Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the It Could Happen Here spooky special?
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Chapter 2: What insights were gained from the Occulture Conference?
Everyone's a sort of intellectual now. Everyone has ability to enter into intellectual exchange. You can be self-educated. It's never been easier to be an autodidact. Why do occultism now? And this goes into this question that someone asked at one of the very last panels is, what's the difference between a scholar and a practitioner? And I asked like a
A question about what's the use of solitary practice, like practicing magic as a personal, religious, or spiritual process, or as a way to gain power in the world, versus using occult thought to shape culture, doing the occulture process, which this whole conference is ostensibly named after.
And I think specifically talking about these like older forms of magic, like why are these important for occultists, like modern practicing occultists, which this conference is attended by, why are these useful to them beyond, you know, in anthropology or like academic sense? And I realize that is a big question, but I mean, we ourselves attended a number of rituals this weekend.
We went to an Abraxas ritual, which was sort of limited by the confines of the conference setting.
But I mean, a lot of these rituals were about trying to induce some kind of like trance or meditative state in which, you know, images or thoughts would come into your head and images and thoughts that you, or feelings that you ordinarily, you know, wouldn't feel in day-to-day modern busy life, right? And
This is a form of why people do these practices, but I guess we can, I don't know, but based on the panels or talks we've attended, go around and discuss why this is a thing that is worthwhile to these people, but also the sort of tensions that we're feeling at an event like this.
I mean, the question why do people get into occultism is like, I think there are as many answers as like practitioners themselves, really. Because, I mean, you know, partly it can be a cultural tradition and you have like a communal or societal lineage that's just like part of the culture. Others who are more, I suppose, more secular are looking for an escape from mundane secular society.
Others, like you said, want power. I mean, if I have to speak for myself, I always find that I come back to the phrase, it's about creating relationships with the world. And, you know, there's like an essence of like enchantment to it, but it's like also being able to recognize like, you know, occult like movements or like the secret, secret, sure.
The secret elements that make up reality or like the vibe, like the vibes of a place can be like something you connect with and you can kind of,
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Chapter 3: How does AI influence modern magical practices?
I don't think I'm gonna get in trouble. for saying this, but she, no, it's not in the book. But she represents a very interesting approach to that, like anthropologists going native. But this was the question that was asked towards the end of like this difference between the academic observer of these things versus the practitioner.
And I think that that really gets to the heart of what it is that chaos magic does and the cultural practice that is that you are producing culture and you're very specifically producing this magical occult culture. So it's a synthetic movement between these kind of like two poles of the secular and of the sacred, of the magical. I guess I'll just close up my notes here.
Specifically, the stuff on Twin Peaks The Return. One of the last talks was by Jeff Howard. Next stop, Universe B. The negatively existent ones and Universe B in contemporary culture. Which was discussing sort of like, you know, mirror... mirror world, underworld concept, not in the Greek sense, but in the occultism of the British occultist Kenneth Grant.
And this would probably be most recognizable to people as the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks is, I think, one of the better depictions of this sort of concept. It is a somewhat limited version, but I think it gets at the the kind of heart of the concept in a way.
And he gave this talk where he was explaining the risks and the great power that you can personally achieve through contacting these negatively existent ones or accessing the magical potential of this sort of mirror negative universe to our own. And he talked about a little bit of Derrida and
Various other stuff, but from the perspective mainly as a practitioner of the danger and the benefits of doing this sort of magic as written by Kenneth Grant. Jeff Howard did discuss Twin Peaks and the use of Kenneth Grant's concepts, specifically in Twin Peaks The Return. And I asked him in the panel afterwards, like, how can you, like, balance these two forms of working with occultism?
Or, like, what is the difference in these two forms of working with occultism? You have, on one hand, this practitioner... where you're using it to, like, gain power or induce, like, limit experiences, like, induce, you know, religious or transcendental experiences that change your own perception of, like, sensory reality versus the way that Mark Frost...
Kenneth Grant's magical world in writing and co-creating Twin Peaks The Return, which I can argue is a much more effective use of magic and exposes millions of people to Kenneth Grant's concepts, people who are never going to read books by a relatively niche British occultist, books which are actually very, very hard to find now.
both getting going into the mauve zone and accessing the non-existent being and beings which don't have existent properties versus phenomenons which are existent but lack any core sense of being. And how Mark Frost, not sure if he would consider himself a magician, but certainly has an interest in magic and the occult more so than Lynch does. Lynch's stuff is more bastardized Hinduism. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of traditional versus chaos magic?
A jury sentenced him to death on June 3, 1975. The murder created a lasting national legacy, sparking paranoia about the safety of trick-or-treating. The state of Texas knew that executing O'Brien would be politically popular and would probably boost support for the death penalty.
Not knowing which resident of Texas' death row would be strapped to the gurney first, Revis ended up interviewing all but one inmate on the list he had been given. The appeals process, however, is unpredictable, and a Fort Worth man known for most of his life as Charlie Brooks would end up winning the dubious honor of being the first to be put to death by lethal injection.
He was convicted for the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old mechanic, David Gregory, during a 1976 robbery. By the time Revis interviewed him, Brooks had converted to Islam and taken the name Sharif Ahmad Abdul Rahim. That is the name we will use referring to him for the rest of the episode. Abdul Rahim had committed the robbery with another man, Woody Lourdes.
He posed as someone wanting to buy a used car and asked to take a test drive. Gregory agreed to ride with him. Abdulrahim picked up Lourdes. The pair threw Gregory in a car trunk, drove him to a ramshackle motel, tied him to a chair, and taped his mouth shut. Abdulrahim and Lourdes accused each other of firing the fatal shot. No weapon was ever found.
Lourdes eventually received the death penalty, but after that was overturned, he reached an agreement with prosecutors and received a 40-year sentence. he would end up serving only 11. The disparity in sentencing is one of the defining features of how capital punishment is carried out, even after Gregg v. Georgia had supposedly addressed that issue.
Shortly before his execution, Abdulrahim insisted on his innocence, but according to Revis, the condemned man was lying. Revis described to us his relationship with Abdulrahim, a.k.a. Charlie Brooks.
Charlie was very alert. passed on his feet, engaged. He was not moping around sad. He had a sense of humor. He told me in the first interview I had with him that he was innocent and that this was racial discrimination, that they executed more blacks than whites. And I told him, oh, what you want is for them to execute more white people, huh?
And that stunned me because I think no one had ever said that to him. But that would do away with racial discrimination, and there's lots of white people who need executing too, was my way of thinking. And he didn't get mad at me or anything. He kind of laughed at it himself after he paused to understand the question. Then he kind of laughed at it himself. But I would say he was...
Even until they got him strapped down, he was in control of his own body. His mind was in great shape. He lied to me about whether or not he was innocent.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do prisons face during executions?
Heavily muscled prisoners, those who are morbidly obese, and those with dark skin can also present challenges for the amateur phlebotomist trying to set up an execution. Prisons sometimes lack the right equipment, such as the correct size syringes or proper tubing.
Lethal injection drugs are pre-made and have to be mixed by personnel, not properly trained in chemistry, which results in errors in dosing. Often people with any kind of medical competence who participate in executions are the ones with the shadiest ethical records.
Professor Lane came across one case in which the state of Missouri relied on a doctor who ignored ethical guidelines and participated in the capital punishment process. He was incorrectly mixing the chemicals, said that the prisoners were only receiving half the dose of the anesthesia meant to reduce the pain of the condemned as required by law.
Dr. Lane shared the horrifying discoveries lawyers who condemned prisoners made about that particular doctor.
Chapter 6: How do medical professionals impact lethal injection procedures?
They looked at the protocol that was litigated and authorized by a federal court.
And it was five grams of this particular drug. And they looked at the execution logs of the last several. And states were using 2.5. And so they filed suit. That's half the anesthetic. And the state wrote back and said, we are not using half the anesthetic. It must be the pharmacy logs that are wrong. We're going to track that down and figure out why they are wrong.
But we rest assure you, we are not violating the protocol. We're doing the amount that was legally authorized. Well, they have to come back the next day and say, oh, actually, the logs were right.
We were wrong. We were injecting half of the amount.
And so the court gives the lawyers for the condemned prisoners a limited deposition to question this doctor behind a veil like they didn't know who he was, but to question him under oath. And They're like, why are you using half? And you said, well, I'm dyslexic. And so sometimes I make mistakes.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of botched executions?
And yet Missouri stuck with them and said, no, we have every confidence in them.
They lose that. The trial court, the federal court says this guy can't be anywhere near.
Look, the whole thing, to the extent it's humane, requires you to meticulously measure and mix chemicals and liquids. And so you can't have someone who just makes mistakes. And then in the meantime, investigative journalists, which, you know, I have to take my hat off. I tip my hat to investigative journalists. But they were like, gee, who is this dyslexic doctor? And they find out his identity.
He admits it's him. He had over 20 malpractice suits. He had had his hospital privileges revoked at two hospitals. He had been censured by the medical board. So, you know, you're asking someone to do something, to participate in something that is fundamentally against your reason for being as a doctor. And, you know, from time to time they find people, but I think they're outliers.
What I have found is they are outliers, not only on ethics, but in other ways too. Experts on capital punishment like Lane aren't comfortable with describing executions that go off script as, quote, botched, even if it's a commonly used term. No matter how the execution proceeds, the end result is the same. The inmate is dead.
However, there is no question that killing people by lethal injection is so complicated and requires so much skill on the part of the executioners that the process is typically far more agonizing than death penalty advocates tell the public. According to the anti-capital punishment organization, the Death Penalty Information Center, out of 19 executions in 2022,
Seven were botched, meaning that the death took far longer than expected, that prison personnel had to jab the condemned people multiple times to get an IV line working, or worse. When Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014, the state used an untested combination of three drugsā The size of the syringes and the amount of drugs used were wrong.
Prison personnel made repeated mistakes as they tried to insert the needle for the IV. Even though the American Medical Association prohibits its members from participating in executions, a doctor was on hand for the locket fiasco. The physician tried but failed to insert an IV into the jugular vein in Lockett's neck.
The doctor then performed a surgical procedure called a cut-down, which is a deep surgical incision through the skin, muscle, and fat performed to expose a central vein under Lockett's clavicle. The procedure was bloody and also failed, and the execution then tried and failed to access a vein through Lockett's feet.
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Chapter 8: How is the future of the death penalty being shaped?
Eventually, they tried to insert an IV through the femoral vein in the upper thigh, a procedure only the most skilled surgeons had mastered. Unfortunately, the available needle was the wrong length for it to work properly. Lockett reportedly was stoic throughout this repeated assault on his body.
After an hour of this torture had passed, the execution team was finally able to inject the deadly drugs. Lockett groaned, convulsed, and at one point was asked, Are you unconscious? According to witnesses, Lockett opened his eyes and said, No, I am not.
After appearing to fall asleep, he began to moan, arched his back, and kicked a foot before he strained against the straps holding him against the gurney, and he tried to get up. Lockett mumbled, something is wrong, oh man, and this shit is fucking up my mind. The prison warden ordered the blinds closed as the execution team scrambled.
Swelling had developed where the IV had been inserted and was blocking the flow of the third and final lethal drug. The doctor was summoned to insert a needle in Lockett's other femoral vein, but Lockett was bleeding heavily and the blood backed up into the IV line.
Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin had already decided to halt the execution, but by this point, Lockett's heart had irreversibly slowed down. He subsequently died of heart failure. The entire execution, from the first attempt to stick an IV in his veins to his death, lasted one hour and 47 minutes. That was one of the longest executions in American history.
The state of Oklahoma later falsely claimed that Lockett had been unconscious the entire time. In 2022, another so-called botched lethal injection, that of Joe Nathan James in Alabama, lasted three hours. In Ohio and elsewhere, executions had to be abandoned when the prison staff couldn't get an IV going.
As we mentioned in the first episode, Reverend Jeff Hood is a priest under the old Catholic rite, who by the time we interviewed had accompanied 10 men during their executions. He said that even the most professional execution is brutal, but that some states, because of a regrettable amount of practice, are much better at killing than others.
I do think that some states know what they're doing more than others.
I think that Texas knows what they're doing. You don't see botched or delayed or mishandled executions in Texas. They go very quickly. When you talk to these guys, that's what they say they would prefer. If you're going to be executed, you would want to go as quickly as possible. Yes, there are some executions that look horrific.
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