Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: Lawsonomy: How the Father of the Modern Airline Started His Own Religion

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CLASSIC: Lawsonomy: How the Father of the Modern Airline Started His Own Religion · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: We return, fellow ridiculous historians with a classic episode for
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Speaker 1: this week, and this is one for all the baseball
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Speaker 1: fans in the crowd. Looking at our super producer, mister
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Speaker 1: Max Williams, No, what do we know about Alfred Lawson.
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Speaker 2: Well, he was the father of the modern airline, of
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Speaker 2: a modern flight as we know it, at least in
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Speaker 2: a commercial sense. Well, he had nothing to do with
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Speaker 2: the invention of it. He was early to the game
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Speaker 2: in terms of his awareness of the Wright Brothers, which
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Speaker 2: gave him one of those quintessential light bulb over the
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Speaker 2: head animation moments.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason we're saying this is good for
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Speaker 1: the baseball heads in the body shaitemy, but fans of
0:45
Speaker 1: baseball in the audience is that Alfred Lawson starts out
0:49
Speaker 1: as sort of a middle of the road baseball player,
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Speaker 1: and as you said, he gets this light bulb moment
0:58
Speaker 1: when he realizes that aviation may be the next big thing,
1:04
Speaker 1: and so he leads the charge to popularize this in
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Speaker 1: the zeitgeist of the day. We're talking publishing trade magazines,
1:14
Speaker 1: getting ads out to the public, even designing the first
1:19
Speaker 1: modern airline.
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Speaker 2: Oh but he did more than that, Ben, He was
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Speaker 2: a bit of a renaissance man and pivoted into economic
1:26
Speaker 2: theory after revolutionizing Yes, yes, after revolutionizing the world of travel,
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Speaker 2: and eventually took those theories and fashioned them into something.
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Speaker 1: Of a religion. Yes, his own religion. This is the
1:40
Speaker 1: story of los Auonomy. Get it because his last name
1:44
Speaker 1: is laws It clever, ridiculous. History is a production of
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Speaker 1: iheartradiore oh man, this is okay. This is going to
2:17
Speaker 1: be a weird one. And I think I have I
2:22
Speaker 1: think I have an interesting way for us to begin
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Speaker 1: today's show.
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Speaker 2: Hi everyone, I'm Ben, hey Ben, and everyone I'm knowing,
2:28
Speaker 2: and I cannot wait to hear what you've got up
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Speaker 2: your sleeve.
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Speaker 1: Well, let's see, let's see if this impresses you. Super
2:34
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram canys plain.
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Speaker 2: Out re quickly. We're in a different studio today and
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Speaker 2: we keep banging our knees on the on the table. Yes,
2:41
Speaker 2: what's happening?
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Speaker 1: How other people do this? We are so spoiled because
2:45
Speaker 1: we endeavor to book a lot of our time in
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Speaker 1: the newer studio. And this I like it. It's smaller,
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Speaker 1: It's it's got a cozy little closet, like little clauset
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Speaker 1: it's got a cozy vibe because we have this paper
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Speaker 1: lamp on the table. You know.
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Speaker 2: It's a little yeah, but it's it's the trade off
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Speaker 2: of the ambiance to the knee banging. Not not worth it.
3:05
Speaker 2: But Ben hit us with her. Yea fascinating intro.
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Speaker 1: Check this out. I don't know, fascinating, but it's weird
3:11
Speaker 1: to me. So you remember Terrence Howard, the actor who
3:15
Speaker 1: has played a number of commended roles Empire, Hustle, and
3:19
Speaker 1: flows so on. Sure, Yeah, he has invented a philosophy
3:26
Speaker 1: or science that helped that he believes explains the universe
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Speaker 1: and fundamentally changes the way that we understand reality.
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Speaker 2: Terrence Howard did this.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called Terryology. Wow and that Okay, this is
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Speaker 1: a true story. This is great, Ben, I've gotta I've
3:44
Speaker 1: got to send you this. So Terrence Howard, again lauded actor,
3:49
Speaker 1: believes that he has created a secret system called Terryology,
3:56
Speaker 1: inspired by his realization in his mind that one times
4:00
Speaker 1: one equals two instead of one times one equally one.
4:06
Speaker 1: And you can read explanations of this. He's had an
4:09
Speaker 1: interview with Rolling Stone wherein he talked about this and
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Speaker 1: says that lately he's been spending up to seventeen hours
4:17
Speaker 1: a day working on this system of logic, oddly enough,
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Speaker 1: what he calls it. And he believes that his discovery,
4:26
Speaker 1: which is what he calls it, will change the way
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Speaker 1: that mathematics is taught for generations to come, and that
4:33
Speaker 1: we're Pythagoras around to see this discovery. Who lose his mind?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he says, this is the last century that our
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Speaker 2: children will have to be taught that one times one
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Speaker 2: is one. Finally, for the first time ever, you heard
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Speaker 2: Harris Howard has solved it. Man Ben, I wouldn't be
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Speaker 2: surprised if he wasn't a fan of the subject of
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Speaker 2: today's episode, mister Alfred Lawson.
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Speaker 1: Yes, oh boy, that's what I so. I was looking
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Speaker 1: up other luminaries, right, and I was trying to find people
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Speaker 1: who had insisted on creating their own understanding of the
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Speaker 1: world or their own I guess we'll call it philosophical entrepreneurship.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, well, Will Smith's kids did it? That's
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Speaker 1: true that this true nold they did. Alfred Lawson perhaps
5:21
Speaker 1: is an inspiration to some of these people in the
5:24
Speaker 1: more modern age. He was born way back in eighteen
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Speaker 1: sixty nine on March twenty fourth. And he's a man
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Speaker 1: of many interests, you know what I mean. Love him
5:35
Speaker 1: or hate him, he's definitely a renaissance dude.
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Speaker 2: Oh he did some stuff. Yeah, yeah, he started off
5:41
Speaker 2: as one of the first professional baseball players when that
5:44
Speaker 2: was very, very, very much in his early days. I
5:48
Speaker 2: believe he played for the Boston bean Eaters. Yes, did
5:51
Speaker 2: I make that up? No, he's correct, And I think
5:53
Speaker 2: that that actual team went on to become the Atlanta Braves,
5:57
Speaker 2: and in some form or fashion.
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Speaker 1: Yes they did. You're absolutely right.
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Speaker 2: And by all accounts, Lawson wasn't particularly great at baseball,
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Speaker 2: but somehow, maybe in those early days you didn't have
6:09
Speaker 2: to be because it was so new. Not quite sure
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Speaker 2: how he inched his way into that world, but apparently
6:14
Speaker 2: it turned him off because there was too much tobacco, alcohol,
6:18
Speaker 2: and just you know, womanizing. He was a little bit
6:21
Speaker 2: more of a measured kind of intellectual type, and he
6:24
Speaker 2: didn't like, you know, consorting with all these ruffians.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was immoral to him. His minor league career,
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Speaker 1: I think went from eighteen eighty eight to around nineteen
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Speaker 1: oh seven, and he was playing in the minor leagues.
6:43
Speaker 1: He also played for the Pittsburgh Alleghanies, and he went
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Speaker 1: on after that career to start his own baseball league.
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Speaker 2: It had a pretty pretty clunky name that we learned
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Speaker 2: from an article from our buddies at Mental Floss eleven
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Speaker 2: notes on Alfred W. Lawson, founder of the weirdest university ever, which,
7:05
Speaker 2: mind you, we're going to get to. But yeah, he
7:07
Speaker 2: founded this league called the Union Leagues of Professional bas
7:12
Speaker 2: space Ball Clubs of America. So at this point baseball
7:16
Speaker 2: wasn't even a single word yet. It was a brave
7:18
Speaker 2: new world of this crazy sport.
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Speaker 1: Imaginea ball and also a base.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, from the combination of the two, what should we
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Speaker 2: call it? He moved on pretty quickly after that did
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Speaker 2: not work out. He then decided he wanted to be
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Speaker 2: a part of what he saw as a pretty important
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Speaker 2: technological movement innovation, which was aviation.
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Speaker 1: It is true he was inspired. This comes from mentals article,
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Speaker 1: but also from a couple of excellent documentaries we saw.
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Speaker 1: He was inspired by the story of the Right Brothers.
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Speaker 1: He recognized, to his credit, you recognize the profound change
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Speaker 1: that aviation would mean for human civilization at large, and
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Speaker 1: he wanted to be part of it. More and more.
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Speaker 1: As we explore this guy's life, we'll see one phrase
8:14
Speaker 1: that I think applies to him directly, and that his
8:17
Speaker 1: early adopter. He had no experience in publishing, He had
8:21
Speaker 1: no experience in aviation, so he decided to publish a
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Speaker 1: magazine about aviation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was all based on just like his
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Speaker 2: gut is gut instinct that this was going to be
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Speaker 2: a big deal. And he even had notions of a
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Speaker 2: future society where everyone lived on aircraft of some kind.
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Speaker 1: Right as superior people, which I feel like we have
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Speaker 1: to hold odds that we let lets let's get there.
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Speaker 1: We'll get there, we'll get there. Well, we're going to
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Speaker 1: earn this one, folks. So Lawson starts an aviation magazine.
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Speaker 1: He starts two one is called fly and one is
9:04
Speaker 1: called Aircraft. And when he starts these, very few people
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Speaker 1: have actually flown, like you could count them on one hand.
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Speaker 2: And these weren't meant to be like trade papers because
9:14
Speaker 2: there really was no industry to speak of this point.
9:17
Speaker 2: It was more for like novice enthusiasts that might want
9:20
Speaker 2: to find out more about this new, brave, new world
9:24
Speaker 2: of flight. Right.
9:25
Speaker 1: It was almost like science fiction or cutting edge tech mature. Yeah,
9:28
Speaker 1: exactly like Wired, which made a really great article about this. Actually,
9:32
Speaker 1: Matt Simon of Wired called fantastically wrong. I'm not going
9:36
Speaker 1: to do the whole subtype because it might spoil a
9:38
Speaker 1: little bit of where we're heading. But this is a
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Speaker 1: story of innovation.
9:42
Speaker 2: This guy is very much an early adopter, like you said,
9:46
Speaker 2: but it all kind of goes off the rails pretty quickly.
9:48
Speaker 2: But before that happens, he does a little thing where
9:52
Speaker 2: he kind of invents basically the modern passenger plane.
9:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he invented the airliner, or to be more specific,
10:02
Speaker 1: the idea of it. He also did not have technical knowledge,
10:06
Speaker 1: so he thought he thought planes are amazing. What's the
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Speaker 1: next step. Let's make them like buses for the sky.
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Speaker 1: Let me hire some people who can build this in
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Speaker 1: a way that will actually work. We should also say
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Speaker 1: one thing this guy never suffered from was a lack
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Speaker 1: of confidence. One of my favorite quotes from him comes
10:27
Speaker 1: from his own description of his birth. He saw that
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Speaker 1: right where he describes his birth in eighteen sixty nine
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Speaker 1: as quote, the most momentous occurrence since the birth of mankind,
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Speaker 1: and he is able to apply this confidence in a
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Speaker 1: contagious way, people buy into his idea. He convinced these
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Speaker 1: designers and these engineers to build this aircraft and it
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Speaker 1: actually works. Low and behold him, We'll walk. In nineteen twenty,
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Speaker 1: he unveils the airliner to the world. At this time,
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Speaker 1: it's the largest non military plane in the entirety of
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Speaker 1: the US, and it seats about sixteen to twenty six people,
11:12
Speaker 1: depending on how you position the seats, and he launches
11:15
Speaker 1: Lost in Airlines.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was a European company that successfully flew
11:21
Speaker 2: what you could kind of lump into this as an airliner,
11:24
Speaker 2: but I think it only held four, which to me
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Speaker 2: just sounds more like a plane, like a small plane,
11:29
Speaker 2: you know, because I guess typically in those days a
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Speaker 2: plane would hold two. So it's just you had two
11:34
Speaker 2: more passers. Not really a commercially you know, lucrative proposition there.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and for a time, Lost in Airlines was doing
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Speaker 1: okay for a short time because they were bringing newer
11:47
Speaker 1: and more impressive innovations to this concept of commercial flight, which, folks,
11:54
Speaker 1: we cannot emphasize enough. We cannot exaggerate this enough. Commercial
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Speaker 1: flight is a brand new idea. It's wild It's like
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Speaker 1: if somebody said, let's build pet shops on the moon,
12:08
Speaker 1: you know, so that moon dogs and cats can have
12:11
Speaker 1: their supplies of toys. People really didn't know whether this
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Speaker 1: would work. And Lawson, despite premiering this, what I think Noel,
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Speaker 1: you and I would both agree is the first real airliner.
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Speaker 1: Lawson becomes a cautionary tale in nineteen twenty one.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but just before that, in nineteen nineteen, he did
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Speaker 2: actually create an airliner that could see eighteen people, like
12:36
Speaker 2: we said, and had a system in place where he
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Speaker 2: could successfully fly people from New York to San Francisco
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Speaker 2: in I believe thirty six hours.
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Speaker 1: He was also getting some lucrative contracts from the government.
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Speaker 1: He was in the running, rather he was the clear
12:54
Speaker 1: front runner to get some postal delivery contracts. So things
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Speaker 1: are going well as we said. But what happens in
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Speaker 1: the eighteen twenty.
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Speaker 2: One Well, a problem that he had was he instead
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Speaker 2: of making more of the I learned this from a
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Speaker 2: documentary called Man Life, which is really really great. I
13:12
Speaker 2: recommend it's on Amazon. You can stream that, and it's
13:15
Speaker 2: about it's about lost in in his life and his legacy,
13:19
Speaker 2: but also like his like kind of lone follower that
13:22
Speaker 2: still you know, in Merle Hayden, it's really really kind
13:25
Speaker 2: of touching, beautiful filmy, very sad, but also fascinating, and
13:30
Speaker 2: in it the filmmaker makes a point that or one
13:33
Speaker 2: of the historians of the interview that he should have
13:36
Speaker 2: just built more of the one that seated eighteen or
13:39
Speaker 2: like improved upon that, but instead he kept wanting to
13:42
Speaker 2: go bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and eventually, yeah,
13:45
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty one, he made one that was I think
13:47
Speaker 2: supposed to see like one hundred, and it did. It
13:50
Speaker 2: crashed and burned. It was it was you know, too unwieldy,
13:55
Speaker 2: and it just didn't work. And his backers were like, Okay,
13:57
Speaker 2: we're done, because they were already kind of like he
14:00
Speaker 2: had been taking too long to come out with this
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Speaker 2: new aircraft and they were losing confidence in him, and
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Speaker 2: this was it. This was they were done.
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Speaker 1: It kept becoming more extravagant, so this was the loss
14:11
Speaker 1: in L four. It was the last in his series
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Speaker 1: of airliners that he had designed and built. It was
14:16
Speaker 1: completely in nineteen twenty but when it flew, it crashed
14:19
Speaker 1: on its initial takeoff. And there's a similar risk whenever
14:23
Speaker 1: we're talking about transit technology to put on my car
14:26
Speaker 1: stuff hat for a second. We're in a similar situation
14:29
Speaker 1: with autonomous vehicles right now. If there is a particularly
14:34
Speaker 1: tragic accident or event that occurs within autonomous vehicle, it
14:39
Speaker 1: may well change the laws and we might not be
14:41
Speaker 1: able to have them. It's a very sensitive time and
14:45
Speaker 1: technological history. However, this guy is nothing if not determined
14:52
Speaker 1: and tenacious. So when he has these government contracts and
14:56
Speaker 1: despite the L four crashing, he says he's gonna keep
15:02
Speaker 1: carrying on. But unfortunately in nineteen twenty there was a recession,
15:06
Speaker 1: so he could not secure the cash reserves he needed
15:10
Speaker 1: for those US contracts. And despite some of his commercial failures,
15:16
Speaker 1: he was widely considered to be one of the leading
15:19
Speaker 1: thinkers in the world of commercial aviation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he actually won the Winged America Award and a
15:25
Speaker 2: magazine called Scientific Age in nineteen twenty seven called him
15:29
Speaker 2: the world's leading passenger airplane builder. And this is coming
15:33
Speaker 2: from a great article in on Milwaukee dot Com. We
15:37
Speaker 2: should also mention there was a strong Wisconsin connection here
15:39
Speaker 2: because his airline was actually headquartered in Milwaukee, and he
15:42
Speaker 2: had designs to turn this city into the Detroit of
15:46
Speaker 2: the aeronautics industry.
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Speaker 1: He wanted Milwaukee to be the aviation's Detroit once was
15:51
Speaker 1: for automobiles. And when the company collapses, laws in soldiers
15:58
Speaker 1: on and he his area of focus. At first, he
16:04
Speaker 1: starts promoting various health practices that he had always himself
16:08
Speaker 1: engaged in, such as vegetarianism and abstaining from tobacco and
16:14
Speaker 1: alcohol and so on. He also around this time claimed
16:18
Speaker 1: that he had discovered a surefire way for people to
16:22
Speaker 1: live to the age of two hundred, which as far
16:25
Speaker 1: as we know, no one has ever done. And he
16:29
Speaker 1: starts rethinking a childhood experiment. I guess a better way
16:37
Speaker 1: to say it is a childhood moment and observation, an
16:40
Speaker 1: observation perfect that stayed with him into his adulthood, and
16:44
Speaker 1: he contemplates it in increasingly intense ways. And the observation is this,
16:51
Speaker 1: as a child, he sees dust in the air, and
16:55
Speaker 1: he realizes that he can move the dust toward him
16:59
Speaker 1: by in air and move it away from him by
17:02
Speaker 1: expelling air. Suction and pressure.
17:05
Speaker 2: That's right, Ben, suction and pressure. We're just going to
17:08
Speaker 2: leave that there for right now, but we will return
17:10
Speaker 2: my words.
17:11
Speaker 1: Yes, but first we have to go back to the
17:15
Speaker 1: time period. You see, the recession in the US that
17:20
Speaker 1: occurred in nineteen twenties was seen as a correction of
17:26
Speaker 1: market forces. Unfortunately, it turns out that this correction was
17:31
Speaker 1: either wrong or not enough to repair the situation, because
17:36
Speaker 1: then we lead into nineteen twenty nine, a very bleak
17:40
Speaker 1: period in US history.
17:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, the aforementioned Great Depression, the big one where you know,
17:46
Speaker 2: so many Americans lost their jobs and couldn't afford to
17:50
Speaker 2: feed their families. And I think there was just a
17:52
Speaker 2: real need, a desperation to find answers and to find
17:59
Speaker 2: some kind of relief. And one source of that could
18:03
Speaker 2: be in say, some kind of ideology that is pushed
18:08
Speaker 2: forward by a certain eccentric former aviation.
18:11
Speaker 1: Entrepreneur, Award winning Noel aviation entrepreneur. Yeah, yeah, is Bona Fides,
18:17
Speaker 1: And he developed his own philosophy that originally started as
18:24
Speaker 1: an economic theory, just a straight economic theory. And what
18:28
Speaker 1: he told larger, larger crowds at various conferences, functions, and
18:34
Speaker 1: rallies was that the Great Depression had a single discernible cause.
18:40
Speaker 1: And this single discernible cause was the role of international
18:44
Speaker 1: financias banks essentially privately owned banks, and he said that
18:49
Speaker 1: they were creating the economic crisis which had engulfed the
18:55
Speaker 1: US and the world by this point. And he said
18:59
Speaker 1: that these are the oppressors of the working force, they're
19:03
Speaker 1: the oppressors of the capital in a country's economy, and
19:08
Speaker 1: that there was, thank god, a way that he had
19:12
Speaker 1: come up with to fix it, to get rid of
19:17
Speaker 1: money and replace it with something else called direct credit.
19:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, direct credit. And it's it's not entirely clear, uh
19:26
Speaker 2: what he meant by that, based on the things that
19:29
Speaker 2: I've read, like is it I think it's sort of
19:32
Speaker 2: like the idea that money only has value based on
19:35
Speaker 2: the goods and services themselves, and like and and the
19:39
Speaker 2: idea that you could get a loan directly from the
19:42
Speaker 2: government or with the government acting as like a steward
19:44
Speaker 2: of the loan, but that he wanted to abolish interest
19:47
Speaker 2: because in his mind interest. We've talked about this before
19:50
Speaker 2: on other shows, the idea that it was very unpopular
19:52
Speaker 2: and considered it's usurists, you know, like with the Kchlaie
19:55
Speaker 2: ghost story or whatever. Right, Yeah, you know, there's a
19:58
Speaker 2: little truth to that. It's interesting. The idea of you know,
20:00
Speaker 2: selling people money. It's a little bit of a weird one,
20:04
Speaker 2: but we've kind of come to accept it, and it's
20:06
Speaker 2: like sort of the basis of our economy.
20:07
Speaker 1: And so weird how quickly things become normal. His idea
20:16
Speaker 1: to replace money in the economic system was summed up
20:20
Speaker 1: by the issuance of direct credit. Direct credit for everybody
20:26
Speaker 1: was one of the slogans they caught on with the
20:28
Speaker 1: Direct Credit Society, and Noel, you nailed it. I was
20:32
Speaker 1: looking for the primary differences, and there are three differences
20:37
Speaker 1: I could find between direct credit and the economic system
20:41
Speaker 1: we have today. The first, the most important, is the
20:44
Speaker 1: abolition of interest clear and in other societies, interests in
20:49
Speaker 1: the way we understand it isn't really a thing either,
20:52
Speaker 1: especially in some Muslim countries. So it's possible to have
20:57
Speaker 1: an alternative system. He was not speaking of religion at
21:00
Speaker 1: this point. Very important to say. So those three differences
21:03
Speaker 1: abolished interest, remove control of money from private banking systems,
21:09
Speaker 1: you know, as he saw them, and put it in
21:11
Speaker 1: the hands of the government. This is after nineteen thirteen
21:16
Speaker 1: in the establishment of the federal reserve system, by the way,
21:20
Speaker 1: So the third difference is more of a consequence of this.
21:23
Speaker 1: It centralizes control of the economy instead of agglomeration of
21:29
Speaker 1: different banks with different interests on multiple levels. There's this
21:34
Speaker 1: single source Uncle Sam who's giving people interest free money.
21:39
Speaker 1: It's just called direct credit for land ownership, for goods,
21:43
Speaker 1: and services for various things. To a lot of people
21:48
Speaker 1: during the depression, this seems like a great idea.
21:52
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean, thousands of people got behind it,
21:54
Speaker 2: and he actually had kind of codified all this in
21:56
Speaker 2: a I guess, I mean it was a book, you
21:57
Speaker 2: could call it a manifesto. Really is when you really
21:59
Speaker 2: start to getting into these kind of more high minded
22:02
Speaker 2: philosophical ideas. Because the thing about Direct Credits for Everybody,
22:05
Speaker 2: which was the name of his book, is that it
22:08
Speaker 2: wasn't only about economics. It incorporated his particular flavor and
22:15
Speaker 2: understanding of physics and the way the universe works, and
22:19
Speaker 2: those ideas of suction and pressure that we talked about earlier.
22:23
Speaker 2: These are key points to this direct credit idea. So
22:27
Speaker 2: not only is it some kind of you know, treat
22:30
Speaker 2: us on how we can improve the economy and save
22:33
Speaker 2: us from you know, the depression and make things more fair.
22:37
Speaker 2: Built into that is kind of a philosophy of life
22:40
Speaker 2: that incorporates everything from personal health and wellness to money
22:46
Speaker 2: and equates the two, right.
22:48
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So the book Direct Credits for Everybody is
22:53
Speaker 1: sort of this utopian manifesto. I think manifesto is the
22:57
Speaker 1: correct word. And it just describes not only direct credits,
23:02
Speaker 1: but it describes, as you said, his other concepts and
23:07
Speaker 1: to loss in these concepts are chained together. You can't
23:12
Speaker 1: understand his economic claim unless you understand his claims about
23:17
Speaker 1: physics to laws in these are inseparable. And so imagine
23:23
Speaker 1: that you are a new member of the Direct Credit Society,
23:27
Speaker 1: the depression is in full swing. You like this idea
23:31
Speaker 1: of getting the bankers out. To Lawson's defense, he was never,
23:35
Speaker 1: at least as far as we can find, he was
23:36
Speaker 1: never openly like an anti semit.
23:38
Speaker 2: No, no, it wasn't. And there was another guy, Toglin, Yeah,
23:41
Speaker 2: that's right, who was much more of a big, blustery
23:44
Speaker 2: speaker who kind of like had some of these same ideas.
23:47
Speaker 2: Because it was you know, people were in revolt. I
23:50
Speaker 2: mean basically they'd been screwed over by the economy and
23:53
Speaker 2: people were mad as hell, right, and so this was
23:56
Speaker 2: a popular movement or type of movement, the idea of
23:59
Speaker 2: get rid of like the money lenders or the bankers.
24:04
Speaker 2: You know that they were like the same with like
24:05
Speaker 2: our recession that we had where all of a sudden,
24:07
Speaker 2: you know, you've got these like bear Stearns in your
24:10
Speaker 2: Goldman Sachs, you know, getting these golden parachutes and stuff,
24:14
Speaker 2: and your average working you know, folks who lost their
24:16
Speaker 2: houses are not happy about it at all. And yeah,
24:19
Speaker 2: we see that same pattern happening today that we saw
24:23
Speaker 2: back then. But this guy, Charles Coglin, or Father Coglin,
24:27
Speaker 2: he had some of these same ideas. He was a
24:30
Speaker 2: Roman Catholic priest from Canada. Actually I think he immigrated
24:34
Speaker 2: from Canada, but he used much more charged language that
24:39
Speaker 2: was much more on the anti Semitic side and equating
24:42
Speaker 2: the money lenders and the idea of people of the
24:45
Speaker 2: Jewish faith being the ones that directly caused the depression.
24:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, with what we would call now a lot of
24:51
Speaker 1: dog whistles, dog whistle stuff.
24:52
Speaker 2: But whereas Lawson was much more like he didn't necessarily
24:55
Speaker 2: blame people. He blamed the system.
24:58
Speaker 1: Right, He blamed the system in and you couldn't understand
25:01
Speaker 1: his perspective. Again, this is something a lot of self
25:05
Speaker 1: appointed gurus do unless you read his understanding of other things.
25:12
Speaker 1: Let's get into his own version of physics, which he
25:16
Speaker 1: called This is why we talked about Terrence Howard at
25:18
Speaker 1: the beginning. He called his greater understanding losnomy losnomy like
25:24
Speaker 1: loss in Onymy.
25:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of this was already in that
25:27
Speaker 2: first book the direct credit for everyone, right, but he
25:31
Speaker 2: took it even further. And let's do a little reading
25:34
Speaker 2: from chapter one of Losonymy, Volume one, just to give
25:38
Speaker 2: you a sense of where we're coming from here. Chapter one, Losonymy.
25:42
Speaker 2: This is what losonomy is and what it isn't. Lousnomy
25:46
Speaker 2: is the knowledge of life and everything pertaining there too.
25:49
Speaker 2: Losonomy is based upon life as it is, and not
25:51
Speaker 2: upon a theory of what it ought to be. Theory
25:54
Speaker 2: as espoused by so called wise men or self styled scholars,
25:58
Speaker 2: has no place in losonomy. Everything must be provable or
26:01
Speaker 2: reasonable or it is not Losonymy. Losonomy treats of things
26:05
Speaker 2: as they are, not as they are pretended to be.
26:09
Speaker 2: Facts not fancies, truth not falsity, knowledge not notions is
26:13
Speaker 2: the foundation of losonomy. So to me, I'm reading this
26:16
Speaker 2: as truth good false bad.
26:19
Speaker 1: Because notice he doesn't ever actually explain that. Now that
26:22
Speaker 1: is the introduction. He goes on for quite some time
26:26
Speaker 1: about falsity versus truth. I believe you can, by the way,
26:30
Speaker 1: read Lossonomy for free online if you.
26:32
Speaker 2: Want Atlasonomy dot org. It's the whole thing, every chapter.
26:35
Speaker 1: And I'm glad to post it. He's a prolific author.
26:39
Speaker 1: He goes into his own version of physics. We mentioned
26:42
Speaker 1: suction and pressure, right. He believes that these are the
26:47
Speaker 1: two prime movers of the world, the universe, reality and everything,
26:53
Speaker 1: and that substances are things affected by suction pressure. This
26:58
Speaker 1: includes solids, its gases. Mentality is also susceptible.
27:05
Speaker 2: He's kind of got his zone vernacular there. And he
27:07
Speaker 2: also is big beef with science. Yes, was that he
27:11
Speaker 2: doesn't believe in energy.
27:13
Speaker 1: Yes, we have the quote there is no greater load
27:15
Speaker 1: of misconception that science has ever had to shoulder than
27:18
Speaker 1: the unprovable theory that's somewhere, somehow and in some shape,
27:22
Speaker 1: there exists a substance called energy that causes movements. No
27:26
Speaker 1: such thing exists anywhere, and science should expunge the fallacy
27:30
Speaker 1: without delay.
27:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and The funny thing is he refers to constantly
27:34
Speaker 2: in this work about how he can't stand it when
27:38
Speaker 2: things are unprovable, and yet continuously puts forth all of
27:41
Speaker 2: these absurdly unprovable and just flying in the face of
27:46
Speaker 2: much more provable scientific research. Yeah, so what are some
27:51
Speaker 2: of those ben.
27:52
Speaker 1: Some of his I guess we say lars andomic beliefs. Well,
27:56
Speaker 1: Lasonomy argues for a couple of different substances or states
28:03
Speaker 1: that do not exist in other forms of accepted science.
28:06
Speaker 1: There's something called less ether less ether l E S
28:11
Speaker 1: E T H E R.
28:12
Speaker 2: Is that the stuff that's in space. No, that's the
28:15
Speaker 2: stuff that's on the Earth.
28:16
Speaker 1: It's from the Sun, but it's on Earth.
28:18
Speaker 2: It's the stuff that the Earth is made of because
28:20
Speaker 2: it's less dense than ether, which is what space is
28:24
Speaker 2: made of, right, less ether less ether.
28:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there's there's something interesting here. His father
28:32
Speaker 1: had attempted for some time to build a perpetual motion machine.
28:36
Speaker 1: That's right, right, and we mentioned, which is what a
28:40
Speaker 1: machine that is able to, once started, function without losing energy.
28:47
Speaker 1: It's able to perform work without losing energy and without
28:50
Speaker 1: taking in new energy.
28:51
Speaker 2: Like a more extreme version of that thing you'd have
28:53
Speaker 2: on your desk with the balls where they hit each
28:55
Speaker 2: other and go click click click click. Eventually those do
28:57
Speaker 2: run themselves out.
28:58
Speaker 1: Something like that that just goes on for a wheel
29:00
Speaker 1: that always spins, and many many people have claimed to
29:04
Speaker 1: invent pret.
29:05
Speaker 2: That's a fallacy, though it's not. It's sort of like
29:06
Speaker 2: cold fusion or something right right.
29:08
Speaker 1: Now, as far as we know, it is not possible.
29:10
Speaker 1: It violates the laws of known physics. But he has
29:14
Speaker 1: lost and has his own kind of perpetual motion machine.
29:19
Speaker 1: It's a state. He calls, help me out with pronouncing this.
29:24
Speaker 2: Exuavar pois exit equaverois, quaver poise, equaver poisse, equaver poise. Yeah,
29:31
Speaker 2: And so he says, there are four separate forces that
29:33
Speaker 2: have to equalize in order that a formation can balance
29:37
Speaker 2: and live, and these are them in order. Internal section
29:41
Speaker 2: that draws in from without, internal pressure that pushes out
29:44
Speaker 2: from within, external section that draws out from within, external
29:47
Speaker 2: pressure that pushes in from without, and x squavar poise
29:52
Speaker 2: is a level that's sought by substances of varying density
29:56
Speaker 2: that causes perpetual movement of matter. So that's like the
30:00
Speaker 2: stuff of the universe, right, It's like what causes the
30:06
Speaker 2: universe to be in harmony?
30:07
Speaker 1: Yep, suction and pressure. Don't buy all those lies about energy, folks.
30:12
Speaker 1: And as people are breeding this material, encountering Lawson's beliefs
30:18
Speaker 1: and hearing him speak, most of the large crowds are
30:23
Speaker 1: people in the Upper Midwest who want to hear about
30:26
Speaker 1: direct credit. When the Great Depression draws to a close
30:32
Speaker 1: later in the thirties, a lot of these people who
30:35
Speaker 1: are part of this big direct credit society movement leave.
30:39
Speaker 1: They no longer need this alternative economic perspective, and they
30:44
Speaker 1: never really cared too much about his concepts of losonomy
30:49
Speaker 1: and pressure and section and lesse there and all that stuff.
30:52
Speaker 1: So the crowds start to dwindle, and what he has
30:55
Speaker 1: left is a group of followers who are hook line
30:59
Speaker 1: and sinker into the concepts the philosophy that he has espoused.
31:04
Speaker 1: Beyond just the idea of direct credit. They want to
31:08
Speaker 1: study his concepts of the brain of the universe, the
31:13
Speaker 1: idea of the male and female dichotomy of suction and pressure,
31:20
Speaker 1: the concept of men orgs. We didn't even talk about
31:23
Speaker 1: men orgs.
31:25
Speaker 2: Too much. Man too much.
31:26
Speaker 1: Men orgs short for mental organizers a portmanteau if you will,
31:32
Speaker 1: and or a portmanteau if you wish.
31:36
Speaker 2: No, we do not wish anymore.
31:39
Speaker 1: And mental organizers are these tiny, tiny creatures that are
31:45
Speaker 1: inside your brain, the cells of your mental system, and
31:50
Speaker 1: help your body function in a focused way, help your cognition.
31:55
Speaker 1: And then there are the disorgs. They're the bad guys,
31:58
Speaker 1: the disorganizers, michroscopic vermin that attempt to destroy for some reason,
32:04
Speaker 1: the mental instruments constructed and operated by the menorcs. So
32:08
Speaker 1: his actual followers post direct credit society like this. They
32:14
Speaker 1: want to learn more, right.
32:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. So, Yeah, he actually starts at college
32:17
Speaker 2: and he's able to purchase an abandoned university campus in
32:22
Speaker 2: des Moines, isn't that right?
32:23
Speaker 1: Yeah? In des Moines.
32:24
Speaker 2: And he I'm sorry des Moines. I said des Moines,
32:27
Speaker 2: and I got roasted for that before. Let me make
32:29
Speaker 2: sure I say right, des Moines.
32:31
Speaker 1: So he, yeah, he buys this university and wants it
32:34
Speaker 1: to become a center of learning, the University of Lisonomy
32:40
Speaker 1: and his followers join him. But the rules of this
32:46
Speaker 1: university differ from those of other universities. Cough cough, hint,
32:51
Speaker 1: hint accredited cough cough hinted.
32:53
Speaker 2: University cough cough hinted scientology cough cough you really you
32:58
Speaker 2: need a cough then, Even of those off buttons, you
33:00
Speaker 2: only have those in real, real radio setups.
33:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, we used to have peak behind the scenes here, Casey,
33:07
Speaker 1: you remember this too. We used to have a sound maker.
33:10
Speaker 1: There's one, but it doesn't have any batteries, does it.
33:12
Speaker 2: No, I mean a button that you push so that
33:14
Speaker 2: it mutes your mic so that you can't Oh yeah, yeah,
33:17
Speaker 2: that's pro stuff, right.
33:18
Speaker 1: Our friends who work for MPR, they have those exactly.
33:21
Speaker 1: I checked out their setup. I just wanted to use
33:24
Speaker 1: it just to feel power. Yeah. Oh, it does have batteries.
33:32
Speaker 1: That's a good one. And it's appropriate because Lawson thought
33:37
Speaker 1: he was dropping a bomb on the scientific consensus of
33:43
Speaker 1: the time, and students at the University of Lausonomy, although
33:48
Speaker 1: they were not getting an Orthodox education, they were getting
33:52
Speaker 1: a rigorous one.
33:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the thing too, is like he outlawed or
33:56
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's the right word, but definitely
33:58
Speaker 2: forbade any books to be on campus that were not
34:01
Speaker 2: written by he himself. And I mean he kept writing
34:04
Speaker 2: these things so that library probably wasn't massive, but you know,
34:08
Speaker 2: there was definitely enough material to go around. And a
34:11
Speaker 2: big part of like testing in this university system was
34:15
Speaker 2: just wrote memorization of Lawson's own texts, which is terrible.
34:20
Speaker 1: You would have these different exams and you had to recite,
34:24
Speaker 1: as you said, Noel, you had to recite from the
34:26
Speaker 1: books verbatim. And in man Life with Merle Hayden you
34:31
Speaker 1: can see that he actually experienced this because he is
34:35
Speaker 1: verbatim quoting from these different books and they had to
34:39
Speaker 1: do this for a cartoonishly long amount of time. After
34:45
Speaker 1: about ten to what twenty years of memorization, you would
34:49
Speaker 1: have an interim exam, and then after thirty years you
34:53
Speaker 1: have a comprehensive exam and if you passed, if you
34:56
Speaker 1: memorized enough of this guy's work, I would receive the
35:00
Speaker 1: degree of knowledge.
35:03
Speaker 2: In Yeah, I'm gonna say nollegian.
35:05
Speaker 1: Nolegian sounds classier.
35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think until he passed away, no one
35:12
Speaker 2: held that distinction except laws in himself.
35:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a little culty obviously.
35:18
Speaker 2: Oh, and not to mention that this was also a
35:20
Speaker 2: communal living situation on a kind of a compound type situation.
35:25
Speaker 2: So you know it was it definitely had that culty
35:30
Speaker 2: vibe to it.
35:30
Speaker 1: The people of Des Moines were getting creeped out for sure.
35:33
Speaker 1: And the big catch here is that only knowledge ins
35:37
Speaker 1: could bestow the degree of knowledge and to another person.
35:42
Speaker 1: So if Lawson is the only one who has this
35:45
Speaker 1: ability and he passes away or something, then there are
35:51
Speaker 1: technically no more people with this degree. But the university
35:57
Speaker 1: bends the rules a little bit to get some people
36:00
Speaker 1: appointed were to you know, have acquired this degree. At
36:10
Speaker 1: this time, this thing that started as an economic theory
36:14
Speaker 1: and later became a kind of philosophy is getting closer
36:20
Speaker 1: and closer to something that we might call like mysticism
36:24
Speaker 1: or spirituality. But it's also garnering attention from the federal government.
36:29
Speaker 2: That's right, because it had been around for about ten
36:32
Speaker 2: years before there were there were some issues in the
36:36
Speaker 2: Senate Small Business Committee caught wind of the fact that
36:40
Speaker 2: they had bought these machine tools from like war surplus,
36:46
Speaker 2: and they actually resold them or at least a large
36:51
Speaker 2: number of them, and made a decent amount of money
36:54
Speaker 2: doing that. And this is coming from that Wired article
36:56
Speaker 2: that we talked about earlier, and he appeared before this
37:00
Speaker 2: committee and tried to explain to them what loaust nomy
37:05
Speaker 2: was fact, the fact that it was based on physics,
37:08
Speaker 2: and then they needed the machine to help, you know,
37:11
Speaker 2: ply their their craft or whatever, or like, you know,
37:13
Speaker 2: follow their religion or their philosophy. And he was very
37:18
Speaker 2: upset when they kind of, you know, didn't understand what
37:22
Speaker 2: he was getting at. And Lawson commented that this whole
37:25
Speaker 2: thing was quote, the damnst thing I've ever heard of
37:28
Speaker 2: in all my life. And then one of the senators said, quote,
37:32
Speaker 2: I don't know whether we're talking about the same thing,
37:35
Speaker 2: but I'm inclined to agree with you.
37:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. They seemed mutually befuddled and irritated at their inability
37:43
Speaker 1: to communicate. And there's a great Times article about it
37:46
Speaker 1: called zigzag and swirl, which is another principle. Yeah, loss
37:50
Speaker 1: to which loss in the hears And I'm sure he
37:53
Speaker 1: tried to explain that to the senators, Yes.
37:55
Speaker 2: Talking about some zigzag and swirl.
37:58
Speaker 1: And I don't that's a very lighthearted moment because I
38:02
Speaker 1: love the idea of both of these guys ardently trying
38:07
Speaker 1: to explain this stuff. And investigations continue, but for the
38:12
Speaker 1: time being, the University of Lausonomy soldiers on. After people
38:17
Speaker 1: graduate the university, their story or their journey with Lausonomy
38:23
Speaker 1: doesn't end. They are offered option for postgraduate work. It's
38:30
Speaker 1: called Lisonian religion and it is made to provide students
38:34
Speaker 1: with the highest quote grade of consciousness. Remember when we
38:38
Speaker 1: talked about the people who would be different and superior
38:41
Speaker 1: to us land lubbers and they would live in the sky.
38:44
Speaker 1: This is the way to become that person, according to Lawson.
38:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, we shouldn't forget too that this
38:51
Speaker 2: was all happening while Lawson was still alive during kind
38:56
Speaker 2: of the rise of Nazism and laws and spoke out
38:59
Speaker 2: against it pretty regularly. But because of the kind of
39:03
Speaker 2: militaristic esque qualities of his organization, much like the kind
39:08
Speaker 2: of things we see with like the sea org in scientology,
39:11
Speaker 2: right it people it was not a good look. People
39:15
Speaker 2: were kind of like a little bit alienated by them,
39:18
Speaker 2: you know, and it was just kind of like a
39:20
Speaker 2: little bit weirded people out.
39:22
Speaker 1: Where they felt maybe it was somewhat hypocritical because these
39:26
Speaker 1: people at the time also would have been familiar with
39:29
Speaker 1: Lawson's earlier work. The Direct Credit Society was a very
39:33
Speaker 1: populist movement, you know, when they did have uniforms and
39:37
Speaker 1: dress codes, and the university was not so different. Also,
39:42
Speaker 1: Lawson was seen as somewhat of a I don't want
39:46
Speaker 1: to say a Tony Stark figure, but it was an
39:48
Speaker 1: aviation expert. We didn't even talk about the circulation numbers
39:52
Speaker 1: of his paper The Benefactor. Under his time with the
39:55
Speaker 1: Direct Credit Society, people were aware of who this guy is,
39:59
Speaker 1: and they saw how his positions evolved would be the
40:03
Speaker 1: nice way to say it changed, would be another way
40:05
Speaker 1: to say it. Over time, they saw how they evolved
40:07
Speaker 1: and changed over time. Increasingly his beliefs were becoming difficult
40:14
Speaker 1: to parse or obtuse, such that in the modern day
40:19
Speaker 1: now Casey and Nola and I are not psychologists or therapist,
40:24
Speaker 1: but in the modern day the kind of language he's
40:27
Speaker 1: using seems to be increasingly what we would call like
40:30
Speaker 1: word salad or disassociative yep. And there's a marked acceleration
40:37
Speaker 1: in this tendency as he ages. There were hints of
40:43
Speaker 1: this all along in his concepts with the Direct Credit
40:46
Speaker 1: Society and the layer of astronomy, but as he goes
40:48
Speaker 1: into out and out religion, as it goes from an
40:52
Speaker 1: economic theory to a philosophy to a religion. Is all
40:56
Speaker 1: the stops are gone. He's just saying insane stuff.
41:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what go to you? Gouts should launch your
41:03
Speaker 2: list a few, We can.
41:04
Speaker 1: Launch your list a few. Yeah, yeah, you went around Robinett.
41:06
Speaker 2: Let's do it, okay.
41:07
Speaker 1: God wanted a supervising agent to manage the earth and
41:11
Speaker 1: all that it contains therein, and so he directed the
41:14
Speaker 1: men Orgs remember them, to design and build a super
41:17
Speaker 1: conscious being upon humane principles that would be capable of
41:21
Speaker 1: executing such orders and performing such duties as he would
41:24
Speaker 1: from time to time prescribe. It was a very crude
41:27
Speaker 1: thing that the Menorgs first produced, which was designated as Man.
41:31
Speaker 1: But they continue to improve him with the view of
41:33
Speaker 1: constantly increasing his intelligence and enlarging his consciousness until eventually
41:38
Speaker 1: he will become acceptable in the sight of God.
41:40
Speaker 2: I like, how I even heard you get bored with
41:42
Speaker 2: reading that? Right, It's just like what what?
41:46
Speaker 1: Well? I tone it down there toward the end, because
41:49
Speaker 1: I feel like that's how a lot of people took
41:52
Speaker 1: it when they were reading something that ostensibly was going
41:55
Speaker 1: to be about physics or science or economic theory.
42:01
Speaker 2: That's the thing, Like all of his stuff is this weird,
42:03
Speaker 2: garbled mishmash of different ideas with no real substance there
42:08
Speaker 2: and nothing that's it's all just a kind of agglomeration
42:11
Speaker 2: of like pseudoscientific ideas and kind of like bluster. And Hey,
42:15
Speaker 2: if there's any Lossonians out there that are offended by this,
42:19
Speaker 2: I'm more than happy to hear your side of the
42:23
Speaker 2: you know, but I don't know that there are any
42:24
Speaker 2: that remain because that film we talked about man Life,
42:28
Speaker 2: which by the way, was the name of a magazine
42:30
Speaker 2: that lost and published, not Man's Life, Man Life, one word.
42:35
Speaker 2: The guy that was the subject of that film is
42:38
Speaker 2: like ninety three years old during the making of the film,
42:42
Speaker 2: and he kind of like sticks around as an archivist
42:46
Speaker 2: and he goes to this like air shows in Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
42:51
Speaker 2: where he tries to recruit young people into the Blasonian
42:55
Speaker 2: faith with very little success, it seems like. But his
42:59
Speaker 2: story is beautiful and he's you know, he he does
43:03
Speaker 2: live to be you know, close to one hundred, and
43:05
Speaker 2: he follows all of the tenants of loss and he
43:08
Speaker 2: eats raw food and you know, he's got like he
43:11
Speaker 2: really you know, lives his life by this code, which
43:14
Speaker 2: is really interesting to see. But there's there's a little
43:17
Speaker 2: bit more of the story. Lawson's legal troubles do not
43:20
Speaker 2: end at the whole affair with the you know, the
43:23
Speaker 2: machines or whatever. He actually they get their nonprofit status
43:28
Speaker 2: revoked and I think he owes in the neighborhood of
43:31
Speaker 2: a decade's worth of back taxes because it was retroactive,
43:34
Speaker 2: right right, So that pretty much bankrupted the organization or
43:38
Speaker 2: they had to sell off the university campus they had
43:42
Speaker 2: and they moved to another kind of farm type campus
43:47
Speaker 2: in Where was it ben It was somewhere in Minnesota
43:50
Speaker 2: in Racine County, Racine County, which is on Interstate ninety four,
43:55
Speaker 2: a very very well traveled stretch of interstate between like
43:59
Speaker 2: Chicago and Milwaukee. Yeah, you can read, uh, you can
44:04
Speaker 2: read a chool article about it on Milwaukee dot com,
44:07
Speaker 2: which is where we bye by Greg Hoffman, which is
44:10
Speaker 2: where we found uh the description of the university after
44:15
Speaker 2: it moved. And one of the features of one of
44:18
Speaker 2: those buildings was a big gray barn that says study
44:22
Speaker 2: natural law on the outside of it. And I believe
44:25
Speaker 2: the campus is still there today. You can. There's a
44:27
Speaker 2: video on this Wired article where a guy just kind
44:29
Speaker 2: of wanders around and it looks like everything's locked and
44:32
Speaker 2: I think it's owned by a trust that still is
44:35
Speaker 2: tied to the idea of Blossonians. But it. Yeah, and
44:39
Speaker 2: he himself lost in passed away two years after they
44:44
Speaker 2: got this new campus, and after he kind of was shamed,
44:48
Speaker 2: you know, for being a bit of a tax fraud.
44:51
Speaker 2: And you know, over after his def to repassed, the
44:53
Speaker 2: numbers just dwindled. They were never like that massive. To
44:56
Speaker 2: begin with, the direct credit movement was much more successful
45:00
Speaker 2: than the Lawsonian movement because of its tie to the
45:03
Speaker 2: Great Depression, and then you know, it sort of dwindled
45:06
Speaker 2: from thousands of members to maybe just a couple hundred,
45:09
Speaker 2: and then you know.
45:11
Speaker 1: Eventually eventually to Now there are some other people involved.
45:16
Speaker 1: We'll get to them in just a second, But yes,
45:18
Speaker 1: it is true. Alfred Lawson died on November twenty ninth,
45:22
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, meaning that one reason or another, he
45:26
Speaker 1: did die before he was two hundred years old. And
45:30
Speaker 1: you're right that it did quickly diminish. The following that
45:35
Speaker 1: was already much smaller than Direct Credit However, there are
45:40
Speaker 1: reports of one last Lasonomic institution out in Kansas. Did
45:47
Speaker 1: you read about now?
45:48
Speaker 2: I did not so.
45:49
Speaker 1: In the Journal Times there is a report from two
45:53
Speaker 1: thousand and one of a church of Austonomy, and this
45:59
Speaker 1: church still remains there in Kansas and Mount Pleasant. The
46:05
Speaker 1: officiator and one of the Lowsonians who still live in
46:11
Speaker 1: the area say that they find this personally meaningful. It
46:17
Speaker 1: has five buildings, including a church, a farmhouse, and a dormitory,
46:21
Speaker 1: but only the two story dormitory is used today. Only
46:25
Speaker 1: one guy lives on campus, is the caretaker. His name's
46:28
Speaker 1: Gary Turner. All these people are pretty elderly at this point,
46:32
Speaker 1: and they have a dilapidated headquarters with tons of books
46:37
Speaker 1: and collections of literature. And one of the big things
46:41
Speaker 1: is that people the remaining Lawsonians want younger people to
46:46
Speaker 1: join the movement or religion, but just like Merle Hayden,
46:50
Speaker 1: they are not reaching many people. They're not convincing anyone.
46:55
Speaker 1: So if this religion dies, and I tried to find
47:00
Speaker 1: more about this, if this religion does die, then unless
47:04
Speaker 1: some company buys the property, it is going to be
47:08
Speaker 1: the property of Kansas. The very last update I found
47:11
Speaker 1: was also by The Journal Times. Ricardo Torres rights that
47:15
Speaker 1: Fox Cohn just bought an unusual piece of Wisconsin history.
47:20
Speaker 1: So as far as we could see, the company, Fox
47:23
Speaker 1: con Technology Group bought the land the Mount Pleasant owned
47:28
Speaker 1: for over nine hundred thousand dollars. So these people may
47:33
Speaker 1: be aging, the group may be aging, but financially they're
47:35
Speaker 1: not hurting anymore.
47:36
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, I didn't hear about that. That's cool.
47:39
Speaker 1: So we don't know what happens the story continues.
47:42
Speaker 2: Maybe this is a weird one man, and this is
47:44
Speaker 2: a tough one to get through. And then there's a
47:46
Speaker 2: lot of stuff we've had to leave out. But I
47:47
Speaker 2: can't recommend highly enough this documentary. It's called Man Life
47:51
Speaker 2: The Last of the Losonians.
47:53
Speaker 1: You can also find some cool audio stuff on YouTube
47:57
Speaker 1: about this. But again i'll post this on our page
48:01
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. You can read these books, a lot of
48:04
Speaker 1: them in full online as far as I can find.
48:08
Speaker 1: Most of them are out of print in a physical edition,
48:11
Speaker 1: so it might be tougher to get there, but you
48:13
Speaker 1: can read PDFs and I don't know, I encourage check
48:17
Speaker 1: it out and if you if you have an understanding
48:20
Speaker 1: of what exactly they're talking about, especially when it gets
48:23
Speaker 1: the physics and the nature of interaction of elements and substances.
48:29
Speaker 1: Feel free to write us an email and break it down,
48:30
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna be honest. I read it. I don't
48:33
Speaker 1: get it, don't They don't quite understand.
48:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's it's it's a tough one. It's a
48:38
Speaker 2: bit of a it's been hard to swallow.
48:39
Speaker 1: A bit of terriology precursor. Maybe we should do that.
48:43
Speaker 1: Maybe we should make up our you, me and everybody listening.
48:47
Speaker 1: Maybe we should make up our own personal philosophies. Why not,
48:50
Speaker 1: and we name them after themselves.
48:52
Speaker 2: Just call it, you know, a code that you live
48:54
Speaker 2: by yourself. We don't have to make other people do it.
48:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing that seems a little bit imperial
49:00
Speaker 1: stick about it, you know what I mean. And also
49:03
Speaker 1: I believe that people should have self confidence. But it
49:05
Speaker 1: feels weird to name things like that after yourself. You
49:09
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
49:10
Speaker 2: Oh, I do know what you mean. And I do
49:11
Speaker 2: want to end with with one last quote from laws
49:14
Speaker 2: in himself that sums this whole thing up. Go for
49:17
Speaker 2: it to try to write a sketch of the life
49:19
Speaker 2: and works of Alfred W. Lawson in a few pages
49:23
Speaker 2: is like trying to restrict space itself.
49:26
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we didn't even talk about how he
49:28
Speaker 1: writes the third person under assumed names yeah.
49:31
Speaker 2: Zy q fonts. All right, well again, maybe we'll have
49:35
Speaker 2: to revisit this one. This I've had a good time.
49:38
Speaker 1: I did too. This also reminds me a little bit
49:40
Speaker 1: of time cube, of a less angry version of time cube.
49:44
Speaker 1: You know what that is?
49:45
Speaker 2: Right? I do not?
49:46
Speaker 1: Are you serious, man? Okay, time cube? This? I know this.
49:48
Speaker 1: We're being such a one more thing is a guy
49:51
Speaker 1: who believes that the Earth encounters You will hear me
49:55
Speaker 1: turning my computer around to show this to knowl who
49:57
Speaker 1: believes that the Earth encounters for simultaneous and that it's
50:01
Speaker 1: moving through a cube of space and time. And his
50:05
Speaker 1: entire website is just this. I can post it. He
50:09
Speaker 1: made an appearance at Georgia Tech, one of our local
50:12
Speaker 1: learning centers, a while back, and I felt really bad.
50:15
Speaker 1: I think he's unwell. He has a very unique and
50:19
Speaker 1: distinct understanding of the nature of reality. And there are
50:23
Speaker 1: more and more people like this, and you ay, sometimes
50:26
Speaker 1: we call them eccentric, sometimes we call them visionaries. Don't
50:29
Speaker 1: know what the difference is, but we would like to
50:31
Speaker 1: hear from you. Thank you so much for checking out
50:34
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks to Casey Pegram, our super producer, and Noel.
50:39
Speaker 1: Thanks to you.
50:44
Speaker 2: Welcome then thanks also to Alex Williams, who composed our theme,
50:47
Speaker 2: and to our amazing researcher, Eve's Jeffcoats, who worked on
50:50
Speaker 2: this episode.
50:51
Speaker 1: Be sure to join us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
50:56
Speaker 1: you can see all sorts of shenaniganry. There cannot highly
51:00
Speaker 1: enough recommend our community page, Ridiculous Historians. If you want
51:06
Speaker 1: to read about hosotomy, then I've got you. I'll post
51:10
Speaker 1: up some PDFs on the page and I would love
51:13
Speaker 1: to hear what you think. If this somehow makes sense
51:17
Speaker 1: to someone, let us know. Because we were adrift and
51:20
Speaker 1: some very high minded concepts today, but luckily we made
51:24
Speaker 1: it back to Earth and that is the strange story
51:27
Speaker 1: of the inventor of the airline.
51:29
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time.
51:30
Speaker 1: Books.
51:39
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:43
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.