Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We are exploring a classic that is
Speaker 1: near and dear to our collective heart. As you may know,
Speaker 1: Matt Noll and yours truly work extensively in the world
Speaker 1: of audio fiction. And we had just an amazing conversation
Speaker 1: with a good friend of the show, filmmaker Brett Wood,
Speaker 1: who created something called the Control Group. And though it
Speaker 1: may be fiction, it is very much based in fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the first fiction pods we
Speaker 2: ever did. And this is kind of your baby, Ben.
Speaker 2: You really help with all the development and all of
Speaker 2: the stuff involving what led to this really really fantastic show.
Speaker 1: Oh, credit where it's due, Paul Decant and I helped
Speaker 1: out with it.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: Oh, and there's human experimentation involved in this one.
Speaker 3: I do believe that's correct. Let's get on the slab.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 4: my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are you, and you
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. A very special episode of our show
Speaker 1: today because we are delving into something that has always
Speaker 1: fascinated us. I think as individuals and as a group,
Speaker 1: and that is the strange intersection of ethics and experimentation.
Speaker 1: Science right science versus the humanity of both the experimenters
Speaker 1: and the experimentees. But we are not alone in this endeavor.
Speaker 1: Today we are joined with a friend of the show,
Speaker 1: a filmmaker Brett Wood, who just recently created How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: first fiction podcast, The Control Group. Brett, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show with us today.
Speaker 6: Brett, what is excited to be here?
Speaker 4: And you are indeed Brett Wood. I, well, we haven't
Speaker 4: fully confirmed. I haven't seen any identification. Did you guys
Speaker 4: get identification?
Speaker 3: They got it at the front desk. We have a
Speaker 3: new policy.
Speaker 6: Okay, he's cool.
Speaker 4: He looks a lot like Brett Wood.
Speaker 1: He at least signed his name Brett Wood when he
Speaker 1: got in here, which is about the level of our security.
Speaker 3: Wow, man, you're really throwing our security team under the bus.
Speaker 1: So, Brett, we were extremely excited about the Control Group
Speaker 1: as we were learning more about the show and more
Speaker 1: about the real life things, events, people and places that
Speaker 1: inspired the the narrative of The Control Group, And from
Speaker 1: what we understand, this originally was a screenplay, is that correct?
Speaker 6: Right? About six years ago?
Speaker 7: I wanted to make it as a film and quickly
Speaker 7: realized that it was sort of beyond my means as
Speaker 7: an independent filmmaker to have this large hospital facility and
Speaker 7: a fair number of extras as patients in the hospital.
Speaker 7: And also, as we may get into a little bit
Speaker 7: later on, I ran into some problems with the locations
Speaker 7: where I wanted to shoot, so I then moved over
Speaker 7: to a different project which is mostly set in a house,
Speaker 7: which was much more manageable for me.
Speaker 4: Is that one called Those Who Deserve to Die?
Speaker 6: That's coming up next?
Speaker 7: That one I've just finished and have not yet shown anywhere,
Speaker 7: or we're just finishing up the sound and music.
Speaker 6: The Unwanted is the one we did instead of The Control.
Speaker 1: Group, right, And for anyone unfamiliar with the work, you
Speaker 1: are quite a prolific creator. Made The Unwanted in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Psychopathia Sexualist in two thousand and six, a documentary that
Speaker 1: we leaned on pretty heavily in another show called car Stuff.
Speaker 1: It's called Hell's Highway The True Story of Highway Safety
Speaker 1: Films in two thousand and three, which I cannot recommend
Speaker 1: enough if you want something with a disturbing twist.
Speaker 3: Those are upsetting.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I remember the carst Of episode that was
Speaker 2: back in my heyday as super producer Nol Brown.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. We all go way back in
Speaker 1: this regard.
Speaker 4: So I like where your work has taken you thus
Speaker 4: far and kind of where it's headed. Can you tell
Speaker 4: us exactly what the control group is, what it's about.
Speaker 7: Sure, it's a sort of a narrativization of a couple
Speaker 7: of different threads that were going on in sort of
Speaker 7: psychological medicine and covert government activities in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 7: and sixties, one of which is the government's drug testing
Speaker 7: programs better known as MK Ultra.
Speaker 6: Of course, Artichoke, Bluebird.
Speaker 7: There were lots of names for what they were doing,
Speaker 7: which is basically secretly testing drugs on people, preferably unsuspecting people,
Speaker 7: and trying to determine if these could be useful tools
Speaker 7: for either mind control or interrogation. And then the other thread.
Speaker 8: Of it is the CIA sponsorship of experimental psychological testing,
Speaker 8: you know, without any apparent connection to the you know,
Speaker 8: covert interrogation.
Speaker 6: Arm of what they were doing.
Speaker 7: So they would they just set up a front organization
Speaker 7: to fund colleges, hospitals, doctors to just do experiments that
Speaker 7: might kind of fit in with the kind of stuff
Speaker 7: they're interested in, namely things like erasing someone's memory, getting
Speaker 7: them to unlock the secrets which they be protecting.
Speaker 6: You can sort of see anything that might be applicable.
Speaker 7: They were kind of open to and a lot of
Speaker 7: the doctors who did the research didn't know they were
Speaker 7: sort of doing it under the sponsorship of the CIA.
Speaker 7: And they say, I called it a cutout, which I
Speaker 7: love that term. Instead of a front, we have we
Speaker 7: have several cutouts that we can hide this behind. And
Speaker 7: we're going to hide this behind. The cutout known as
Speaker 7: the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 6: What is that either?
Speaker 7: Great? It's just such an important sounding like who doesn't.
Speaker 6: Believe in that's real human ecology?
Speaker 4: That's what they called it.
Speaker 7: Yes, And well, I guess we can announce here for
Speaker 7: the first time that pretty soon we are going to
Speaker 7: make available Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology t
Speaker 7: shirts at our Control Group merchandise shop. So just stand
Speaker 7: by for more details on that. But I just love
Speaker 7: the idea of this, of this nonprofit organization and handing
Speaker 7: out money to ambitious researchers.
Speaker 1: And there's a bit of an ego fee too, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, we believe in your work.
Speaker 3: Sounds kind of like Illumination Global Unlimited.
Speaker 6: Perhaps, But it's funny.
Speaker 7: This is why I feel so at home here, you know,
Speaker 7: within the house, stuff works. Family is because Life with
Speaker 7: the Driver's a documentary and I know that MK Ultra
Speaker 7: has been a subject on stuff they don't want you
Speaker 7: to know and other shows because you know, your audience
Speaker 7: sort of relishes these secret histories of not always the
Speaker 7: underbelly of what's going on in our society and government,
Speaker 7: but just like being in the know of the things
Speaker 7: that were not in your high school textbook.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well said. So let's dive into your research process
Speaker 1: as you were gathering material and documentation for the script
Speaker 1: itself and for the story. What kind of stuff did
Speaker 1: you find? Where did you look?
Speaker 6: Mostly?
Speaker 7: Well, the interesting is there's not much first generation information
Speaker 7: about this stuff. The whole thing would have been secret
Speaker 7: and forgotten were it not for the survival of I
Speaker 7: think seven boxes of financial records receipts, and it was
Speaker 7: from those documents that people were able to piece together
Speaker 7: this history. But there are a number of great books
Speaker 7: on the subject. As far as the CIA testing, there
Speaker 7: is the Search for the Manchurian Candidate by John Marx.
Speaker 7: And as far as the medical research, there's one person
Speaker 7: in particular who I was, who is kind of the
Speaker 7: unofficial inspiration for our main doctor in the control group.
Speaker 7: And the real life doctor's name is Ewan Cameron, and
Speaker 7: he was a doctor in Quebec. He was the head
Speaker 7: of the American Psychiatric Association. You know, you couldn't be
Speaker 7: more highly regarded, But yet he was conducting these today
Speaker 7: we might consider ethically questionable experiments in manipulation of the mind,
Speaker 7: which I can't wait for us to start talking about
Speaker 7: the details of those. But you know, the thing is,
Speaker 7: when you read about all this stuff, it just doesn't
Speaker 7: seem possible. It's outrageous, it's fascinating, but you can't really
Speaker 7: imagine it actually happening. And so what I wanted to
Speaker 7: do with the control group is sort of imagine what
Speaker 7: would it be like to actually be subjected to something
Speaker 7: we call psychic driving, which is where doctor Cameron would
Speaker 7: he would often record it himself. He would a tape
Speaker 7: which would play in a constant loop. You are not
Speaker 7: being kind to others. You need to open up and
Speaker 7: be more open with your emotions. You need to you know,
Speaker 7: and just sort of a mantra or a reinforcement of
Speaker 7: the kind of behavior the person should have. And so
Speaker 7: that tape would play constantly, constantly, constantly in days at
Speaker 7: a time, for days at a time in headphones, and
Speaker 7: sometimes they would have it like a helmet where it's
Speaker 7: wired so a person could get up and walk around.
Speaker 7: And they even had speakers built into mattresses so that
Speaker 7: when someone's asleep, you will be kind to others, you
Speaker 7: will be more responsive to treatment.
Speaker 6: So that's psychic driving.
Speaker 4: Okay, So that psychic driving. Was it done on patients
Speaker 4: in like a psychiatric word or where who was this
Speaker 4: done to?
Speaker 6: Yeah? And it wasn't.
Speaker 7: That's the thing it was done to just like regular people.
Speaker 7: There was a tendency to do a lot of this
Speaker 7: more on women, and we of course address that. That's
Speaker 7: a big part of what the control group is some
Speaker 7: of that, I think is the ego of the doctor
Speaker 7: who if he's going to shape and sculpt a patient
Speaker 7: Pygmalion style, he tends to want to do that more
Speaker 7: with a woman than a man. But I think also
Speaker 7: it feeds a lot into the fact that psychological issues
Speaker 7: are have traditionally sort of been tilted towards women. Like
Speaker 7: the best example was hysteria. That is something that, if
Speaker 7: you take it by its original technical definition, has to do,
Speaker 7: you know, with the reproductive organs of a woman, that
Speaker 7: was the source from which the psychological problem emanated. Or
Speaker 7: we think a lot about housewives in the fifties being
Speaker 7: prescribed tranquilizers and for the men they would just you know,
Speaker 7: have an extra martine at lunch.
Speaker 6: That was their way of dealing with it.
Speaker 7: So there has often been this focus on psychological problems
Speaker 7: on women, and so that sort of became an important
Speaker 7: part of the control group as.
Speaker 1: Well as an avenue of control. I think given the
Speaker 1: misogyny that was institutionalized and still exists today, it seems
Speaker 1: like in many cases, with the benefit of retrospect, weariable
Speaker 1: as a society to look back and say, well, that
Speaker 1: person wasn't mentally ill. They just did want to be
Speaker 1: forced to marry that jerk. Yeah, you know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: this I think that's I think that's a powerful thing.
Speaker 1: But the idea of psychic driving too, I don't want
Speaker 1: us to lose that. At first, when you first hear it,
Speaker 1: it's easy to think, well, I'm familiar with that. I've
Speaker 1: had a song stuck in my head before. How bad
Speaker 1: can it be? You know, it can't be any worse
Speaker 1: than desposito or something. But there are some other techniques
Speaker 1: that doctor Cameron was using. Could you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about those, maybe starting with the sleep treatments.
Speaker 7: So as part of the psychic driving, you would need
Speaker 7: to have your mind sort of neutralized before the fresh
Speaker 7: messages these reinforcements are being allowed in your mind. They
Speaker 7: need to wipe the slate clean, and so they did
Speaker 7: that a couple of different ways. But the cleaning process
Speaker 7: was called depatterning, and that means fix the mind so
Speaker 7: it no longer has a regular pattern of thought.
Speaker 6: It's open and neutral. And even people you know.
Speaker 7: Had memory loss, long term memory loss, they could remember
Speaker 7: what was happening to them now, but couldn't think back
Speaker 7: into their past. That was the whole point, wipe the
Speaker 7: slate clean so that we can replace it with the
Speaker 7: fresh messages, with the psychic driving. So the one way
Speaker 7: they would do that is ect electroconvulsive therapy better known
Speaker 7: today as shock treatment, doubled up with sleep therapy, where
Speaker 7: they would tranquilize someone and have them sleep around the clock.
Speaker 7: And you know, sleep is great, and to a certain degree,
Speaker 7: shock therapy even now is considered of use when correctly applied.
Speaker 7: But what they would do is give people shot treatment
Speaker 7: multiple times in a single day, and according to one source,
Speaker 7: six times the voltage or dosage at which it is
Speaker 7: normally given. So it wasn't just like, you know, you're
Speaker 7: need a little mental tune up. It was an attempt
Speaker 7: to really flatten the brain waves of the mind by
Speaker 7: excessively delivering shot treatment and then rest so that the
Speaker 7: body and the mind would just shut down and you'd
Speaker 7: get woken up, fed more e CT and which puts
Speaker 7: you right back to sleep, and then they would continue
Speaker 7: to drip or the pills. I think someone was telling
Speaker 7: me that phenobarbital is more commonly given as pills, so
Speaker 7: that was I guess how they would keep you in
Speaker 7: that deep sleep.
Speaker 1: Wow, And how how effective was this at least the
Speaker 1: deep patterning aspect.
Speaker 6: You know, the like I said, people did you know?
Speaker 7: After this all came out, a number of patients got
Speaker 7: together and sued you and Cameron, claiming that they had
Speaker 7: you know, erased their memories and you know, cross these
Speaker 7: ethical barriers. So it certainly didn't seem to have the
Speaker 7: curative effect that he was proclaiming it was going to have.
Speaker 7: It didn't completely mess up people's minds the way say,
Speaker 7: you know, uh, transorbital lobotomy might. So the effect it
Speaker 7: was never proven to be especially effective either as a
Speaker 7: sort of a treatment for you know, general psychological difficulties,
Speaker 7: and it certainly was never applied to the kind of
Speaker 7: use that the CIA thought it might be valuable for.
Speaker 7: So we'll never know if it was an effective way
Speaker 7: of interrogating or brainwashing someone. And it doesn't seem to
Speaker 7: have been an especially effective way of curing someone's mental ills.
Speaker 4: And we'll learn more about that right after a quick
Speaker 4: word from our sponsor. So you know, there is one
Speaker 4: thing that perhaps didn't exactly come out of this, but
Speaker 4: was utilized within the mk Ultra trials and specifically within
Speaker 4: the world of the control group, which is confinement the
Speaker 4: uh I don't want to give it away too much,
Speaker 4: but the cages, because that's something that we do see
Speaker 4: used in what we would I guess consider modern interrogation
Speaker 4: techniques isolating someone not allowing them to sleep for long
Speaker 4: periods of time, and we see some of that in
Speaker 4: this story as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and when we talk about the cages in the
Speaker 7: in the podcast, it's a little bit of a fictionalization
Speaker 7: just in terms of it's that it's true to the
Speaker 7: spirit of what was going on. I mean, we had
Speaker 7: a lot of sensory deprivation where someon would be kept
Speaker 7: in the dark with something over their eyes and something
Speaker 7: over their ears so they can't hear, and sometimes with
Speaker 7: their hands inserted into something so they can't feel.
Speaker 6: As it's sort of like a version of the sleep therapies.
Speaker 7: So to just see how long a person could exist
Speaker 7: in that state before their mind gets weakened and becomes
Speaker 7: open to you know, better programming, I guess. And in
Speaker 7: the podcast, the characters talk about how, you know, back
Speaker 7: in the day when the section this ward was called
Speaker 7: the cages, people would just be left to wander and
Speaker 7: sit in their own filth.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's very well documented from.
Speaker 7: Like back in the nineteen thirties and forties, where you
Speaker 7: would have wards of people naked, sitting in their own
Speaker 7: filth and just being given no treatment per se, a
Speaker 7: condition that existed. I think, you know, there was a
Speaker 7: lot of mental hospital reform in the nineteen fifties, so
Speaker 7: it was mostly cleaned up at that time. But you know,
Speaker 7: so you have this this dichotomy between like excessive treatment
Speaker 7: and then no treatment where it's just a matter of
Speaker 7: pump some drugs and someone neutralized the symptoms.
Speaker 6: And ultimately that's what all this kind of was about.
Speaker 7: And if we talk a lot about some of the
Speaker 7: other medical visionaries who have done some pretty crazy things
Speaker 7: over history, usually the justification for what they did was
Speaker 7: that it eliminated the symptoms, but it didn't actually cure
Speaker 7: the disease. My favorite, and I've thought about trying to
Speaker 7: dramatize this guy's work somehow. It was a guy named
Speaker 7: Henry Cotton, and in the nineteen twenties he had a
Speaker 7: big theory that mental illness and health problems was work
Speaker 7: triggered by different kinds of infection, and.
Speaker 1: It's like bacterial infection yeah, okay.
Speaker 7: And chronic dental infection was one of the big ones
Speaker 7: because you know, they didn't have great dental care back
Speaker 7: in the nineteen twenties, no fluoridation of water. And so
Speaker 7: he would pull teeth and remove tonsils and he had
Speaker 7: two sons and completely pulled all their teeth, adult teeth,
Speaker 7: oh wow, and gave people tons electomies the colon. You know,
Speaker 7: lots of bacteria in the colon. He would remove people's colons,
Speaker 7: he would remove portions of their stomach, he would remove
Speaker 7: the spleens. So it was just all about taking out
Speaker 7: anything that was a possible source of infection.
Speaker 6: And it would be amazed at how, you.
Speaker 7: Know, high highly regarded this guy was, and how high
Speaker 7: up the professional ladder he was able to climb. He
Speaker 7: became the superintendent of the Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey,
Speaker 7: in New Jersey, and you know, eventually people kind of realized, Aha, well,
Speaker 7: his numbers look good on paper, but all he's doing
Speaker 7: is you know, removing a cause, you know, a potential cause.
Speaker 7: He's getting rid of symptoms, but he's not actually treating
Speaker 7: the illness. And usually in cases like that, what happens
Speaker 7: is we don't do that anymore, and we don't talk
Speaker 7: about that anymore. And so like lobotomies are another great example.
Speaker 7: The botomies were considered so effective because they wiped out
Speaker 7: the symptoms.
Speaker 3: To say, they don't do the bad stuff anymore.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so different of their part of.
Speaker 3: Their brain that makes them act like a human.
Speaker 7: And part of it is the fact that you've you've
Speaker 7: physically changed them to not be able to do that anymore.
Speaker 7: And in the case of something like shock therapy, they
Speaker 7: change their behavior because they don't want more shock therapy.
Speaker 7: Of course you're still not treating the cause, but you're
Speaker 7: causing the symptom to go away, either medically or through
Speaker 7: the fear instilled in them by well.
Speaker 2: It's like that idea that torture isn't particularly effective and
Speaker 2: getting good confession. It's just effective at getting what you
Speaker 2: want to hear, or you'll get some kind of confession, some.
Speaker 7: Amazing stories, and if you torture someone enough, they'll tell
Speaker 7: you everything anything.
Speaker 2: This guy you're talking about reminds me of like sort
Speaker 2: of like a sick, twisted John Harvey Kellogg type almost
Speaker 2: where he's like into all this like holistic stuff, but
Speaker 2: he's treating this symptoms more than he is the actual illness,
Speaker 2: you know, enemas for everything, like yogurt enemas and all
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 7: It's a great guy because he's like the lighter side, yeah, right,
Speaker 7: the same kind of visionary and it's all about a
Speaker 7: good a good colon flor.
Speaker 6: And we can kind of have fun with him.
Speaker 7: But then when you get into someone who as a
Speaker 7: little more barbaric in their treatments, but you know, it's
Speaker 7: the same. It's two sides of the same coin. This
Speaker 7: sort of visionary medicine that is not that grounded in
Speaker 7: the science of the illness that's being treated well.
Speaker 2: And this guy you're talking about, it sounds like he
Speaker 2: kind of developed a bit of a god complex around
Speaker 2: it too. When you're unchecked and you can do this
Speaker 2: stuff and you have this vision, you know, but no
Speaker 2: one's stopping you, then of course you're just gonna push
Speaker 2: it as far as you can, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And no one's stopping you.
Speaker 7: And like in the case of you and Cameron, you're
Speaker 7: being made the head of the American Psychiatric Association.
Speaker 6: That's like total validation. I go take it further.
Speaker 7: And so well, back to the control group one of
Speaker 7: the things I wanted to do is what would one
Speaker 7: of these conversations be like with the Society for the
Speaker 7: Investigation of Human Ecology, where they're coaxing in along and like,
Speaker 7: maybe you should try pushing the envelope a little bit.
Speaker 7: And because I wanted to, because the doctors who are
Speaker 7: doing these things are not monsters. They're ambitious, and I
Speaker 7: think they all have good intentions, even if they have
Speaker 7: egos kind of running rampant, And it doesn't take a
Speaker 7: whole lot of encouragement to get someone to maybe cross
Speaker 7: the threshold into something a little less ethical than they
Speaker 7: might if they were not being fueled by so much
Speaker 7: encouragement and adoration.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point, because in the
Speaker 1: real world we see these sorts of situations coalescing in
Speaker 1: degrees of increments. It's not as if some shady person
Speaker 1: from what was that phrase, Brett cutout comes to you,
Speaker 1: comes to you and says, let's see how much LSD
Speaker 1: we can pump into someone before we ruin their lives.
Speaker 1: We're going to just get like ten people and just
Speaker 1: take a spaghetti at the wall approach. You know that
Speaker 1: that's something that we ease into as people, and it's
Speaker 1: very easy to rationalize those further steps, especially and I
Speaker 1: think this is this even goes to the degree of
Speaker 1: victimization that some of the medical professionals experience, which is
Speaker 1: much lower than the patients obviously, but there they're being
Speaker 1: convinced that one must make certain sacrifices for the quote
Speaker 1: unquote greater good. And we actually have a clip from
Speaker 1: the control group that I think touches on this, right, Matt.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, this is this is great. This is from
Speaker 4: episode four. The name is phenobarbital, and it's a discussion
Speaker 4: between a character named Summer Hill and doctor Hayes, and
Speaker 4: they're discussing funding for the I guess the research that's
Speaker 4: being done at the hospital, as well as what types
Speaker 4: of things need to be done in order to continue
Speaker 4: that funding of the research.
Speaker 9: Get us a name.
Speaker 6: Start with that.
Speaker 9: It'll be a good measure of your progress. But if
Speaker 9: you hold that a little longer, do the detective work.
Speaker 9: Connect the dots. I'll try, but I can help wondering
Speaker 9: whether or not we should be I'll stop thinking about
Speaker 9: should Should is a dirty word in research. Take yourself
Speaker 9: off the leash, doctor Hayes. Allow yourself to run you
Speaker 9: have a hunch, follow it, got an inch, scratch it
Speaker 9: and urge indulge it, and don't stop to ask whether
Speaker 9: it's something you should be doing. If it gives you
Speaker 9: a better understanding, that's all that matters.
Speaker 4: I love and detest this so much because it feels
Speaker 4: too real to me, having this person from the outside
Speaker 4: group that controls the money that's going to fund the
Speaker 4: research come in and say, well, you know, don't you
Speaker 4: want to do something that's going to be different and beyond.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know you're fifty, but you really got
Speaker 4: to think like a twenty six year old and push
Speaker 4: things harder. But he never once says anything about you know,
Speaker 4: this is exactly what you need to do or anything
Speaker 4: like that. So he's got this weird plausible deniability with
Speaker 4: him and his cutout. But at the same time he's
Speaker 4: convincing this doctor to push himself ethically to the boundary
Speaker 4: and perhaps beyond. And it makes me wonder just how
Speaker 4: much of that is actually what occurred during the mk
Speaker 4: Ultra trials, how much they were just pushing people without
Speaker 4: the CIA actually being the ones who are these dastardly
Speaker 4: who come up with the dastardly ideas that we then
Speaker 4: think about as being perhaps evil if you look back
Speaker 4: with hindsight, it just makes me wonder if they're literally
Speaker 4: just the pushers just getting the scientists to keep going
Speaker 4: that extra mind right.
Speaker 7: I think, giving them the resources to keep going, giving
Speaker 7: them the encouraging, you know, stroking the ego a little bit.
Speaker 7: And then also you have to remember in the nineteen
Speaker 7: fifties a couple of big things were happening at the time,
Speaker 7: and the biggest one is a Cold War. And even
Speaker 7: though they didn't specifically talk about the applications of this
Speaker 7: to you know, CIA activities, there was this sort of
Speaker 7: attitude that certainly within the CIA that were behind in
Speaker 7: the race with the Russians and the Chinese and the
Speaker 7: Koreans for mind control because they believed brainwashing was a
Speaker 7: real thing, and to some degree it is, but not
Speaker 7: everyone believed that it was going to be the thing
Speaker 7: that was gonna You're gonna either transmit something to change
Speaker 7: the way people think, or put something in the water supply.
Speaker 7: At one point, they wanted to put LSD in an
Speaker 7: entire city's water supply just see what would happen, or
Speaker 7: like have some kind of drug or tool. And it's
Speaker 7: interesting the Americans.
Speaker 6: As we are, we love gadgets.
Speaker 7: The Americans always wanted some kind of James Bondian type thing,
Speaker 7: whether it's a drug or a tool or a shot,
Speaker 7: you know, you give someone rather than the more effective
Speaker 7: means of mind control, which is to have a conversation
Speaker 7: with someone, earn their trust, let them talk and you know,
Speaker 7: share your ideas and eventually get them to come around
Speaker 7: to your way of thinking. That is the most effective
Speaker 7: means of mind control.
Speaker 6: But we don't have time for that.
Speaker 7: We want, you know, we want the magic bullet, we
Speaker 7: want the the spy device. So there was almost like
Speaker 7: a sense of espionage to what was going on at
Speaker 7: the time that there was there was a race to
Speaker 7: find either the secret of brainwashing on the part of
Speaker 7: the CIA or with medical science, there's always like a
Speaker 7: race to either find the cure or find the best treatment,
Speaker 7: or be the person to break through the next threshold
Speaker 7: of psychological medicine. And a lot of times there's this
Speaker 7: attitude of yeah, well, you know, there are some ethical
Speaker 7: issues with this, but if we succeed, it's for the
Speaker 7: greater good, So we're going to go ahead and do
Speaker 7: the experiment. And you know that persists today. There's always
Speaker 7: this sort of suggestion that if you break a few eggs,
Speaker 7: that's fine, but as you know, think of the millions
Speaker 7: of lives it's going to save if these test subjects
Speaker 7: die for the sake of science. You know, there's so
Speaker 7: many ways you can justify doing something unethical, so many
Speaker 7: ways you can talk yourself into, you know, believing that
Speaker 7: you're actually doing it for the greater good. The greater
Speaker 7: good is one of those things that is always such
Speaker 7: a When you hear that phrase, you have to be
Speaker 7: very suspicious of it because when someone trucks it out,
Speaker 7: someone's gonna get hurt.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a power move, right, It's like I can
Speaker 2: tell you what the greater good is because I have
Speaker 2: the master plan.
Speaker 3: I see the big picture, and you need to get
Speaker 3: on board.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Our super producer Paul uses the phrase the greater good?
Speaker 6: Is it okay?
Speaker 4: I hope play Devil's advocating for a moment. Isn't there
Speaker 4: a greater good overall for humanity in some way? And
Speaker 4: this is just me Devil's advocating.
Speaker 3: It's called God's plan.
Speaker 4: Oh geez. But I'll be completely serious, Like there are
Speaker 4: maybe things that humanity is going to face in our
Speaker 4: not so distant future, choices we're gonna have to make sure.
Speaker 4: They're gonna be really hard and are probably gonna end
Speaker 4: up killing lots and lots of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but isn't the problem that it's like the people
Speaker 2: in power, whether it's in like a an organization like
Speaker 2: a psychiatric hospital or a government, that are usually the
Speaker 2: ones that dictate the agenda of what that greater good is,
Speaker 2: and they're typically looking out for their best interest or
Speaker 2: the best interest of their cronies in some way, not
Speaker 2: necessarily the greater greater good. It's more like this notion
Speaker 2: of my it's my greater good. I don't know that's
Speaker 2: why I see it. Maybe that's cynical, but.
Speaker 1: I think you're right on. It's in that kind of situation,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to define the greater good as the
Speaker 1: things that are that make things that are good for
Speaker 1: me greater.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would describe it as the status quo
Speaker 2: in many ways, you.
Speaker 9: Know, sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also there are differing definitions. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: being a little bit lid, but there are differing definitions
Speaker 1: For some people, as spiritual greater good is a world
Speaker 1: in which one hundred percent of all living people follow
Speaker 1: the same specific religion. In if we're looking at a
Speaker 1: purely soulless biological imperative, then the greater good is one
Speaker 1: in which no individuals matter. The human species just metastasizes
Speaker 1: and eventually gets to the stars. Neither of those are
Speaker 1: particularly great things for individuals.
Speaker 4: Right, well, let me tell you about migrator good.
Speaker 1: We're kidding, all right, So so we can see that motivation.
Speaker 1: And I think Brett your words of warning are astute
Speaker 1: and sorely needed, both in current age and in past ages.
Speaker 1: But we don't want to lose some of the conversation
Speaker 1: we were having about other mad scientists. Is it okay
Speaker 1: if we call the mad scientists, is that is that
Speaker 1: out of bounds? Because they're not necessarily insane? Right, they're
Speaker 1: just mad? Yeah, they're not that.
Speaker 3: They're not always angry either, Okay, so perturbed scientists.
Speaker 6: There we go.
Speaker 1: Hold on one. Okay, so these these perturbed scientists, could
Speaker 1: you tell us a little more. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: may have found a rogues gallery of people that you
Speaker 1: considered investigating further.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, so we I talked about Henry Cotton,
Speaker 7: and Walker Freeman is the person who really behind the lobotomy,
Speaker 7: and I don't know that we need to add too
Speaker 7: much to his legacy. Jean Mortin Charcout was a nineteenth
Speaker 7: century scientist and his big thing was hysteria. And on
Speaker 7: the plus side, he was one of the first to
Speaker 7: say hysteria is not just a female malady. Men can
Speaker 7: have symptoms of hysteria as well. But then he kind
Speaker 7: of got the show business bug, not literally, but he
Speaker 7: would have these demonstrations and invite people into the surgical
Speaker 7: theater and have patients come out and perform for this
Speaker 7: audience of medical dignitaries. And what would happen is women
Speaker 7: who suffered from this particular brand of hysteria would have
Speaker 7: seizures and contortions, and their bodies would twist into very
Speaker 7: strange positions and then sometimes have something sort of called
Speaker 7: an erotic extra see. And these became very popular among
Speaker 7: the intelligencia and the medical community. And there's even one
Speaker 7: woman named Blanche Whitman who became known as the Queen
Speaker 7: of Hysterics because when she would perform, she could always
Speaker 7: be relied upon to have the convulsions at the right
Speaker 7: time and really exhibit her erotic ecstasy in a way
Speaker 7: that was dramatic. So at a certain point, what are
Speaker 7: we proving and studying anymore? But it's and again it's
Speaker 7: it's women who were the ones put on exhibit. And
Speaker 7: there's a very famous painting of Charcot holding Blanche Whitman
Speaker 7: in front of an audience of men in this surgical environment.
Speaker 6: But careful with the mad scientists thing, because.
Speaker 7: I have a favorite doctor who, by a lot of
Speaker 7: standards would be considered a mad doctor, but actually was
Speaker 7: a brilliant surgeon and contributed an awful lot to our
Speaker 7: understanding of anatomy. And that's John Hunter, who was an
Speaker 7: eighteenth century resurrectionist, and he was the first who really
Speaker 7: championed anatomizing bodies, cutting open bodies to understand them that way.
Speaker 7: This is when there was still a big taboo on it,
Speaker 7: and you would only get a body if someone was
Speaker 7: hanged or executed. The surgeons could have their bodies and
Speaker 7: that became a big trade, and then eventually they started
Speaker 7: robbing graves to get the bodies so that the students
Speaker 7: would have any something to practice on. And when I
Speaker 7: first was reading about him, it was in a book
Speaker 7: a really sensational book about like the corpse robbers and
Speaker 7: the grave robbers of the eighteenth century. But I read
Speaker 7: a really amazing biography of this guy, and it totally
Speaker 7: showed that he was breaking down these these sort of
Speaker 7: notions we have that you can't cut open a human
Speaker 7: body and that it's degrading to have your body, you.
Speaker 1: Know, violated.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's what they would call it, right yeah.
Speaker 7: And it was like when people be executed there, it
Speaker 7: would be a very frightening thing for them to realize
Speaker 7: that their body is going to be given to the
Speaker 7: school for the young surgeons to practice on. But he
Speaker 7: totally believed in it and anatomized so many bodies over
Speaker 7: his lifetime and really broke that barrier and helped facilitate
Speaker 7: getting to the point where bodies were provided to medical
Speaker 7: school so that you could learn from the thing that's
Speaker 7: gonna you know, you're going to actually be operating on.
Speaker 7: I'm going to tell you this anecdote, which you may
Speaker 7: want to cut out for sensitive listeners, or we should
Speaker 7: just give a little trigger warning.
Speaker 4: Go right ahead.
Speaker 7: BRT one of my favorite stories of him, and it's shocking,
Speaker 7: but at the same time, it shows this guy John
Speaker 7: Hunter was so believed in what he was doing. You
Speaker 7: didn't have a lot of way of testing certain things,
Speaker 7: and so he wanted to find out, like certain liquids in.
Speaker 6: The body, how they've aged after death.
Speaker 7: And so one of the great they quote it in
Speaker 7: this book where he took the semen of a corpse
Speaker 7: and put it in his mouth and like.
Speaker 6: Kind of switched it around, and.
Speaker 7: It was like, yep, it has a a a metallic
Speaker 7: brackish taste, and so you know, how else are you
Speaker 7: gonna like test things like that? But that just shows
Speaker 7: to him that the body it was not it had
Speaker 7: so been has been demystified for him. He just wanted
Speaker 7: to learn about the flesh and all of it's this
Speaker 7: little glory exactly, and was willing to do everything to
Speaker 7: better understand it.
Speaker 6: So, you know, on one hand, we have.
Speaker 7: Our scientists who are doing shocking things, but at the
Speaker 7: same time, a lot of times, not always, it yields
Speaker 7: knowledge and it leads to demystification and the loss of
Speaker 7: certain taboos that we have about the body.
Speaker 2: Hold on a second, guys, let's not go there quite yet. First,
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 4: You know, that's something we've discussed on the show numerous times.
Speaker 4: What do you do with research that's gained from human
Speaker 4: experimentation over the years, like Unit seven thirty one or
Speaker 4: some of the things that the Nazi Party was doing.
Speaker 4: What do you do with the because there is there's information,
Speaker 4: raw data that is collected there about the horrible things
Speaker 4: a human can endure. And we kind of had a
Speaker 4: discussion last time, like do you just throw that away?
Speaker 4: Do you keep it locked away somewhere? Do you actually
Speaker 4: use it towards medical research in the future. What do
Speaker 4: you think, Brett, what should we do with all this stuff?
Speaker 7: I mean, once the deed is done, you certainly have
Speaker 7: to try to gain from the knowledge it provided, as
Speaker 7: long as you're not encouraging further, you know, an ethical experimentation.
Speaker 7: But do you think there are things still going on?
Speaker 7: And I wanted to try to suggest this with a
Speaker 7: control group, that we look back on the horrors of
Speaker 7: the mid nineteen fifties, and people in the mid nineteen
Speaker 7: fifties look back on the horror of the turn of
Speaker 7: the century, and so on and so on and so on.
Speaker 7: Do you sort of feel like, what's the horror that
Speaker 7: people are going to look at us fifty years from
Speaker 7: now and sort of realize they.
Speaker 1: Did what Absolutely, And it's fantastic that you bring this up. Well,
Speaker 1: tragic and disturbing, but also fantastic because that's one of
Speaker 1: the questions that we had for you. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of a two part question. So the first is what
Speaker 1: do you see as the importance or the the crucial
Speaker 1: relevance of a work like the control group in the
Speaker 1: modern age?
Speaker 3: And that's.
Speaker 1: A big question to throw answer one. But then the
Speaker 1: second part is exactly what you were asking us, do
Speaker 1: you think it is possible that there is experimentation occurring
Speaker 1: today that will later be looked at with opprobrium by
Speaker 1: future historians. Were trying to make a list, and I
Speaker 1: was thinking, you know, one of the big disadvantages is
Speaker 1: that a lot of that stuff, if it is occurring,
Speaker 1: will be classified. Right, so we only found out about
Speaker 1: things like psychic driving, where as you said, seven boxes
Speaker 1: escaped a purge. Yeah, you know, And what do we
Speaker 1: know now? We know that there are some pretty boundary
Speaker 1: violating experiments with big data, right, that might be something,
Speaker 1: But as far as suppressed medical experimentation, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I couldn't conjecture.
Speaker 7: You know, I was thinking about this, and again I
Speaker 7: think it's and it's part of that double edged sword
Speaker 7: of while we judge the past, we shouldn't judge the
Speaker 7: past too harshly because a lot of times this was
Speaker 7: the best they had and so they were sincerely desperately
Speaker 7: trying to deal with certain illnesses. And we may not
Speaker 7: agree with the way they treated it, but they were
Speaker 7: desperate and there were no other ways of really treating it.
Speaker 7: And it's kind of you know, I sort of feel
Speaker 7: horrible bringing it up, but when you think about something
Speaker 7: like chemotherapy, it's all we got right now. It's it
Speaker 7: is the thing that is we're one of the things
Speaker 7: that is the most effective in treating cancer. You know,
Speaker 7: fifty years from now when we look if someone looks back,
Speaker 7: they're going to say, you did what you you know,
Speaker 7: you put radioactive material in someone's body so that the
Speaker 7: body would kind of, you know, fight and kill some
Speaker 7: portion of something that's growing inside it.
Speaker 6: But it worked. It was what.
Speaker 7: We were able to do with the technology we have.
Speaker 7: So I'm not by that saying that can therapy is
Speaker 7: bad and radiation therapy is bad.
Speaker 9: But.
Speaker 7: You know, don't judge. Hopefully we won't be judged harshly
Speaker 7: because it's it is the best. We're doing the best
Speaker 7: we can, and we have to cut some slack to the.
Speaker 6: People who were.
Speaker 7: You know, it's hard to say that cut slack to
Speaker 7: people who are performing lobotomies and you know, excessive shock
Speaker 7: treatment and things in the past. I don't think it
Speaker 7: was malicious and it was the best they had in
Speaker 7: treating these things. And fortunately things have gotten a lot better.
Speaker 7: So the treatments we're using today, we know are more
Speaker 7: effective and they're focused and they're specific. But at the
Speaker 7: same time, technology is going to reach a point to
Speaker 7: where they have genetic modification and these diseases just disappear,
Speaker 7: and they're going to look back and say, well, why
Speaker 7: didn't y'all do that? And you know, we're going to
Speaker 7: be the people who were, you know, putting people in
Speaker 7: iron lungs.
Speaker 6: Basically, we didn't have the cure. This was what we had.
Speaker 7: So you know, it's a certain amount of tolerance for
Speaker 7: the quote unquote mad scientists of the past is called for.
Speaker 1: I think well said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really answers the question that you brought up to.
Speaker 2: Man, it's like, what do we do with this research,
Speaker 2: and sometimes the means justify, not justify the ends, but
Speaker 2: at least you can accept the results as like something
Speaker 2: of value, even in retrospect. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's hard, It's really hard.
Speaker 1: How do we make it not a total loss right.
Speaker 2: Almost to like honor the people that were subjected to
Speaker 2: this stuff. It's like, you don't what do you just,
Speaker 2: out of like pure ethical kind of panicky outcry toss
Speaker 2: out positive results from these experiments that seems counterproductive and
Speaker 2: almost disrespectful to those who may have lost their lives
Speaker 2: or been damaged in these kinds of experiments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to be a little bit conspiratorial and this,
Speaker 1: and this is just my opinion. I would absolutely be
Speaker 1: unsurprised if it turned out that there were unethical and
Speaker 1: indeed illegal experiments being conducted through some tenuous, tenuously attached
Speaker 1: form of government funding. Because one thing that's really interesting
Speaker 1: about Ewen Cameron that we missed. I believe we mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we emphasized it enough. He was
Speaker 1: from Quebec. These experiments that he was conducting occurred in Canada.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the CIA and the various cutouts
Speaker 1: were not funding experimentation domestically. It happened abroad. So if
Speaker 1: something like this is happening in our current world, it
Speaker 1: is probably happening somewhere where law enforcement or rule of
Speaker 1: laws a little more lax, a little weaker. But I
Speaker 1: feel like, just with all the medical breakthroughs that are
Speaker 1: occurring or on the cusp of occurring, it is less
Speaker 1: plausible that something like that is not happening, which I
Speaker 1: know sounds like maybe I'm a little tinfoil on this one.
Speaker 7: No, because there's a sort of a suggestion of that
Speaker 7: ends reading accounts of the CIA activities. There's a thing
Speaker 7: which comes up and we talk about it in episode
Speaker 7: ten called terminal studies, and that's where you conduct an
Speaker 7: experiment on someone to the point of no return. And
Speaker 7: there's no evidence that any terminal studies were performed in
Speaker 7: the United States, but at least one source sort of says, well,
Speaker 7: but some studies were performed in other countries on people
Speaker 7: who are not Americans, like prisoners of war, and we
Speaker 7: don't know what happened there, And so there's I wouldn't say,
Speaker 7: you know, a good chance. I would just say that
Speaker 7: it's entirely plausible that terminal studies were performed on and again,
Speaker 7: this is like the Korean War.
Speaker 6: This is war.
Speaker 7: We're losing or we're behind in the race for the
Speaker 7: control of the human mind, and it calls for, you know,
Speaker 7: desperate measures.
Speaker 4: I would just say, with the number of destabilized nations
Speaker 4: right now across the globe, it makes me wonder if
Speaker 4: there isn't some kind of this is conspiratorial, but some
Speaker 4: kind of smaller operation that's still studying interrogation techniques out
Speaker 4: there in black sites. Sure, I mean, they're just so
Speaker 4: there's so many places where it could be happening, where
Speaker 4: there is a even a small CIA footprint.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, we did get to the present day.
Speaker 6: Yeah, in a very scary way.
Speaker 1: We hope that you do not consider this show a
Speaker 1: form of mind control, because it's just that it hit
Speaker 1: me when you were describing this, Brett, you said, you said,
Speaker 1: you know, the real form of brainwashing and mind controlling
Speaker 1: is just hanging out and talking with people, yeah, and
Speaker 1: getting them over on your side. And it hit me
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, no, have we acts deadly become Brett Brett.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Brett has a very disarming smile, and it does
Speaker 4: make me a little nervous.
Speaker 1: But we do want to We do want to thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time to come on
Speaker 1: the show today and teach us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the real world inspirations behind the Control Group, which
Speaker 1: when you check out the show does sound like there's
Speaker 1: no way it could have really happened, but it's presented
Speaker 1: in a very plausible escalation because it did happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just to make sure, Ronald Grant is that
Speaker 4: Frank Olsen.
Speaker 7: It sort of is Frank Olsen, except Frank Olsen did
Speaker 7: not die under the same circumstances in which there are
Speaker 7: a number of parallels between the Control Group and the
Speaker 7: real life counterparts. So if you're a real fan, you
Speaker 7: know that Morgan Hall is the alias of George White,
Speaker 7: who's the notorious former Bureau of Narcotic agent who's in
Speaker 7: charge of these safe houses where Operation Midnight, Climax and
Speaker 7: other things went on. So there's there's lots of sort
Speaker 7: of easter eggs for people who are fans of this
Speaker 7: kind of information.
Speaker 4: We left a lot of things unsaid in one particular exactly,
Speaker 4: I just want to put that out of there. We
Speaker 4: don't want to spoil it.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 4: This is an interesting thing you could do right now.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do this after we conclude this show. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go back and listen to the mk Ultra.
Speaker 6: Episode that we did.
Speaker 4: Then I'm going to go and finish episode six because
Speaker 4: that's the one I'm currently on in the control group,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to see where all those parallels are
Speaker 4: because it's I can see it already up until this point.
Speaker 4: But episode nine is midnight climax, so I want to
Speaker 4: really want to listen to that one.
Speaker 1: And thank you, of course, folks for tuning in. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear your stories or accounts, and this
Speaker 1: might be opening a little bit of a risky door,
Speaker 1: but if you have knowledge of what you can sysidered
Speaker 1: to be an ethical or illegal human experimentation occurring in
Speaker 1: modern day, or if you know of something that did
Speaker 1: happen and has not yet reached the public sphere for
Speaker 1: one reason or another, contact us. We would like to
Speaker 1: hear from you.
Speaker 2: You can write to us on social media. Get the Facebook,
Speaker 2: Got the Instagram. We are conspiracy stuff show on Instagram,
Speaker 2: Conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter?
Speaker 6: Right mean? All right? Coolah?
Speaker 2: And you know there's another way to get to us too,
Speaker 2: but we'll hold off on that for a second. We
Speaker 2: want to find out first a little bit more about
Speaker 2: our guest.
Speaker 4: That's right, Brett. Where can we listen to the Control
Speaker 4: Group and learn more about you and your films and
Speaker 4: all of that stuff.
Speaker 7: We can find the Control Group at Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 7: all major podcast platforms, and we have a site which
Speaker 7: is a Control Group dot show. And as far as me,
Speaker 7: I'm on the Internet Movie Database and I don't maintain
Speaker 7: like a regular profile type page, but.
Speaker 6: I try to stay in the social medias as much
Speaker 6: as I can.
Speaker 1: And you can also find the Control Group social media
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter if you want to interact
Speaker 1: directly with the show. There's some really cool visual aspects
Speaker 1: to it that I think are definitely worth the digital trip.
Speaker 7: And all the films that I've made, including The Unwanted
Speaker 7: and of course Hell's Highway, are available on DVD from
Speaker 7: Keno Larber.
Speaker 4: So get out there right now. You can go ahead
Speaker 4: and no, don't pause this yet, let it finish, but
Speaker 4: then subscribe to the Control Group and then start listening
Speaker 4: to those episodes right after this. And that's the end
Speaker 4: of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or
Speaker 4: questions about this episode. You can get into contact with
Speaker 4: us in a number of different ways. One of the
Speaker 4: best is to give us a call. Our number is
Speaker 4: one eight three three STDWYTK. If you don't want to
Speaker 4: do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio.
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