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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and i'm Christian seger. In.

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Speaker 1: Today we are tackling a topic that is actually the

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Speaker 1: first topic that I ever covered at How Stuff Works. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when I was hired four years ago, the first thing

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Speaker 1: that I ever worked on was a video series called

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Speaker 1: Stuff of Genius. And the first video that I proposed

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Speaker 1: that we do was about Jack Parsons. And this was

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Speaker 1: your first assignment right out of it was sort of

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Speaker 1: like they didn't really give me assignment so much as

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Speaker 1: they were like build the show. And so my producer Paul,

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Speaker 1: who's still here with us and works on a lot

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Speaker 1: of our projects, the two of us got together and

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Speaker 1: we had like five ideas and Parsons was one of them.

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Speaker 1: And we went to this library that I was working

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Speaker 1: at part time and we shot a cup of these.

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Speaker 1: It was real bizarre, super embarrassing. It's all still like

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Speaker 1: you too, but like I played this weird, like sort

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Speaker 1: of doctor character who was expeering right. Yeah. I still

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Speaker 1: had a facial hair back then, and I wore like

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Speaker 1: a suit and I stood between like collapsing library shelves

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Speaker 1: and did an episode on Jack Parsons because I was

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Speaker 1: actually just interested in Jack Parsons and had just finished

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Speaker 1: reading a book that actually we're going to reference a

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Speaker 1: lot today, which is called Strange Angel The Otherworldly Life

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Speaker 1: of Rocket Scientists John Whiteside Parsons. It's written by George Pendell.

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Speaker 1: Pendell is going to come up a lot in the

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Speaker 1: literature today. He is like the go to guy on

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Speaker 1: on Parsons, So we're going to dive right into it here.

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Speaker 1: Let me tell you something about Jack Parsons. Jack Parsons

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Speaker 1: was a man who wanted to break free from the

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Speaker 1: confines of the early twentieth century. As author George Pendell

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Speaker 1: points out, quote Parsons had his rocketry as well as

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Speaker 1: his normal life. He discovered other worlds by imagine going

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Speaker 1: in a rocket to the moon. He wanted to explore

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Speaker 1: this new frontier. He saw both space and magic as

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Speaker 1: ways of exploring these new frontiers. One breaking free from

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Speaker 1: Earth literally and metaphysically. Yeah, that's a good way to

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Speaker 1: encapsulate it. He he is one of these characters we occasionally,

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Speaker 1: I'd say, like maybe once a month, once every two months,

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Speaker 1: hit upon these fascinating characters from history that are a

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Speaker 1: weird amallegation of scientific insight and like occultism. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: I think we've called him with the counterculture of injuries before. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Parsons would definitely be on there, although he's a little

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Speaker 1: bit before the time of a lot of the folks

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Speaker 1: that we've covered. I think that's one of the shames

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Speaker 1: here is that he feels like it feels like he

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Speaker 1: would have been more at home living alongside you know,

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Speaker 1: John C. Lily. Yeah, and what part of the more

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Speaker 1: you know, the more mainstream counterculture resurgence of the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: but he didn't live that long. Yeah, I kept thinking

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Speaker 1: of John C. Lily going over this research again. I

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Speaker 1: think they would have been fast friends. Yeah, and he

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Speaker 1: also was well. Discussion reminds me a lot of John D.

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Speaker 1: Dr John D. From loza Ethan Times. So who was

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Speaker 1: Jack Parson? So, because I know a number of you

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Speaker 1: are still confused who were even talking about? First and foremost,

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Speaker 1: he was a rocket engineer. He helped found both the

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Speaker 1: Jet Propulsion Laboratory or JPL and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation.

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Speaker 1: He pioneered the use of liquid and solid rocket fuels

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Speaker 1: and actually built the first rocket engine to run on

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Speaker 1: castable composite rocket propellant. And at the same time he

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Speaker 1: was a figure of counterculture mystery, consumed by occultist ideas,

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Speaker 1: uh sex and alternative political models. Yeah. So if you

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Speaker 1: have heard of him where all, If this is all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden like you're going, oh wait, I think

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Speaker 1: I know what they're talking about. It's because of that,

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Speaker 1: because he has been launched up to this sort of

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Speaker 1: legendary figure status after his death. I think, though, really

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Speaker 1: it piqued maybe in the late nineties, early two thousands,

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Speaker 1: and then Pendel came out with this book, I want

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Speaker 1: to say, in two thousands six, maybe. Yeah. The interesting

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Speaker 1: thing about Parsons is that what he's certainly been celebrated

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Speaker 1: and held up by, you know, such counterculture of voices

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Speaker 1: as Robert Anton Wilson. I think I have no fewer

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Speaker 1: than three individuals on my friends list who have worked

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Speaker 1: on plays, comics, or other fi fictional treatments of Parsons,

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Speaker 1: like he's taken on this heroic form in that scene.

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Speaker 1: And yet at the same time he has often been

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Speaker 1: downplayed in the scientific community, and his his legitimate contributions

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Speaker 1: there are often a bit forgotten, actually purposely erased, as

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Speaker 1: some people accuse them. Pendel, among them, says that at

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Speaker 1: first he was a footnote in the history of the

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Speaker 1: jp L, and then he was even erased from the footnotes,

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Speaker 1: and again he reminds me of Dr John d in

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Speaker 1: many ways. He's he's his contradiction, standing on the barrier

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Speaker 1: between science and magic. Pendele puts it this way. Parsons

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Speaker 1: seemed devoted to reconciling opposites, smashing together the technical and

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Speaker 1: the spiritual, the white lab coat in the black robe,

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Speaker 1: fact and fiction, science and magic. Yeah. So Parsons actually

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Speaker 1: found magic and rocketry to be similar in the sense

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Speaker 1: that both, at the time that he was working on

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Speaker 1: them were disparaged and deriveded as being impossible, but both

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Speaker 1: also presented him with a challenge. And I also think

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Speaker 1: this is an important note that I think I got

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Speaker 1: from Pendle's writing. Although there was a lot of research

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Speaker 1: for this episode, uh, Parsons saw himself as being part

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Speaker 1: of a lineage of scientists stretched all the way back

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Speaker 1: to Newton. He thought of himself as being more of

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Speaker 1: a natural philosopher, so of course he saw everything from

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Speaker 1: magic to poetry as part of what being a scientist was,

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Speaker 1: again very much like John d and his Kim temporaries,

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Speaker 1: and that it wasn't just like scientific rigor, but also

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Speaker 1: just sort of being a renaissance man. I suppose you

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Speaker 1: could put it. Uh, And so that's why I mean,

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Speaker 1: he has a book of poetry that you can go

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Speaker 1: out and buy right now. Uh. I guess it's still available. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's still available. I don't know if he can

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Speaker 1: get it on Amazon, but it's out there. Yeah. Well

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Speaker 1: I have notes about it at the end of the episode.

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Speaker 1: But and then of course was doing all this magical

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Speaker 1: stuff as well. Um, why don't we start off with

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Speaker 1: his early life though, and kind of work our way

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Speaker 1: up to the crazy kinky stuff. Yeah, yeah, I hit

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Speaker 1: us with the basic deats, the basic origin story here.

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Speaker 1: So he's born in Pasadena, California, in nineteen fourteen, and

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Speaker 1: his actual first name was Marvel Um and he was

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Speaker 1: named after his father. His father was also Marvel Parsons. Uh,

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Speaker 1: So his real name was Marvel Whiteside Parsons. But when

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Speaker 1: Marvel Senior abandoned the family after committing adultery, Parsons mother

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Speaker 1: just started calling him John, and then friends eventually started

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Speaker 1: calling him Jack in later life. So that's why today

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Speaker 1: everybody refers to him as Jack Parsons. Nobody says Marvel Parsons,

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Speaker 1: although hey, it's a cool name, especially give him more

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Speaker 1: to talk about today. Well, that's the way it always is.

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Speaker 1: Give a child a cool name, and they will change

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Speaker 1: it to something mundane. Give a child a mundane name,

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Speaker 1: and they'll hate it their whole life and maybe change

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Speaker 1: their name to zargone. Yeah, we don't know what his

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Speaker 1: actual I mean, he could have had like a nicknames

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Speaker 1: within the philemic cult that he was in, Like if

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Speaker 1: Crowley was the Beast, maybe Parsons was something to the

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Speaker 1: critter the Critter. So in eighth grade, Parsons meets his

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Speaker 1: future colleague Edward Foreman, and they become fast friends. They're

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Speaker 1: both fans of science fiction at the time, this meant

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Speaker 1: Jules Verne Stories and Amazing Stories magazine. They started experimenting

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Speaker 1: with fireworks and constructing their own solid fueled rockets in

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Speaker 1: parsons backyard. An important thing to know here that's not

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Speaker 1: in the notes is that Parsons came from a pretty

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Speaker 1: wealthy family that had ties to like old money back east,

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Speaker 1: and they were on hard time though, so they sort

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Speaker 1: of lived in this rich community in Pasadena, but I

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Speaker 1: think like they were barely able to scrape by, and

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Speaker 1: part of that was because his father had left. So

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Speaker 1: they're in his backyard. They're making basically bombs like as

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Speaker 1: little boys do, you know. And this is when he

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Speaker 1: first starts using glue as a binding agent with loose powder.

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Speaker 1: And this becomes important way later on and is really

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Speaker 1: like his key discovery in terms of rocketry and its

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Speaker 1: influence on NASA. So later in life this is obviously

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Speaker 1: there's no way to incorporate this. But later in life,

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Speaker 1: Parsons claims that when he was thirteen years old, he's

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Speaker 1: summoned Satan, so he was into like occult ideas even

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Speaker 1: back to his childhood, and he called the experience terrifying,

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Speaker 1: but it seems like this was like the sort of

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Speaker 1: instigating event that got him into the occult UH side

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Speaker 1: by side along with rocketry. So he's in high school,

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Speaker 1: him in Foreman or Buddies. They're making bombs in the backyard. Rockets.

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Speaker 1: Parsons UH starts working for the Hercules Power Company. He

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Speaker 1: graduates from high school in nineteen thirty three, and then

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Speaker 1: the two of them could to Pasadena Junior College together,

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Speaker 1: but neither of them graduate. They both end up working

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Speaker 1: at Halifax Explosives, which was a company that was based

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Speaker 1: in the Mojave Desert. Parsons couldn't afford his tuition fees.

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Speaker 1: So this again goes to the you know, the thing

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Speaker 1: of like he came from old money, but he just

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Speaker 1: he didn't have the wealth to pursue a higher education

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Speaker 1: like traditionally. Yeah, I think his his background here with

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Speaker 1: the family and money is is interesting because you see

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Speaker 1: this throughout his life. He does seem to live his

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Speaker 1: life like a guy who who has come from money

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Speaker 1: and occasionally has access to a lot of money but

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Speaker 1: inevitably squanders it in one way or another. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does seem to be sort of like the waves

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Speaker 1: in his life are up and down with with his finances.

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Speaker 1: But also just like in general, I think because he

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Speaker 1: was raised in this family, like he thought of himself

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Speaker 1: as being upper class even though he didn't really have

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Speaker 1: a lot of money. Um. So important going forward to

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Speaker 1: this whole thing about him never graduating from that college

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Speaker 1: is part of why he was never really accepted as

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Speaker 1: part of the scientific establishment, and Parsons marries his high

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Speaker 1: school sweetheart, Helen Northrop in nineteen thirty five. This leads

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Speaker 1: us into his experiences with rocketry. Yeah, and again this

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Speaker 1: is a key area because this is this is where

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Speaker 1: he definitely had you know, outside of his his later

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Speaker 1: effects on popular culture, this is where he had an

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Speaker 1: impact on the world. Yeah, so you know, he's important

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Speaker 1: as an innovator. I don't want you to think that

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Speaker 1: this is like a guy who just fiddled around with

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Speaker 1: rockets and then also was a magician, right, Like, he

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Speaker 1: has an important legacy in the history of rocketry, together

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Speaker 1: with a group of other rocket enthusiasts that were unfortunately

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Speaker 1: named the Suicide Squad. That's even more unfortunate now that

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Speaker 1: we have a movie, a terrible movie with that name.

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Speaker 1: But Parsons developed a solid rocket fuel that has evolved

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Speaker 1: into the same kind of stuff that we now use

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Speaker 1: to fire objects into space. So the solid motors and

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Speaker 1: the space shuttle, the motors in the Minuteman missile, those

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Speaker 1: were both based on the solid propellant technology that Parsons invented.

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Speaker 1: And here's how the story goes. He and Foreman go

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Speaker 1: down to the California Institute of Technology for a lecture,

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Speaker 1: and they meet Theodore von Carmen of the Guggenheim Aeronautical

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Speaker 1: Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology for sort that's

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Speaker 1: referred to as gal sit. I believe now I want

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Speaker 1: to throw in everyone has heard of Verna von Braun,

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Speaker 1: and you may have sort of Vaughan and you're not

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Speaker 1: in your mind as being like German rocketry. Uh, but

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Speaker 1: at this individual von common he um he was Hungarian. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: although Verner von Braun was a correspondent with Parsons and

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Speaker 1: admire his work, yeah yeah, and spoke up for him

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Speaker 1: in later years. Uh. So von Karmen introduces Parsons and

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Speaker 1: Foreman to Frank Molina, who is a student at cal Tech,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out they're all interested in developing rockets,

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Speaker 1: but no one takes them seriously because at the time

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Speaker 1: everybody was like rockets, that's science fiction, Like, that's that's

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Speaker 1: goofy stuff. Uh, it's considered a joke or insanity, like

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Speaker 1: if you're actually gonna try to like blow your way,

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Speaker 1: blow yourself up to the moon or something like that. Well,

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Speaker 1: the crazy thing is that all of these rockets. Scientists

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Speaker 1: of the day were heavily inspired by science fiction, Von

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Speaker 1: Braun included, So there's it's it's it's used as a

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Speaker 1: you know, to say that what they're doing is an

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Speaker 1: important but it's also in a way the guiding light

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Speaker 1: of what they're doing. It reminds me of an experience

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Speaker 1: that we had when we did one of our live shows.

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Speaker 1: We performed at a Star Trek convention. I don't think

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Speaker 1: I've told the story on air before, but this is fun,

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Speaker 1: but so lots of people know like Star Trek had

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Speaker 1: a great influence on people getting involved in science. Uh

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Speaker 1: and in the same way that these early science fiction

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Speaker 1: stories had an influence on Parsons generation. Right before we

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Speaker 1: went on stage, I was in the bathroom and this

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Speaker 1: guy came in and asked me what we were doing,

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Speaker 1: and I when I told him, you know, what our

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Speaker 1: podcast was and what we were covering. He lectured me

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Speaker 1: on this and wanted to make sure that I knew

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Speaker 1: how many people in the audience knew more about science

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Speaker 1: than I did before we got a stage. Okay, so anyways,

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Speaker 1: Von Carmen approves their research basically even though these Foreman

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Speaker 1: and Parsons aren't even students, but they file it all

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Speaker 1: under Molina's PhD proposal. Uh and von Carmen himself remembers

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Speaker 1: Parson as a quote delightful screwball. So they begin experimenting

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Speaker 1: on the campus, but they have two explosive accidents on

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Speaker 1: the campus. One supposedly left a like uh rebar blown

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Speaker 1: into a wall. Okay, like it was that bad. So

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Speaker 1: they move their experiments near something called Devil's Gate Damn,

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Speaker 1: which is at the edge of Pasadena and the Arroyo

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Speaker 1: seco A. It's a dry canyon. Basically. This is where

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Speaker 1: they get the nickname the Suicide Squad because they're just

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Speaker 1: blowing things up constantly, and the other kids on campus,

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Speaker 1: you know, give them this reputation. But they are eventually

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Speaker 1: joined by several other students now on the rocket testing range.

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Speaker 1: This is a fun fact. Foreman and Parsons were renowned

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Speaker 1: for holding gun duels where they would try to shoot

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Speaker 1: at one another's feet without flinching. So this is already like,

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Speaker 1: this is a guy who's definitely into like thrill seeking

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Speaker 1: and adrenaline, right yeah, and it very much seems to

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Speaker 1: have never grown up because I remember being a kid

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Speaker 1: and have you know, horsing around with fireworks. I have

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Speaker 1: I have a friend, uh, this guy Oz, who has

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Speaker 1: this enormous scar on his arm from being shot with

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Speaker 1: a flaming arrow when he was a child, So he

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Speaker 1: seems to have carried that spirit on into his adult life. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But in night, the U. S. Army comes along and

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Speaker 1: they look at their research and they say, hey, do

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Speaker 1: you want to work on this research project we have.

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Speaker 1: We need to make rocket engines for small aircraft. So

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Speaker 1: the suicide squad says yeah. They try powdered fuel at first,

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Speaker 1: but these rockets that they're they're building are unstable in

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Speaker 1: the fuel combination that's inside them. Basically, it's prone to

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Speaker 1: settling when it's in storage containers, which adversely affects the

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Speaker 1: temperature when it launches, so it's unpredictable. The story goes

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Speaker 1: that Parsons watched a roofer applying hot asphalt on top

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Speaker 1: of a building and he remembered the stories from his

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Speaker 1: youth about Greek fire being used as an incendiary weapon. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this would have been used by the Greeks, like in

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Speaker 1: ship to ship combat. Yeah. Yeah, it's like for those

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Speaker 1: of you who are Game of Thrones fans. It's like

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Speaker 1: the green fire that they use in that big scene. UH.

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Speaker 1: So he adds binding agents like hot tar to potassium

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Speaker 1: perchlorite powder and this provided a clean and even burn.

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Speaker 1: So they could put potential of this into what's referred

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Speaker 1: to as jet assisted takeoff or is it JATTO or

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Speaker 1: just j A t O Uh, that's that's the acronym

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Speaker 1: that's used for it. UH. And so the military says,

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Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna invest a little bit more money

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Speaker 1: in this project. And this leads to the basis for

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Speaker 1: those rockets that launch us into outer space. It's important

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Speaker 1: to note that the JATTO jetsis to take off and

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Speaker 1: also rocket assisted take off a RATTO. UH. This was

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Speaker 1: a big deal and uh and indeed Parsons was instrumental

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Speaker 1: in developing JATO rockets. So the key application during the

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Speaker 1: war and it's real and it's essential to remember that

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Speaker 1: Parsons was born into an era of World War and

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Speaker 1: UH and and ultimately Total war. UH. This was to

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Speaker 1: boost the takeoff for military aircraft. With these, you could

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Speaker 1: actually reduced the reduced the distance required to get a

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Speaker 1: plane off the ground by thirty percent. And UH, I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of us forget about like that this

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Speaker 1: period of history. We just think like what planes were

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Speaker 1: invented and then then they became like you know, the

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Speaker 1: commercial airliners that we used today. But it's obviously there

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Speaker 1: were a lot of steps in between, and this was

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Speaker 1: a major one. Yeah. I mean, if you can cut

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Speaker 1: take off by thirty percent, you need less uh takeoff area,

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Speaker 1: you need less landing strip. And the other cool thing

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Speaker 1: is that this allows you to better utilize a strip

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Speaker 1: that has been damaged by bombs or some other kind

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Speaker 1: of an assault if you're in a war zone, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and there were a lot of war zones at the time. Now.

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Speaker 1: The German Luftwaffe at the time also used this approach,

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Speaker 1: and this is a topic I've I've long found fascinating.

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Speaker 1: They would use rockets to assist the takeoff of intercept

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Speaker 1: planes such as the amazing jet fighter the Master Smith

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Speaker 1: two six two, and they also used it as the

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Speaker 1: engine for the rocket interceptor, the Mestre Smith one sixty three. Comment. Uh,

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Speaker 1: So this was with the Germans. This was called the

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Speaker 1: star Filfa Rocket assisted takeoff unit and this would have

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Speaker 1: been used nineteen thirty seven n eight. Uh. There were

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Speaker 1: other planes to use it as well the Aorado TO

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Speaker 1: thirty four, which is a jet bomber, and uh also

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Speaker 1: the Mestr Smith three twenty three Giant also uses the

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Speaker 1: Giant for anyone who's enough familiar with it was essentially

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Speaker 1: this enormous, guppy looking glider and it was used to

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Speaker 1: carry like a massive amount of equipment. And then they

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Speaker 1: adapted it with engines and they had to They had

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Speaker 1: these were planes where you had to use the rockets

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Speaker 1: to just get it moving. Right, Okay, I'm picturing like

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Speaker 1: and this isn't even probably a modern equivalent, but like

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Speaker 1: a C five A like those really big planes that

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Speaker 1: we used to carry tanks and stuff like that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So the US task again von Karmen and his team

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Speaker 1: which included Parsons with developing J to and ninety nine,

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Speaker 1: they tested it out, it was implemented. Another key area

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Speaker 1: is that it it helped bombers or cargo points to

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Speaker 1: take off with incredibly heavy loads. And in the post

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Speaker 1: war period, uh, this this kind of rocket boosting, this

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Speaker 1: becomes pretty standard for a while due to the low

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Speaker 1: slow speed thrust of existing jet engines. So we get

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Speaker 1: to this point where actually, you know, Parsons makes this discovery,

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Speaker 1: but it's really JPL engineer Charles Bartley who later improves

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Speaker 1: on it by replacing the hot asphalt with thiah call

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Speaker 1: polysulfi had polymer, and the team is granted a thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars woo uh. At the time, that was a lot,

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Speaker 1: becoming the first government funded rocketry research group in history.

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Speaker 1: So you know, everybody was laughing at them and basically saying, like,

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Speaker 1: these guys are idiots. They're just trying to, you know,

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Speaker 1: replicate some science fiction stories. But then like it turns

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Speaker 1: out like not only is this applicable for wartime, but

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Speaker 1: it's also like a really profitable commercial business. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: becomes one of the like like rocketry in rocketry technology

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Speaker 1: becomes one of the like the guiding technical advancements for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the century and even today. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: had to use a quarter of that money though, so

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Speaker 1: two fifty dollars to pay for the damages that their

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Speaker 1: explosions had already caused to the Caltech buildings on that campus.

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Speaker 1: Around that same time, so we're talking ninety eight here,

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Speaker 1: Parsons actually gave testimony as an explosive expert in an

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Speaker 1: attempted murder case by Los Angeles Police Intelligence chief. Apparently

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Speaker 1: he tried to hill a p I and with a bomb.

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Speaker 1: So Parsons reconstructs that bomb and establishes himself as an

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Speaker 1: expert and is like a key witness on the stand.

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Speaker 1: Then in nineteen forty Parsons in Foreman there. I mean

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Speaker 1: they're no pun intended, but their rockets rising. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: are on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine ninety one.

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Speaker 1: They successfully strap a booster to a small aircraft, ignite it,

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Speaker 1: and that allows the vehicle to take off in half

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Speaker 1: the distance that's usually required. So the U. S. Air

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Speaker 1: Force then is like, we're all in. They fund them

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Speaker 1: very well, and this allows them to found the Aerojet

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Speaker 1: Engineering Corporation. So Parsons was a founding member of that.

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Speaker 1: Now the Suicide Squad group also founded the Jet Propulsion

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Speaker 1: Laboratory at the California Institut of Technology. We've mentioned that already,

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Speaker 1: but think about this like the JPL. You've probably heard

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Speaker 1: the name before. In fact, when we did that Star

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Speaker 1: Trek Convention convention, the JPL had a booth on the floor. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They are partner of NASA's and they helped do things

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Speaker 1: like launch Mars rovers, X ray telescopes, and gravity mapping spaceships.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they are heavily involved in our major scientific

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Speaker 1: and endeavors of the day. In nineteen forty three, the

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Speaker 1: military actually took over their operations. This is when they

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Speaker 1: changed the name to the JPL, and they developed several

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Speaker 1: weapon development systems that are based on the liquid and

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Speaker 1: solid fuel technology that the Suicide Squad invented. This is

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Speaker 1: the Suicide Squad movie I want to see, is like

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Speaker 1: the bio pick about these guys. After the war, the

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Speaker 1: military attached a j TO to a German V two

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Speaker 1: rocket and they sent it seventy kilometers straight up, making

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Speaker 1: it the first American rocket to exit the Earth's atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: So this is why NASA then takes over the JPL

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Speaker 1: in nine. One other thing, this isn't really relevant to

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Speaker 1: all of the parts and stuff that we're going to

395
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Speaker 1: talk about today, but many of the Suicide at Squad

396
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Speaker 1: members end up later being investigated and even jailed for

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Speaker 1: supposed ties to communism in the fifties. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it can it can be. I think it can be

399
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Speaker 1: tough to really put ourselves in that nine fifties mind

400
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Speaker 1: set here, But you know, the Cold War was a

401
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Speaker 1: time during which the threat of nuclear war was very real.

402
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Speaker 1: Everything seemed frozen in this terrifying conflict, and paranoia was rampant.

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Speaker 1: Entertainers with communist leadings risks being blacklisted. You know, certainly,

404
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Speaker 1: I think everybody's similiar with the Hollywood blacklist. Uh entails

405
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:34,560
Speaker 1: spinning out from that, but academics suspected of communist sympathies

406
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:37,480
Speaker 1: could be frozen out as well. So Parsons and many

407
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 1: of his colleagues they lost their security clearance and this

408
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 1: left him unemployed. Parsons, as Will discussed, was left to

409
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Speaker 1: pursue other employment options outside of you know, central rocketry research,

410
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Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. There's a whole story behind that.

411
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Speaker 1: But there's also the build up and this didn't help

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Speaker 1: him either of his entire involvement in the occult. So

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick rake and when we get back,

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Speaker 1: let's delve into sex magic. All right. We've we've prayed

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Speaker 1: to our our gods are are pagan gods of advertising

416
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 1: here and now we can start discussing parsons involvement with

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Speaker 1: the occult. All right, So why don't you tell everybody

418
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Speaker 1: about Alistair Crowley because this is the toughest part, I

419
00:23:20,800 --> 00:23:24,120
Speaker 1: think is sort of establishing who Crowley is and sort

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Speaker 1: of what the belief system was. Yeah, and it's it's

421
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 1: intimidating to talk about Alistair Crowley because he is a

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00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:33,879
Speaker 1: character that on one level he defies brief explanation. We

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00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: really needed to do a deeper dive into him. And

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Speaker 1: at the same time, there's so there's so much conflicting

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Speaker 1: information and even from the man himself about who he was,

426
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:43,960
Speaker 1: what he was, what he was up to. And he

427
00:23:44,320 --> 00:23:48,160
Speaker 1: lived a big life, so he lived in that life.

428
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: By the way, it went from eighteen seventy five to

429
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, so they had a good stretch there.

430
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 1: He was a prime counterculture figure of the day, if

431
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,359
Speaker 1: not one of the if not the prime counterculture figure

432
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: of the day. He engaged in bisexual hedonism, recreational drug use,

433
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: and you know, both before either was really fashionable, I

434
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:13,280
Speaker 1: would say, and uh. And of course he established his

435
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:18,440
Speaker 1: own recreation of ceremonial magic and new paganism. He was

436
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,520
Speaker 1: also a bit of a provocateur and a con man.

437
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,360
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that it is a slam necessarily

438
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: being a comment, because how can you lead your own

439
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: counterculture occult movement and not be at least a little

440
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 1: bit CARNI also something that's going to be very important,

441
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: as we discussed Parsons, but this reminds me we were

442
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: talking about this before we came in the studio. I've

443
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:41,679
Speaker 1: been reading this graphic novel that Douglas Rushkoff wrote called

444
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 1: Alistair and aid Off. That's all. I think. It's semi fictional,

445
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: but it's about how Alistair Crowley used his influence in

446
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: the intelligence community to try to help influence basically, uh,

447
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: the German Army so that the Allies knew where they

448
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: were going to be. Yeah. I mean this included people

449
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 1: like uh uh Ian Fleming. Yeah, also Dennis Wheatley. Dennis

450
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:10,439
Speaker 1: Wheatley incidentally ended up writing the book The Devil Rides Out,

451
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 1: which we talk about in our Satanic Panic episode. Um yeah,

452
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: he this is a guy. You get the impression that

453
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 1: Crowley definitely like oozed charisma. It was just a fascinating character.

454
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:25,199
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, he rubbed elbows with a lot of

455
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: important people at varying points in his life and in fact,

456
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: is you have a note here. He's the one who

457
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: claimed to have invented the V for Victory. Yeah, I

458
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: always thought that that was Churchill. Well, again, this is

459
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: the thing with Crowley, it's he wrote. He was He

460
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: wrote a lot about himself and about his ideas and

461
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 1: his thoughts, and you were just running into the situation

462
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: of how much do you trust him? How much of it?

463
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: It is just part of his bravado and his image

464
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,199
Speaker 1: that he's creating, and how much can you take to

465
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:57,640
Speaker 1: the bank. Again, a fascinating character though the real basics

466
00:25:57,640 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: though on Crowley, because man, we could do like a

467
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 1: whole pot guest series just on crowding. Uh So, early

468
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 1: in his life he joined the occult society known as

469
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 1: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. But he was

470
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 1: actually expelled from this for quote deviant and homosexual behavior.

471
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,120
Speaker 1: So this is a guy who's getting kicked out of

472
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: secret magical societies. Uh. Then he joins the occult secret

473
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: society apparently there were there are a lot of them

474
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 1: back then, Ordo Templary Orientius. This is in nineteen He

475
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: rises up in their ranks and becomes the leader of

476
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: their English speaking fraternities, and he reinvents their belief system

477
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: to his own religion called Salima or the Thelemic religion,

478
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,360
Speaker 1: and it's mainly about free love, sex, magic and sort

479
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 1: of the idea of, as he called it, do what

480
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 1: thou wilt. It was a philosophy of individualism and self

481
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 1: fulfillment and the sexual rituals that he sort of invented

482
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: for this, we're supposed to lift your consciousness to a

483
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 1: higher plane. Now, I do want to add that magical

484
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: exploration of sexual energy itself was nothing new. You find

485
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 1: terrific examples of this both in Chinese Taoism and in

486
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: Indian yoga traditions. I mean a particular note. You have

487
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 1: the contra. Yeah, yeah, this rose to prominence within the

488
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: Hindu traditions in medieval India around the fifth century and

489
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 1: uh and it may even go back further to that,

490
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:24,399
Speaker 1: to the Indus civilization of thirty three b C. But

491
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,640
Speaker 1: just to give a just a quick example of what

492
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: the contra consisted of, you'd have male and female tantricas

493
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 1: and they would they would bathe, they'd address and all

494
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: up purify through med meditation and recitation of mantras, and

495
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,160
Speaker 1: then they would form into male and female couples. They

496
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: would they would unite sexually, and this would be the

497
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: pronunciation of mantras turned turning the female partner into the

498
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: embodiment of a goddess the male into a god. So

499
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: on a mythic level, they would re enact the cosmological

500
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: union of Shiva and and Shakti, Deva and davy And

501
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: I think all that's rather interesting in light of some

502
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: of the activities of Crowle at Crowley and Uh and

503
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: Parsons that will discuss. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to

504
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: imagine that Crowley was unaware of tantra or other like

505
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 1: sexual rituals in varying cultures. I feel like, like again

506
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: like the whole Colm aspect, like like he plucked things

507
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: from various you know, ideas that he had learned about,

508
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: and he sort of molded it together into this super

509
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: charismatic UH cult. I guess. Yeah, Well, I mean you

510
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: can look at it two ways. On one hand, if

511
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,959
Speaker 1: you're selling something to somebody, inevitably you're just taking an

512
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: existing product, rewrapping it and selling it as something new.

513
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: And then in terms of new religious movements, which we

514
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: talked about in a recent episode, like all that is

515
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: doing is you're you're taking existing ideas and motifs and

516
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: making them apply to the modern world in a new way,

517
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: in a way to connects with modern individuals. And we

518
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: see somebody else do that to Crowley himself, not just

519
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: in a short while, somebody rather famous. So Crowley actually, uh,

520
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: here's a fun story about this guy fakes his own

521
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: death in nineteen thirty while he's rock climbing in Portugal,

522
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 1: and then three weeks later he reappears and he's like,

523
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: ha ha, I'm alive. Um Parsons for his part, So

524
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 1: what does what does all this Crowley stuff have to

525
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: do with Parsons? Parsons was a fan. So Parsons and

526
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: his wife actually joined the O T O S Pasadena

527
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: chapter in nineteen thirty nine, and this was called the

528
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 1: Agape Lodge. Parsons began corresponding with Crowley, so they're writing

529
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: letters back and forth to one another on a regular basis.

530
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,720
Speaker 1: He purchases a mansion in Pasadena and he turns it

531
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: into a commune of creative types where they're just constantly

532
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: having these wild parties. Like more than one article that

533
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: I read about this talked about how like the neighbors

534
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 1: hated the fact that Parsons lived there because he would

535
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: have these like crazy black magic sex parties and like

536
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 1: like one of the stories was like something about a

537
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: naked pregnant woman jumping through like hoops of fire or

538
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, just like who knows if

539
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,720
Speaker 1: that's real or not. But supposedly this house was pretty wild. Well,

540
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: he was living large in a time when there was

541
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: a very button down idea of what an individual was

542
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: supposed to be and how you fit into society. Yeah,

543
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: and so you've got people hanging out at this place.

544
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: It's called the Parsonage by the way, uh, like Robert Heinlein,

545
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: Ray Bradberry, and l Ron Hubbard. At the time, l

546
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard just coming out of the war and a

547
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: burgeoning science fiction author. And this is before the writing

548
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: of dianetics and the sounding of them. So Parsons is

549
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: able to convince the police every time they show up

550
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: for one of these complaints. He's like, look, man, I'm

551
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: a respectable Caltech scientist. I work for the JPL. These

552
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: neighbors are just complaining about nothing. But actually instead they

553
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: were performing gnostic masses inside, which I'm not going to

554
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: get into, but it's pretty lurid. And they would consume

555
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: cakes made from menstrual blood supposedly. Uh. The house next door,

556
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 1: fun fact, was actually the former state of beer baron

557
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: Adolphus Bush. This is where the famous Bush Bush beer

558
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: and Bush gardens, and so the Bush Gardens were next

559
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: door to Parsons place. Uh. This is all part of

560
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 1: a strip that was referred to as Millionaires row Now

561
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: before any of his rocket launches, like he would supposedly

562
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: chant Crowley's him to Pan. Uh. And so when you

563
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: when you talk to like, you know, Parsons experts about this,

564
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,000
Speaker 1: They're like, it's not that big of a deal. I mean,

565
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: like it would be like the same thing as like

566
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: cheering for your football team or something like right before

567
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: you do something exciting. Well, I mean, how weird is

568
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: it compared to any invocation of a divine being when

569
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: you're doing something like landing on the moon right right,

570
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's there's kind of a clash of

571
00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: worlds there now, Pan either way or the great god

572
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: Pan if if you will was of course you're an

573
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: Arthur making fan. Yeah, and that is indeed a wonderful

574
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: story that will make you see Pan in new ways.

575
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: But this is a Greek god of wild nature and sexuality,

576
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: often represented as a satyr uh, generally accompanied by a

577
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: flock of nymphs. So during World War Two, Parsons is

578
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: actually convinced to sell the shares that he has an

579
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 1: aero Jet, and this amounted to twenty thousand dollars and

580
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: he uses this to basically devote his life full time

581
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: to spirituality. Uh. And the reason behind this was actually

582
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: that aero Jet had sold fifty one percent of its

583
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,479
Speaker 1: stock to the General Tire and Rubber Company so they

584
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 1: could keep up with the increased demand for production that

585
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military had for them. And these new

586
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: investors wanted to distance themselves from Parsons UH that he

587
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 1: was very eccentric. And this isn't just because of like

588
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: the occult sex magic stuff, but also just like he

589
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: was kind of risky on the rocket range as well.

590
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: So they basically bought him out. He was only thirty

591
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: years old at the time, so like he had started

592
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: his own company and divested and you know, I was

593
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: living the life at thirty. So this is where things

594
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: start to turn a little sour for him. Yeah, and

595
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: and I it's impossible not to note here at thirty

596
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: years old the time he has seven years left to

597
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 1: live like this is a guy who burned brightly for

598
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: a short amount of time, younger when he died than

599
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 1: you and I are now. Yeah. Uh, So, he had

600
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: an affair with his wife's seventeen year old sister, Sarah,

601
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: and so his wife leaves him for the leader of

602
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 1: their local OTEO lodge. Parsons subsequently becomes the new head

603
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: of the Pasadena Otio. Then this is when things with

604
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard get weird. So he's invited to stay

605
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: at the parsonage in nine. Parsons is super impressed with him,

606
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: like he thinks he's again. So like, imagine I imagine

607
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: both Hubbard and Crowley as being guys with like a

608
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: D and D charisma of eight team, Like they're super charismatic,

609
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: but they also see through charisma, so you can tell that, like,

610
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: these are two guys that can probably only tolerate each

611
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:10,399
Speaker 1: other for short amounts of tea. Crowley isn't even there

612
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: and he thinks that the Hubbard is a fraud. He's

613
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: writing letters to Parsons and everybody at the lodge saying like,

614
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: don't have anything to do with this guy. He's a

615
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 1: total con man, which is ironic. Uh. Still, Parsons invites

616
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 1: Hubbard to become his magic partner, and they try to

617
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: develop their own sex magic rituals, specifically to summon the

618
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 1: goddess Babylon, also known as the Scarlet Woman. This is

619
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:37,839
Speaker 1: all part of Crowley's Thelemic practice. So the idea here

620
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 1: is they want to impregnate a woman with the elemental

621
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: offspring that would be known as the moon Child, and

622
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: they called this project Babylon Working. Some people refer to

623
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: the moon Child as the Antichrist. I think it's a

624
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 1: little different from that, but that's sort of like the

625
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: shorthand version for just like the general public to understand

626
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: what they're up to. Yeah, and uh, if I remember correctly,

627
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: they're the Moonchild and Babylon Working, this comes into ploy

628
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: and Grant Morrison's the Invisible Yeah very much. So. Yeah,

629
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,800
Speaker 1: there's a whole actually, like a major plot that overarchs

630
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: the whole thing of a moon child and like sort

631
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: of bringing about an apocalypse. Yeah. Um. So the same

632
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 1: time as all this is going on, Parsons meets Marjorie Cameron,

633
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: who's described as a woman who's a free spirit with

634
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: red hair, and he thinks I did it. I summoned

635
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: Babylon she's got red hair. She's the scarlet woman. Hubbard

636
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,799
Speaker 1: convinced his Parsons in the meantime, he says, give me

637
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:37,240
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. I'm going to invest it in a boat

638
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: scheme down in Florida and we're gonna get rich. And

639
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: so he takes this twenty dollars and Parsons This is

640
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:47,720
Speaker 1: where I get confused. I don't think they've ever married.

641
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: So it's parsons ex wife's sister, Sarah. Uh so she's

642
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: not his second wife, but maybe she's his girlfriend. Hubbard

643
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: runs off with her and the money and goes to Mexico,

644
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: and Parson is pissed and he comes after them, and

645
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: he claims that he cast a spell that invokes a

646
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: thunderstorm that made Hubbard and Sarah's boat have to force

647
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: back to land because the storm was so bad. They're, uh,

648
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:20,280
Speaker 1: you know, grabbed by the authorities. I think everything basically

649
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:24,280
Speaker 1: like washes out. Like obviously Parsons isn't pals with them anymore.

650
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:26,359
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like he gets his money back or

651
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: his girlfriend back, but you know that they basically sever

652
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 1: that relationship. Yeah, and no, no children came about from

653
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: the from the union and that means real children or

654
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 1: moon children. Yeah, no as far as we know. But

655
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 1: supposedly Marjorie says she had an abortion. Uh so there was,

656
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 1: but there was no moon child that ever came out

657
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: of this whole experiment. And then all of this O

658
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 1: T O stuff actually is said to be a major

659
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: influence on Hubbard when he starts scientology years later. So

660
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 1: it's interesting, like if you look at the two side

661
00:36:56,719 --> 00:36:58,879
Speaker 1: by side, they have a lot of similar sort of

662
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: beliefs and pro actices. It's just like Hubbard dulled it

663
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: up in a different way. Yeah. Again, it kind of

664
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: comes down to repackaging something that already exists in selling

665
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: it to a new client, uh, and taking older ideas

666
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:15,839
Speaker 1: and making them more applicable to the modern individual. So

667
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: this is kind of the sad part. So you know,

668
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: he's he's ousted from aerojet. He's lived this kind of

669
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 1: like fantastic occult lifestyle in a mansion with parties, but

670
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: now like he's lost his money to Hubbard. Uh and

671
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: he has no security clearances. Well yeah yeah uh, and

672
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: so he ends up doing odd jobs to make money,

673
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: like repairing, washing machines, pumping gas, fixing cars, being a

674
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 1: hospital orderly and then designing pyrotechnics for the movies. My

675
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 1: understanding was he was building squibs uh and so he

676
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: worked actually as a chemical researcher for Hughes Aerospace. But

677
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty the FBI investigated him. This is how he

678
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 1: loses security clearance. They accused him of stealing documents from Hughes,

679
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: and their claim was that he was going to exchange

680
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: the documents, which were actually rocket plans, to the Israeli

681
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 1: government so he could have admission into Israel and be

682
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: part of the newly founded government there. He was basically

683
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: going to establish a rocket program for Israel. He lost

684
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 1: all of his privileges and his security clearance and obviously

685
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,439
Speaker 1: the huge aerospace job. As far as I could tell,

686
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: he and Marjorie they stayed together until his death. They

687
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: eventually moved into the carriage house that's behind the mansion.

688
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: Another account that I read those says that they ended

689
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 1: up renting a room over a garage on another estate.

690
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: So I'm not quite sure. It sounds like they were

691
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: living in a uh, you know, a small house behind

692
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: a larger mansion on this sort of millionaire's row area,

693
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: But I can't tell if it was the original parsonage

694
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: house or if it was somewhere else. All Right, we're

695
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 1: gonna take one more break, conduct one more prayer to

696
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 1: our pagan gods of advertising, and when we come back

697
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: we will discuss parsons death and his legacy. Okay, we're back.

698
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 1: So Parsons died in a really horrible way. Like it's grizzly.

699
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: So it's June. S He's in the garage that he

700
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: lives above. This is in Pasadena. Still uh, He's mixing

701
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: chemicals and there's an explosion. The garage blows up. He's

702
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: still conscious when responders get to the scene, but he's

703
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: lost his right arm. He couldn't speak because half of

704
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 1: his face was mutilated. Now, criminologists who investigated the scene

705
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: later they thought that it was caused by fulminative mercury

706
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: that was being mixed in a coffee can and then

707
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: was dropped in the garage, and this burst ignited other

708
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 1: volatile chemicals. Imagine a guy like Parsons. He's probably got

709
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff in this lab and and some

710
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: of his former co workers had issues with his safety.

711
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh yeah. So it's thought that Parsons was

712
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:03,359
Speaker 1: working on an order of explosives for one of these

713
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,479
Speaker 1: movies he was working on. He died a few hours later,

714
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 1: like they got him to the hospital, but he just

715
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 1: he didn't survive. There's all kinds of speculation around this.

716
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: Some people say he was assassinated, some people say it

717
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: was a magical experiment gone wrong. Most likely though from

718
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 1: the evidence that was acquired at the scene, he was

719
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: just careless with these chemicals. Now, Marjorie Cameron, on the

720
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: other hand, says that that's totally unlike her husband, that

721
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 1: he was super safe with his chemicals, and she thinks

722
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,800
Speaker 1: that he was murdered somehow. Uh. And he was only,

723
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, thirty seven years old when this happens.

724
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:43,959
Speaker 1: So we go on through history and because of all

725
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:49,280
Speaker 1: of this sort of scandalous activity, the writings of Parsons

726
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: were subsequently purged from the academic papers that were stored

727
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: at cal Tech. But at the same time, I mean,

728
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 1: this is a guy who had a huge influence on

729
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: an important scientific aspect of American society. In nineteen seventy two,

730
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,320
Speaker 1: A crater on the Moon is named after him. Cameron

731
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:11,239
Speaker 1: herself was publishing his essays after he died. Uh and

732
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: In fact, in and mark his hundredth birthday, a publishing

733
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: house put out a collection of his poems that he

734
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: wrote about Marjorie Cameron that were it was called Songs

735
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 1: of the Witch Woman, and it featured illustrations by her,

736
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: like she drew a company. Yeah. Yeah, And I already

737
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: mentioned Verna von Braun and other individuals people who worked

738
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,200
Speaker 1: with Parsons and knew him or just knew of his

739
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: work and knew how it influenced the trajectory of rocket technology.

740
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: You know, they would continue to speak out for him

741
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 1: and say, this is a guy who deserves more credit

742
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 1: for what he did. Yeah, I mean, so Pendell, who's

743
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: really like, as far as I can tell, the go

744
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: to source on this, there's another book about him, but

745
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: it's written by somebody who used a pseudonym. But Pendel

746
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: is the person who, like, uh, anytime, like somebody who

747
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 1: writes an article about Parson's they find Pendel and he actually,

748
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 1: you know, is a journalist himself. So for instance, like

749
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: Motherboard's piece in fourteen that was all about like the

750
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: the hundred year anniversary of Parsons that was written by Pendel. Uh,

751
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 1: and Pendell's ideas like well, yeah, like they purged him

752
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 1: from this sort of academic history. But then like when

753
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: you go and you get like official responses from people

754
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:25,719
Speaker 1: at the JPL, they say, like, what do you mean,

755
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 1: Like we we totally recognize that Jack Parsons was part

756
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: of our founding, you know. But so there's a little

757
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,239
Speaker 1: bit of push and pull there. But really like if

758
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: you want the full story, you're not going to find it,

759
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: uh in caltext like archives. Now. I like that you

760
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: say story, because that's one of the things that were

761
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:46,359
Speaker 1: the figure like Parsons, is that when we look back

762
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 1: on history, like we're not just looking at a list

763
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: of things. We're looking at at stories and often conflicting stories,

764
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: stories and different different versions of the truth that are

765
00:42:57,320 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: that are struggling for dominance. And then how do you

766
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: fit a character like Parsons into all that? Like what

767
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,759
Speaker 1: does he what does he mean? Right? And Uh, we

768
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: want to we want to look at at someone like

769
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: him or Crowley or any of these other figures we've

770
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:12,760
Speaker 1: looked at. We want to look at him like Profits

771
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: or Harbinger's Uh. Because on the other hand, the idea

772
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:19,720
Speaker 1: that ultimately Parsons were just one of many that Parsons

773
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: just another example, maybe in a more noteworthy example of

774
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:27,920
Speaker 1: someone who did not fit into the mainstream demands. They

775
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 1: didn't fit the mold that that people were supposed to

776
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 1: be poured into at the time. Like that, that's that's

777
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 1: maybe a bit depressing to think of it that way,

778
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: And we tend to think, oh, well, he was he

779
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: was unique, he was something special, and he was he

780
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: was something special. He his like I say, his, he

781
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 1: stands out because his story is different than most of

782
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:50,840
Speaker 1: what has has survived to us. Yeah. I think the

783
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: appeal of him in particular is the sort of dichotomy

784
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: between the universe of what we think of as rational

785
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 1: science combined with what we think of irrational magic. Right. Um.

786
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:07,240
Speaker 1: But again, like going back to this idea that Parsons

787
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:09,399
Speaker 1: had of himself, he didn't think of himself as being

788
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: like rational or irrational on either side. He thought all

789
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:15,720
Speaker 1: of it was woven into his identity as being somebody

790
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: who faced challenges and uh tried to like basically make

791
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: the impossible possible. Yeah, And there's there's much to say

792
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: about where Parsons and other similar figures fall into the

793
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,320
Speaker 1: trajectory of twentieth century American culture. There's an excellent Ian

794
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: magazine article by Benjamin Breen titled Into the Mystic From

795
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: Stonehenge to Silicon Valley How technology uh nurtured New Age

796
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: ideas in a world's supposedly stripped of its magic. And

797
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 1: I think the title gives much of it away, But

798
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: the author here argues that there is a direct link

799
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: between the occult movements of the Late Enlightenment and the

800
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:55,919
Speaker 1: New Age movements of today, and then it ties into

801
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: the power of technology. So I want to want to

802
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 1: read a quick quote from this, he said quote. We

803
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: might also regard the New Age movements of the nineteen

804
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:08,760
Speaker 1: seventies is arising from, rather than defeating, this Apollo era

805
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: conviction in the power of technology. In the nineteen thirties,

806
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: while he was immersing himself and the theoretical physics that

807
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: underpinned the first atomic bomb, for instance, the young physicist

808
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: Jay Robert Oppenheimer was also learning Sanskrit and compulsively reading

809
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: and comparing himself to ancient Vedic scripture. Similarly, even the

810
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 1: rocket scientist Jack Parsons was co founding the Jet Propulsion

811
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: Laboratory at cal Tech, he was becoming immersed in alchemical

812
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: lore and occultism. Performing sex magic in his Pasadena mansion

813
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 1: and wrote in with a rotating cast of bohemian Los

814
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: Angeles characters. Parsons would chant Alistair Crowley's him to the

815
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: Greek god Pan before every rocket test, and he claimed

816
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 1: his discovery of solid rocket fuel in nineteen forty two,

817
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:58,840
Speaker 1: which laid the groundwork for the Apollo space program, derived

818
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: from his mystical intuition. So what's interesting about this passage

819
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: to me is in their description of these connections between

820
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: um Magical Enlightenment and New Age movement, they actually mentioned

821
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: two things. Oppenheimer is also in the Invisibles, in the

822
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:22,319
Speaker 1: whole idea behind, like the bomb being somewhat like connected

823
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 1: to just the largical sort of mystical journey that's in

824
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 1: that book. But then also the rocket is named Apollo,

825
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: and Apollean beliefs and worship of the god Apollo are

826
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: built into a lot of these occult backgrounds that we

827
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 1: find when we go digging, you know, back into people

828
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: like John d et cetera. Yeah, and even in our

829
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: modern era, we can't stop naming spacecraft after either gods

830
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: or at least mythological being like we did that episode

831
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: on NASA's Osiris Rex named for the Egyptian god Osiris,

832
00:46:55,760 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: or or consider China's You Too that the jade rabbit.

833
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: This was the lunar module, and it was named for

834
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:07,040
Speaker 1: the mythical animal task with the pounding of the elixir

835
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 1: of immortality on the far side of the moon. Yes,

836
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: so this is really like an interesting I think through

837
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 1: line for stuff to blow your mind. And one of

838
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:17,359
Speaker 1: the reasons why I thought, like when I when I

839
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: first joined the show, I was like, we gotta do

840
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,240
Speaker 1: a Jack Parsons episode, like this is the most stuff

841
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:22,919
Speaker 1: to blow your mind of stuff to blow your mind

842
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: the topics. But because as we've seen through like John

843
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: d and other people that we've looked into these other

844
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: like countercultural characters involved in science throughout history, there's a

845
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: through line that does connect the occult and sort of

846
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: magical thinking and romanticism to what we think of today

847
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:46,760
Speaker 1: as being empirical science, right, and they're very much related.

848
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that I don't know necessarily that

849
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that going on today. Maybe it's

850
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 1: just that I mean, maybe the John Parsons of today,

851
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: we don't know that they're having sex, magic rituals or

852
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: something like that. But um, it's just curious to me

853
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: that science has sort of divorced itself entirely from this

854
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: idea of more of a Renaissance form of knowledge. Yeah.

855
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. All right. So there

856
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: you have it, Jack Parsons, if you want a deeper

857
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:23,759
Speaker 1: dive into either his scientific achievements or certainly his occult interests. Um.

858
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:27,360
Speaker 1: We we mentioned the book at the top of the episode,

859
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: George Pendell's book. It's Strange, Angel, I believe, Yeah, and

860
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: it is. It's a fantastic reader. I've read the whole

861
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 1: book and I really recommend it. Um. Pendell is not

862
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: only like an excellent researcher who went out and found

863
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: primary resources for this book, but he tells a really

864
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 1: compelling narrative to Yeah, and hey, if you want to

865
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, do so, Like, for instance,

866
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: is there another uh counterculture avenger out there that we

867
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: need to be covering on the show. Yeah? We lets, yeah,

868
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: please do because I feel like, um, maybe it feels

869
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 1: like we're starting to run out of them, like we

870
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: we've covered a lot of him with Lily and d

871
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:06,040
Speaker 1: and Um Sasha Shulgin, Yeah, oh well, we we need

872
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 1: to we need to visit the world of Timothy Leary

873
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,000
Speaker 1: at some point. That is true when we have you

874
00:49:11,080 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: never did a Timothy Learry episode before. We we have

875
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: an older episode that that discusses him somewhat, but I

876
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: don't feel I don't feel that we gave him is

877
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: is close to consideration as he's Yeah, Timothy Learry is

878
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:28,359
Speaker 1: like the Captain America of this countercultural actors. Yeah, yeah,

879
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,640
Speaker 1: please let us know. So ways to get in touch

880
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:33,240
Speaker 1: with us. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler,

881
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 1: and we're on Instagram. You can write us through all

882
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 1: of those social media channels. You can also find them

883
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 1: all on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah,

884
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: and if you want to get in touch with us,

885
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:47,359
Speaker 1: uh via the old technology, the old ways, you can

886
00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 1: do so by sending us an email that blow the

887
00:49:49,680 --> 00:50:02,360
Speaker 1: mind and how stuff Works dot com for more on

888
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff works

889
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: dot com? They fou