1395 Turning Heroes into Villains: Inside the War on Reality

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**SPEAKER_4** (1:04)
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**Shane Cashman** (1:42)
Operation Mockingbird never stopped and I also think MK Ultra just turned into the algorithm.
They went from ACID to Twitter, Instagram or whatever, but it does seem to be the case where there's people who are being told to say certain things. They might not even know that they're foot soldiers for the deep state. They might just be like, I have a good source, but that source happens to be the CIA, which they've been doing this forever, but now they realize, they as in the deep state realized during COVID, dissident voices were able to use Twitter to the best of their ability before being censored to subvert the narrative. And now they're like, well, now we need to pretend to be them. We're on their side and we'll tell them our information. And that's how we can hijack the narrative. And then you can get the people on board who were the dissident voices, but now they're being tricked into being part of the system.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:30)
Richard Syrett's Strange Planet, following the truth wherever it leads, exposing evil and corruption and the secret machinations of powerful elites, revealing the high strangeness beneath the surface of our supposed reality. Coming to you from the Great White North and his studio beneath the stairs.
Here's Richard.

**Richard Syrett** (2:57)
Hey there, welcome back to Strange Planet. And tonight's guest didn't just report on the culture wars, he walked straight into the battlefield. While most journalists were watching America's biggest controversies unfold from a safe distance, Shane Cashman embedded himself with some of the most polarizing and feared figures of our time. He sat across the table from Ye at the height of his public implosion. He spent time with Alex Jones after the biggest defamation judgment in American history. He covered FBI whistleblowers, political dissidents, child predator investigations, environmental disasters, AI infrastructure and the shadowy world where media narratives are born and reputations go to die.
What he discovered challenged almost everything he thought he knew. His new book, Good Villains, My Journey to the Frontlines of Fame, Controversy and the War on Reality asks a dangerous question. What if we've become so addicted to heroes and villains that we've lost the ability to recognize truth?
What if the most powerful weapon in the modern world isn't a bomb, a virus or even artificial intelligence but the ability to decide who gets labeled a monster?
This isn't a book about defending controversial people. It's about exposing the machinery that creates controversy in the first place. It's about censorship, cancel culture, algorithmic outrage, propaganda, faith, free speech and the invisible forces shaping what millions of people believe is real. And tonight we'll journey inside the alternative media revolution, explore the psychology of public shaming, examine why trust in institutions has collapsed and ask the question that may define our age. Are we witnessing the death of objective reality or the greatest psychological operation in modern history? Shane Cashman, welcome to Strange Planet. How are you?

**Shane Cashman** (4:47)
I am good. Thank you so much for having me.

**Richard Syrett** (4:49)
For people who are not familiar with your work with Tim Poole and the Timcast Podcast, just tell us a little bit about what your involvement is or was.