Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe to Middle Theory Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS
On this episode of the Middle Theory podcast, we look at the disturbing allegations of human trafficking and slavery pertaining to Albany-based NXIVM, a group led by a self-help guru who calls himself “The Vanguard.”
Before tackling a range of issues sweeping from the Middle East to disturbing news of cult-activity out of upstate New York, the conversation this week begins on a lighter note, as Chris and Micah discuss one of the world’s most beloved, yet regionally complex, dishes: chili.
After talking about ingredient and process preference, the hosts turn their attention to Jail-O king Bill Cosby, who was convicted of aggravated assault and could be sentenced to up to 30-years in prison, pending appeal.
Another food-related piece of news this week was the Waffle House Shooter, who stripped himself naked and went on a rampage in Antioch, Tennessee, killing four. A subsequent investigation into the killer, 29-year old Travis Reinking, revealed an intense paranoia, complete with Facebook postings referencing the Illuminati.
Moving into Syria, we take a look at progressive legend Noam Chomsky and his surprising signature on an open letter calling for continued U.S. military involvement in Syria, and then the relationship between the Kurdish militias, Syrian Democratic Forces, and ISIS is examined. Why is the American government supporting a war that directly empowers ISIS? Do the ends truly justify the means?
The MID this week takes a long look at the NXIVM cult in upstate New York, which has been blazoned across headlines after leader Keith Raniere and second-in-command, former Smallville actress Allison Mack, were arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
What makes a cult leader? Why do people follow them? We close the discussion with an examination of the tendencies that cult leaders seem to have in common. Are any of them spookily familiar to people you know in your own lives? Perhaps evil really does lurk nearby.
A special thank you to those who donated this week:
- John Quirin
- Chris Beggio
- Jennie Vongvith
- RUNE
- Mark Hankins II
- Ali Buchan
- John Jolly
If you like Middle Theory and want to help support the show, you can donate to the program here:
We are now also offering SUBSCRIPTION accounts for those who would like to make recurring monthly payments to Middle Theory. If you would prefer to SUBSCRIBE to the program, click here to visit our DONATES page, and scroll down below the primary DONATE button.
JOIN US: REACH OUT TO MIDDLE THEORY
To send us feedback, you can email us here. Also, follow Middle Theory on Twitter too… this is highly recommended, and may even be vital for some of you. Finally, as mentioned earlier, some may be further compelled to donate to the program, which helps keep ads for survival gear, water filters, male enhancement supplements, and do-it-yourself earthworm farming kits off the program.
You can also sign up for our newsletter, and get news alerts, articles, and podcasts from Middle Theory sent right to your inbox:
[email-subscribers namefield=”YES” desc=”” group=”Public”]
Finally, here are links to stories addressed on this week’s program:
-
- Cosby Unleashes Expletive-Laden Tirade After Guilty Verdict
- Naked Gunman Kills 4 In Waffle House Shooting, Remains At Large
- Suspected Waffle House gunman thought laptop was hacked weeks before shooting
- Lawyers’ Committee For 9/11 Inquiry file petition to open investigation into 9/11
- Noam Chomsky supports continued US involvement in Syria
- NXIVUM: The dark cult with billionaires, stars, and allegations of sex slavery
- Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded
- Allison Mack and Keith Raniere discuss “The Authentic Human”
- Hillary Clinton’s $30,000 Fans Are Her “Cult” Following
They probably agreed with his politics…rule number one to becoming a victim of a con man paying attention to words…ignoring the realities…
This is amazing I was seriously going to write you guys to see if you know where I can get help seriously…I have been able to quit cigarettes, booze, drugs, with out any problem, yet now that I’m allergic to many foods, I can not stop myself from eating them. I ate an orange the other day knowing it will swell my intestines cause acid reflux and migraines, and I still ate it…tricking myself thinking if I only drink the juice and spit out all the pulp I won’t feel like I’m about to spontaneously combust…chille = instant diarrhea for me…
Stop trigger trigger… every damn ingredient your mentioning is a trigger…
But seriously I seriously have never found any drug addictive, and now that I’m allergic to food I realize it is just as addictive as how people describe crack, heroine, and meth being…
I’m thinking of taking homeless people to dinner and I can just watch them enjoy all the things I can’t….
I have learned to put ranch dressing on everything…that’s the extent of my palette…
ahh ahh you just expressed you’re a food addict…
wow I wonder how many PC people are really human trash trying to be self help gurus like cosby, vanguard, freud…after all the shit that pos gave Richard Pryor about his comedies lewdness… PC the roof of rapists, conartists, and phony weak lily wimps…
I always say it’s the pillars of democracy that’s why they have to get Gram Hancock to dig them out of the asbestos ridden septic tank we call new homes in the 300’s…It’s only 300 right…yeah well you want a pc roof with that.a door…electricity…siding…insulation…hope you like smelling your neighbors farts cause you just paid 300 + to be within inches of the releasing stink…
Cosby was a wimp I listened to Richard and Willie
red, white, and blue, from a black point of view
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSp9N2p0RX4
that’s my favorite comedy record of all time…we used to listen to it over and over…
They were like trump, they all got a red button and were told it controls the nuclear installations across America…and believed it sitting in a room scoffing at 200 people all who have a useless red button in their pocket they all believe gives them power and makes them special…the red button is the political equivalent of envisioning the room naked….
It’s like S.I.P. for those who don’t know what that is…It is a con job where on the off chance a school might have one smart person, they create a group for gifted people. The problem is you can’t get funding to hold class for one guy so you take a bunch of the froth off the idiot top… 29 average morons and tell them they are smart too and stick them with the one maybe smart person just to fill a class room…and make a buck…
What about the fact that during this whole occupy movement Piss Nollan was making movies featuring big banks…I’m Bank Man
while he claims and focuses on the last batman to try and say he didn’t have any bank connections pre occupy you can watch Batman and Dark knight even the trailers have banks in them…
and not just any bank…
Can you guys explain how intelligent people can watch a Nolan porno and not go this is pure propagated phony trash?
I mean when you guys watched interstellar the line about Nasa wouldn’t drop bombs on unsuspecting innocent people didn’t like me, make you reach for the remote and hit eject? and Mathew is one of my all time favorite actors…
wow this is great film making…Nasa wont bomb innocent people what poetry… I’m going to do a three hour podcast on this…and right on time with the American publics decline in interest and rise in suspicions of the entire nasa institution…just a coincidence
like “arrival” holy crap what a dull boring terribly lit pile, and how many podcasters thought they needed to do 3 hours talking about it…even the film makers themselves couldn’t pull that much time out of it…
Why do people like movies that are for stupid people…what do I mean? Movies that don’t hand every answer they beat you over the head with one message like the sixth sense, and momento. One note wonders. I have heard Kenny G take hell for his one note pieces, yet he plays the rest of the notes sensually with elegance, he just “can” hold on one, he doesn’t have to. I can’t say the same for Nolan…He’s a hack as soon as I saw What dreams may come the remake “inception” I knew this dude is Ed wood with government stooge money…First you do the propaganda film…then you get to do the stolen script film…the water marks of shit film makers…only morons pee ons and half wits truly enjoy a Nolan flick…hope that covers everybody here…be offended, but that won’t change the fact you can’t recognize blatant propaganda and think it’s great art…
Show me any other guy who has made a super hero movie and then gone on and done movies about nasa, and war, most people who made these types of films end up has beens…I know what fans are thinking well Nolan is an auteur, a director tells people where to stand that is literally it…I don’t consider directing art unless it is, name one scene in a Nolan film that is art? You can’t cause it’s all dull shit…nothing memorable, he just has uncle sam giving him all the advertising money to get in your back pocket…that’s all
Yeah like the day after I wrote you guys about how cameras are basically a scare crow and phony security…
My neighbor told us these peoples kids were going into peoples houses and when they approached the parents they said that’s why we put up camera’s? Yes these people have cameras, low quality, and at the far end of the complex from where their children play all day…suspiciously perfectly placed to see their cars which they pre heat every morning by remote…hmmmm….morons probably dressed for wallmart 24/7 watching Nolan flicks instead of raising the kids they say they love so much…
I had a lot of these Walmart people in film school all jealous because all the teachers, women, and talent searchers thought I looked good…and were attracted to me… compared to PJ Hooker…anyone looks sheik…
Every time I drop off my wife at the college I’m like when I went to school I dressed like I was in Hollywood why would you go to college dressed for a dildo party? Where’s your pillows at?
You could argue our school system is the training of people to become more susceptible to cult/authority figures…
My favorite self help guru on paper is Stephen King, he doesn’t delude people to the fact his books only help himself…
as someone who has had sex sex sex, all you are missing is lame lays and two pump chumps people don’t believe Hollywood, you ever seen an actor naked it’s like changing a diaper…
wow he sounds like a normal teacher too me…price of admission, molding minds into malleable pulp, trust, superiors, branding, acceptance, authority and the democracy not caring cause of consent…even when you get out you have to keep paying…are all satanic secret societies modelled off our school system…wait up the pavlovian bell just dinged…time to put on my PC sex mask…like eyes wide shut for ridged stiffs who hold their books with their butt cheeks…you ever seen one of them turn a page with their rim it’s disgusting then they sell it back at the end of the year so some one else can lick their fingers and flip through it…
Authentic is when I bite of this guys tongue off and spit it back in his face whiles he’s screaming for authorities to protect him…
I cried a week ago with a gay homeless man at the park I had never met before, not by pandering to some low seated, brainwashed, set trigger to go off person…that is why I turned off DareDevil it went straight for the tears didn’t it, just like a pc roofed rapist…
Crying should be revered under the same light as rage, it’s loss of control, loss into weakness…
what about people like me who feel our entire system is forced upon us against all our consent….oh well the cult of America is too big to fight right….
that’s why I despise atheists the most what kind of a person who believes this is all they get would settle for this…
Wow 15 years? my cousin at 18 got more time for saying give me the money at a gas station…what a way to show cults…my friend who wrote a bad check will probably do more time then these people will really serve…money is what our law is there to protect not citizen rights…
Just sent you guys a nice letter about how all that constitutes a mass shooting is three deaths…not even shooting a mass of people could qualify you a mass shooter? Are you kidding me?
If you made it past the drivel here is the gold: Go to your local Asian mart we have one in every city look at the statues of the dragon. It is three…it has a Bell…It is up rising in hyrogliphics…Rebellion…
RE BELL LION putting the bell back on the plant stalk…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_guardian_lions
What do these mean…Foo Dogs…The dog on the Chinese Zodiac stands on the pig they are a totem pole so the dog is last moon of fall when the seeds fall…So the seeds fall into the underworld… seed/pit Pig /Boar/bore…This is why the dog is standing on a round object representing the seed under the ground and why dog character is lord of the underworld…he is above it…lord over…
What a dragon is, is a totem pole made up of the Zodiac animals, they are the true disciples (ety those who hold up) the Djed force…the force that brings plant life up from the underworld…
This is where Egypt got their Anubis, Ptah, argue all day there is bone script I have seen exactly depicted as in Egyptian Hieroglyphics pre dating Egypt culture, of the same symbols…
(8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in Jiahu)
So the Foo Dog (Guard lion) is a symbolic totempole telling the story of plants…not humans as the cheap western knock off claims…So the three foo dogs are the three tears that rise up to Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring…The reason the bell is around his neck is because it represents ety of a cape…Spring rain brings rising waters that form capes on land…so the bell is at his neck for this reason…and this is why corny ass people like poke runyon wear lame costumes and do rituals that have no soul…they don’t really understand…and watching his ritual he had the colors on the alter wrong…hello I’m a corny dude…is his power making magic look lame??? He’s the best wizard in the galaxy then…
in Hindu you will see The hatchet in Ganesh’s left arm which is the bell that comes down with seed…his trunk reaches for the water but it is contained in the underworld as a bottled up force. Ganesh will use his hatchet(cotyledon) and trunk(water, rain) to split the seed releasing the seedling “the son” from the shield/shell/…
and here is that having “”””no relation””” “””at all””” based on people with a doctorate in being blinded by word play…
https://www.omniglot.com/chinese/jiaguwen.htm
Take a look at rain which is a trident…
Women… which is depicted seated arms crossed facing right exactly as in hieroglyphics…
child… which is an ankh, an ornament
water… which is exactly depicted as Egyptian river, even having four characters placed around it…
You can see horse is “MA” unlike what conspiracy says this is the origin of Ma…horse is middle summer moon the plant life raising up to see their mother… The secret of the Wadjet and eye of Horus…
And I unlike all these other con artists have revealed to you already the secret of the two cherubim…They are Thoth and Seshat…
Anyone who looks at the Hieroglyphic of Thoth and Seshat you can see Thoth is symbol of a mono cotyledon and Seshat a Di cotyledon and this is the reason churches have bell towers they are bird houses… The birds live in… the son… this is why shield’s have birds on them birds sit on eggs up in trees…they are the roosters (roost)…churches had red doors to symbolize going into the red heat of Spring inside of an artificial underworld…The middle steeple of all churches is the Yin Yang Pole…and what does the Yin Yang point to…down…rabbit Spring red… up… bird yellow…”bell”
the only explanations are their was an older culture lost, a constant connection between cultures we deny, we learned it from them… or magic and woodoo… to keep going on ignoring Eastern culture because we are narcissistic and truly think we are god’s chosen…poke ruynon is the chosen…those guys who do Shaolin and can flip and take a blow from a heavy blunt object across any part of the body, and meditate in freezing snow…they are the devil…some guy who creaks when he walks and sings in monotone…
with school, science, and western thinking…it’s all a coincidence…wow let me get into debt today…
too be clear some guy who creaks when he walks and sings in monotone…is poke…