don't know about expose a's, but expositions
Speaker 2: I would say about about different movies in your in
Speaker 2: your books. And you know one thing that you know,
Speaker 2: just I like movies, you know, I thought they were great.
Speaker 2: You know, they'd be on TV. You know, you'd watch
Speaker 2: them and different things. And and one thing that I
Speaker 2: started thinking about, you know, because when you look at
Speaker 2: Hollywood and la I mean, there's always been a lot
Speaker 2: of cults and interesting people around there. And you know,
Speaker 2: when you've got when you're making a movie and you're
Speaker 2: making a movie about some of these occult and you know,
Speaker 2: devil type themes, it seems to me that, you know,
Speaker 2: the whole movie set becomes to a certain extent a
Speaker 2: place to have rituals and to do quote unquote workings
Speaker 2: when they're doing these movies. Do you have any thoughts
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: I think I think it might have been Sensor Force's
Speaker 3: trilogy where I first heard that idea, or maybe it
Speaker 3: was some other article somebody had written a long time
Speaker 3: ago to remember, But when you look into the way
Speaker 3: that people who do ritual magic, who are interested in
Speaker 3: that subject matter when they see their actions or even
Speaker 3: their artwork. Even something like a film could be seen
Speaker 3: as a ritual action. So you're putting your will and
Speaker 3: your intention out there into the world through this product
Speaker 3: to try to get your worldview accepted. You mentioned, you know,
Speaker 3: velten schungskriga worldview warfare earlier. That's kind of what is
Speaker 3: going on from a propaganda perspective with movies. But also
Speaker 3: you could be trying to put out your worldview in
Speaker 3: a more symbolic occult way like you're talking about. And
Speaker 3: so the first chapter or section of the third book,
Speaker 3: I call that Hollywood is Megas or magician, because there's
Speaker 3: a great there's a classic novel that's in the canon
Speaker 3: and Western Canadon literature called The Megas by John Fowls,
Speaker 3: and he's famous because he wrote a really well known.
Speaker 4: Serial killer story.
Speaker 3: But The Vegas is interesting because you have this character
Speaker 3: who's kind of an Aristotle of Nassas billionaire guy who
Speaker 3: kind of can engineer everything in regard to this one
Speaker 3: guy's life that he's kind of messing with. So he's
Speaker 3: this wealthy guy who has nothing else to do other
Speaker 3: than to kind of mess with young idiotic guys and
Speaker 3: bring them to your billionaire island and sort of tweak
Speaker 3: their worldview and see what you can get them to
Speaker 3: believe and not believe. And so I said, you know
Speaker 3: that character. I think his name is a Conchiese. He's
Speaker 3: kind of an image of the way Hollywood works. You,
Speaker 3: Hollywood's is the same kind of a thing, where it's
Speaker 3: kind of giving us this world you throughout all these stories,
Speaker 3: a lot of propaganda, a lot of bad messages, some
Speaker 3: good messages here and there slipped through, but probably fewer
Speaker 3: good than bad. But yeah, I think you also have directors,
Speaker 3: to be more precise, who are explicitly into ritual magic,
Speaker 3: who you have the idea that they're actually participating in
Speaker 3: ritual workings. Somebody like Darren Aronofsky, who pretty clearly is
Speaker 3: into Kabala. Kubrick, you could debate that. I've had some
Speaker 3: discussions with Vivian and his daughter, and I keep trying
Speaker 3: to get her to come to an interview, but she's
Speaker 3: real hesitant to do that. But I think that clearly
Speaker 3: Kubrick included some of these themes. How serious he took
Speaker 3: any of that is up for debate. But other directors
Speaker 3: are more well known. I think David Lynch definitely included
Speaker 3: Tibetan Buddhist themes. You know, he included transital meditation themes.
Speaker 3: So in those examples, it's clear. More recently, Robert Eggers
Speaker 3: that directed The Witch and those fraw two, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think he's pretty clearly a Crollian of some kind.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's what's going on at multiple levels once again.
Speaker 1: Right, I love that whole like vampire thing that became
Speaker 1: really big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all occult things, aren't you know. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a thing like a gun. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not you know, evil or bad. It's what it's what
Speaker 2: people do with it because it is it is a
Speaker 2: reality of what uh you know, happens in our in
Speaker 2: our life. And I'd like to just go to a
Speaker 2: different place here just for a little bit. I'd like
Speaker 2: to talk about advertisements that we see on TV. Okay,
Speaker 2: because I think that's one of the main ways that
Speaker 2: they're radicalizing people and getting people into camps, and one
Speaker 2: of the main ways that they're messing with us is
Speaker 2: advertisements on TV. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Speaker 3: You know, it's a good one that I didn't really cover.
Speaker 3: You know, I focused on sort of major films, TV
Speaker 3: shows and some independent films and B movies. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's actually a good overlooked point at music
Speaker 3: industry too, music videos, which are not as popular as
Speaker 3: it used to be. But you know, it's funny. I
Speaker 3: got rid of quote TV probably fifteen to twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: I just got rid of it, and so I don't
Speaker 3: see a whole lot of TV. Yeah, like when I
Speaker 3: go over to somebody's house or if we're eating at
Speaker 3: a restaurant, Well, that's really annoys me too. You can't
Speaker 3: go to a restaurant now without TVs everywhere, which is
Speaker 3: that to me is dystopian. We should be able to
Speaker 3: have a meal without having to watch you know, sports
Speaker 3: and ads. So I do see ads here and there.
Speaker 3: And one thing I noticed, at least in the last
Speaker 3: ten years is pharmaceutical ads everywhere. I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: like you're just you can't even turn the channel without
Speaker 3: you seeing just in you know, constant pharmaceutical, which to
Speaker 3: me is very brave, New world, very dystopian. The idea
Speaker 3: that there's a pill for every single, you know, thing
Speaker 3: going on in your life. I think we're meant to
Speaker 3: have depression at times in life. We're meant to have
Speaker 3: bad experiences that you know, helps balance out with the
Speaker 3: good experiences. So the idea that you should medicate yourself
Speaker 3: at all times to have no experiences is kind of
Speaker 3: you know, uh, kind of crazy to me. But you know,
Speaker 3: advertisements also have a lot of odd themes of men
Speaker 3: are usually in this sort of women role, or they're subservient,
Speaker 3: the women are always bossing the men around. The men
Speaker 3: are all idiots, they're all Homer Simpson, they're all you know,
Speaker 3: Albundi type characters who are just total idiots. Advertisements probably well,
Speaker 3: I mean they just kind of further the whole idea
Speaker 3: of just endless, infinite, you know, consumption and consumerism. So
Speaker 3: I think you're absolutely right that advertisements are overlooked and
Speaker 3: ads to.
Speaker 4: A lot of the directors who.
Speaker 3: Became kind of prominent directors, many of them began with advertisements.
Speaker 3: David Fincher, I think he went from ads and music
Speaker 3: videos to being you know, one of the top sort
Speaker 3: of directors that it's pretty nihilistic. Most of his movies
Speaker 3: are pretty dark and nihilistic. So yeah, that's a good point, Chris,
Speaker 3: I should have I should have.
Speaker 1: And then and then they also got into things like
Speaker 1: subliminal messaging. I remember that by Jim Keith. What was
Speaker 1: that book Jim Keith put that book out about mind
Speaker 1: control I have over here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but they did mass control, mask control that.
Speaker 2: Right, right, yeah, right, and it just you know, it's
Speaker 2: part of the whole toxic soup. Okay. But then movies,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean it's like you know, the the
Speaker 2: quote unquote powers that be have you know, tried to
Speaker 2: stop me many times and try to put us out
Speaker 2: of business because you know, they don't like us publishing books.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's hard to stop stubborn people sometimes.
Speaker 2: And then also but when it gets to movies, they
Speaker 2: move in with the big guns and stop it because
Speaker 2: everybody goes to the movies. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 2: have kids and we try and raise them and whatnot,
Speaker 2: but you know, uh, they listen to the movies more
Speaker 2: than they listen to the parents most of the times.
Speaker 2: And then you know, you'll see how the movies take
Speaker 2: a life of their own in the society where people
Speaker 2: are relating what's going on in the world to the movies,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and so they're making you know.
Speaker 2: So it's it's really quite a toxic soup. So Adam,
Speaker 2: you know what what what are your thoughts and all
Speaker 2: of this and comments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I I'm like him. I got rid
Speaker 1: of my TV a while back, and I started I
Speaker 1: just read all the time, like I love books, and
Speaker 1: you know, talking to other people, it's just it became
Speaker 1: apparent to me people are so used to having the
Speaker 1: TV and stuff. It's that a lot of people can
Speaker 1: hardly even read a page. They're just like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't you know. It's like we've been really just kind
Speaker 1: of dumbed down and almost like a trance. The TV
Speaker 1: kind of puts them into a trance. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: just said, it's it's it's something else. I mean I
Speaker 1: like movies though, you know, I do watch movies and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just I have a TV here, but it's never on,
Speaker 1: like I've never I.
Speaker 4: Barely even use it.
Speaker 1: I'm always reading and I keep a long list of
Speaker 1: every book I read. I keep and that's my way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some people just.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, my daddy, my daddy told me, he said,
Speaker 2: you know, read it all, so you know, I look
Speaker 2: at it now. I mean, I'll watch the news from
Speaker 2: the from the different uh you know, outlets to see
Speaker 2: what they're saying, because you know, he told me, you
Speaker 2: learn so much from missing disinformation about where they're trying
Speaker 2: to send you and why, and then what they're not
Speaker 2: telling you too. You know, So Jefferson had he said,
Speaker 2: you know, he did a little bit more flowery, but basically,
Speaker 2: you know, you have to do your homework because if
Speaker 2: you don't do your homework, good chance you're going to
Speaker 2: be played, you know, and and and whatnot. So, uh, now, Jay,
Speaker 2: you came from a philosophy background to you know, you
Speaker 2: studied a lot of philosophy in college. What what can
Speaker 2: we learn from philosophy? Why should we care about philosophy?
Speaker 2: What does it mean to today's world?
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 3: So the key issue of philosophy is what is the
Speaker 3: meaning of life?
Speaker 4: What is the examined life? Right?
Speaker 3: So, if you go back to Socrates and Plato, Socrates
Speaker 3: made a lot of people mad in Athens because he
Speaker 3: went around asking questions. And the classic dialogue is Plato's Apology,
Speaker 3: which is about this story of Socrates walking around and
Speaker 3: asking everybody, you know, what's the meaning of this? Why
Speaker 3: are you doing this? What's the meaning of life? And
Speaker 3: he went to all the different people in Athens, including
Speaker 3: politicians and craftsmen and tradesmen, and everybody has the same
Speaker 3: answer that whatever they're interested in or whatever they do
Speaker 3: is the answer to life, and that's the meaning of everything.
Speaker 3: So the politician, of course, says, well, life is politics,
Speaker 3: and then the you know, the tradesmen says, well, life
Speaker 3: is about you know, your craft and your your trade.
Speaker 3: And eventually it goes to the oracle Delphi and says,
Speaker 3: you know, who's the wisest man? And the oracle says
Speaker 3: you are, and he says, well, why am I the
Speaker 3: wisest man? I don't know anything. And the point was that, well,
Speaker 3: you're the wisest man because you ask the questions why.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that philosophy does, it's sort
Speaker 3: of its essence, is getting us to ask why is
Speaker 3: this happening?
Speaker 4: What is this? What's the meaning of life? The examined life.
Speaker 3: As Socrates says, as Plato says, is the only life
Speaker 3: worth living. So that's the basics. And then as you
Speaker 3: get into more advanced modern types of philosophy, you get
Speaker 3: the idea of critical thinking and logic and analysis which
Speaker 3: points out things that don't make sense, contradictions. So, although
Speaker 3: we might not think that philosophy has much to do
Speaker 3: with advertising or propaganda, if we recognize fallacious argument's bad argument,
Speaker 3: and they help us to identify the propaganda. For example,
Speaker 3: go back to weapons of mass destruction, the story, for example,
Speaker 3: of that propaganda firm that Bush Senior was involved in
Speaker 3: that had the Iraqi ambassador daughter go up there and
Speaker 3: say that he's doing.
Speaker 2: The babies out of the incubators.
Speaker 3: So we got to go to war because supposedly there's
Speaker 3: weapons of mass destruction, balls of gas that Saddam has
Speaker 3: and he's throwing babies out of incubators. Well, on the
Speaker 3: surface of it, it's kind of absurd. Why would Saddam
Speaker 3: walk through and just throw babies out of incuba? It
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. And then of course, if we
Speaker 3: knew a little bit of the history, we'd know that, well,
Speaker 3: Saddam has a history of being trained by the CIA,
Speaker 3: and he's pictured in Buddies with Rumsfeld the Pentagon, So
Speaker 3: it's like we would know that there's something about that
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense, and it's it's an absurd story
Speaker 3: on its face. And then we would have we'd be
Speaker 3: able to notice contradictions in the narrative, well, why would
Speaker 3: we be friends with Saddam or why would we be
Speaker 3: friends with the Mujahadin? And then suddenly there are enemies
Speaker 3: the next day, So something doesn't make sense there, something
Speaker 3: else is going on. And philosophy just helps you kind
Speaker 3: of at a really basic level, use critical thinking to
Speaker 3: not be duped by advertising tricks or propaganda which plays
Speaker 3: on your emotions. Right, you hear this story of babies are.
Speaker 4: Thrown out of.
Speaker 3: We Got to Go after saying they did the same
Speaker 3: thing with a sad right Asad is gassing his own people,
Speaker 3: and the BBC puts out this story and later, oh,
Speaker 3: it turns out that BBC story wasn't true. And so
Speaker 3: you know, wartime propaganda always utilizes these really hyped up
Speaker 3: emotional sensational with stories, and philosophy could help recognize how
Speaker 3: that doesn't make sense. And movies push the propaganda. They
Speaker 3: pushed the pull on your heartstrings through the stories, and
Speaker 3: you identify the bad guys through these through these movies
Speaker 3: that unknowingly propagandizes you against you know, X, Y Z enemy.
Speaker 5: I would say that philosophy kind of also helps you
Speaker 5: put yourself in your own story, kind of like we've
Speaker 5: been talking about with those round tables about putting yourself
Speaker 5: in your own story, writing your own story for your life.
Speaker 5: And philosophy helps, I guess, helps you gravitate to where
Speaker 5: you kind of need to be at.
Speaker 2: Right, and so it in conspiracy literature, h you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talk about Hegel and and you
Speaker 2: know they think Hegel is a bad guy, and you
Speaker 2: know Hegel was really just you know, trying to explain things,
Speaker 2: and can you can you talk about Hegel a little
Speaker 2: bit so people can hopefully understand a little bit more
Speaker 2: rather than just going for a quick bullet point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think with most with most philosophers, there's good and
Speaker 3: bad pros and con you know, with Plato, he could
Speaker 3: be used for the idea of the individual coming to
Speaker 3: enlightenment through rational you know, process and thinking and dialectics.
Speaker 3: And it could also be turned into the Plato's Republic
Speaker 3: becoming some kind of proto you know, communists, super state.
Speaker 3: You know, philosophers can be used in different ways. Hegel
Speaker 3: is very dense, it's very abstract, it's very idealistic, not
Speaker 3: in the sense of an idealistic, revolutionary, but idealistic in
Speaker 3: the sense of everything that exists is mind, geist or
Speaker 3: idea or spirit, as he says, So he's somewhat similar
Speaker 3: to Plato. But one of the things that he wanted
Speaker 3: to do was reconcile the idea of change or process
Speaker 3: versus everything being in a pure, static, immobile sense that
Speaker 3: Plato thought about the real world or the forms. So
Speaker 3: for Plato, this is a changing, fluctuating world, and the
Speaker 3: real world is the ideal realm of the forms. So
Speaker 3: Hegel has to be understood in a context of wanting
Speaker 3: to reconcile and fix some of what he saw as
Speaker 3: old philosophical problems that were still lingering. So if Hegel
Speaker 3: thinks that dialectical process in terms of the world itself,
Speaker 3: helps to explain where the world is going, what's happening,
Speaker 3: how everything is mind or spirit at root, and in
Speaker 3: his mind in some way, eventually everything would sort of
Speaker 3: culminate into some sort of what he called an omega point,
Speaker 3: which is some kind of everything becoming one. It's kind
Speaker 3: of mystical, it's kind of unclear. But Hegel's used then
Speaker 3: by people like Carl Marx who just sort of flips
Speaker 3: Hegel and gets rid of all the spirit geist stuff
Speaker 3: and says, Hegel's right about all the stuff he's talking
Speaker 3: about about dialectics furthering the whole process of the world
Speaker 3: moving towards its purpose. But it's not spirit and all
Speaker 3: this mystical mombo jumbo. It's just matter in motion. So
Speaker 3: that's where Marx takes Hegel and turns him on his head.
Speaker 3: But at root, Hegel is just a kind of process
Speaker 3: philosophy or theology that is rooted ultimately in elements of
Speaker 3: Hermeticism and Kabbala' that's actually been demonstrated now in some
Speaker 3: recent academic literature.
Speaker 4: Who are Hegel historians and philosophers?
Speaker 3: So that's the process philosophy that So Hegel's philosophy is
Speaker 3: a bunch of little triangles where thesis and antithesis come
Speaker 3: together to produce a higher order of synthesis, which is
Speaker 3: a more true revelation than the previous partial knowledge. Right,
Speaker 3: So that might be a little abstract, but that's really
Speaker 3: the whole Hegelian system. And Hegel doesn't just think that
Speaker 3: you or I interacting right now in that way is
Speaker 3: further into dialectic. Everything in the world is operating to
Speaker 3: further this dialectic towards ultimate synthesis at some future endpoint
Speaker 3: in time. Thus, Hegel could be used by a Nietzschean,
Speaker 3: he could be used by a communist, He could be
Speaker 3: used by a transhumanist. Any of these philosophies could sort
Speaker 3: of take that and say, hey, this is our end goal.
Speaker 4: I mean the Reich.
Speaker 3: Some of the philosophers of the Reich liked the idea
Speaker 3: of Hegel, and they said, hey, what Hegel's saying is
Speaker 3: our Reich is the end goal of history. Marx could
Speaker 3: say the you know, whither away the state is the end.
Speaker 4: Goal of history. So he could be used by various.
Speaker 2: People right right now. I don't know rightly or wrongly,
Speaker 2: but I look at a dialectic basically as one of
Speaker 2: our failed safe devices that we have all as a group,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'll say some things I know are
Speaker 2: true about secret societies, drug running and intelligence agencies. And
Speaker 2: now I'll find somebody that's a spook saying something you
Speaker 2: know a little bit more outrageous. He'll put lives in it.
Speaker 2: Because by controlling the extremes, you control the middle, yes,
Speaker 2: and whatnot. So thank you, I really appreciate all this
Speaker 2: talk about philosophy. It always helps me to understand things
Speaker 2: and U. But let's get back to your books. Esthetary
Speaker 2: Hollywood one, Esthetary Hollywood two, and the soon to be
Speaker 2: when I come out Esotery Hollywood three. And now how
Speaker 2: do people find you? And and what all are you
Speaker 2: doing out there? You have some pot you do interviews
Speaker 2: and whatnot. How do people find you and whatnot?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm on the major social media outlets except for Facebook.
Speaker 3: I'm not a huge fan of Facebook, so I kind
Speaker 3: of I mean, there's still a page there, but I
Speaker 3: don't really pay much attention to it.
Speaker 4: I'll update it every now and then.
Speaker 3: Mostly I'm on YouTube now, and that's kind of the
Speaker 3: biggest platform, so I do live streams and videos almost
Speaker 3: every day, maybe every other day. That kind of became
Speaker 3: the main outlet for me. But I'm also on Instagram
Speaker 3: and I'm on Twitter, so people can find me on
Speaker 3: all those places, and now TikTok as well. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so you can find me there. You can get access to,
Speaker 3: you know, the previous books in the shop at my
Speaker 3: website jaysonalysis dot com. All my stuff is there, are
Speaker 3: all the archived lectures and interviews and talks the last
Speaker 3: ten years or so, and the shop you have to
Speaker 3: click on the shop tab and you get the two
Speaker 3: st CALLAB one and two. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 3: been a it's been a wild ride for the last
Speaker 3: you know, eleven or almost almost ten years. The first
Speaker 3: one came out in twenty sixteen, so we're nine years
Speaker 3: out of Callywood one. I'm really thankful to you for
Speaker 3: you know, seeing the potential of that and and you know,
Speaker 3: publishing that. I think it went. It went for a
Speaker 3: great run. And then Part two was great as well.
Speaker 3: It was a little bit different. So one we we
Speaker 3: focused on a lot of the directors like Kubrick, Hitchcocks, Bilberg,
Speaker 3: so the main players in terms of directors.
Speaker 4: And then in part.
Speaker 3: Two it was more thematic, where I talked about organized
Speaker 3: crime and I talked about mafia, you know, we talked
Speaker 3: about intelligence agencies in Hollywood, of geoengineering, even how that's
Speaker 3: portrayed in film. And then this more recently Part three
Speaker 3: will be focusing on some of the same material. But
Speaker 3: I decided to divide it up into areas that I
Speaker 3: never really got to in the first two that were
Speaker 3: really important. So we've got comic books. I had so
Speaker 3: many people messaging and dming over the lead years. Hey,
Speaker 3: you're not covering comic book movies. Those are really big,
Speaker 3: those really important, and you know, comic book films took
Speaker 3: over Hollywood maybe for the last twenty years. When it
Speaker 3: comes to the blockbusters Marvel films. I liked comic books
Speaker 3: when I was a kid. I'm not not a huge
Speaker 3: comicbood fan anymore as an adult, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: this just took over, and then Disney bought out Marvel,
Speaker 3: so it's you know, it's just a massive thing. And
Speaker 3: they're pretty heavy with propaganda. I would say back in
Speaker 3: the two thousands they were a little more revelatory in
Speaker 3: terms of good, good ideas, and then as we got
Speaker 3: you know, more and more up to where we are now,
Speaker 3: they're pretty much almost unwatchable.
Speaker 4: So I haven't watched a lot of the.
Speaker 3: More recent, you know, three or four years of comic
Speaker 3: book movies, but I did watch throughout the twentys and
Speaker 3: twenty tens most of them. So I try to pick
Speaker 3: out some of the ones that were really interesting, including
Speaker 3: the Christopher Nolan films. I think he's a pretty good
Speaker 3: director hit and miss when it comes to some of them,
Speaker 3: but you know, he has a lot of union themes
Speaker 3: that we highlight in his Batman trilogy.
Speaker 4: And then we go into.
Speaker 3: Dystopian films that I never got to, Mad Max, that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, and then a numbering archetype I wanted
Speaker 3: to cover that not a lot of people have noticed
Speaker 3: except for some of my friends that the SYSA podcast,
Speaker 3: they have highlighted this theme of this sort of dark
Speaker 3: goddess that's emerging through a lot of films in the
Speaker 3: last twenty or thirty years. So we did a whole
Speaker 3: section on that, the whole section on independent and B
Speaker 3: movies that I thought were worth people's viewing if they
Speaker 3: were interested in this idea of truth in B movies,
Speaker 3: and then Hollywood Alchemy, horror Trauma that was I wanted
Speaker 3: to hit some of the classics. Electory Detective which was
Speaker 3: pretty dark, had obvious you know, Krollian satanic cult themes there,
Speaker 3: and then it's some more on key propaganda in Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise's Mission Impossible stuff, all that's based on the Howard Hunt,
Speaker 3: you know, in his his background, his history, and then
Speaker 3: some elements of Hollywood spies, actors, who've been recruited into
Speaker 3: intelligence work, and then a little bit on Hollywood and
Speaker 3: christ and how that's been portrayed in various films. I
Speaker 3: think we're kind of at the end of the old
Speaker 3: model of the studio system. I mean, you've had a
Speaker 3: lot of directors like Spielberg, you others coming out saying
Speaker 3: the old studio system is pretty much done, it's going away.
Speaker 3: Nowadays it's Apple Studios, Amazon Studios, so the tech companies
Speaker 3: are kind of buying out and taking over old Hollywood.
Speaker 3: And also, movies are a lot less popular with gen Z.
Speaker 3: The younger people. They watch scroll TikTok all day and
Speaker 3: they play video games, so I think that they don't
Speaker 3: care as much about movies. So it's kind of synchronicity.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say that, you know, this last
Speaker 3: one that we wrote that I wrote here, well there
Speaker 3: might be more, I don't know, but you know, Part
Speaker 3: three ends up being sort of the end of at
Speaker 3: the end of the old Hollywood system. So it's apocalyptic.
Speaker 3: It's an end of the era. So I think it's
Speaker 3: a fitting kind of title.
Speaker 2: Right right, And well, you know, I do think that
Speaker 2: they are moving some of that propaganda stuff into the
Speaker 2: video games, and so let me let me ask you
Speaker 2: a question here, what would you now you know you've
Speaker 2: gone through all this and this research, what would you
Speaker 2: tell your your your own self, you know, ten fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago, what have you learned that you know, really
Speaker 2: profoundly affected you?
Speaker 4: I think another good question.
Speaker 3: I think so in the first series of essays, in
Speaker 3: part one, there was a lot of speculation and a
Speaker 3: lot of symbolic interpretation that it's not that it's bad,
Speaker 3: it's just a little kind of kind of speculative, shall
Speaker 3: we say. And I think nowadays I would have found
Speaker 3: it a lot more interesting to have written more about.
Speaker 3: But you know, at the same time, there wasn't a
Speaker 3: whole you know, ten fifteen years ago, there was even
Speaker 3: less information out about people in Hollywood and their their
Speaker 3: ties to intelligence. I would have focused more on some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that that I put towards the end
Speaker 3: of this third book, had I known about it. I
Speaker 3: think that's more interesting, maybe even than some of the
Speaker 3: propaganda in the films.
Speaker 4: But I think that comes with age two.
Speaker 3: You get a little more mature, you're more interested in
Speaker 3: you know, well, it's actually more interesting that you know,
Speaker 3: Julia Child's working with the OSS or you know, somebody
Speaker 3: like Jimmy Stewart, you know, working for the FBI. That's
Speaker 3: a little more interesting than you know, this movie over
Speaker 3: here with this symbol over here, which is not that
Speaker 3: that's not interesting, It's just I would have focused more
Speaker 3: on that. I would have looked more at, you know,
Speaker 3: modern people. You know, I think some of these big
Speaker 3: some of these big A listers themselves have been perhaps
Speaker 3: doing you know, I think people like Sean Penn or
Speaker 3: people like George Clooney, you know, those kind of a
Speaker 3: list people could have been more interesting as a focal
Speaker 3: point even back then if I'd known about it, maybe
Speaker 3: some of the production companies, some of the actual operations
Speaker 3: that were done and apparently about using movies as covers,
Speaker 3: that could have been I think a better approach, less
Speaker 3: of the speculation.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, somebody comes up and tugs on
Speaker 2: people's patriotic heartstrings, and you know you can get them
Speaker 2: to do most anything. Adam, you have any last thoughts
Speaker 2: here about this interview?
Speaker 1: This was a really this is a great time. Hopefully
Speaker 1: maybe I can get you on Try and Day Treasures.
Speaker 1: I do a new podcast for trying day authors and stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe down the line we.
Speaker 2: Can do it.
Speaker 4: Sure anytime.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, Jay, I want to thank you very much
Speaker 2: for your time. And you know, people, if you want
Speaker 2: some education, you know, check out j on YouTube and
Speaker 2: check out his books and anything. And onwards to a
Speaker 2: better future for our children.