From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies history is riddled with unexplained events.

You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but we'll be back very soon.

They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Decand.

Most importantly, you are you.

You are here.

That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know this is thinking about this earlier

Matt this is an episode about more than one conspiracy in fact I would argue we could call this a story of conflicting dual conspiracies,

both true, both set against one another in a fundamental shadow war.

And we were going to record this episode earlier.

I'm glad we took some time on it because key to this tale is larger than life,

immensely controversial figure.

To some folks he's a hero to others, and we'll get to those others in specific he is a bungler who nearly

risked the safety of America entire now question had you heard of this guy before we started researching him?

Only from, you know, film school and this movie that came out in 1939 that we're going to talk

about. That's the only reason I knew anything about

this story. It is a weird time in US history, often I think at least in my personal experience when we think about the United States and spying

There's a hyper focus on the United States versus the Soviet Union

This is a time before the Cold War spying days and games. It's interesting to take your mind to the 1920s and thinking about spying.

Yeah, it's also the interwar period is something that doesn't get a ton of examination

in a lot of American public schools.

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