Dr. Heather Lynn | Censoring Human Origins, Magic, Baphomet, & The Academic Blockade

Oh baby, before we dive into this today, I gotta announce a big update we have made to the Plus system. An upgrade that allows you to bypass the need for a username and password to get Plus on your podcasting app. It's true. But how is that possible? Well, now when you sign up for Plus, you'll get a customized RSS link emailed to you, you copy it, and you paste it right into whatever podcasting app you like to use, and you're done. Of course, the site still has cool stuff like the category displays, a great search function for older episodes and specific topics, comments, ratings, and the forums, and you do need a username and password for that, but now you don't have to log into the site at all if you don't want to. From a convenience standpoint, this is about as good as it gets, and that is the feedback I hear most often. It's not about the $8. I just don't want to have to use the site or remember another password or stop using the podcast app I like. And I get it. Hey, I'm a podcast listener too, and that is why I set the IT guys to the task, and they crushed it. This custom Plus feed not only has all two-hour Plus shows going back to when it started, but it also includes the pre-Plus episodes going all the way back to my first real interview with Michael Tesarion over a decade ago. And if you forget this URL or you need it again for any reason, you can always go back to that welcome email or find it on the My Account page, just so you know. So if you've ever been a Plus member and left because of the hassle or some glitch with authentication or getting locked out or having the feed not updating properly or just finding it too confusing, I would ask you now to give it another try. The guys assured me that not only is it easier for all of you, but it's also a much lighter load on the site and the server and all that. The system verifies if accounts and feeds are active in a much smoother way now too, but I will spare you all that technical stuff. And really, the only caveat is Spotify. If Spotify is your podcasting app and you want Plus to work there, then I need you to sign up through Patreon. Corporate partners going to do what corporate partners do, but any app that allows you to add a show via a link or RSS URL will allow Plus, and that's basically every podcast app I know of. Don't take my word for it. Try it with a free one-week trial. Me and the IT guys are standing by to help anyone who needs it, but I have gone through the sign-up process several times now, and I can't even think of a way to make it better or faster or easier. I don't even think we ask for your name. If you're a current member, you can of course get this link on the My Account page at any time too, but the old system has not been messed with either, so no need to do anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that's it. I've done what I can do technically to be best in class, and I do everything I can to give you the best ad-free interviews out there. The full two-hour versions are always deeper and oftentimes weirder, and you really do miss a lot if you're only getting that free first hour. I'm laying it on thick, but this is how I make a living. I just spent a lot of money on this upgrade, and consider a subscription a tip for a service that is maybe a little more valuable than bringing a sandwich to your table or pouring you a couple of draft beers, you know? Use the link right in the show notes to sign up. Grab the RSS link from the welcome email, and you're right back in your app getting the whole THC enchilada. Few people in the game care more about the user experience and keep an eye on the latest technology available, and also work every time to make sure interviews are very information-rich and easy on the ears. I take my job seriously. I hope you appreciate it. Help me help you. Become a Plus member. Thanks for listening. Enjoy. The planet puppet masters almost surely have a plan There's clearly maybe something there beyond the realm of man And until we've thoroughly tested every last close-chested view I find the more we think we know, the less we really do Without T to us, just don't know to what degree Where would we, where would we, without THC To show Greg Carlwood and company Oh, Captain, my Captain, from the Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood, strapping in for another cruise through the vast and choppy waters of the big conspiracy, just trying to find some truth in a world run on cultivated ignorance and fear. Because we are left in the dark on so many things, including a nuanced look at our past, the advanced remnants of ancient cultures, and the prospect of a world that lived in symbiotic ways that might be much more appealing to us today. But we've been systematically steered away from such material and the natural world, and instead towards the industrial and digital, and instilled with the lessons of harsh cutthroat capitalism and top-down domination, at the cost of being close to the intelligent design of our unadulterated environment, learning about the flow of energy through observation and experience, and cultivating true abundance by leaning into the mechanisms embedded all around us. The consequences of our modern lifestyle also must include an ignorance of the spiritual dimensions of reality, which might even be the most important, along with our lost knowledge of symbolic language and the neglecting of a vast array of nuanced understandings of the unseen. Not to mention a condemnation of the personal pursuit of direct knowledge in exchange for the encouragement to outsource our spiritual lives to following the orders of the murderous and opulent religious power centers of corporatized modernity. It's a mess, folks, and the work of today's guest, Dr. Heather Lynn, touches on all these things and more. She is an esoteric historian and symbologist focused on decoding the secrets of ancient wisdom. She's got a background in archaeology, anthropology, history, and information technology, and Dr. Lynn holds an MA in history and a doctorate from the University of New England. Her work explores the hidden aspects of history, ancient mysteries, and esoteric symbolism, bringing to light profound insights often overlooked in mainstream narratives. Her books include The Anunnaki Connection, Sumerian God's Alien DNA and the Fate of Humanity from Eden to Armageddon, Evil Archaeology, Demons, Possessions, and Sinister Relics, The Final Frontier, Xeno-Archaeology, and the Interplanetary Search for Lost Civilizations, and her most recent, Baphomet Revealed Mysteries and Magic of the Sacred Icon. She also hosts the Midnight Academy podcast and has crafted a complete college-level introductory course on the Anunnaki via her website, drheatherlynn.com. Well, there's no shortage of strange stuff to talk about, so let's get into it. The Sumerian scholar, academia, double-agent, and esoteric historian extraordinaire, Dr. Heather Lynn. Welcome to THC. Well, thank you so much for having me. I hope that I can live up to that amazing introduction. Ah, all in a day's work. But thank you for doing this. Your stuff covers so much great material that I love to get into around here. I hope we can touch on most of it, but to kick it off, I wanted to ask you about your experiences in academia, or at least your view of it as an insider. I think most of the listeners see it as a process for anointing certain information as valid and suppressing the kind of stuff we might be more interested in around here. Did you see any of that firsthand? Like, the curiosity is gone, and it's more about upholding those established narratives? Oh, without a doubt. It's been quite a difficult ride for me. I look at academia as an abusive boyfriend, one that I just love so much, and I want to love me back. And then I keep going back to over and over and over again, and then he just hurts me every time. Ah, that's funny. Yes, it's terrible. So I started out... Actually, my story's a little sorted. I was, you know, an academic at heart, but due to all sorts of family circumstances and life events, I ran away from home at 16 and never finished school and just traveled and was transient. And I was doing van life before it was a thing. So I do not recommend. But still, I did it. And that's kind of how I got into a lot of this sort of fringe research. I was spending a lot of time in my car. Thankfully, I had a car at this point. And, you know, it sounds, maybe it doesn't sound glamorous, but it does sort of sound glamorous if you're young to think, oh, I'll just run away and, you know, live in my car and have adventures. And so I ended up spending a lot of time in the desert and being kind of lonely. And you can only listen to so much music. This was before podcast, unfortunately. So I ended up listening to a lot of the show Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. Now it's George Norrie. And I used to just listen to that at night, looking up at the stars and thinking, wow, what could be out there? And I thought all of the guests were so interesting. And I used to think, wow, wouldn't it be amazing if one day I could have conversations with these types of people? So fringe, so out there, so fascinating. And so that was sort of in the back of my mind. But as life would have it, I'd have to go through my ups and downs of poverty and turmoil trying to get on my feet. And after many misadventures, I did end up going back to school at a community college. And that was where my adventure began. So I started going for business because that was the responsible thing, you know, business, right? I'll just do something. So I ended up taking courses like art history and things that I really loved. And, you know, I ended up saying, you know, after my first accounting class, this wasn't for me. So I thought I have to follow my passion. That sounds really trite to say, follow your passion, follow your dreams. But unlike Joseph Campbell, I wouldn't recommend somebody follow their bliss. I'm usually very careful at saying actually follow your passion because the Latin origin of the word passion actually means suffering. So in a way, you do want to follow your passion, you want to follow your suffering. But it's not this sort of meaningless, trivial suffering for nothing. It's find something so worth the suffering, find something that the meaning will carry you through all of those things that you just have to endure past. And so be cool, stay in school, kids, follow your passion, et cetera. But I ended up doing that. And then I find myself in the archaeology program. And I was just, this was where I belonged. I was so excited. So of course, I'm just starry eyed. And I paid for my $800 textbook, which that was a thing. And I paid for all these things back in the day. And so I thought this expensive textbook has all the answers. I'm sure I'm going to know everything now. So I was really, really naive. And then I find out day one, archaeology 101, before I know anything about methodology or whatnot, they have on the board a list of names of scholars, what I would consider scholars. And the professor was saying, part of the assignment is to pick a name and their pet theory and debunk it. So on the board, there was Graham Hancock, there was Michael Cremo. There were many different people that I recognized from, you know, my interest in different things. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. And I'm still just holding on to the book, like, yeah, okay, I'm doing what I'm told. And I noticed the Michael Cremo one, and he had been a personal favorite author of mine for a long time. And I thought, okay, well, this is fair, we have to look at ideas and critically examine them. But the professor went on to explain after handing out a paper on the American Anthropological Association, and their guidelines and ethics and everything, that it isn't so much about validation of the theory or not, it's about literally securing the position of the American Anthropological Association, and securing the position of archaeologists as a profession, as the authority. And I thought, huh, okay, so they're saying the quiet part out loud to a bunch of freshmen, who this is their first introduction to anything, they don't even have the not only credentials, but the actual skills and the training to fully be able to go in and judge these theories based on anything solid. So I thought that was a little bit interesting. And then, of course, I'm fired up because I see Michael Cremo on there. But I do what I'm told still, I'm going through because what do I know, I'm just happy to be there and not homeless or something. So I'm just like, whatever. And over the years, I get involved in the program even more. And I have mentors and, you know, doing excavations, I'm working with a community organization whose job it is to help teach disenfranchised youth the importance of their community culture and heritage through archaeological excavations and urban archaeology and this sort of thing. Fantastic program. So I thought, until I got involved in the grant writing aspect of it, and got really involved in the money part of it. And I was very earnest. And I would do what I was supposed to do and present these opportunities for grants. And one night, me and the advisors were sitting around a table at a restaurant and had a little too much to drink. They did. And my advisor looked over at me and laughed and said, you know, we're really not needing this kind of money. We just need a little bit. Because I was looking for, I wanted to expand the program. I was believing. And they were like, we're just doing this so that we have a buffer for the summer season, especially for the adjuncts. So what I come to find out was just in this, it was a state school. What they were doing was they were just making up ideas and grants. And they had no intention of actually doing anything except one little workshop for the kids in the urban area that the school was located in. And the rest was just to secure funds for professors. And that was such a low level thing. That wasn't even like what I ended up seeing much later. But that cued me into feeling like, that's really wrong and understanding the ins and outs of academia in general and the motivations. And so I kind of got disenchanted. And I reached out to Michael Cremo. I thought, oh, you know, forget it. I'm just gonna strike out on my own, right? And I thought, well, let me contact Michael Cremo. I didn't think he'd respond. And so he did. And he responded. And I asked him and told him a little bit of what was going on. And he gave me very cogent advice and said, you know, if you stay in academia, you can only push the envelope so much, but you can. And it's important to, you know, get the education, et cetera. If you leave, you can do so much more. However, there is that stigma. And you miss out on some of the important knowledge that is still valuable in having a formal education, understanding things that maybe you don't know the questions to ask. And let me just point out to you, a formal education, when I was going, this was before we had all of the different options online that we do now. So just for the record, put an asterisk on that because I still stand behind education, even formal education. The difference is, is now we have access to all of that online and people are able to really go in and learn the important and necessary things needed for whatever discipline or whatever. So, you know, we're seeing the importance of the very expensive academic industrial complex diminish over time, which I think is a good thing. It's sort of a double-edged sword, but overall, I think it's a good thing for people. So yeah, he told me that he said, you're in a fork in the road and it's your decision. And I thought, okay, I'm going to calm down, Heather. I'm going to go and I'm going to just continue. And I sort of saw myself as a, maybe a double agent, but I think I became a little more mature too, in my thinking, like, this isn't all bad. Not all of the people were bad. Not all of the things were bad at all. And what was being taught, I started to be able to discern the difference between understanding methodology and agenda. And it would be sticky at times, but that was the goal. And so I felt like it was a training camp for being able to discern sources and understand the climate and the culture as a whole. But this was a little while ago. And since then, since working in it, again, I kind of, I left and then came back. And then I went back because I just, I love teaching. And I went back to a community college thinking, this is going to be it now. This is different. This is all different. And it was, I will say, I did have a lot of academic freedom. And so I had a very amazing class. So I thought I had it made finally. I thought, oh my gosh, this is it. They let me do all my, they even let me take time off for ancient aliens. I, you know, do the show, fly out, whatever, come back, teach my students. I thought I really have it made until most recently I had a situation where one of my students had written a manifesto about who they were going to nix in the class. Wow. And I was like, whoa. And so they, they latched onto me because I listened and they were like telling me things that were just frightening. I recorded the conversation because it was direct threats. And so I took it to the proper procedures and they told me I needed to adjust my teaching because they were aware of the student. They were totally not going to do anything. They wouldn't give me extra security because they said that they didn't want to offend the student. So, okay. They didn't want to look like they were doing something unfair. I said, okay. The student had grabbed me multiple times and was physical with me in the class in front of everybody. They said, well, he is part of the Hispanic club and the Hispanic club professor who runs the program. She lets him hug her. So like, so what? That's inappropriate. And I don't, I don't feel like having this kid that's threatening murder to hug me. So this shouldn't be a conversation. And at the end of the day, what they told me was I needed to make sure that in my presentations, I had to nix any kind of reference to anything existential, which was difficult because this particular class I was doing, I was talking a lot about different philosophies and ethics and it was a humanities course, but we were talking about existentialism and whatnot. And they said, yeah, you're going to have to maybe change that. Well, first of all, academic freedom, and you're going to expect me to do that overnight. So it was a whole thing and it ended up being a whole legal thing. And it was just an unfortunate like final breakup, I guess you could say. And now I'm completely independent. I've said, you know, as much as I would love to teach, I have to find different ways. And so I've started teaching online people who don't need to have backgrounds in anything. I've decided teaching doesn't have to be in a formal structure in that way, in that traditional way, and that we can define our own teaching environments and learning environments. Cheers to that. So that's a long answer, but let's just say academia is a mess for many reasons. I mean, really all our institutions are broken or crumbling. And I think separating methodology from agenda is a really great way to frame what the value could be of going through the academic course and then coming out the other end and what you can take away from it versus like what is actually probably doing harm to your intellectual curiosity, which is that agenda part. It's really tough because once you're vested economically in going down a path, you get there after they've already taken the check from you and then say, okay, this is the way it's going to be. And it sounds a lot more like a drill sergeant putting soldiers through like some reconditioning process than it does just free and open education. But, you know, when you talk about that agenda, obviously it can span many different subjects and your work spans many different subjects. What do you consider some of the most important or fruitful lines of inquiry that do carry that stigma and that mockery from academia, the things they won't touch, the things where you said, no, this material is so important to me that I'm going to have to go outside of the system because it's super important and it's kind of censored within the system. That is a very good question because that could be answered easily by saying things that people may expect like aliens, technology, occult, all of the more interesting things we could talk about. But it's been my experience that people are much more open to some aspects of that than you may imagine. And in fact, there are academic institutions who specialize in things like Western esotericism in particular, University of Amsterdam. There's a lot of scholars doing legitimate work in these areas. They may not have huge support in terms of grants and funding and this sort of thing, but they're there. And with a bunch of younger people entering the academy, people have a difference of interest and acceptance in some of these topics. So it is a little more open than you maybe once imagine. But that shouldn't lull anybody into thinking that now it's just going to be open inquiry and nothing is taboo because now what it is is it's very different things. And it's been my experience too that things that I did not consider to be taboo were in fact what would be taboo. So for instance, the big one to me is human origins. This one is so tricky because it hits on so many different, very contentious points, especially now in the political climate that we're in. So when you explore human origins, you are looking at, first of all, an unfortunate situation like you have in most of academia where everything is so siloed. There is not interdisciplinary work predominantly. It's a lot of disciplines that are just doing their own thing and never the two sort of meeting. And that is unfortunate. But with something like human origins, you can't just relegate yourself to the realm of say, archaeology or anthropology. There's limits to the methodologies in there so that you have to look at something like, of course, evolutionary biology, or you have to look at archaeobotany. You have to look at climate science. You have to look at all of the different things that, as you could imagine, every single one individually has been usurped by agendas. So for instance, if you want to say, hey, like in my work, when I look at something like the Sumerians and the origin of civilizations, this should not be that controversial. Yet it is. It's extraordinarily divisive and controversial. And so when you start looking at it from the standpoint of say, geopolitical or what would usually fall in the field of geography, which is kind of like geopolitics and whatnot, those types of things, those economic questions, they have a basis in the understanding of how civilizations were made. Like, why was it important for people to have particular systems of rule after having a civilization sort of built? Did religion come before agriculture or did agriculture come before religion? And these are the issues that people discuss when it comes to Gobekli Tepe. Gobekli Tepe, it kind of put a whole different wrench into the situation when it was originally thought that the advent of agriculture is what enabled people to have the nutritional support and then the time to sit around and ponder the biggest questions and thereby leading to philosophical and religious thought. Gobekli Tepe, it turns out, it looks like it may be flipped. So now it's a question of, okay, well, is the religious inclination there before? Is this something that's maybe natural within us? And if you look at things in genetic research, you can find that, yes, there's hard science evidence that we are somewhat maybe, as you say, programmed, I guess you could say, to have a religious inclination. And that's not necessarily meaning religious as in an Abrahamic religion or something ritual that way. It just simply means that since we are in this hierarchical structure as primates, we do have this inclination to look for systems of hierarchy of value. And that can come in the guise of, say, Christianity, Judaism, paganism, whatever religion, but it can also come in different political movements, philosophical movements, anything with an ism. Like Nietzsche said, we have a God-shaped hole in our heart. And so there's something there and we look to fill it. So this is an area that shouldn't be that controversial, but then you look at, well, people want to be the first for everything. So if you start saying, well, maybe religion came sooner and it came from this region, well, what about the discoveries over in another area? So we start comparing and then that doesn't even take into consideration the mysteries that surround these structures themselves. Like how are they built? That's a whole new problem because there's limits to our understanding. And we have this thing called the myth of progress. And this has been written about, this isn't a made up thing, although some people don't like it. The myth of progress is that we think that just because of the passage of time and we look around and we have like the internet, you know, we're just like, we're getting better and better. And the future is just about technological advancement. And if that's the case, ergo, the past was primitive, they knew nothing and we're always improving. But that's not necessarily so. And when you look at the Egyptian artifacts, artwork, and monuments, the older they are, the more precise they were. In some ways, you could say the better they were, the more advanced they were. And they just kind of devolve from there. And if you say that again, bad language, because if you say anything like this, you're saying, well, you know, you're saying that people in these different regions weren't smart enough to do these things and what's wrong with you. And God forbid you bring up aliens because now you're saying only aliens can do this. And so it's become this like trope of say white supremacy or all these political things that they want to put on it. And again, we haven't even talked climate change. So the issue with like Younger Dryas impact event, that's not something humans did. And it's debated still whether that's happened, which is kind of like, okay, fine. But it's just a mess. So I think there's many things, but where it comes down to this idea of human origins, who we are, and where we've come from, that seems to be the stickiest situation of them all. Yeah. Well said. I agree. And just something I picked up from one of your previous interviews, talking about the Sumerians and the robust amount of knowledge we have from the tablets that have been unearthed. You say, in some cases, it seems like even more than the Egyptians, perhaps, because the Egyptians wrote on papyrus and that breaks down. And a lot of the tablets are kind of mundane receipts for bagels and inventory and all this kind of stuff. But this, I copied down that you said, maybe in passing, you might not, you know, sometimes we were just talking, you know, but I latched on because this is probably the heart of like one of my deepest interests to try to figure out on this show. But you talked about the Sumerian Kings list and you said the Sumerian Kings list documents, the first Anunnaki kings and their assigned sage, like kind of a guardian spirit, perhaps. And over time, the Anunnaki names gave way to more human names and royal bloodlines and that kind of thing. But the sages still exist, maybe quietly advising the elite of the world, perhaps even today. And I am so interested in that, just the topic of the elite secret religion, the thought that people in power behind closed doors have a totally different spiritual paradigm than really anything that's been exoterically advertised to the rest of us. I think that stuff is really interesting. And I've heard people refer to it as watcher worship and like that there may be willing participants in some kind of archonic possession to a degree. It can get quite weird, but just, I'd never heard anyone really talk much about the Sumerian Kings list in detail. It's referenced a lot, but the details of those sages and the thought that maybe this was the establishment of civilization and there is some kind of continuity that could continue on advised by these same maybe eternal spiritual forces. I mean, speak to that a little bit. Well, yes, I'm actually glad you brought that up because I just finished a manuscript that I've submitted to the publisher, New Paged, for a follow-up that really goes more deeply into that. So it'll be out next year. It's the Anunnaki revelation and where I reveal a little bit more of that component, maybe the mysterious component. And I find it's very important to do this because right now, just as I said, there's an academic industrial complex. Over the years, I noticed a huge increase in interest in the Anunnaki, which is amazing. However, that's also made it a really great opportunity for whether it be grifters or people coming in and putting in misinformation on purpose. And so now I'm looking at this like the Anunnaki industrial complex. If anyone starts to Google around, it's like, wait a second. And so you see a lot of misinformation. Some people just don't know. They're just repeating the things, but I feel like there's also an opportunity here for people to maybe go in like COINTELPRO and take it down from within. So like you said, kind of like watcher worship. It looks as though there is a push to get more people interested in the idea of worshiping the Anunnaki, maybe like an alternative alien religion or some sort of thing like that. That's its own case. But in terms of the actual history, that is something that I try to very much go into with my research into the Anunnaki is breaking away a little bit from the Sitchin paradigm, because while his work was very important and influential in getting the Anunnaki into the zeitgeist, into the conversation, and he did have some really important contributions in how he set up the mythos and the framework and giving us the points of references and the tablets, he was writing this in the 60s and 70s. And technology and discoveries have long since flourished since then. And a lot of people get trapped in the cult of personality that's Sitchin. And so I think it's very important to sort of move past that and look at what you said, which are all of the tablets that exist that outnumber even the Egyptian papyri. There are many, some of them, they're using artificial intelligence right now to decipher. At least they're attempting to do that. That's its own problem here, but that's another discussion. But it just goes to speak to the vast amount of information that's still out there and available. And the problem with this sort of machine that is the interest in the Anunnaki is if you Google Anunnaki, you're going to see all of these different like gods and etchings and prints. And they're not all Anunnaki. They're not all Sumerian. Many of the common depictions are Assyrian. Many of them are Babylonian. Many of them are not Anunnaki. And many of them are different beings altogether. And so this is something important to distinguish. And not all of their deities were Anunnaki. So there's a lot of confusion. And that's why I have a whole class that kind of goes over this to say, well, what does that really mean then in practice? Is it important to get all of the names right and all of that? No. It's the principle. The principle is that the Anunnaki, that was more of a position. So almost like if we said Lord, the Lord, also landlord, or someone's lording over, you know, this idea of position of authority. So there were gods and ones that are often discussed when talking about the Anunnaki, but they were not actually Anunnaki. So then you look at some of those images and you see the common ones that are depicted that sometimes have an eagle's face or have wings and they're holding the pine cone and maybe the handbag and this sort of thing. Those are not Anunnaki. Those are Apkalu. Very important distinction. And the Apkalu, those are the ones that are referenced as the sages. And they're not just another set of deities. They're described as being semi-biological and originating from the Pleiadian star system. So when people want to talk about this, maybe ancient alien or otherworldly connection, when it comes to the Anunnaki, it's difficult because if you look at the stories of their interactions with what they call the blackheaded ones, those that have been the semi-settled hunter-gatherers that were in the region of Mesopotamia before the Anunnaki came, they have very human behavior. In fact, they eat food. They enslave the humans that are there to do things for them. They want them to worship them. And the origin of the word worship actually just means to work for. And so in common sense, we might think when you worship, it's like you're bowing and praying and singing praises, but that's just a modern take on it. To worship means you are doing deeds for, you're working for, so essentially these individuals came and they were enslaving. So Sitchin got a lot of that right, but it was really based in agriculture and a whole lot of other things that appear very human. But then you have their rituals, their discussions amongst themselves, and their depictions of these Apkalu. And that's where we get into all of the antediluvian lore and the idea of who taught the Anunnaki, the sciences and the technologies, and then who use those to enslave the humans. So in my thesis, I generally propose that these Anunnaki that we're familiar with, the Anki and all of these, were not necessarily otherworldly beings, but instead these were individuals who had been displaced by a cataclysm, the flood. So these are pre-flood individuals who came from a very advanced society. And eventually they made their way to the Mesopotamian region where they encountered the semi-settled hunter-gatherers, and they had this sort of establishment in this conflict. So much in the way that there are cargo cults, the individuals on that side of things would have looked at these Anunnaki, as they called them, the shining ones. They would have been like the gods. That could explain, and again, these are just all, this is based on some of the texts. I'm not asserting this as fact because how can we? This is history. Anyone who tells you that, oh, this is how it went, don't listen. But this is what I've gathered and what I'm still gathering is this distinction between the sets of gods and these other entities. So these other entities, the Apkalu, who get confused with being the Anunnaki, they were the ones that almost were like you said, like a spirit guide, so to speak. And they were channeled. And what I have recently discovered, and we'll be publishing and talking more about, and I'll just share it here because I'm so excited, I can't wait to tell people, that they used a lot of different methods to encounter and get in touch with these beings. Shamanistic methods, shall we say, things like meditation, but also altering their consciousness through substances, specific ones too. So I looked into the work of Allegra on the sacred mushroom in the cross, and he did a lot of work trying to look at the etymology of Sumerian words and associating them with mushrooms. And while I did find evidence for that, one thing in particular are actual mushroom tablets. They're housed currently in a museum in Berlin. They are cuneiform tablets shaped as mushrooms, and they have prayers that go around them. And their purpose was to be placed into the walls of the temple. So like in the Wailing Wall, where if you're Jewish and you go there and you want to say a prayer, you have a little script, like a piece of paper, and you put it in the wall, and that's between you and God. Likewise, they did this sort of communication, but they use the iconography of the mushroom. And so they have these little mushrooms. They're like just very small little mushrooms, and they have cuneiform writing all around them. And that was their way to say, the mushroom is the conduit to the gods. So you have that. But what I also found was a very interesting connection to their reverence of the poppy. The opium poppy was something that they were using in what was called the whole gill, right? And that was their word for joy plant. So they considered this a plant that made them joyful. And when mixed with other substances, it was something they could use to anoint the king, to allow them to be christened, have their third eye opened, and be able to then commune with these apkalu. And there's this mysterious, you might see it floating around there where people are like, what are these mysterious wristwatches of the gods? What's so cool about that is, well, it may disappoint some people, but it may intrigue others. I have found the actual so-called watches. They exist. Now, this is where it gets tricky, because a lot of the discoveries that have been made in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, have been looted. They are constantly being destroyed. Yeah, some people think that's the subtext of the whole war in Iraq thing, or just all the upheavals, that it's really an attempt to obscure and hide anything that conflicts with the official Western narrative, or any narrative, really. But there's all a lot of vested interests in, like, let's not change the story. Exactly. So that is something that has been going on for a long time. And after, it's a sordid story. It kind of goes through the origin of archaeology as a discipline, because before archaeology was a discipline, it was an elite sort of gentleman's club. It was called antiquarianism, and it was just basically people in these, mostly in Europe and particularly in the UK, the people in these beautiful, great homes and estates, landed gentry. They would have all kinds of money, and then they would go off and look for things and collect objects and put them in what they called their cabinet of curiosity, which was just a nice big room, a little museum, this sort of thing, and they would feel very proud of themselves. But over time, when socioeconomic situations were shifting and the war happened, World War I, people were becoming very upset with the elites and the disparaging wealth and all of this. Many of those people with the great homes lost their homes, so they had to give them up because they either went broke, or the public pressure was such that they had to give up their land to the public trust for parks and this and that. So they saw this coming. And rather than give up their hobby of going and exploiting people, they were like, we're doing this for science, guys. This is what we're doing. We're legitimizing this. And so part of what they did to legitimize it was they said, we will open up the museums, and they will be free, and people will be allowed to go see the stuff. Because before that, it was very rare for anybody to have access to any of these things because they were either in homes or universities, and you couldn't go look at them if you were just a lowly serf. You were just out of luck. So once they started putting the regulation on themselves, so to speak, they looked like the good guys. And then they go in and say, we're doing this in the public trust. But also, and now we've learned how to exploit the public trust for money to ensure that all of our things are being held, and we still own them. And so if you go to museums now, you'll see often the little placard, the label beside the artifact will say something like, courtesy of the such and such family. All of these things are just in the public trust, but they're from a familial trust. And it's just, that's how we've come to know archaeology is an actual discipline. So it's a very new discipline. And it's a soft science. As much as we'd like to make it a hard science, it's not. It still requires a qualitative analysis and a bit of storytelling to piece together what you think that the story is. And they don't like that because they want they as in like the flint dibbles of the world. They don't like that. They want this to be this is hard science. And it's like, no, it's not hard science. Just because you're using scientific tools, like ground penetrating radar or anything that is based in hard science, it doesn't make your results any less qualitative. So this is the problem is we have these individuals, the whole thing is coming from this elitist perspective. So they feel entitled to the information. Then there's private archaeological organizations who are hired to go in and look for things to make sure, well, they do many things. But one big thing that the private ones do is they go in and say, before you are building a road or something, you are required to do any kind of survey to make sure there's no indigenous sites that could be disruptive or anything like that. But the problem with that is that anything that's found, anything that is of interest, sans something that belongs to the indigenous people, that becomes what's called gray material. It means it belongs to the private organization. And it's called gray material because it was joked that this is the sort of research that stays in the gray cabinets, the file cabinets. So there's a lot of information out there that's being purposely held. There's collectors, the black market is an enormous industry, billions. Yeah, Hobby Lobby had a hell of a collection, I hear, which is very strange. But yeah, they did. They had what was called the dream tablet from the epic of Gilgamesh. And they were forced to give that back after many months in the courts. But and this is just one tablet. So of course, you know, we don't we don't have all of the information. I was reached the years ago, one of the first things that I investigated and wrote was the Sumerian controversy. And that was at the request of a local who had noticed that for the first time in since the 70s, researchers were out there researching and gathering up the cuneiform tablets. And it was this joint effort with the University of Manchester, and a few other organizations. So I looked into it, I contacted the University of Manchester, I thought, well, you know, they put out a little press release. So they were excited about their story. So why couldn't they talk to me? I had an appointment to speak with the professor in charge. Once I submitted the questions that I had, they ghosted me. And I thought, okay, I didn't ask them like, wild things, right? Like, I just asked specific questions. But something about my questions didn't jive with them. So they ghosted me. And so that just made me more interested. So then I started going down the rabbit hole on that. And I found that who was actually funding that entire, very expensive, very groundbreaking, no pun intended, research was big oil, big oil companies, elite families, and former Nazi financiers. And so in that report, I name everybody, I lay it all out. So it's not just this crazy conspiracy stuff. It's like, no, here it is. And a big problem with that is when they would do their research and have their field reports, they didn't present it to the public. They first presented it in the boardroom of the Gulf Sands Petroleum Company, along with Baron von Thyssen from the Thyssen family dynasty, who bankrolled Hitler, who was very much involved in the Skull and Bones Society. And working with George Bush Sr. and all of these weird kind of oil and Nazi ties. And it just was a little bit much. But you know, you follow the evidence wherever it leads. And that is what I found. And Thyssen was an interesting person, because it was said that his personal collection of art, particularly from the Middle East, but overall, was rivaled by only Queen Elizabeth II. So this is an individual many people don't know about. He was just this playboy, nepo baby, collecting artifacts from all over the world. And so they take the money, they have a foundation, the foundation then gives the money to another organization, that organization gives the funds to the internal organization in the university, that is the research lab, then the university pays the professor, like, it's just all the way down so that you can't readily see what's going on. And eventually, what you do find is there is a inordinate amount of interest in the artifacts that are coming out of that region. And I can't help but think that it's tied to their quest to understand what it is that the ancients knew, what it is that perhaps they knew about civilization building, controlling people, maybe the catastrophe that led them to have to rebuild to begin with. I mean, it could be a number of things. But yeah, so it's the surprising area that you end up getting to, when you look into something that would seem as benign, maybe as human origins, where did we come from? And possibly then where are we going? Because I think that's the agenda is controlling the future. Yes, yes, well said. And I really like the way you frame up museums. Yeah, it's these elite who privately own antiquities. And people were like, hey, this is kind of humanity's birthright. And they're like, fine, we'll let you see it, but it's still ours. And of course, we know that museums don't display everything they have. They display things that are smoothed out with the narrative, you know, things that don't really upset the perception of the reality we have. But when it comes to the classic Sumerian 101 stuff of like, oh, well, the gods told us about all these different disciplines, mathematics and the sciences and everything, it's agriculture that is really interesting. Because only recently have I had guests who have talked about agriculture as like, not really a major advancement. And you mentioned enslavement. Yeah, you need people to go work on that stuff. But it's annual crops, not perennial crops. So this is another difference with hunter-gatherers who are just living in their environment, going and getting the berries and getting the apples from the tree. No, we're talking about wheat and things that are cultivated every year, corn stuff. So now you've centralized and you've gotten people to depend on a centralized distribution system of an annual crop that could go away. And this is how you establish haves and have-nots. This is how you establish this order. So yeah, you could also say institutions of science, you know, new universities, like places to study. But it's the agriculture that really took us away from living within an environment that could have cultivated abundance. You can always plant more apple trees and live amongst them. And they'll yield every year. But it's the agriculture, the monocrop gritting of putting the same stuff in the ground year after year and getting people dependent on it that cements your power. So if there was some spiritual entity that whispered into the ear of man, hey, you know what, let me tell you, if you really want to cement your power, this is how you do it. These would be the steps. I mean, agriculture is the linchpin and Apkalu is a term I have heard, but I don't hear it emphasized very much at all. As you know, it's always the Anunnaki. And if they are the pre-flood advanced people, it's maybe Graham Hancock's lost civilization. I can get that. I can get on board with that. But the Apkalu as the channeled spirit guides, I mean, these would be the entities that perhaps if they have maintained, so there's a continuity of order. The types of societies we still have are the same based on these same distributions of a centralized authority. So maybe the whole thing isn't much different. Maybe the same guides are still influencing people. What do you think about that? The idea of a real continuity or that there is some spiritual entity actually interacting with modern elites? If you'd have asked me this maybe 10 years ago, I would have thought, no, that's, I mean, fine, I guess. Maybe if you're religious or something like that. But now after not only the research, but after the people I've met, after the people that I've had these discussions with, after the people that have reached out to me that I would never think should have an interest in reaching out to me and asking questions, I think that anything's possible. I'm at the limits of my knowledge at this point. I've gotten to this point where I think that we just have no idea. So I'm not one of these people that would be, I'm not like super religious, but I'm also not an atheist because I think it's just as foolish to say, oh, there's no God. Well, how do we know? I'm agnostic. I'm curious and I'm staying curious. I would love to know. I don't know that I will know. But when it comes to this idea of, are these entities some sort of otherworldly, maybe spiritual, maybe as you said, archons, something like that, I would say that a great number of people, particularly those in positions of power, believe this to be the case. And if you're a person that says, oh, that's just crazy, that's fine. But it should still interest you to know that people in positions of power then hold crazy beliefs. And because they have power, they have influence and power over you. And so they're using this to determine what their policy maneuvers are going to be. So either way, there's no good outcome here. If it's not real, and the elites believe in this, that's a scary world we live in. If it is real, regardless of the elites or not, I mean, that's still a scary world we live in. So I don't see this as any good thing. So whether or not it's real is difficult to say, because, you know, I even talk about this in my evil archaeology book is the question of what's real is, are demons real? I talk about a case of true crime where an individual in North Carolina had changed his name to Pazuzu to honor the Sumerian demon of the Southwest wind. Yes. This is a great story, actually. I think it's in the intro of that book. And the guy's name is John Larson. Yeah, very everyday name. And yeah, this is weird, though. It's totally weird. So what he ends up doing is becoming very, very obsessed. And as one would argue later, possessed by the spirit of Pazuzu. Pazuzu is a Mesopotamian demon. In that framework of the Sumerian religion and Mesopotamian religion, the demons were bad and good. They were sort of neutral, like the gods. They had tendencies either way. An example of this that's really weird, and why we even have Pazuzu amulets or artifacts at all, is because Pazuzu was very popular among pregnant women. They would wear amulets of Pazuzu. And let me say, if you don't know what Pazuzu looks like, it is the demon that was depicted in the opening sequence of The Exorcist. It's the demon that possesses the main character in the film. It's a horrible looking creature, and it has a huge, enormous erect penis. Hello. And so it's very vulgar. It's very like off-putting to people. And if you can imagine this like gnarly looking guy who's just like ready to go. And that's what the pregnant women not only wore around their neck, but they had little plaques of that sitting next to their baby's cribs. And so you think, why on earth would anybody do that? Well, in the mindset then, Lamashtu was the demon responsible for stillborns, for sudden infant death, for anything that would take the baby. Lamashtu was the wife of Pazuzu. And so if there's anyone that's going to control the wife, it's going to be the husband. And so there's these plaques. One of them is called the Mesopotamian hell plaque in the Louvre. And it's depicting Pazuzu and all these levels of hell. And Pazuzu is taking a whip and he's whipping his wife into submission like, you will not take this baby. So it's just this whole mindset. So this demon is a demon, but again, to understand their world is a little bit different. But this contemporary guy in North Carolina looked at it as this demon only, and he interpreted it as needing human sacrifice. So what he ended up doing was getting a cadre of disenfranchised youth in his neighborhood to come together and help him worship Pazuzu by murdering neighbors and cannibalizing them and burying their remains in the backyard of his mother's house. Of course, he lived with his mother, but in his mother's house. And eventually he was found and arrested and taken to jail to await trial. And he was asking to do his ritual to Pazuzu. It was called the full moon ritual. And they were like, no. His mother called and said, please let him just do something. I'm afraid he says he's going to hurt himself, please. And they're like, no. And so of course he's speaking to a psychiatrist. He begs them, please just one small animal. Can I just kill a little, little animal? Pazuzu is going to get me if I don't. And they're like, yeah, buddy, no. So he's back in his cell and about three in the morning, they hear something and there was nobody in there with him. And they hear something and the guard goes and he sees this Pazuzu is lying in a puddle of his own blood. He bled out. He was scratched up through his arteries and he was dead. And this is verifiable. This is in the record. His people that he got together to help him, they were tried and punished, but he'd never made it to trial because he died mysteriously. And there was no explanation other than hemorrhage. So I thought after that, well, what is real? I mean, is Pazuzu real? Are demons real? Are possessions real? You could say, but he was inspired by the demon. And if you think about the word inspired, it comes from the Latin inspirare. And it was a specific word that meant when a deity blows an idea or thought into you and that you have that sort of essence, like the breath of life in you. So now you have that inspiration. So it's like expiration, like you breathe out. So if you looked at possession in that way, you could say he was inspired. He was inspired by the spirit of this demon and it caused him to do real world things that were bad. So does it matter at the end of the day, if it's something that's measurable by our five senses? I don't know. So, I mean, that goes into more of like a, an ontology, you know, like what is real? What is reality? Is it quantum, et cetera? I mean, you could follow that to the 18th degree, but at some level we have to agree on a set of parameters. And if somebody wants to agree then that there are such things as spirits that can inspire and cause people to maybe do something they wouldn't have otherwise, then so be it. But this is something in our modern world we are maybe tempted to say is just superstition. But again, with that God-shaped hole in our hearts, we are still just these organic biological beings and we are fallible and we're vulnerable. And most of the time when, you know, studies are done of people who have interesting beliefs, there's a really good book out. It's an academic text recently updated called Paranormal America. And it was written by a few sociologists who spent time with people like Bigfoot researchers and ufologists and all sorts of people. And they found some very common and interesting statistics and themes between their belief sets. But one thing that stood out was no matter what, somebody holds some sort of belief, no matter who and how educated or how logical or whatever, everybody has some kind of belief that someone else would look at and say is kind of out there. So we can't escape that at some level. So I would say that when it comes to the question of whether or not there are elites, so to speak, out there believing that they could be in touch with these other entities, I think absolutely 100%. Because what makes you elite in a lot of ways, you know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if anyone's familiar with that, it's a pyramid. And you know, you have like your base needs that need to be met, like food, air, etc. And it kind of builds from there into the top of self actualization. But I always joke that when you become in these circles, you are not bothered by Maslow anymore, you're hovering above that hierarchy. And so you have nothing anymore to lose, you become, well, you're not crazy, because if you are crazy, that just means you're poor. However, if you are wealthy, and you have crazy ideas, you're eccentric, so they become eccentric. But that doesn't mean that they are not subject to having these weird beliefs. And it's been my experience that they very much do, and that they're actually trying to contact entities. And that comes down to the question of then what are these entities? Are they demons? Are they archons? Are they aliens? Are they Anunnaki? What are they? It's a curious question. And I'm definitely with you. I'm kind of past the point that I'm pretty confident that the elite believe these things. I just am more trying to figure out to what degree are they real? Or if they are, what kind of influence can these beings have on our reality? What are the limits of that interaction or relationship that they might have? And either way, this is super interesting stuff. We went far outside the scope of the Baphomet book, but I think that's all right. You've done a lot of work. Do remind people about some of the books, the podcast, anything else you're working on, and the Anunnaki course. That's obviously pretty unique. Yeah, I'd like to think so. It's been very fun. People have seemed to enjoy it, so I'm happy for that. Yeah, so you can find me at drheatherlynn.com, and there's books there. I have a podcast called The Midnight Academy. You can find it everywhere podcasts are and on YouTube as well. And yeah, I have an Anunnaki class. I have other classes coming. I have one on the Anunnurbe and the occult aspect of Nazi beliefs entwined with archaeology. And so we're doing a deep dive on that to see the Nazi roots of some of these archaeological excavations, and it's wild. But I think the one that people have loved the most so far has been the Anunnaki one, because there's a lot of misinformation about them. And what I try to do in the Anunnaki course and a lot of different things that I'm publishing is really just break it down to a digestible level so that people understand the family trees, the connections, what are these terms, and understand the multiple ideas that can be presented about the Anunnaki, including Sitchin, including Tellinger, including maybe mine, Graham Hancock, anybody and everybody, and mainstream, of course, because we can't rule all that out. And then also trying to help people understand how they themselves can start to try to translate these tablets. Because believe it or not, there's many resources available so that you can look at these translations yourself. And so I think it's important to empower people in that way. It's interesting. I think the more people that we have who are curious and looking into this, the better, especially before they start to take it all away and make AI responsible for all of those translations, which is what they're trying to do. So that's dangerous. Interesting, has possibility. I'm all for use of AI. But who's doing the data set? Who's controlling the information? And from what I've seen so far, it's actually one organization. It's a global organization. And that's to be continued. Yeah, it's current research. So but yeah, you can find me anywhere. Dr. Heather Lynn dot com. I like it. And it is funny. You ask AI a lot of spicy questions about today's politics and stuff. And you can see it all going one way. And it's created to be the neutral, all seen. I here's the real answer, just the boilerplate answer. But then even if you apply it to something as neutral as a translation, which you would think would just be like, well, I mean, this is not covered in all this political modern residue. It should be pretty one to one. But no, you can still cater translations and that sort of stuff to come to conclusions that you might want and kind of downplay other ones that might suggest other things. A simple one word can change the whole meaning of a thing. So very cool. Great points. Well, I appreciate your double agent status as a rogue academic, and I hope we can do it again sometime. Keep up the good work and take care. Thank you. Anytime. All right. Kicking off November with an interesting one, something probably unexpected. Even I was hit with the unexpected because the actual interview carved a totally different conversational path than I had planned. Her latest book is on Baphomet. So I thought it would pretty much start there after just a quick little getting to know you sort of thing about going through academia, but preserving a mindset closer to our own. But that went a bit longer than I thought, and it got into more of the bulk of her work. And so we jumped right into her real bread and butter, human origins, the Sumerians, the Anunnaki, the Apkalu, and the idea that the apex players of the pyramid do know the truth. And it sometimes comes out if you read between the lines of certain events and the placement of certain statues and all that. And of course, magic. Since that's the kind of stuff I wanted to get to anyway, it's nice that we got there faster and leapfrogged the Baphomet stuff because so many people have so many opinions on that. It's probably better to come in with less loaded stuff first, right? I'm sure I'll get the hang of this interviewing thing eventually. But I do like the way she talks about academia and the rogue double agent framing is great. In fact, I leaned on that very heavily in the lyrics I wrote for the closing song on this one. Maybe my favorite so far. I know people have a lot of feelings about the AI music, but for me, it's a creative outlet. I've always liked writing lyrics. You guys kind of know I like playing with words. And so just think of them as my little poems with a drumbeat and a guitar riff thrown in. I think there's a bit of humor in crafting a song that is so specific to one thing that it is only used once and never again. If you don't share that sentiment, I'm sorry. I guess you can just dip out a little early. Hopefully, just because I changed the flavor of the icing, you don't start hating the whole cake. But some of that background on Baphomet was pretty interesting, though I think that as a symbol, it gets too much attention already. It is funny that the origins of the image basically have nothing to do with evil. It was created by a Catholic priest for meditation purposes, and yet the ones who really have the biggest reactions to it tend to be the most ignorant of that history and origin. And the thought that Baphomet, the term itself, could have been a misunderstood Mohammed from the interactions the Knights Templar were having with the assassins, man, I don't know if I consider that the most likely scenario, but it is also quite comical, if true. We get so wrapped up in thinking we know certain things and we don't have any flexibility and we close our minds to the alternatives or to new information. And I guess it's just human nature, but I try really hard to work against that. Usually. But big thanks to Dr. Lin for representing the alternative in a professional way. If you liked the free first hour and were curious about the second hour, that's where we got into most of the Baphomet stuff. The Knights Templar and the origin of Baphomet, the Templar's history with the assassins, Eliphas Levi, Baphomet, and the doctrine of ritual and high magic, the unification of opposites, weaponizing unification, the one world religion, one world government thing, the acceptance of evil because, hey, it's all good, the fruits of progressivism today, the Baphomet-Sumerian connection, and Dr. Lin's contact with the UFO philanthropist and disclosure movement figures. See, that was really interesting. I guess since she didn't say the name, I shouldn't either, but there's only one person who comes up when you search for the UFO philanthropist. And it's very interesting to know that he reached out to her about her work and how it might relate to the UFO thing. Very curious. And then we talked about the Ubermen, Superman, and transhumanism, and a bunch of other stuff. Become a Plus member right there in the show notes. A few dozen more signups this week, and pretty much across the board glowing reviews of the new RSS link process. I underestimated how annoying people think usernames and passwords are. I mean, I knew it was kind of there, or I wouldn't have undergone this update. But just hearing me explain this new, more convenient system, and knowing that you get a custom link to just copy and paste right in your podcasting app, has certainly prompted a lot of people to sign up, and it's a beautiful thing. I get your eight bucks, you get the show you like, and it's convenient, and we all win. But here we are, the day before the big political showdown. I actually think we navigated the election year pretty well. We just didn't really talk about it all that much. We kind of did our own thing, and I hope that was appreciated. I can't be the only one with election fatigue, and imagine if it was all we talked about here too. I did line up some good political guests for the end of this week and the beginning of next week, as I just don't know how long we will be waiting to have the official results. I tried to play it safe. If the election is on Tuesday, maybe by Friday, we'll know. But what I never wanted to do was to spend all these hours and hours on speculation beforehand, like every other show that I listen to. Let's just talk about what happens after it happens, and what it might mean. I like to be pretty non-partisan and refrain from putting my hope in any political party. And even though I don't support either candidate enthusiastically, to think that RFK Jr. could be in charge of public health and Ron Paul could be in charge of assessing government waste, man, that's pretty appealing. I don't care too much about Trump himself or, of course, Elon, but to put RFK Jr. and Ron Paul, those two people, in the positions I mentioned, that would be pretty amazing. And compare that to the other side where I don't really see anything positive at all, but whatever happens, happens, and we'll just carry on doing what we do. Not to bring this up again, but my dad had pretty strong political opinions. He told me he's voted third party in every election since I was born, which I never really hear from anyone else. But the point is that, like a lot of people, he followed the news, and he was vested in the circus to a degree in what was going to happen, and he died a few months before the election. I guess it's just made me think more about how much time I spend getting emotionally invested or intellectually invested in things I can't control. Any time I spend listening to political talk should probably be spent doing the type of research inversionism does, or learning more about permaculture and the practical things that I'm going to be doing in the next few years. Even investing and planning for my kids' futures, I'm pretty ignorant of a lot of that stuff too. I never had money. I don't come from money. You know, I don't got a guy. But it all matters a lot more than the political shit show. And the reality is that my political thoughts and opinions are always going to be in the minority, so why get invested in areas where the majority opinion wins out? Why even get upset about it? Even if it wasn't rigged, I wouldn't have a lot of faith in the people to get it right. It's why we're a counterculture show, isn't it? I think a lot of us would say that we have a better handle on reality than our peers, but we admit that we're greatly outnumbered by people who are captured by one type of mind control or another. A blue flavor of propaganda ice cream or a red one. So I don't know, I think about my dad's last year and how much time was taken up by following a story that was never going to have a resolution. I know the time that my dad wouldn't have traded in was the limited time he spent with his grandkids or seeing his son finally get his life together. I know a whole bunch of families and siblings who no longer talk over political divides, children who don't understand why their cousins can't come over for the holidays anymore. It's really gross. And for what? Because one person thinks their hypothetical scenario would work better for society than another hypothetical scenario. When we don't really have the power to make the change, what are we even arguing about? I guess that's all I'm saying. Family relationships are too important to waste on political fantasy. At least that's how I feel today, you know? In higher side news, I went to the post office and realized a listener had sent me some of my favorite medicine to the PO box. Now, I don't recommend people do this. This guy clearly grows and has a good system and vacuum sealed it up right and put it in a locked bag and all that. But the point is, the guy's got a cannabis business going in Colorado growing organic and he wants to grow his business. He goes by Shasta on the THC forums and it was his idea actually. He mentioned that he was going to post on the entrepreneurs forum thread. And I kind of even forgot that I had made that, but it's something I should highlight more often. If you have your own business, post it there so other listeners can comb through all the entrepreneurs out there and support people within the network if they like what you do. If I do start to see some quality posts in there, I might make highlighting that part of my wrap up too and promote such things. But if you're in need of a good hookup, check Shasta's thread and take it over to Signal where he feels it's best to communicate about such things. But thanks Shasta, smart thinking and best of luck on the dream. Also, I'm going to revive the little thing I did before moving to Florida and auction off some THC script outlines since we're getting into the Christmas season. I will link my eBay page in the show notes, but probably won't get anything up there for a few more days. It's not really a big deal. But to remind people for every show, I write a lengthy outline and I always print it out and follow along and mark them up quite a bit as I do the interviews live. It's a process I started a long time ago and I just can get very lazy and I can be a procrastinator, especially when I don't have someone looking over my shoulder. So the process that has worked for me, I have kept intact and I don't stray. So if you find an outline for a particular interview you liked, you can read through it and see which questions got asked and which ones I skipped and how I had to pivot things based on what the guest says and all that sort of stuff. Kind of fun. And I signed them because I guess why not if they're going to be sold off? But it's a unique piece of THC memorabilia, I suppose. It was never my intention to sell them. I just find it easier to conduct interviews from paper and then they all started stacking up because I didn't really want to throw them away. And then I had that idea before I moved and it went way better than expected. So I figured, hey, I'll do it again. I think eBay listings go for two weeks, so I will get them up there and I'll have a less wishy-washy announcement before the next show. But think about it if you don't know what to ask for for Christmas. Of course, there's plenty of THC merch too, but these outlines I would think are a bit cooler and more unique than a printed t-shirt. And we know how scary my pillows are. We don't even need to get into that. But moving on, let's look at the review for the last episode with Gabriel Custodiette regarding online privacy, centralization, and the idea of Utopia. Well, it was well-liked. We got another 4.8. Love to see it. I know it was a bit more dry than some other topics, but it's also practical and it affects us all. And like I said in the comments, I'm not very good about my digital footprint, really. In fact, I hate two-factor authentication. And whenever one of these websites tells me my password's compromised, I'm just kind of like, whatever, whatever. Hey, it's on you to keep my account secure. Not really the best attitude, but it is what it is. Although I do appreciate the occasional reminders, much like someone who takes exercise seriously. I admire it. I acknowledge the value in it and that I should probably put some added effort into that area of my life. And then I get distracted with something else. I mean, hey, the Penguin show is quite good. But in both cases, it's motivating and important to be reminded of how much damage I might be doing to my physical and digital life, because it's easy to overlook a lot of the things that are going on under the surface until they're pointed out. So I appreciate Gabriel and everyone is in a different place with this. Some people will prioritize it. Some people just find it interesting to hear from someone so committed to a privacy lifestyle. But the actionable intelligence is there if you want it. Topic wise, I just thought it was a fun way to switch it up. And as for the meetup calendar, what do we have on deck? Well, the Montana Tap House in Whitefish, Montana, November 7th. And then on November 9th, Trails Cafe in LA, November 13th, Athens, Ohio at West End Cider House. Followed up by a new event on the calendar, November 17th, Moundsville, West Virginia at the Guest House Lounge. Sounds fun. And then November 22nd, Tampa, Florida. I'm still planning to go. I hope the people come as well. We will see. But very nice. Find the others. Local networks are crucial. Plus, it's just good fun. What are we here for if not to engage with reality? But thanks again to Dr. Lynn. She's great at what she does. And I hope you had a good time. Brace for the election madness and realize that your personal life will most likely be pretty unaffected. So hug your kids. Thank your parents. Put your energy into your own personal goals and love your life as hard as they might want to make it to do that. I've done my part. Your move, academic deceivers, human origin hiders and magic deniers. Your fucking move. But she didn't buy in. She went to class but saw through the spin. Got what she needed and got out of the spin. The academic double agent, Dr. Heather Lane. The professors say keep it intact. If you find something anomalous, how you gonna act? Today you'll learn more outside of the circle. You can go out on your own. Leave behind fancy credentials and crushing student loans. They won't fund your studies. If you go against the grain. They got no cash for excavations. Professor say keep it intact. And how you gonna act? It's all through the spin. Got what she needed and got out again. Double agent, Dr. Heather Lane.