Wetwired

Sean and Jules
  • 4.7 (13)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Biweekly

Creating a podcast about culture, control, and empire

  1. Sep 7

    Episode 99: TSOG feat Gabriel Kennedy

    We're back with Gabriel Kennedy, author of Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson to talk about Oligarchy American style, Gilens and Page's research on American democracy, Harry K. Thaw's killing of Stanford White, and how sexual exploitation is the norm in elite networks. We wrap all this up in the context of Robert Anton Wilson's statement's back in the early 2000s that the conspiracy theory he most believed to be true is that the US is secretly an oligarchy ruled by the rich and that our democracy isn't much more than an elaborate sham. How right he was. Gabriel has a Kickstarter for creating an audiobook version of Chapel Perilous. He has some great bonuses for backers. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chapelperilous/chapel-perilous-the-robert-anton-wilson-biography-audiobook See all of Gabriel's work https://chapelperilous.us Learn more about TSOG https://rawsemantics.home.blog/2024/08/06/tsog-2025-other-scenarios/ Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page published a paper called “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/div-class-title-testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens-div.pdf

    Episode 99: TSOG feat Gabriel Kennedy

  2. Jul 26

    Episode 97: Meatball Business

    As a way to wrap up our Cold as ICE series about the creation of an American paramilitary force answering only to Trump, we wanted to find some solid historical examples where secret police forces were dismantled. The idea was to give some reasons to hope that things could be better. The problem was that we couldn’t find any examples at all! You could say this is an episode about trying to write that episode. In every case, once a secret police force was created, it remained. Very much like every expansion of state power or infringement on human rights, once they happen, it takes an enormous effort to put things back to something like they once were. When a secret police force or some brand of Brown Shirts was finally disbanded, it was always due to a constellation of internal and external pressures that ultimately took down the entire regime. The paramilitary arm of it just went down with it.  No one ever seems to get rid of a secret police force without dismantling the whole government. Along the way, we also talk about how IKEA helped support Romania's Securitate secret police under Ceaușescu. Later on this episode, we get into a Vanity Fair profile of a Sloperator VC fund called Harpoon and a little about Pete Hegseth's tailor. Bathroom reading: https://www.foxnews.com/media/homan-blasts-dem-hypocrisy-deportations-recalls-past-obama-gave-award-enforcing-border https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/04/ikea-funds-romania-secret-police-communist-era https://www.vanityfair.com/story/vc-defense-tech-harpoon

    Episode 97: Meatball Business

  3. Jul 24

    Episode 89: The Veiled Prophet Secret Society feat Devin Thomas O'Shea (Rerelease)

    Editor's note: We originally recorded this episode in January 2026. Since then, Devin's book is now available in hardcover and ebook. Devin's been promoting it all summer on a whistle stop media tour at independent bookstores across the country. It comes out in paperback in July 2027. Tour info: https://devinoshea.wordpress.com/veiled-prophet/ Buy The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet Here's the original description for this episode. Enjoy! We're with Devin Thomas O'Shea, author of The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis. Most of Devin's book surrounds a Gilded Age secret society founded in St. Louis in the late 19th century. The story would probably begin and end in St. Louis if that little group for racist businessmen and politicians who liked to throw parties had fizzled out like most secret societies do. This one didn't. Founded in 1897, the Veiled Prophet Society exists to this day. Over the course of its life, it's had bank presidents, captains of industry, judges, at least one police chief, and more than one US presidential advisor as members. As Devin tells us, the organization was purposely conceived to create a venue for money to mix with politics. This makes the story of the Veiled Prophet Society also the story of how power is captured and wielded. Find Devin online: https://linktr.ee/devintoshea The book will be available on June 23, 2026. Preorder the book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet Our long promised merch is here!! Fly your crypto-leftist flag with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    Episode 89: The Veiled Prophet Secret Society feat Devin Thomas O'Shea (Rerelease)

  4. Jul 9

    Episode 96: Hail Eris! feat Bob Campbell and Gabriel Kennedy

    We're joined by first time guest Bobby Campbell, creator of the beautiful comic book adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy, Tales of the Illuminatus! as well as many, many other wonderful things. We also have back with us long time friend of the show Gabriel Kennedy, author of Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. Together we dig into some ideas about how we can make sense of things, stay sane, and win when the times get tough. Along the way we talk about why people are attracted to certainty over nuance, the ways that media and outright propaganda can shape our perception, and ultimately how Discordianism and RAW's Maybe Logic can cut through the noise. The topics range widely with a crowd like this. We dip into how RAW differs from a lot of superficially similar cultural figures. While scams, cults, and thought leaders (cringe) might identify real problems, they almost inevitably just end up replacing the status quo with their own half-baked ideas. RAW purposely went a different way. Instead of spoon feeding a replacement belief system, he encouraged people to stick with questioning and to keep interrogating reality (my words). We also bump into chaos theory, get into some gritty details about Discordianism, its founder Kerry Thornley (aka Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, aka Ho Chi Zen) and how he happened to know Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy's assassination, and so many other fun digressions. Inevitably, we keep coming back to the conclusion the chaos is unavoidable but how we respond to it is not. Instead of suffering under its weight, our time is better spent influencing our worlds with intention and valuing curiosity over certainty. Editor's comment: We had more than a few internet connection problems during this conversation. Gabriel enters and leaves like a chaos apparition throughout the episode. The unaffected of us were probably much more entertained by this than he was. But since he's a real pro, he didn't let it get him down. You, the listener, shouldn't either. Find Bob Campbell's work: https://www.bobbycampbell.net https://www.etsy.com/shop/WeirdoverseGiftShop https://talesofilluminatus.com/ https://x.com/RGC777 https://bsky.app/profile/bobbycampbell.net Bobby's Illuminatus! Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbycampbell/tales-of-illuminatus-3-opus-chao Find Gabriel Kennedy's work: https://chapelperilous.us https://gabrielpatrickkennedy.substack.com/ https://bsky.app/profile/propanon.bsky.social Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY) Fly your crypto-leftist flag with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/

    Episode 96: Hail Eris! feat Bob Campbell and Gabriel Kennedy

  5. May 16

    Episode 95: It's Disclosure Day, Again

    That’s right everybody, Disclosure Day came and went and not much really happened. The reactions to the grifter ufologist hype cycle have been entirely predictable and hilarious. We’re talking too much about the substance of the UAP/UFO files released by the government. Mostly because how much can you say about a bunch of infrared videos of a bright dot moving around or FBI files that have been publicly available in essentially the same form for, in some cases, 60 or 80 years already? I think the proper way to understand what’s been happening over the past week is that it wouldn’t be a letdown if the hype men and women hadn’t been out there building anticipation. And whatever you do, don’t think for a second that any of this is anything more than a distraction from Trump failing completely to win a war with Iran that he started. Credit to this account for the outline of the hype cycle I built on in this ep: https://x.com/kyle_ferriter/status/2052768865503920471 Corrections: I gave credit to Robert Skvarla for noticing that the most recent file dump was in at least one case more censored than when the files were released in the past. It turns out that credit belongs to this account on Twitter: https://x.com/mrjeffknox/status/2053972920549232732 Follow Robert anyway while you're at it. He posts great stuff! https://x.com/RobertSkvarla Less importantly, I said that J. Edgar Hoover, while director of the FBI was looking into the communist ties of George Adamski. It was actually Frank Scully who he was looking into. Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY) Fly your crypto-leftist flag with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/

    Episode 95: It's Disclosure Day, Again

  6. May 9

    [PREVIEW] Premium Episode 71: He Came from the Internet / I Always Wanted to Be a Groyper, Part 5

    We're talking about the Right's still rising reactionary star, Nicholas Joseph Fuentes. Fuentes’ videos posted on Rumble are regularly watched by 100s of thousands of people, but aside from a brief brush with Donald Trump as a dinner guest of Kanye West, he's been almost completely dismissed by mainstream conservatives. That is, until the last year or so. Since last summer, he’s appeared on multiple interview shows including Candace Owens, Dinesh D’Souza, Patrick Bet-David, and Piers Morgan but by far the most consequential person to host him last fall was Tucker Carlson. Despite their eventual falling out, Fuentes’ conversation with Carlson on The Tucker Carlson Show not only exposed Fuentes to Carlson’s extremely large audience (it was watched over 7 million times on YouTube and 18.5 million times on Twitter, if you can believe anything Elon Musk says), but it was also the chummiest, possibly aside from his October chat with Alex Jones. Fuentes is the most effective personality and movement leader who’s consistently out MAGAed Trump. He’s also the most successful among all those who've tried at separating the America First agenda from Trump and the cult of personality that surrounds him and has the potential to continue America Firsting after Trump is gone. That should terrify the Republican establishment since succession has always been that nut that the people at the center of MAGA have never cracked. This recent normalizing of Fuentes, who’s been known to liberally use the n-word, has praised the Taliban, is verbosely homophobic, proudly calls himself an anti-Semite and complains about the “organized Jewry”, and doesn’t think women should be allowed to vote or even go to school, has said he wants to drag the Republican Party “kicking and screaming into the future, into the right wing, into a truly reactionary party,” shows that the gap between mainstream and the fringy far-far-right is as thin as it's ever been.

    [PREVIEW] Premium Episode 71: He Came from the Internet / I Always Wanted to Be a Groyper, Part 5

  7. Apr 17

    [PREVIEW] Premium Episode 70: Party in Pristine Park, USA

    Welcome to Pristine Park, Ohio where the beer is light, the fireworks are silent, and everyone parties like it's the 4th of July, Polish style. I ambush Jules with a surprise recording session where I treat him to the story of the 4th of July LARPers. Based in Poland, for the last few years they've put on a 3 day live role playing session based around their takes on staples of American society. Set in the fictional Pristine Park trailer park, the 4th of July LARP isn't only a send up of the trailer park culture, it manages to be an incisive review of American society and the terrible turns of events that befall just about all of us.

    [PREVIEW] Premium Episode 70: Party in Pristine Park, USA

  8. Apr 11

    Episode 94: Star Trek Socialism feat Aaron Thorpe

    Damn, this was a fun chat! Today we have Aaron Thorpe from The Trillbillies with us! Aaron’s hanging out with us today to talk about two of my favorite things: Star Trek and socialism. We also have as an unofficial second guest, the spirit of Kurt Schiller from Podside Picnic and formerly of Blood Knife magazine. He wasn't on the show but we mentioned him quite a few times during this episode. I keep asking myself, what is it about that show that keeps me coming back and watching episodes and seasons over and over again? At least one of the reasons is the social values.  Over and over again you see characters acting out a way of viewing the world that is entirely different from any examples I see in my own life. Just before we recorded, Kurt serendipitously posted on Substack an infinitely more eloquent exposition of this idea. Kurt describes the characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation as: [W]eird, ethics-obsessed utopian naval officers with a very particular culture and outlook that's not our own. They don't act like us, talk like us, and for the most part they don't really think like us. In fact, many of the aliens they encounter resemble modern people much more than the Federation - this was also the case in the original series, and both series use the Federation characters to comment on modern day society by imbuing alien species with our modern attributes (petty squabbles, greed, various culture wars, etc) while the Federation characters observe and comment from a fundamentally different viewpoint. Read Kurt's entire post here: https://substack.com/@knifepoint/note/c-227691504 The values defined throughout the early Star Trek series aren't just coincidental to the economic structure of the Federation, they're essential to creating and maintaining it. You can't get to their post-currency, post-scarcity world with replicators alone. You need to want it first, the replicators come later. Find Aaron online and check him out on The Trillbillies https://x.com/afrocosmist https://x.com/thetrillbillies Find Kurt on Substack https://substack.com/@knifepoint https://x.com/PodsideP Follow Wetwired on social https://x.com/wetwiredpod

    Episode 94: Star Trek Socialism feat Aaron Thorpe
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4.7
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Creating a podcast about culture, control, and empire

Information

  • Creator
    Sean and Jules
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    117
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Wetwired

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