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PODCAST

Failed State Update

Joseph L. Flatley

Stories and conversations from the end of America. Subscribe to the newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com My book NEW AGE GRIFTER: THE TRUE STORY OF GABRIEL OF URANTIA AND HIS COSMIC FAMILY is available for preorder *now* from Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/new-age-grifter-the-true-story-of-gabriel-of-urantia-and-his-cosmic-family/9781627311106

society & culture

All Episodes

01:01:01

16. UFOs, Radical and Conservative

Failed State Update ·

2020/07/12

Has "cancel culture" hit the UFO scene? Probably not. But MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) has had a few controversies over the years, including a recent one where the State Director of Vermont and Rhode Island lost his position for some really messed up Facebook posts. To shed some light on what's happening there, I spoke with Eric Smith, a MUFON field investigator based in Rhode Island. He says that the UFO scene is getting increasingly younger and more progressive — and that MUFON doesn't seem to be

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01:00:13

15. Boy's Bible Study

Failed State Update ·

2020/07/07

NOTE: I've fixed the wonky audio 30 minutes in and updated the file. I've always been fascinated by the weird, parallel Christian media universe, so for this episode, I figure we'd consult the experts. Boys Bible Study is a podcast known for its hilarious and insightful reviews of faith-based movies (a fair amount of which involve Kevin Sorbo somehow). In this episode of Failed State Update, I will be joined by the Bible boys: Ash, Julian, and Scott, as we discuss The Reliant (2019). This film

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01:49:43

14. Josh Lilly on living in (and being kicked out of)...

Failed State Update ·

2020/07/02

From my other podcast, The So-Called Prophet From Pittsburgh about a UFO cult in Arizona and its leader, Gabriel. Joshua Lilly (spiritual name: VanMon) was brought into the Global Community Communications Alliance as a kid, kicked out as a teenager, and joined again as an adult. Practically his entire family is still in the group. In this in-depth conversation, Josh relates the path that drew him to Gabriel of Urantia (twice). We also discuss cult members' motivations, cult "mind control"

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01:02:29

13. Police Cops! w/Stuart Schrader

Failed State Update ·

2020/06/24

Stuart Schrader is a Lecturer/Assistant Research Scientist in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. In this episode of Failed State Update, we talk about the little-understood facts that the United States is an empire, and that what our police do at home has a striking resemblance to what our military does overseas. Of course, this has some very serious implications for the current resistance

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01:00:45

12. The Fascists Are Telling Us Who They Are

Failed State Update ·

2020/06/18

For this episode, I spoke with two pretty smart dudes. First off, Jared Yates Sexton (a political analyst, associate professor, and author of the forthcoming book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People) discussed authoritarianism, both in the Trump White House and in the hearts of too many of us. We also covered the role of conspiracy theories in... well, almost everything. After that, my interview with Shane Burley (author of Fascism Today: What It Is And How To End

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00:53:44

11. Exposing R. Kelly with Jim DeRogatis

Failed State Update ·

2020/06/10

For fifteen years, Jim DeRogatis was the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was while there that Jim and his colleague Abdon Pallasch became the first reporters to expose R. Kelly's sex trafficking cult. His book Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly both exposes what rich people get away with in this country and gives the reader a first-hand account of the work that investigative journalists do. I think it's one of the most important books of 2019. Jim DeRogatis on Twitter:

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00:58:33

10. Protest in the Age of Magickal Thinking

Failed State Update ·

2020/06/04

There's an uprising goin' on. But while the oppressed are uprising, and the cops are knocking heads, right-wing thugs are waiting to take advantage of the chaos for their own fiendish ends. And these ain't your daddy's racists: they believe in meme magick and wear aloha shirts. In this episode of Failed State Update, I talk to two people who have devoted some serious time and effort to understanding Q Anon, the Boogaloo Bois, and other absurd modern manifestations of the radical right. Mike Rains is

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00:46:34

9. The Battle of Pittsburgh

Failed State Update ·

2020/06/01

I'm a veteran of the anti-globalization movement, but sadly these days COVID-19 and some seriously messed up lungs have turned my activism into slacktivism. When I wasn't busy yesterday Venmo-ing my donation to the Pittsburgh Freedom Fund (see "Pittsburgh Jailbreak," below), I spent about 12 hours monitoring Twitter feeds, live streams, and my handy police scanner to try to get an idea of what was going on during the Battle of Pittsburgh. On this episode of Failed State Update, I will ponder

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00:58:22

8. The Jakarta Method (w/Vincent Bevins)

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/28

Clearly, the American Empire is clocking out —it's anybody's guess whether it will go with a whimper or with a bang, but it seems likely that we'll know the answer to that question relatively soon. But what did it take to forge this empire in the first place, and how can it be that so many Americans are unaware that this imperium even exists? In the latest episode of Failed State Update, I will be speaking with Vincent Bevins, a journalist and the author of the recently released The Jakarta Method:

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00:45:23

7. The Opperman Report

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/26

UPDATE: The latest on the story of THE SO-CALLED PROPHET FROM PITTSBURGH is available now from Please Kill Me Online: https://pleasekillme.com/cosmopop/ Ed Opperman is like a character in a movie: Private investigator, native New Yorker, conspiracy researcher, and former Yippie. It was a pleasure to talk to him on his radio show recently about the UFO cult I'm investigating (including some new wrinkles in the story, available here for the first time). We also spoke at some length about this podcast

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00:56:15

6. To Live and Die in L.A.

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/23

Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist and the author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (PublicAffairs, 2018). We spoke recently about the response to COVID-19 in the city of Los Angeles, where he currently lives. Since it's Yasha, the conversation quickly turned to surveillance and empire and the fact that the systemic collapse of the USA (ca. 2020) is largely the result of the chickens coming home to roost — as web 2.0 influencer Ward Churchill might say

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00:54:08

5. I Am Seeing UFOs (w/Adam Gorightly)

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/19

This episode of Failed State Update is about the intersection of government spies and ETs. As far as I can tell (and who can really tell?) the UFO community has been encouraged to pursue and promote some wacko ideas over the years by the United States Air Force to distract them from the shitty things the government is doing (and the scary weapons their government is creating). The best evidence supporting this hypothesis is the story of a defense contractor named Paul Bennewitz who we will discuss

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00:47:08

4. You're Donezo! (w/Chuck Ochelli)

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/15

I recently appeared on The Ochelli Effect to discuss this podcast and the sorry state of the world in general. I had a great time, so I thought I'd share some highlights of our conversation with you. If you like what you hear, make sure you check out Ochelli.com to listen to the whole two hour conversation. Topics include: rich people/disaster capitalism/Hurricane Katrina, The Day After (again!), my cursory understanding of Jung, the COVID-19 lockdown, and more. The Ochelli Effect website:

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00:51:29

3. Radical politics and the Peoples Temple

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/10

Laura Johnston Kohl grew up as an activist in Washington, D.C., and watched as many of her heroes were assassinated in the 1960s. She attended college in Connecticut and continued her commitment to work for change and to make a difference. While exercising her civil rights to protest peacefully, she was tear-gassed while protesting the war in Vietnam. After a brief marriage, a visit to Woodstock, and a stint working with the Black Panthers, she moved to California to join her sister. Soon after

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01:06:21

2. Amazon.com and the crisis of meaning

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/03

In the second episode of Failed State Update, we check in on Christian Smalls, the ex-Amazon employee who lost his job fighting to protect his coworkers from Covid-19. And then we'll have a wide-ranging conversation with J.P. Sottile, the journalist behind the influential Rundown newsletter, about the strange political and psychological times we've found ourselves in. Topics include the generation gap, fascism, nuclear war, and looking at the bright side of the system's collapse. [CORRECTION: I'm

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00:55:25

1. Militia Dudes and Juggalos

Failed State Update ·

2020/05/02

In the premiere episode, Joseph "Lenny" Flatley talks to J.G. Michael of Parallax Views about the politics of the anti-quarantine movement and the tragic canceling of Insane Clown Posse's 2020 Gathering of the Juggalos music festival. He also speaks to Christian Yingling of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia and John "Wagz" Wagner of the PA Lightfoot Militia about the militia movement's response to Covid-19. NEW! Failed State Update newsletter: http://lennyflatley.substack.com/ Parallax Views:

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