Optophobia

Mar 15 2021 49

Optophobia Podcast artwork

Optophobia is the fear of opening one’s eyes. Our show is dedicated to encouraging you — our listeners — to move beyond that fear. To solve riddles they don’t want us to unriddle. To investigate supposedly ironclad truths. To unearth evidence, buried for so long they believed it would stay buried. Each season we tackle a new investigation into what is often dismissively called a “conspiracy theory,” and each week a new guest weighs in. Are you bored by the lies? Open your eyes.

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Introducing: Optophobia

Sep 04 2019 2 mins

Optophobia is the fear of opening one’s eyes. Our fear is that too many people close their eyes to the truth. The mission of this podcast is to wrench yours open with copper clamps like Stanley Kubrick did to Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Will it be painful? Yeah, maybe. Full episodes launch September 30.

S1Ep1 | Meet Season One's Co-hosts

Sep 30 2019 31 mins

We introduce the show's Season One co-hosts: Hassan Gray, a Verizon Fios sales analyst and host of the "Not My Problem" podcast & Debra, former host of the syndicated radio program "Debra," and author of "I Can't Go for Mind Control (No Can Do): Hall, Oates and the Soviet Roots of Blue-Eyed Soul" available in free-thinking bookstores everywhere.

S1Ep2 | Virginity Lost-and-Found in the Danakil Depression

Sep 30 2019 33 mins

Our guest this week, Theodore Kettle, grew up in the privileged world of 1980s international diplomacy. As the son of the UK ambassador in Addis Ababa, Kettle stumbled upon a hard-partying music scene in east Africa's Great Rift Valley, considered the "cradle of humankind," where he lost his virginity to a Russian-speaking beauty named Olga. Or did he?

S1Ep3 | Cleopatra 2: The Mind Hug

Oct 07 2019 25 mins

After starring as Girl With Beach Ball in 1965's "Beach Blanket Bingo" and Girl Near Jukebox in 1973's "American Graffiti," Meredith Crossings found herself on the set of "Cleopatra 2" filming near Kagnew Station. During a night spent under the stars with a herd of goats, Crossings received a mysterious message that ultimately forced her to leave her parents' Hollywood dreams for h

S1Ep4 | The Earthquake That Released the Voice of God

Oct 14 2019 34 mins

Librarian Sylvia Brown discusses her research into a mid-1970s north Africa earthquake that unleashed what many have since called "the voice of God." The quake triggered a mass, 48-hour bout of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, across much of Eritrea. The U.S. government harnessed that energy and still deploys it on Americans today when, for instance, they're deciding whether or

S1Ep5 | The Groundhogs Are Coming For Our Teeth

Oct 21 2019 30 mins

Before Tabitha Walton worked in Warren, Connecticut’s only occult museum, she spent years as a dental hygienist in Washington, DC. It was in the office of Dr. Stephen C. Hopkins, DMD that she discovered a horrifying coincidence: Many of Hopkins’s patients had worked on Kagnew’s STONEHOUSE project. And they were hearing voices. And then their teeth began to disintegrate.

S1Ep6 | The Farmer's Almanac Connection

Oct 28 2019 29 mins

In 1975, Gary Belt and his brother were stationed at Kagnew when Gary’s brother was beamed in the face with a space laser from the STONEHOUSE antennas. Gary, now a ghost writer at the Farmer’s Almanac, believes the content of his brother’s brain was the first of thousands that STONEHOUSE sucked into a mysterious black box, a massive database we now call ... The Internet.

S1Ep7 | The Danny Boy Killer

Nov 04 2019 33 mins

After a traumatic childhood audition for "Oliver!" that blacked out his community theater, Dan Hammer had a feeling someone, or some thing, was controlling the world's electronic grid. Despite his conviction that STONEHOUSE was the cause of every bad thing that happened in his life, Dan persevered with his acting career. And he found love. Tragically, electronics found her too.

S1Ep8 | Father's Father Devoured by the Father of Lies

Nov 11 2019 27 mins

When Father Richard Thomas’s dad was stationed at Kagnew, he found that STONEHOUSE was concealing a supernatural government discovery: the Gates of Hell. And he succumbed to the Prince of Darkness. When the U.S. Navy officer finally returned to San Diego, his own son was forced to perform a secret exorcism.

S1Ep9 | East is West. Up is Down. Grief is Love.

Nov 18 2019 29 mins

What if everything you thought you knew about your orientation on this planet was wrong? Not just wrong, but exactly 180 degrees wrong. Kim Ingram, a talent scout from Mustardton, SC, believes the STONEHOUSE antennas are actually powerful magnets designed by the government to disrupt the way we think about directions, injecting chaos and confusion into society as a way to make us m