logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2024
4m 6s

Introducing...A Sense of Rebellion

TORTOISE MEDIA
About this episode

We are partnering with the Center for the Advancement of Infrastructural Imagination, so that we can continue to bring our listeners brilliant investigations like Sweet Bobby. You can join Tortoise as a member to get early and ad-free access to new series and support our investigations at www.tortoisemedia.com/invite.


Introducing...A Sense of Rebellion


A Podcast Series by Evgeny Morozov.

Forget the military or Silicon Valley: we owe our smart technologies - from toothbrushes to beds - to a band of eccentric 1960s hippies. Hidden away in a secretive, privately funded lab on Boston’s waterfront, these visionaries developed intimate, personal technologies a decade before Steve Jobs. But their rebellion was fraught with obstacles: the military-industrial complex, corporate resistance, and the founders’ larger-than-life personalities. As Silicon Valley adopted their ideas, the lab's vision for more humane and diverse technologies was twisted into something entirely different. A decade in the making, this podcast unravels their captivating and often tragic tale. It's all here: Cold War psychiatry, Maoism, LSD, the Rockefellers, Scientology, CIA’s forays into extrasensory perception, and even the advent of tech libertarianism.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Jul 22
Introducing ... The Lab Detective
Introducing...The Lab DetectiveKathleen Folbigg was known as ‘Australia's worst female serial killer’ - she’d lost all four of her infant children and was convicted for killing them.Until, after spending decades in jail, a scientist working in a lab uncovered the truth behind the ... Show More
40m 35s
May 19
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
We are partnering with Greenpeace and Crowd Network, so that we can continue to bring our listeners brilliant investigations. You can join Tortoise as a member to get early and ad-free access to new series and support our investigations at www.tortoisemedia.com/inviteWhat does it ... Show More
5m 39s
Oct 2024
Introducing...Crime Junkie
We are partnering with Audiochuck, so that we can continue to bring our listeners brilliant investigations like Sweet Bobby. You can join Tortoise as a member to get early and ad-free access to new series and support our investigations at www.tortoisemedia.com/invite. Introducing ... Show More
4m 19s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2025
38. CIA Mind Control: America’s Secret Cartel (Ep 4)
How did Cold War paranoia fuel the CIA's mind control experiments? What did popular films like The Manchurian Candidate have to do with the agency's secret programs? And did the CIA really help shape the counterculture of the 1960s? In the shadowy world of espionage, the line bet ... Show More
46m 2s
Jan 2025
Enhance the Paranoia
Fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, a group of activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971. Their goal: to expose how the agency was suppressing anti-war protests. Calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, they successfully sto ... Show More
45m 3s
Aug 2024
CLASSIC: MKULTRA 101: The Basics
The rumors spread for decades: Somewhere in the US, our own government was conducting dangerous, heinous and illegal experiments on citizens from all walks of life. This conspiratorial tale seemed set to remain little more than an urban legend -- until, that is, intrepid reporter ... Show More
43m 53s
Jun 2024
Season 3, Episode 8: James & Tom Risen, The Last Honest Man: the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedy's - and one Senator's Fight to Save Democracy
Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his conversation with authors James and Tom Risen on their important, new book The Last Honest Man, a gripping biography of Idaho Senator, Frank Church.  The Risens describe the remarkable events of 1975, when Senator Church almost single-handedly ... Show More
52m 20s
Sep 2024
Episode 367 - MKUltra - Part 1: Cold War of the Mind
In the wake of an Allied victory, the threat of a communist New World Order loomed over the West. Desperate to beat the Soviets at their own game, the USA gave the secret service all the money and drugs they needed to create a real-life Manchurian Candidate.Left with their minds ... Show More
1h 2m
Nov 2024
The Tech-God Complex: Why We Need to be Skeptics
Silicon Valley's interest in AI is driven by more than just profit and innovation. There’s an unmistakable mystical quality to it as well. In this episode, Daniel and Aza sit down with humanist chaplain Greg Epstein to explore the fascinating parallels between technology and reli ... Show More
46m 32s
Dec 2024
The Hunt for K-129
In 1968, the Soviet submarine K-129 sank in the Pacific, carrying nuclear weapons and Cold War secrets. After its location was pinpointed three miles beneath the ocean surface, the CIA tasked a trailblazing engineer named Curtis Crooke with designing the technology to bring it ba ... Show More
42m 12s
Aug 5
A Redacted Medical Mystery: Weather Warriors/Red Menace
In this special MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries and Redacted Crossover episode, MrBallen and Luke Lamana join forces to bring you two shocking stories of the military testing bizarre, deadly weapons of war in secret. In “Weather Warriors,"" the U.S. Army goes to extreme lengths to d ... Show More
38m 23s
Mar 2025
America’s Human Test Subjects
The Cold War made America desperate for new weapons. The military looked beyond nuclear bombs into chemicals and drugs: LSD and Sarin gas. But first, they needed test subjects. They turned to their own soldiers and turned men into lab rats. Today’s episode explores two stories ab ... Show More
43m 40s
Dec 2024
Charles Manson and the CIA (Part 2)
As we dive deeper down the Charles Manson rabbit hole in Part 2, we explore the shocking link between the cult leader, mind control, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As Tom O’Neill concludes his two decade long investigation, we look at the author’s findings th ... Show More
41m 50s