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Episode 370: Cease to Exist (Part 1) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-15 14:06:14
Edited:
2024-10-11 00:15:13
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

We finally visit CHAOS author Tom O’Neill at his place in LA to talk about the CIA, Charles Manson, the 1960s, and two decades of trying to put it all together. Part 1 of 2.

check out Tom O'Neill's book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the 1960s here 

Files

Comments

SH

Just finished chaos. What timing!

Buster Malino

Let’s gooooooooo Chaos was such a crazy entertaining read, along with being so dense in characters and info

Ryan Fox

Let’s go you guys rock

j

Oh heck yea, thank you guys!

Kevin Weiss

What a wonderful way to start a Monday!!!

Onion Billy

I just took a shit whistling peace frog like 5 min ago

Watermane

read the title and was hoping this was about "Israel"

Noah

Just finished, another banger.

Adrian

Lets fucking go. CHAOS is goated

Barnabas

Issuing a fatwa against Liz for the doors slander

Gabby S

i’ve been waiting for this one 😤

DRS

Oh Hell yeah. Second ep in a row about somebody Brace looks up to. First Claude Marks and now Manson 😉

Tom Clarke

Reading it at the moment 😎

will michel

i’ve read chaos a few times since buying it in 2020. i plan on reading it a dozen more times over the next decade…it’s just that good, and dense. weird comfort read for how absolutely discomforting it is

Liam Farley

I swear oml this cold open has happened before brace not knowing animal crossing is so familiar

NYCM&AHole

Punctual, unlike Chris Wade

NYCM&AHole

Also this one will be a banger, unlike all the late Chapo episodes

C. J

Ohhhhhhh my gad yes. Shouted out loud when I saw Tom O'Neill in the description. YES.

Blank

Ngl I’m 20 mins in and still don’t know why this guy is being interviewed—not to say there’s not a point, I just don’t know it yet and feel like many recent eps require other reading/listening to appreciate and don’t include any kind of signposting/headline. Sorry not to be a hater

Travis

could’ve mixed the chimes a little higher

Hank

I feel like previous mentions of Animal Crossing happened during their Ghislaine Maxwell coverage. I could be completely wrong but it was a time I hyperfocussed on this podcast.

Eric

You guys are on a roll. This is a dream ep

Hal Warren

Almost as if they're recording conversations with people they themselves are interested in that they hope will hit with the listener. Chaos is a good book. However, like a foot-dragging Netflix documentary, it could have been spared Tom's story and cut out all the bullshit of his personal journey. You really just want him to frontload the information and stop boring you to death. Pretty much impossible to keep all the details in your head without visual materials or repetition too.

Michael S. Judge

Stay strong, Liz. We are the only 2 people with the correct Doors opinion, and we WILL win

Lucas Muller

I just finished reading Choas on Saturday. Very excited for these episode.

B

you treat us so well. Looking forward to a little laurel canyon weirdness

Dogface Reilly

Who was the diver that was mentioned? Perry Boone?

Michael S. Judge

wait till you get fat and TrueAnon is renamed The Belden Hotel but you're not on any episodes

Demented Avenger

Speaking from Minneapolis, did Tom ever talk to Ouisch, our local Manson girl?

B

holy fuck can Tom please spill about the Tex Watson tapes

spanky bulldog

I get how that could be annoying. I bet youd get a lot more out of it if you listen to the chapo episode they did with tom o neill around the time chaos came out, or the rogan episode with him.

Henry Gould

Was literally googling the other day for “trueanon tom O’Neil” assuming that surely this ep happened years ago BUT NO

Blank

Thanks I appreciate the tip!

Adrienne Graf

Came here for the interview, stayed for the crust punk slander 🫡🫡🫡

Natalie

"bullshit of his personal journey" he's just talking about his life god damn 😭 i know TA can be bad with painting a picture sometimes but it is not the guests fault your short term memory is bad. They picked him for a reason. Give him a chance instead of complaining 1/4th of the way in y'all ..complain afterwards! give yourselves context!

Natalie

Link to buy book in description for our/guests sake 🤲🏼 man has been in LA as long as I've been on earth. Respect sir

Zoe

yesssssss

Tomas Vall

He wrote Chaos, please read it. It's good

Hal Warren

I am talking about the book. I don't have time for many podcasts anymore. He could have easily written a book and a memoir about writing the book or even his life in LA journalism. He didn't do that. And instead we have a lot of wind-up to him landing an interview and it's very boring when you want to just know the facts.

ploob

OMG race war, cults and family annihilation are sooo hot right now

Jess 🐞

Definitely read the episode title as “Cheesed to Exist”

Amanda

So fun!! More more more

Smooth Shrek

I’m with you there. This and the Octopus eps sorta feel like you need to do some homework before you can enjoy them. I’m close to the 20 min mark as well and I have no idea why I care about this guy moving to LA. I get there’s a book but I haven’t read it or heard of it before so I’m mainly just feeling lost

Natalie

reading the Manson wiki and I had no idea his links to The Beach Boys, hence the episode title. Wild stuff

Evan O'Reilly

Manson wrote the original version of that song, the Beach Boys technically covered Charlie Manson

Natalie

yeah that's what his Wikipedia says lol, and they didn't credit him either which is kinda funny

Casey

I’m 13th in line for this book at the library. 6 more weeks to go!

Axel H.

I think there’s something interesting here, and I don’t mind hearing about his life, but I didn’t really get what this is all about, and I guess I have to read the book to find out (that is, what is the thrust of his argument about the connection between the CIA and Manson and the hippie movement and the motives for the murders?) We got a hint when the topic of the military distributing LSD came up (thinking MKUltra), and I can sense where this is going. But what I also got was a lot of potentially related things that may or may not be actually related. Which maybe is the point, and is the same takeaway I got from the Octopus discussion. A lot of loose ends that are (perhaps intentionally designed to be) maximally confusing. My understanding is also that, like the investigation into the Octopus, the conspiracy obsessively occupying and taking over the investigator’s life is part of the story too.

Mark Owen

Fantastic episode. I wondered how he survived economically extending his magazine assignment by 2 decades, now I know. Also I remember the engagement with Star, but that whole story + Gallo afterstory is suitably insane.

spanky bulldog

I disagree about his story being unnecessary for the book. Nobody would read it except die hard conspiracy/deep politics people, since the conspiracy itself defies narrative as they so often do. People like my mom and joe rogan can read his book and relate to his story and learn something about the american deep state in the process. Its the same reason jim garrisons publisher made him write about his own story of investigating the jfk murder, and why the movie JFK was such a big hit

Eric

That could honestly take years

brodie

Bin laden had every season of entourage on his hard drive including several Iranian porn parodies of the show all involving turtle

Gordon Schmidt

I was thinking of commenting on why you hadn't had him on yet, O'Neill's fine doing two hours on the "Kush and Chemtrails" podcast so it was weird he hadn't been on TrueAnon yet. Very excited for this! Wish it was a 3-parter. O'Neill's interviews are always great, even if the interviewer isn't.

Natalie

You don't have time for Podcasts yet you're subscribed to a podcast on Patreon. you know you can listen to a podcast while doing things right? actually way easier to multitask a podcast than a book. Right now I'm painting and listening. I would recommend.

Jordan

all these fucking boomers without a doubt have like 5 minutes per episode dedicated to how much SUPERIOR paper books are or handwritten notes

maxwell

peace frog is the goat doors song

Monica

Such a good episode. The interviews keep getting better and better, the rapport you guys build up with guests is so great. Never feels like an interview but a discussion between friends / colleagues

Malika Nash

Im pretty sure I almost Airbnb’d that bungalow in Venice — I specifically remember how bookish and cozy it looked, and the description said something about “if you like books you’ll like this place.”

Louis Wilkins

Maybe you should take some notes.

Josh

This is one of the guest I wanted to see most on here! Now if only you can get Wendy Painting!

Jordan

boomer detected

Quinn

I love this so so much. Tom O’Neill is so cool! Great job gang

The Chris Gabo Show

Does anyone remember when Liz offhand mentioned a book or an article that was positing that the third world war already happened and that it was the suppression of communism?

Dan

If old folk having intangible preferences for familiar objects is tedious to you, relax, you'll do it too when your time comes. One day the world that you knew will be receding around you, and you will cling to pieces of it for comfort.

Louis Wilkins

See if you took notes your detector wouldn’t be all fucked up and so poorly calibrated.

Raul Pacheco

Not sure about a book, but I know Micheal S. Judge often suggests this.

Scout

as an aside i was relistening to the ghislaine trial eps and i know it was a slog but i do in my heart wish you guys were covering the trump trial... just think it would have been really fun...

Hal Warren

Doors are a great band. They wrote great music. Jim Morrison was kind of a weirdo, but burnt out and left us before we could witness him destroy himself further and make up stories about seeing Indians scattered along the highway. Not the life anyone would have wanted, but where he was headed...

Hal Warren

I just lost interest. If you have really been following this community, all of these things have been bandied about and talked about for years. Retreading old ground. Just like a YouTube channel that's like, that was so good, you should have Chomsky on, I would love for him to say the same things about climate change again, talk about Cambodia, and his other pet topics. They speak in order to convert a new audience. For five-year long supporters, we have heard it all before. I hope your paintings are actually good and not a form of therapy.

Hal Warren

I agree with you Axel. It is interesting to follow how somebody gets obsessed with something and our pursuit of Truth. Also perhaps instructive that they didn't kill themselves in the process as the tentacles get longer. In fact, that level of interconnectedness is why I gave up on certain academic tools like "causal loop diagrams". You can find some interesting patterns, but all you're doing is replicating a reality that will just get bigger and bigger. Kind of the point of that crappy Kaufman film, "Synecdoche, New York". And yes, something can be boring and uninteresting while making a good point or revealing important information. I myself loved In Cold Blood, but Capote was on the cutting-edge, and there was never anything like that before.

Hal Warren

Also Liz often hates people simply because of the people that like them. Hunter S Thompson was cool. Just because he was friends with Johnny Depp (who used to be cool) is not a reason to dislike him or his work. A lot of idiots and people I don't respect like people I like for much different reasons. Just hold your truth and #StopAsianHate

MLVF

Imagine this crew somehow gets Pynchon on a mic

Hal Warren

If Pynchon understood the Internet, he wouldn't do it. I think Pynchon is working with a biographer as we speak and we will get the full story when he croaks. I believe his reclusiveness was intentional, to get us to focus on the work and not the man. Also prevented him from getting caught up with celebrity, when literary celebrity still existed and wasn't for someone writing their identity immigrant memoir or social justice screed. If only the TrueAnon creators could have followed his example...

Blank

I hope your paintings are good and a form of therapy ☺️☺️

Simon Ilyena

ironically Jim Morrison is buried in the same cemetery as the Communards Wall. Will say whats up to him for you guys when I'm there for May Day in a couple weeks

Dogface Reilly

Thanks a very interesting person who introduced Oscar Janiger to lsd

Selecao9

did they even mention Thompson? I must've missed it.

Hal Warren

Archival material from the Johnny Depp Amber Heard coverage

pzd

yall with the bad wack ass music takes again in the intro lmao

Zakir KH

I really did like the wind chimes in the background on this one

Mara B

I just want to know how I retcon’d myself into thinking y’all talked about this before bc what else made me buy chaos and read it

D420694206942069

Thanks for doing this! I'm a fiend for Tom O'Neill interviews, probably listened to every one out there. CHAOS is one of the most important books of recent years.

B JAMBOR

The doors suck thank u Liz

Lea Jaffe

Acid folk theme song every episode acid folk theme song every episode

ResilientBastard

Brace playing coy about his jam band knowledge. Man needs to return to “Guys a Podcast about Guys” for a Jam Band Guy episode

malpertuis

In my 20's in 90's SF - I knew a couple girls who played at being next generation neophyte Manson family so they could get free vacations to appear on the Maury Povich, Sally Jesse etc. They worked at the O'farrell theater.

Fernando

Good bit when Brace says he was punk

Andrew Hardwidge

Will you do an episode one Swedish/stockholm gangs and shootings

drizzly_november

Great interview. I remember back when CHAOS first came out, O'Neill mentioned getting some files on Whitey Bulger. His participation in MKULTRA tests while in federal prison were pretty well-known at that point - even though it never came up in his trials - so I'm curious if O'Neill had any further leads.

Phil Darovic

This is a v solid ep. question, is this new theme song here to stay?

Selecao9

I just listened to an old q&a episode from 2019 where Brace recommends it, so possibly that

Brody

fantastic interview. you guys seem to get better with every episode

Jay-Z Pants

Is it just me or does this guy REALLY love to talk about himself?

Connor

Manson was a proto crust punk

Mr knucklehead

been saying there needs to be an entourage reboot for at least 8 years

ploob

🌽

Thomas Kelly

i was so distracted by those chime 😭

J

Love it when they let Liz cook

Florina Tudose

I actually watched Entourage because Liz told us so.

Protracted posters war

In crying of lot 49 the Nazi psychologist who is distributing LSD in LA is revealed at the end to have been doing hyperbaric chamber experiments at concentration camps during the Holocaust

Zachary Manenti

Inherent Vice Pynchon. Not the movie that is not as good ( tho I love PT Anderson, IMO Joachim is miscast) ). But book is best take on hippies LA. I lived on Haight going to sfsu and also to Berkeley lived near telegraph. Found telegraph and people’s park at the time more lost and psychically creepy than the Haight. Late 80s. AIDS more the specter then, but Haight had not yet lost its dirty hippie vibe. Great interview. Thanks. part 2 ….

Baked B

Great episode, Tom is an awesome guest!!

Jake Keil

Manson n00b here. Can anyone recommend a documentary or series to watch? There's a lot to choose from

Tranche Devereaux

Thank you! When I hear an organ in classic rock, I instantly get a headache

Tranche Devereaux

Thanks for the tip! Just put holds on 2 books on Libby thru Multnomah County (Portland) library: Inherent Vice (4 week wait) Chaos (12 week wait) They’re 16 hour audiobooks so def gonna listen on 2x speed

K H

Wow. WOW. Liz. Anti cat anti The Doors. Wow. Ok. Blatant antisemitism I can tolerate, but this is getting obscene.

Boves

These past few episodes are bad. Super long winded yet very little content. Hard to care about this author’s experience when you just want to know the basics and details of what happened.

Justin Zuberka

great interview guys!!! love the show... thank you to the whole team!!!

pete fritz

Phil Kaufman (mentioned in ep) was also the dude who stole Gram Parsons’ corpse from LAX and cremated it in Joshua Tree. Cool dude.

The Children of Jack Acid

I was at the premiere screening of Decline of Western Civilization Part III in L.A. in the 90s (or at least, the first L.A. screening)! All the liberty-spike street urchin punks from the movie were in the audience, and they were all drunk out of their minds, and they had all snuck beer into the theater and were talking to the screen the entire time and rough-housing with each other. And everytime someone's face came on the screen that they hated or had beef with, they would shout "Piece of FUCKING SHIIIT!!!!" and throw all kinds of assorted missles at the screen. (And they REALLY hated the Mau Maus guy, for whatever reason.) Eventually they were, like, throwing cans of beer and huge, empty 40 oz malt liquor bottles at the screen, and random food and drink items that could have damaged the screen (or other patrons). Penelope Spheeris actually PAUSED THE FILM at this point, and brought the houselights up! She came out in front to a podium and did a little yelling speech at the punkers, saying "I TOLD you not to FUCK UP THIS SCREENING! This is YOUR MOVIE! I had to sell my soul making THE LITTLE RASCALS to finance this film, and it's FOR YOU, and you're RUINING IT! You need to CUT the SHIT NOW or the movie is OVER!" And it worked just enough to calm the punkers down so they threw, maybe, only like 29% as much stuff at the screen as they had before. It was one of my best movie experiences EVER.

Joel

never met another soul that also thinks peace frog is one of the best rock songs of all time, respect brother

Ellie Voyyd ⚧️

cant wait until the episode where they interview God and ask if theyre real

Kirk

Hating on The Doors became super hip over the past 5 years. As annoying as pretending to like entourage

Joel

he was pretty near paul barras iirc

Lucas

Doors are 🔥

Gerehy

Just read the book brother

Jake Keil

Halfway through the audiobook rn

FREUDIAN NIP SLIP

If someone (me) knows very little about the Manson case, what books should I read before reading CHAOS or can I dive right in?

The Children of Jack Acid

I think you should start with the classic: Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, which came out in 1974 and was written by the prosecuting attorney in the main Manson Family murder trial (in which Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten were tried, along with Manson--and they all were convicted). Later journalism (by folks like this episode's guest) seems to have proved a lot of his impulses wrong, or at least cast doubt on his conclusions about WHY Manson and the family committed murders, and what was going on with Spahn Ranch and Death Valley, etc. But nonetheless, Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney, so he had a ringside seat to virtually all the important events that happened after the murders, from the perspective of the squares. In particular, the book does a good job taking you through the experience of what it would have been like to sit in the courtroom during the Manson murder trials, which was somewhere between Perry Mason, a Rob Zombie movie, and a cheap carnival circus! It also gives you a window into how America discovered the Mansons via television and the media circus, e.g. by watching the rest of the Manson girls carving X's in their foreheads outside the courtroom, cutting off their long hippie locks into commando-style short hair, doing television interviews while cleaning assault rifles as if preparing for covert guerilla warfare, etc. And right or wrong, this book is also basically what entire generations of kids read in high school when they got fascinated by the Manson family. Reading this book will help you understand John Waters' earlier films more, as well as Dave Markey and the whole Redd Kross thing, and actually all of Los Angeles punk rock from the late 70s and 80s as well as punk rock in general! And it'll make the White Album sound better.

Sarah S

I’ve hated on the Doors for way longer than 5 years. Sounds like elevator music imo.

Sarah S

Complete opposite opinion. I’m sorry you have such a short attention span.

cogandbal

I do cog and bal

Chloëeia

Next time can you remove the wind chime 🥲

Reece Coren

had to come back for my drive to San Francisco <3

Reece Coren

my favorite summer tradition

Benjin

Yeah they tripped me out