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Foreign. This podcast is supported by FX's love story, John F. Kennedy, Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. The new limited series from executive producer Ryan Murphy. It explores the complex courtship of the iconic couple, considered to be American royalty, whose love story captured the attention of the nation. Their fairy tale romance would unfold in front of the public eye, where their private love would also become a national obsession. FX's love story John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. Watch now on FX, Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. All right guys, it's the new year. New year, new you. Are you ready for a New Year's resolution that's going to actually work out for you? That's going to actually stick? That you're going to be able to stick to? Well, Groons is the one resolution that actually sticks. Groons is the simple daily habit that will succeed. It's easy. Extreme resolutions, they're not easy. That's why they fail. But Gruins can deliver real benefits with minimal effort. If you haven't heard me talking about grins before, listen. It's so simple. They're just a super convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies that you eat every day. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some at a fraction of of the price. And it tastes great. You got to get into these daily snack packs of gummies because you can't fit the amount of nutrients Grunds does into just one gummy. And it's a fun little treat. I look forward to it. It's like a nice little, nice little dessert after my lunch. These are low in sugar, they're vegan nut free, gluten free, dairy free, no artificial colors, no junk, no artificial flavors, and they include 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. They taste great. Super convenient. I keep a pack of the gummies in my car at all times if I want a little snack. Kick your new year off, right? And save up to 52% off with code Disgraceland at Gruuns Co. That's Code Disgraceland at G R U N S dot co. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Grateful Dead are insane. Singer, guitarist Jerry Garcia dosed unsuspecting film crews with LSD. Drummer Bill Kurtzman reportedly slept with 13 women in one night. The band was arrested in New Orleans with enough acid and assorted drugs to fuel an alternate moon landing. The Grateful Dead were born out of the sonic boom of 1960s. Counterculture and carried the mantle further and longer and with more significance than any of their 60s counterparts. They were also kept under the watchful eye of the CIA, who, along with the indirect help of the Grateful Dead and their patron saint, soundman Augustus Owsley Stanley iii, were directly responsible for the mainstreaming of hippie idealism, an ethos of tune in, turn on and dropout styled freedom. The Grateful Dead believed in freedom to their core and adhered to this belief throughout one of the longest and most successful runs in music history. And they made great music along the way, some of the greatest music ever made. And that music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called mellow flute hoedown, BK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Mrs. Brown, you've got a Lovely Daughter by Herman's Hermits. And why would I play you that specific slice of adolescent shindig cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 5, 1965. And that was the day that Mother McCree's Uptown Jug champions walked into Magoo's Pizza to play their first show. A band that would soon change their name to the Warlocks and then to the Grateful Dead and become one of the most influential bands the world has ever known. On this episode, a mellow hoedown, adolescent cheese, way too much LSD and the Grateful Dead. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace. Charles Manson, the psychotic cult leader behind the Tate LaBianca murders, murders so brutal they grip the nation, once said that giving someone LSD without their knowledge, an act known by hippies as dosing, was something that he would never do, not even to his worst enemy. Despite Manson's murderous and manipulative behavior, dosing someone was a bridge too far. Why? Well, because it was just too fucked up. Unsuspecting individuals suddenly under the influence of insanely powerful psychedelic chemicals were in for a terrifying ride. Perhaps one they'd never re emerged from the high of being on acid. The trip is so intense that it is life punctuating. You ride a rollercoaster of emotions. You see yourself and everything around you differently. And I don't mean figuratively. I mean literally. That's why they call it hallucinating. You're never the same afterward. Those who willingly drop LSD know this already. It's a choice they've made, one that is born sometimes out of a great notion of self exploration. To open previously unknown Doors of perception, to become a more enlightened version of oneself. That's the theory, anyway. The reality is that you trip balls. Your mind scrambled like yesterday's eggs. You laugh at nothing and everything. You feel connected to the world, the universe, in a stronger, more visceral way. And for the first four hours, you ascend the great cosmic ladder until you peak midway through the eight hour high, your body and mind literally buzzing in harmony with the entirety of your surroundings. And then the road you're on turns. It's darker, bumpier. You question everything, including yourself. Nothing makes sense. It's all some sick joke. You hate yourself because you're unrecognizable. Just like all that surrounds you. You hold on for dear life, white knuckling your way through the remaining hours of your trip, descending down Jacob's ladder, past the horrifying screams of your psyche, praying to God that you land in a place where you can still recognize the person you used to be, swearing to your Lord and savior the whole way down that you'll never, ever touch the stuff again. Then, hours later, you crash, emerging from the trip with the worst hangover you've ever experienced and the feeling that the only thing that will save you from its debilitating grip is strong grass and quite possibly more acid. And thanks to the CIA, Americans have plenty of acid at their disposal. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency theorized that if LSD was capable of altering one's perception, then it could be used by the military as a form of mind control in its ongoing Cold War with the Soviet Union. So under a top secret government program known as MK Ultra, the CIA began testing the new drug on military personnel and even civilians to measure its effectiveness and thus calibrate its usefulness as a weapon. Unsuspecting military contractors, mental patients, prisoners, street walking johns and sex workers were experimented on, dosed, decoded and disregarded, despite whatever lasting effects the acid had on them. Noted and alleged subjects of MK ULTRA experiments included Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, eventual Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, future Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and author of the best selling novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ken Kesey. One military scientist, unaware he'd been dosed by his CIA colleagues, believed he could fly and so famously jumped through the glass window of his bedroom on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City. That was in 1953. In 1969, Jerry Garcia, guitar player and singer of the world's preeminent psychedelic band, the Grateful Dead, knew Nothing of the flying Statler scientist. He did, however, know the effects of dosing someone with lsd. But he didn't care. To Garcia, it wasn't about fucking with someone so much as it was about enlightening them, getting them on his level. Garcia's level was high as fuck. He and his bandmates made sport out of tripping on powerful lsd. The Dead were professionals who used the drug to explore the outer limits of where their music could take both them and and their live audiences together further. Which is precisely why Garcia, AKA Captain Trips, was hunched over the coffee maker on the set of Hugh Hefner's cheesy television studio, secretly mixing high octane LSD into the hot black java mischievous grin on his mug. He was dosing anyone who'd be on the set or in the made for TV audience that his band was about to perform for. Because if the Grateful Dead were going to perform, Garcia wanted the audience to be on his level. A level that this audience was far from naturally inclined to be on. Playboy After Dark was the brainchild of Hugh Hefner, editor of the men's magazine Playboy. A sort of TV version of the Playboy philosophy. A free flowing televised salon of 60s Zeitgeist staged in Hef's small screen bachelor pad. Pseudo intellectualism, subversive sex, as much skin as sensors would allow, Rocks, glasses and stems. For days, Hefner positioned himself at the center of mid century masculinity. A reimagining of sexual norms and personal freedom not unlike the thinking of the Grateful Dead. But where the band and the man differed was in style. The Grateful Dead presented themselves as a ragtag group of music surrealists. Hefner presented himself, his magazine and his television show as sophisticated, far more Don Draper than Salvador Dali. And that difference in style was seen by the Dead as being square and squares made for shitty audiences. So Garcia dosed them. The result was wild, unhinged freedom. A coming together of two seemingly different types of people ascending the cosmos on the sounds of psychedelia. Pre Dead performance. The set was humming, Garcia tripping, waxing poetic with Hef on the Aurora. Boris. Sid Caesar hung back, banged down barbiturates in straight vodka and felt an unknown buzz settle about his brain. And the show's PA searched frantically for that night's guest astrologist, who was last seen circling unknown rabbit holes backstage. The rest of the Grateful Dead sat on the Playboy After Dark stage, patiently waiting for their singers, Jerry Garcia, who was now making his way through the manufactured television audience wearing his familiar shit eating all knowing grin, the one that perfectly matched the green and orange drug rug he was wearing. Cameras rolled. The crowd cued into the imminent performance and their applause grew louder. Someone confused by the acid booed. Someone else yelled out, you're the Dead. Garcia shouldered his acoustic and slyly responded, right you are. Laughs, Giddy pitched anticipation. A quick check of the tuning on the six string and straight into Mountains of the Moon. When the song ended, the audience, having suffered through an uninspired version of the tune, leaned a bit too heavily into their applause, excited more for what they hoped was to come than what they just tolerated. And what was to come was worth the wait. The Grateful Dead fell in soulfully to St Stephen. Garcia now swung an electric SG and it sung a wildly psychedelic and different tune than his acoustic. Playboy Bunny swayed with abandon on the edge of three. Four time horny male bachelors, all black ties and brill cream, did their best to keep cool within the staunchy confines of their starched white collars. A fundamental lack of understanding for anything that was going on. Reeling from the sting of LSD and the sharp jabs of pheromones, Fernet and pent up sexual aggression, Garcia hit the solo. The band swung. The pocket was big. It sucked in everyone. While the television cameras rolled and speeded for sound, Hef lorded over the scene he'd created, the modern man forever turned on and decidedly tuned into the hipness of the Grateful Dead. Hef rocked. Garcia killed one man, gathered with the other man, spilled America got laid down night to Jerry Garcia and his bandmates Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kurtzman, Mickey hart, Ron Pigpen, McCarron and Tom Constantin on stage that night. It was magical. It all reminded Garcia of a sort of ready for primetime version of the acid test from a couple years back. But not as dark or scary. This was pure freedom. A type of freedom that was impossible to imagine in the the beginning days of the band when they sweated over regimented bluegrass scales and pitch perfect harmonies. Here in the psychedelic present, they were free. Free to take the audience wherever they wanted and free to let the music they were making take them on a very long and very strange trip. Very long, very long, very.
