Episode 95 · The GaS Digital / Ray Kump Era
The Montauk Project
May 9, 2018 · 1:01:28 · 15 segments, 115 moments indexed
- 1 min
Cold Open: The Montauk Monster
#Tim and Ray introduce the show fresh off a Montauk trip and bring up the Montauk Monster, a mysterious creature that washed up on the beach, speculating it might be connected to the Plum Island animal research facility.
2moments
- 0:00Tim welcomes Ray Kump to the show.
- 0:14Ray and Tim discuss the Montauk Monster, something that washed up on a beach.
- 3 min
Decomposed Bodies, Morgue Work, and Viewing the Dead
#Ray, drawing on his morgue/funeral background, argues society should be less squeamish about viewing dead and decomposing bodies, describing bizarre details of decomposition; they riff on career day, wedding photography versus funeral work, and whether curiosity about death makes someone a sociopath.
8moments
- 0:30The creature looked like a hybrid—wildebeest or werewolf—and people blamed Plum Island.
- 0:53Tim explains it was just a decomposed dog, which is why it looked so strange.
- 1:10Tim says his life was enriched by seeing different variants of people in decay.
- 1:23Viewing the dead is necessary; we're meant to see it, and avoiding it creates moral hazard.
- 2:06Decomposition causes bizarre physical changes—bloating, gas expansion—that look unnatural compared to living bodies.
- 2:42Tim argues that seeing decomposition demystifies death and shows humans as part of the natural cycle.
- 3:15Watching an autopsy—seeing someone's asshole removed—makes him question what any accomplishment means.
- 3:41Getting a job at a morgue is the only real way to view the dead; you can't just be a voyeur.
- 3 min
Tim's Impression Haters and the Rules of Comedy
#Tim talks about people getting angry at his impressions and voices, defends the logic of why an exaggerated gay voice combined with shocking material is funny, and jokes about past interviews including John Kiriakou.
8moments
- 4:04Tim warns listeners not to show up unannounced at places they heard about on the podcast.
- 4:30Tim jokes about a wedding photographer justifying morgue work as photographing dead people dancing to Sweet Caroline.
- 4:45People get angry when Tim does someone's accent, and a stranger messaged him years later demanding he stop ripping on someone named Red.
- 5:14Tim explains the guy doesn't understand the bit and insists the comedy works because the subject is intelligent but speaks in a funny voice.
- 5:52Tim compares the humor to himself being gay and using a voice while saying crude things—the contradiction between intelligence and the voice creates the joke.
- 6:15Tim notes that nobody expects a tortured CIA counter-terrorism official to suddenly say crude things, which is why it lands comedically.
- 6:38If you don't understand comedy, the show may not be for you.
- 6:52The morgue job at Montauk plays into the voice bit because of the location's specific identity.
- 2 min
Freezing in Montauk During the Met Gala Exodus
#Tim explains why he ended up in Montauk this week (fleeing Met Gala hotel prices), how cold and miserable the trip actually was, and the mix of angry fishermen and confused Dutch tourists he encountered.
5moments
- 7:13Coworker hired after six years of trying, eventually quit after seeing a diagram of a baby autopsy and breaking down over the reality of the job.
- 7:32Tim needed to evacuate his apartment because floors were being redone during the Met Gala, when hotel rooms were jacked up to $400.
- 7:54Tim was not invited to the Met Gala, calling it a stunning oversight.
- 8:22Arrived in Montauk to discover it was 40 degrees, completely unprepared and realizing he's an idiot.
- 8:35Montauk is on the tip of Long Island in the middle of the ocean—the wind makes it feel 20 degrees colder than the city, and the season hasn't started yet.
- 8 min
The Montauk Project, Camp Hero, and MKUltra Comparisons
#Tim walks through Camp Hero State Park and dives deep into Montauk Project lore "”time travel chairs, the Philadelphia Experiment, Preston Nichols, Andrew Basiago's supposed time-travel photo"”while separating the plausible MKUltra/Operation Paperclip history from the outright grifters and frauds peddling super-soldier claims.
13moments
- 8:56Tim describes a night out to Montauk to see the lighthouse, noting it's freezing and miserable despite good seafood.
- 9:36Authorities claim no underground facilities exist at Camp Hero despite theories about bunkers beneath the site.
- 9:53The Montauk Project conspiracy attracts grifters who exploit the story for profit, whether naturally or by design.
- 10:29People claiming to be 'Montauk boys' are frauds, according to Tim's assessment of supposed program survivors.
- 11:45The Montauk Project likely stemmed from MKUltra, Operation Paperclip, and Nazi scientists brought to America to continue human experimentation.
- 12:18Documented experiments like those in The Search for the Manchurian Candidate involved Nazi scientists attempting to split personalities and create programmable humans.
- 12:43MKUltra, the Tuskegee experiments giving syphilis to Black men, and prison experiments are all historically verified.
- 13:27History Channel's Dark Files features fraud claimants like Al Bielek and Stewart Swerdlow who pose as Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk supersoldier survivors.
- 13:58Preston Nichols, author of The Montauk Project, lives in a compound upstate with a man wearing a pot on his head to block government transmissions.
- 14:54The documented aspect of Montauk involves experiments on children including LSD administration in a painted room called the acid house.
- 15:45Stranger Things directly mirrors the Montauk Project, with Hawkins Lab representing Camp Hero and the test subject Eleven as the program's victim.
- 16:14Montauk claims extended beyond personality-splitting experiments to include attempts to send people through time using the Montauk Chair.
- 16:27Tim dismisses the time-travel element as absurd, sarcastically suggesting the focus should remain on the documented torture of children.
MontaukMK UltraOperation PaperclipStranger ThingsThe Montauk ProjectPreston NicholsCamp Hero State ParkTuskegee Syphilis Study+4 more
- 4 min
Fucking Kids Through Time and Fake Advertisers
#A dark riff imagining time-traveling soldiers 'fucking kids' throughout history, a bit about pitching advertisers on this content, and how remote/secretive Montauk still is today.
10moments
- 17:13Senator, are you gonna fuck the kids?
- 17:40Tim walks into a place and doesn't feel the eerie darkness that supposedly haunts it.
- 17:55A friend tells him he would have been a guard there, which bothers him.
- 18:18Tim notes the morgue probably didn't involve suffering, since people were already dead.
- 18:39A groundskeeper casually directs him to the radar tower at a supposedly tightly guarded military base.
- 19:09The base isn't actually tightly guarded—you just can't fuck around there without people getting called.
- 19:37Tim suggests the base could just be laundering money rather than conducting experiments.
- 19:49Montauk probably had kids getting flogged to break them up to prayer.
- 20:00The Philadelphia Experiment is bullshit, but it's real because someone had AIDS and got fired for it.
- 20:14There's a funny picture of something spooky.
- 9 min
Vice Videos, Pizzagate, and Real vs. Fake Conspiracy Journalism
#Tim describes a Vice video about credit card scammers getting mysteriously taken down and possible Bank of America pressure, then pivots to distinguishing legitimate investigative journalists (Seymour Hersh, Nick Bryant, Russ Baker) from conspiracy hucksters, using the Franklin scandal and Pizzagate as examples of real victims versus fabricated lore.
10moments
- 20:28Andrew Basiago claims he time traveled and appears as a kid in a photo with Lincoln, which hucksters use as 'proof' despite the obvious absurdity.
- 21:56Tim describes the Lincoln photo as exactly what a fraud would find and present—good grifting material, not evidence.
- 24:40Montauk is remote enough that military testing could happen there without locals caring or noticing.
- 25:09Vice removed a video about credit card scammers because someone wasn't blurred enough and got threatened, leading to conspiracy theories about Bank of America suppressing it.
- 26:04The conspiracy theorist making claims about Vice censorship isn't entirely wrong to suspect something, but his reasoning is sloppy and unfounded.
- 26:53The Franklin scandal gets credibility because it has real victims who came forward and journalists who did actual reporting, unlike Pizzagate or Montauk Project claims.
- 27:19Montauk Project sources calling themselves super soldiers are frauds and clowns, so none of that can be taken seriously.
- 27:40Real investigative journalists like Nick Bryant, Russ Baker, and Jane Mayer have training and skill that separates genuine journalism from shoddy conspiracy work.
- 28:17Outsider conspiracy books do whatever they want, while trained journalists like Baker identify when they're making leaps from fact into association and editorialize accordingly.
- 28:46Good journalists explicitly identify what is and isn't a stretch, asking whether it would be unfair to presume a connection rather than presenting loose associations as proof.
The Montauk ProjectFranklin scandalAndrew BasiagoPizzagateMatt TaibbiNick BryantMontaukBank of America+5 more
- 5 min
HARP, Tesla, and Cold War Black Projects
#They speculate about HAARP as a possible weapon disguised as weather research, secret DARPA/military tech hidden behind UFO stories, and how Cold War paranoia between the US and USSR justified horrifying experiments believed to be existential necessities.
10moments
- 29:12Tim on whether time travel capability exists and what scientists say about it.
- 29:27The military was probably experimenting with teleportation underground at Montauk.
- 29:45Tesla and the 20th century's beginning with remarkable scientific experiments.
- 30:22HAARP could function as a weapon, using lasers to push the ionosphere and send energy back.
- 30:54Fantastical alien stories may have been invented to conceal equally wild DARPA and Defense Department projects.
- 31:18The military likely experimented with teleportation in the desert, though with unclear results.
- 31:56Cold War competition between Soviet Union and US led to justification of any amoral action for advantage.
- 32:33To understand these experiments, you have to see them through the lens of Cold War terror.
- 33:02Military people had to believe these inhumane programs were essential to national survival.
- 33:26Rank and file military officers directing subordinates believed their orders were essential, unlike top brass inflating the threat.
DARPAHAARPMontauk ProjectTeslaStephen Hawking
- 1 min
Arguing About Castro With His Step-Grandfather
#Tim recounts getting cornered by his stepmother's father over a U-Haul, who lectured him about Castro, the US embargo, and comparing Cuban political prisoners to American drug incarceration.
5moments
- 33:57Tim's stepmother's father, a lawyer, confronts him about Cuba while he's trying to pick up his truck from the driveway.
- 34:16Tim explains the lawyer's argument that Castro had no choice but to trade with the Soviet Union after the embargo.
- 34:35Tim concedes the lawyer had a point—the U.S. embargo pushed Castro into Soviet arms.
- 34:52When Tim brings up Castro's political prisoners, the lawyer responds by pointing to mass incarceration of Black Americans for marijuana possession.
- 35:05The lawyer blames the Clintons, and Tim clarifies he's never even called the police on anyone.
- 11 min
Matt Taibbi, the Mortgage Crisis, and Adjustable Rate Mortgages
#Drawing on his own past as a mortgage salesman, Tim pushes back on Matt Taibbi's framing of the 2008 financial crisis as pure racialized predation, explaining how adjustable-rate mortgages, Alan Greenspan's rate cuts, FHA loans, and universal belief in refinancing before rates adjusted set up the collapse, while acknowledging real racial harm and fraud existed.
12moments
- 35:43Alan Greenspan created the entire mortgage market by slashing rates, and then Wall Street did what Wall Street does.
- 36:05Everybody wanted adjustable rate mortgages because they were cheaper, not because they were being tricked.
- 36:36At every closing, a closing attorney explained the terms to you and asked if you understood the rate lock period.
- 37:09Nobody predicted a worldwide financial crisis would drop house values 50 percent—if they had, the rich people would have made the Big Short bet.
- 38:11People weren't choosing between a fixed seven percent rate and an adjustable five-point-five percent; the gap was huge.
- 39:03The Taibbi narrative says rich people systematically suck money from the middle class, but the actual story is more complex.
- 40:01Tim took an adjustable rate mortgage because he believed he'd refinance into a fixed rate and sell the house successfully.
- 41:04If fixed rates had been given to the majority of borrowers, they would have been fine—adjustable rates are what destroyed people.
- 42:40Rich people disproportionately benefit from bubbles and insulate themselves from busts, and they lobbied for these things to be allowed.
- 45:03A lot of the mortgage crisis came from speculation—people buying second and third homes, not poor people being duped.
- 45:41If something seems too easy to make money on, that should be a red flag that something corrupt is happening.
- 45:52People with no qualms about corruption were willing to flip multiple houses, but Tim recognized the scheme as too simple to work.
Matt Taibbimortgage crisisAlan Greenspanadjustable rate mortgagesBethany McLeanMoody'sGoldman SachsChristian Bale+1 more
- 5 min
Speculators, Closing Attorneys, and Who Really Got Duped
#Tim argues many crisis victims were middle-class speculators flipping second and third homes, questions why closing attorneys who signed off on loans faced zero accountability, and describes shady salesmen he worked with trying to talk elderly parents into equity deals.
10moments
- 46:34Tim bought adjustable-rate mortgages himself and believed borrowers could refinance into something better within two or three years.
- 47:03A century ago, people had healthy skepticism about banks and loans—a cultural attitude that eroded over time.
- 47:36Black Americans were systematically excluded from homeownership, suburbs, and wealth-building mechanisms available to white people.
- 48:18Everyone was gambling on adjustable-rate mortgages because they were cheaper, not because they understood the risk.
- 48:35Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan weren't directly originating these loans; they bought them from smaller lenders through the back door.
- 49:26Tim's house foreclosed and his credit was ruined for a decade after he bought into the market as a mortgage broker.
- 49:51He was handing out business cards at family parties trying to sell mortgages to anyone willing to buy.
- 50:08People were buying $600,000 houses with interest-only loans—everyone was participating in the bubble, not predatory masterminds.
- 50:32The real mechanism that enabled the bubble was moral hazard—shielding people from liability through credit default swaps sold by AIG.
- 51:01When everyone hedges the same bet with the same instrument, it stops being a hedge and becomes systemic risk.
AIGChaseCitibankHSBCcredit default swaps2008 financial crisisJPMorganGoldman
- 1 min
AIG Risk Bit
#A quick improvised bit imagining an AIG risk executive addressing a trading floor with absurd game-show-prize lines about Blackberries and Bermuda.
2moments
- 51:09Tim does a bit about risk-takers putting down their Blackberries and challenging whether they're mad enough to take money.
- 51:26He references the Gary Spiesman bit and doing it wrong, bringing in a chair.
Gary SpiesmanLou Tamagotch
- 4 min
Legal Malpractice, Predatory Lenders, and the Diffusion of Responsibility
#Continuing the mortgage discussion, Tim and Ray debate why closing lawyers were never blamed for legal malpractice, how predatory salesmen often failed while more agreeable ones profited, and how the auto-loan market today resembles the same bubble dynamics via securitized debt and diffusion of responsibility.
10moments
- 52:01Tim knew guys who'd try to get the better of their own mothers in real estate deals.
- 52:12Sons would pressure elderly parents to extract equity from their houses, framing it as consensual.
- 52:41Closing lawyers take no blame despite sitting in on hundreds of deals—where are they in all this?
- 53:14Aggressive salesmen who'd lie to customers didn't actually make money; the successful ones blurred ethical lines quietly.
- 53:44Tim's parents got their mortgage because a local banker fudged the paperwork, which has always been standard practice.
- 54:07Capital One constantly offers him guaranteed car loans, signaling another bubble forming in auto finance.
- 54:38Tim bought film cameras and made a failed movie on credit cards he never paid back.
- 54:54These defaulted loans get bundled and sold as bonds to China, pension funds, and whoever else.
- 55:22The real mechanism enabling predatory behavior is the diffusion of responsibility across opaque financial structures.
- 55:39The uncomfortable answer to stopping this is either curtail everything or accept that someone will eventually manipulate the system without consequence.
Capital OneBethany McLean
- 4 min
Thomas Sowell, Bernie Sanders' Lake House, and the DSA
#Tim invokes Thomas Sowell's 'no solutions, only trade-offs,' argues Bernie Sanders would have been a useful cultural reset despite not being a real Marxist, mocks the obsession with Sanders owning three homes compared to Hamptons excess, and separates sincere democratic socialists from ideologically confused rich-kid Marxists in the DSA.
7moments
- 56:18Tim cites Thomas Sowell's principle that there are no solutions, only trade-offs, as a framework for evaluating policy.
- 56:50Bernie Sanders would have made a good president as a reset—not because Tim trusts his competence, but because he'd project maturity and intellect.
- 57:36Tim dismisses criticism of Sanders owning three homes and a lake house, pointing out the actual wealth disparity people encounter in places like the Hamptons.
- 58:15Government ownership of all major industries and banks has never reduced inequality historically, and idiots who believe it will happen are not people in power.
- 58:57The DSA contains both genuinely good people seeking real change and guilty rich white kids trying to feel like good people without doing the work.
- 59:42Many DSA members are actual Marxists who celebrate Karl Marx's birthday, not Nordic-style socialists as some claim.
- 1:00:02The alt-right and radical leftists both overshoot in their ideological commitments in similar ways.
Barack ObamaBernie SandersDemocratic Socialists of AmericaThomas SowellBill ClintonKarl Marx
- 1 min
Tim closes with a riff on disaster capitalism being unsustainable, then runs through upcoming tour dates in Cincinnati, San Francisco, LA, New York, and Ireland, plugs his socials, and signs off with Ray.
3moments
- 1:00:31Tim argues that if you can't even get booked at Broadway Comedy Club, you shouldn't be running the global economy.
- 1:00:50Tour dates: Cincinnati Ohio Memorial Day weekend, Clusterfest in San Francisco June 1-3, LA after that with possible podcast with Sam Tripoli.
- 1:01:16July brings shows in New York, Ireland, multiple other places, and potentially Montreal.