Revisiting Tripping Johns

Summary

True Weird Stuff – Revisiting Tripping Johns (April 11, 2026)

Podcast: True Weird Stuff
Hosts: Sheri Lynch (B), Max Sweeten (C)
Episode Theme: A self-reflective revisit of the show’s early MK Ultra episode, “Tripping Johns,” exploring the bizarre history of Operation Midnight Climax and the CIA’s LSD experiments, with live commentary on storytelling, production evolution, and the weird underbelly of American espionage.

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Episode Overview

The episode dives back into “Tripping Johns,” True Weird Stuff’s original exploration of Operation Midnight Climax—one of the CIA’s most infamous and perverse MK Ultra programs. Using a now-rare format of a live postmortem (commentary throughout), hosts Sheri and Max analyze both the subject matter and their own storytelling and production choices, reflecting on the podcast’s growth and the sheer absurdity of real-life government experimentation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Operation Midnight Climax and CIA Weirdness

• Introduction to CIA LSD experiments: The hosts set the stage with an overview of CIA projects in the 1950s-60s, focusing on the agency's reckless experimentation with mind-altering drugs (LSD), and general lawlessness during the Cold War.
• The "Tripping Johns": Operation Midnight Climax involved CIA-run brothels, where sex workers dosed unwitting customers (the “johns”) with LSD, while agency operatives watched hidden behind one-way glass.
• Key Figure – George Hunter White:
  • Undercover narcotics agent turned OSS/CIA asset.
  • Oversaw Midnight Climax, designed the brothel’s decor, and personally observed and documented (sometimes drunkenly) the outcomes.
• Purpose and Science (or lack thereof):
  • “One of the things that's true about all this MK Ultra stuff is ... there’s nothing that's truly scientific about their approach.” [01:23 – Max]
  • Lack of scientific rigor; largely speculative, curiosity-driven human experimentation.

2. Podcast Meta-commentary and Evolution

• Format Changes:
  • Early True Weird Stuff episodes lacked the now-standard postmortem. Listener feedback drove the hosts to adopt commentary and deeper dives.
  • “We were just putting out stories and … we weren’t following them up … And so that changed the format of the podcast.” [01:59 – Sheri]
• Production Growth:
  • Early production borrowed heavily from radio (“no pauses, transitions, more aggressive music beds”).
  • “Our radio show now sounds more like True weird stuff than a radio show, probably.” [03:17 – Sheri]
  • Self-deprecating about technical difficulties and inexperience, including unedited glitches for authenticity.

3. Historical & Ethical Context of MK Ultra

• Birth of the CIA:
  • Formed from the OSS, collecting societal “odds and ends” deemed unfit for public knowledge.
  • “The CIA began as it meant to go on. … a holding pen for things that were either too sensitive to be known to the public or too distasteful for the government.” [21:02 – Sheri]
• Operation Methods:
  • “Deception in the service of democracy can be a noble thing. And fellatio for the cause of freedom. Wait, what?” [07:22 – Sheri]
  • Spying, sexual manipulation, and chemical mind control—acknowledged as both unethical and unscientific.
• Absurdity and Consequences:
  • LSD proved unreliable for forced confessions, contrary to CIA hopes.
  • “The idea itself, I mean, it's unethical and illegal. Everything. But can you see the merits of the idea?” [24:33 – Sheri]
  • Most MK Ultra files destroyed; suspicion that most CIA agents were not “highly trained” but rather “adjacent” hires.

4. Notable (and Weird) Historical Tangents

• MK Ultra Victims:
  • Whitey Bulger, the Boston mobster, was experimented on in prison and spoke about it.
  • “Whitey Bulger actually talked about his experiences in the MK Ultra program. … There's the usual cadre of government people that are like, that never happened…” [11:31 – Sheri]
• Julia Child in the OSS:
  • “Julia Child whipped up a recipe for shark repellent for the US Navy … That’s true. She worked in the OSS.” [16:21 – Sheri]
  • Segued into reflecting on the playful, absurd intersections of historical figures and government secrecy.

5. Reception of Early Podcasting Efforts

• Production Critique:
  • Hosts mock early music choices and fast, breathless narration, noting their growth.
  • “There's no sense of breathing in it. There's no sense of dramatic pausing. But in our defense, we didn't know what we were doing when we started this.” [31:39 – Max]
• Listener Support and Community:
  • Thank listeners (“Tweedos”/“true weirdos”) for patience and feedback, reflecting on the need for rich detail and episode length.
  • “We want to be better. And that's. We're trying to get better.” [36:29 – Sheri]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Operation Absurdity & Ethics

• On CIA experimentation:
  • Sheri: “She [America] needs to be taken to task for her many, many sins. … My disappointment in how jacked up and deceptive and frankly, batshit some of our government agencies are.” [07:22]
• On George White:
  • "He designed the setting for the ... experience. Down to making all of the decor decisions for his bug brothel ... It's kind of hard to not look at that whole scenario and not see very personal preferences at play.” [29:11 – Sheri]
  • White’s own words: “I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and the blessing of the all highest?” [27:59 – George White, cited by Sheri]

Production and Podcasting Ad-Libs

• Technical Snafus:
  • “I'm leaving all this in because this is the kind of technical stuff we have to deal with.” [04:19 – Max]
• On Podcast Evolution:
  • “We may be half assed, but we're whole ethics around here.” [14:11 – Sheri]
  • “We for sure learned as we went … in radio, you can't have a pause. You can't have silence. You can't have dead air.” [31:57 – Sheri]

Historic Weirdness

• Shark Repellent for Astronauts:
  • “Julia Child's shark repellent... for Mercury and Gemini astronauts just in case their capsules ... splash down in shark infested waters.” [17:52 – Sheri]

Unintended Comedy and Reflection

• On Trying for Confessions while Tripping:
  • “If you've got somebody ... tripping and you've got somebody ... unzipping their pants, you might be able to coax some information out of them.” [25:34 – Sheri]
  • “The LSD was the wrong drug, but the idea itself ... But can you see the merits?” [25:34 – Sheri]
• Summing Up the Episode:
  • “Operation Midnight Climax. George White perched on his portable toilet behind his two way mirror, the Tripping Johns. Straight up Austin Powers territory. ... It's your tax dollars at work, everybody. WTF?” [35:43 – Sheri]

Listener Acknowledgment

• On Enduring the Early Episodes:
  • “To any of you who listen through this, thank you so much ... because we just so sorry. Yeah, we just ... our shame is great and unending.” [36:10 – Sheri]
  • “Thanks to whoever named the people that listen Tweedos. ... You're very patient, Tweedos.” [40:23 – Sheri]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Intro & podcasting background: 00:27 – 03:37
• Operation Midnight Climax begins: 05:38
• CIA/OSS origins & Julia Child sidetrack: 15:06 – 18:47
• George White, ethics, and purpose: 24:33 – 26:13
• Production/meta-commentary (music, style): 31:22 – 32:28
• Operation Climax aftermath & long-term MK Ultra speculation: 33:35 – 34:45
• Personal growth & podcast reflections: 36:10 – 39:48
• Behind the scenes on CIA recruitment & era differences: 41:13 – 42:58

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Structure & Tone

• Conversational, irreverent, and self-aware. The hosts mix dark historical storytelling with tongue-in-cheek asides and candid talk about podcasting.
• Rich in asides, context, and detail. Even secondary anecdotes (Julia Child, Whitey Bulger) are woven in for color.
• Emphasis on the absurdity and horror of real-life events, with a focus on transparency and improvement.

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Summary Takeaway

True Weird Stuff’s “Revisiting Tripping Johns” is both a descent into the surreal world of CIA Cold War experiments and a transparent, often hilarious, look at the evolution of a storytelling podcast. Sheri and Max highlight the unimaginable ethical lapses of American intelligence—sex, drugs, and surveillance—while examining their own journey as podcasters, always hunting for the strange truths that lurk in history’s shadowy corners.

As Sheri puts it:
"It's so very crazy and so very true. It's your tax dollars at work, everybody. WTF?" [35:43]

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Well, hey there true weirdos. How you doing? We got something a little different for you today. We've been, we've been spending a lot of time with the CIA looking at an MK Ultra incident that happened in the 50s when one of their own scientists went through a window after being dosed with lsd. And that led us to a story of a little city and little town really in France that many people believe the CIA did this whole crazy LSD crop dusting experiment on. And early, early in True Weird Stuff's history. We did an MK Ultra episode called Tripping John's and we refer to it a lot in our episode Postmortems because it's a great example of what a cowboy cluster the CIA was during the Cold War. Like, they just did as they pleased and no rules, right, Max?

[C]

And this story in particular, since this was the first one we did. You, you've got a guy who's sitting behind a one way mirror in a brothel that the government, it's a government institution. They are dosing the johns with the hookers and this guy behind the One way glass is getting drunk while he's observing this. For what purpose exactly? I'm not sure. One of the things that's true about all this MK Ultra stuff is there is, there's nothing that's truly scientific about their approach to whatever they're doing.

[B]

It, it feels so haphazard. It feels like, hey, what do you think would happen if. And then they do the thing and then they see what happens, right? So when we released Tripping Johns, it was early in True Weird Stuff and we were just putting out stories and we weren't following them up. With our postmortems where we go deeper into the story and we, we just kind of talk it through and we were amazed at how many people were like, can you guys stick around after the story and talk? Okay. And so that changed the format of the podcast. Trippin John's is one of those episodes that doesn't have that. So we thought instead of tacking a postmortem onto it, we would do a live postmortem inside the episode. This should be a cringe fest because. Because like anything you do for us, like anything you do, you hope that you get better in time. And woo, buddy, did we need to get better in time?

[C]

And when we started this, we both had sensibilities of where we came from, which is radio, which does not have the kinds of pauses and transitions. And in fact, the way the music is mixed on this is more like for radio than it would be for the way the podcast is done now.

[B]

Anyhow, I'm glad you make that point because I had an epiphany revelation, if you will, the other day. When we first started True Weird Stuff, we brought radio to the podcast. But over time, the. Our radio show now sounds more like True weird stuff than a radio show, probably.

[C]

Yeah, I would say.

[B]

And you know what? Listen, people, listen. We ain't getting paid for any of it. So we're just going to do what we're going to do because there's nobody going do it differently or you don't get a paycheck. So here we go. While we. We give everybody on the True Weird Stuff team a week to catch their breaths and get caught.

[C]

Oh, and we lost Sherry. Good Lord. Well, to let you know, this is something that we deal with a little behind the scenes. This is something we deal with technical problems because sometimes we just lose people in the middle of while we're talking from each of our own little home studios.

[B]

Where did you lose me?

[C]

So I was explaining what happened. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? So now she can't hear me. I'm going to leave all this in because this is. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to voice text Sherry. Sherry, can you not hear me, question mark? I'm leaving all this in because this is the kind of technical stuff we have to deal with. Exclamation point.

[B]

Anyhow, where did you lose me? Where did you lose.

[C]

Well, we were. You were sort of explaining how all this worked and. And I'm telling them this is what we deal with.

[B]

Leave. Yeah, leave it all in.

[C]

I'm leaving it all. Gonna leave it all in. And in fact, we're at a point now where we will actually start the episode. We will start the episode and then we will have some commentary during the episode, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's the plan. And listen up. This technical stuff. We're having this Ain't my Internet provider. This is the Central Intelligence Agency interfering with this transmission.

[C]

We believe that.

[B]

Yes, that's what we think.

[C]

So. So we will ha. We will start the episode momentarily. So here it is. This is Midnight Climax. Tripping John's from our first few episodes of doing the True Weird Stuff podcast.

[B]

The room is something out of a Hollywood set design fantasy of what a big city brothel might look like. Plush red fabric draping the windows, silky sheets pooling on the bed, provocative French art on the walls, and a large ornate mirror positioned to take it all in. Something a little funny about that mirror, though. Something about the room itself that just feels off. What is this? And why does it feel like we're being watched? We're being watched. And they got a small beam of light against the mirror. Well, this is a punishment already.

[C]

Tell me. I was sitting. It is. Yes. True weird stuff.

[B]

Even the truest, most patriotic patriot who absolutely loves this country can admit that. Yeah, actually, there's a whole wagon train of weird lurking around the edges of the American story. Time, though, has done its job of buffing and polishing the facts, scraping away details that are trivial and lurid. This the romantic business of nation building. You know the story. Thrifty puritans, scrappy colonists, bold tycoons of industry, serious minded scientists and inscrutable government.

[C]

I wouldn't have picked this music this time.

[B]

The same altar. Truth, justice and the American way. But along the way to the American way, corners definitely got cut. That's just how the world works, right? We all know it. And if the ends justify the means, well, we usually manage to find a way to be okay with it. Deception in the service of democracy can be a noble thing. And fellatio for the cause of freedom. Wait, what? Fellatio? Freedom? What are we talking about? We're talking about a little government program called Operation Midnight Climax. Okay, let's pause here and let me own. Let me own my full agenda. I am one of those people who loves America and thinks she could be a lot better. This girl is a mess. And she. She's been lying and keeping secrets and getting up to all kinds of harm. And we all know what she's capable of on the good side, but she needs to be taken to task for. For her many, many sins. And that's kind of a running theme in this podcast that, you know, my disappointment in how jacked up and deceptive and frankly, batshit some of our government agencies are, they just run amok, do they not? And this story is an example of that.

[C]

Yeah. There wasn't any government oversight for what with the financing of this particular program. And I think I hear myself going, huh? Or something in the background. This was before we stopped me talking, when you were doing the narration, I think. And, and I.

[B]

We only stopped that because it was so unfair to Max. I would like spend. I'd spend 20 hours in some rabbit hole writing this and he'd be hearing it for the first time and there'd be a test like that just wasn't.

[C]

This is before we started using actors, voices and it too. All right.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, just like it sounds. It all went down, so to speak, over about a decade during the cold war. That 40 plus year long era of geopolitical jockeying between the USA and the Soviet Union. They called it a cold War because there was no direct conflict between the two superpowers. It was a battle of ideologies framed by the very real risk of global nuclear annihilation. Exactly the sort of circumstances that breed mass paranoia. And also apparently some absolutely demented spycraft. So have you heard of something called MK ultra? How about you, Max? Have you ever heard of MK ultra? Oh. Oh my gosh. This is going to be your new favorite thing. MK Ultra is a famous. And let's pause here and say it is his new favorite. So if I could predict lottery numbers as much as I can predict quirky conspiracy rabbit holes for you, we would be. We would be so rich. Yeah. So that's an example of like Max has spent his life, you know, pursuing other micro fixations like serial serial killers.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And so here I am in front of God and everybody. Max, what do you know about MK ultra? Well, I don't know anything yet, Sherry. Oh, okay, let's not do that again. Go ahead, say infamous CIA program that explored potential techniques for mind control. You know, brainwashing, hypnosis, mind altering chemicals, that sort of thing. MK Ultra was in operation for 20 years, partnering with universities, prisons, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, the US military, all very, very legit. Except for one incredibly sticky detail. MK ULTRA was basically a giant illegal experiment on human beings. Human beings didn't know what the CIA was doing to them and most certainly did not consent to any of it. Oopsies. Now here's a fun fact for you, Max, since you've never heard of MK ultra.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Infamous, legendary Boston gangster, Whitey Bulger.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

When Whitey Bulger was incarcerated early in his criminal career, he was part of a group of inmates that were in the MKUltra experimental pools where they were given incredibly Strong mind altering drugs and experimented on. And Whitey Bulger actually talked about his experiences in the MK ultraprop program. And there's the usual cadre of government people that are like, that never happened. The government would never do anything like that. And then there's the rest of us going, oh, yeah, the government would never do anything like that. And Operation Midnight Climax, that was part of MK Ultra and not just in one location. The CIA actually had three brothels all wired for sound and surveillance. There were two in California and one in New York City. And the man in charge, the man whose very specific vision.

[C]

And I'll just say that this music bed has shown up on a couple

[B]

other episodes, a journalist turned federal narcotics agent named George Hunter White. This dude. All right, let's pause here. Let's pause here. You know, sometimes you look back on your life and you go, what happened to me? I used to be. I used to be so much better at whatever this is not that case. I think we improved things. I think we improved the way we talk. I think we improved the way we tell these kinds of stories. What do you think?

[C]

Yeah, I think so too. And I think that it does help that, you know, you write it now that there are actors that have part parts in this sort of thing. And I think that it carries the story very well.

[B]

I think the Whitey Bulger, you know, Whitey Bulger pop pops up a lot in my world because I spend a lot of time in MK Ultra. All the documents that I can lay my hands on and declassified memos and all that. I think the Whitey Bulger story is its own episode. Not the Whitey Bulger gangster story, the Whitey Bulger MK Ultra story. Okay, so, and, and as far as like music beds, well, we have, you know, we're. We don't have access to the world's infinite store of music because things are watermarked and we'll get sued. I mean, we. And we try not to steal from people. Like, we give credit where it's due. We use music that we're licensed to.

[C]

Yeah, we, I mean, we have a service that we. And I have music that I have to go through.

[B]

So anyhow, we're trying to be very. We may be half assed, but we're whole ethics around here. Okay, go ahead.

[C]

It's because we're afraid of being sued.

[B]

This dude was a real character who probably deserves his own movie. He was super good at being a narc. So much so that in the 1930s he went undercover and infiltrated this powerhouse drug trafficking ring called the Hip Sing Tong. And he remained in the the gang for two years. He took a blood oath to the Hip Sing Tong and cemented his rep as a guy who could be counted on to keep a secret. And George White was about to keep one of the biggest secrets of all.

[C]

And so when I first started doing this, Sherry, I had that sweep, went into everything because I didn't know what else to do. So that. And at some point I went, I'm so tired of this thing.

[B]

So who the heck is George Hunter White and why is he designing a sneaky spy brothel for the CIA? And what the heck is the plan for this? Right. George White wanted to be an FBI agent, and he applied for the job multiple times. But I'm guessing that the bureau saw things in him that just didn't fit their ideal of what a GMAN looked like. And it was a disappointment for sure for George White, but not a dead end. Because George White eventually found his way to something called the Office of Strategic Services, the oss. This was an intelligence agency that was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 because he was so exasperated and so pissed off by the chaos of lack of coordination when it came to spy stuff and espionage and information in his very own government and military that he said, bring it all together in one place, by Jove. Call it the oss and get me that crazy narc George White in here to run it. Or he said something like that, because I'm pretty much guessing of what President Roosevelt actually said. Any who. Historical fun fact. Historical fun fact. The OSS is the unit that the famous chef Julia Childs.

[C]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

And we have an episode called the Sea Demon about a legendary shark that touches on the work Julia Childs did in the OSS to help the Navy create something that might serve as shark repellent. Because what a lot of people don't know is we lost as many sailors to sharks as we did to enemy combat back in the day. Yes. So if you've ever heard that Julia Childs was a spy for the United States government, that's true. She worked in the oss. Yeah, the famous people worked for the OSS because back then we were fighting the Nazis. And. And we were all in absolute full agreement then that Nazis were 100% bad and must be defeated at all costs. I think we no longer feel that way now. But back then, we were unified. We were anti Nazi. Legendary Hollywood movie director John Ford put in. And today. And so did that Icon of French cooking, the beloved chef Julian. Oh, there she is. And among her many wartime contributions missions at the OSS. Here we go, Julie. True story. Julia Child whipped up a recipe for shark repellent for the U. S. Navy. Listen to this. Back then a surprising number and I don't know why it never occurred. Oh, here we go about this. Or maybe it's never occurred to any of us to think about this. Maybe it was in this episode Max and not the sea demon. Oh, cringe, cringe for sharks. It was a significant hazard and a great sherry.

[C]

It's what, 155 episodes or something?

[B]

Oh, who can say? I don't even know where I am. This French chef in the OSS Earth comes up with a shark repellent and it was great for shipboard morale. Unfortunately, yes, I've tried. I stand out in the yard at night with my arms raised to the sky and they don't come for me. Julia Child's shark repellent to their Mercury and Gemini astronauts just in case their capsules managed to re enter earth's ashes atmosphere safely and then splash down in shark infested waters. So, so let me just pause here and point out. Let me just pause here and point out. You think there are grown ups, but they're. You're. We're the grown ups. Right? So we're like to these astronauts. Oh, hey, okay, first you're going to space and good luck with that. And also then you're coming back to earth and you might become shark food. So put a little this, Dab this behind your ears boys, and good luck to you. Let's like. Isn't it crazy how. How this sounds like a game you and your brother are playing in the backyard?

[C]

Right?

[B]

Astronauts and sharks and everything else. Okay, go ahead. An alternate. We're not even high doing this. Got eaten by a great white shark. I mean, holy cow. Total disaster for him, the space program and humanity itself. Thank you, Julia Child for your shark repellent. But back to George White, who's also in the OSS and he's spending his OSS time figuring out ways to sneak truth serum into foods eaten by gangsters, suspected communists, and even the occasional conscientious objector who didn't care for their government's policies and practices and procedures. Truth serum. Does that not sound like a subplot from an Austin Powers movie? But it's. And they were just obsessed with it for decades. Truth serum. Oh yeah, like right after Roosevelt and

[C]

Bennett, them when I was a kid. I thought it was a real thing.

[B]

Yeah. So did they. It was hidden behind layers and layers of secrecy and obfuscation and mystery and those secret corners of the OSS where they were monkeying around with stuff like truth serum. That's where the CIA was born. That's where the CIA came from. So how in the world do we get from Franklin Roosevelt to Julia Child to some pimp's fantasy of a sexy boudoir in San Francisco? And why is there a man lurking behind a two way mirror watching strangers fornicate? And for the love of God, is that a picture of martinis at his side? What is this? This is Operation Midnight Climax. They tucked it under the wing of the newly formed SEA CIA and they hid it inside the super secretive MK Ultra program. A group. Music's too loud.

[C]

Sorry.

[B]

Recruited by George White, Lord Unsuspecting. John. Remember when we used to get. Remember when people used to be like, the music's too loud. And Max was like, no it isn't. Get a grip. And now he's like, the music's too loud.

[C]

Well, I was producing for radio. I wasn't producing for this.

[B]

And observed how the men behaved while under the influence of both powerful hallucinogens.

[C]

This. There's a couple things at play here that are different now too.

[B]

How it's processed, everything extra for their efforts and promised. There is an important. There is an important nugget of knowledge in that. In this part of the episode, when you understand how the CIA was born, you understand the CIA's mandate. There's an expression, it's an old fashioned, I think it's British. There's an old fashioned expression that I love that goes like this. Begin as you mean to go on. Which means if, you know, if you're. If you want to do a great job, you have to have a great beginning. Begin your relationship with honesty. Whatever. Begin as you mean to go on. The CIA began as it meant to go on. The CIA was created as a holding pen for things that were either too sensitive to be known to the public or too distasteful for the government to have its fingerprints on. You following.

[C]

Right? Right.

[B]

So when the agency itself was birthed from a need to have a place where the unspeakable and unthinkable could be conducted as everyday business. Now you understand a little bit better why the CIA has always been such a black box. It was built to be that there was never a day where the CIA promised transparency or accountability. And you know, when it comes to governments and you know, geopolitics and jockeying for power and position. A lot of really distasteful things are done the name of that. And they're the kind of distasteful that citizens, taxpayers and voters don't get on board with. So there has to be a place where that kind of business can be conducted in the dark, and that is the Central Intelligence Agency. All right, go law enforcement. And if it sounds nuts, it's because it was nuts. Along with being highly dangerous and profoundly unethical. People love to get all nostalgic about the golden days of the 1950s, that idyllic chapter in American life when people were decent and hardworking and knew their place. LOL. Like the 50s were ever that pure innocent. Like any human endeavor is ever that pure innocent. We just need and want so desperately to believe in our own goodness, you know, to believe in our various lost Edens is a better time just waiting to be revolution captured. Remember the sitcom Happy Days? Okay, so that show was set in the years 1955 through 1965. That's when happy Days took place. While Richie Poty and Ralph Mouth were sneaking out at night to watch the Fonz compete in a midnight drag race, the CIA was roofing anyone who served the purpose. From men paying for sex to convicts, soldiers, even their own unsuspecting co workers. What a time, right? They were. They were literally just slipping LSD into people's drinks at work, at parties, and then watching how they reacted under the influence of the drugs. Now the goal with the tripping johns and George White's sex surveillance setup is so loud.

[C]

I'm so sorry. You're complaining about the writing? I'm complaining it about the production.

[B]

I knew this.

[C]

I know.

[B]

And it is colors. Seeing music under circumstances that wild, getting him to spill a few secrets seems reasonably doable. Plus the lsd. I have to say pause here. It wasn't a bad theory. In theory, if somebody. If you've got somebody. If you've got some foreign agent or government person or whatever military commander at. And they're tripping and you've got some. Somebody like unzipping their pants, you might be able to coax some information out of them. I'm not saying the CIA had a bad idea here. That's not. I mean, it did, as it turns out that LSD is the wrong drug for confessions. Because people that think that they're transforming into flying dogs are not reliable narrators. So the LSD was the wrong drug, but the idea itself, I mean, it's unethical and illegal. And everything. But can you see the merits of the idea?

[C]

Yeah, I can see the merits of the idea, but this is the most unscientific way to go about this. All right, back to the cringe fest.

[B]

Very purest secret government lab quality. And you also must remember that they had no idea what was happening to them. They went from, oh my God, you can tell my daddy was a drug dealer because I took a moment to point out how, how high the quality was of the product. Way before Timothy Leary, the 60s, and the coining of the phrase turn on, tune in.

[C]

No one was stepping on the product.

[B]

Maybe just on the prowl for like, I don't know, a hand job. Only to watch that hand turn into a spider or a buzz saw saw or a rainbow. Who knows what they experienced in that room. It had to be terrifying, at least for some of them, right? And then when they finally came down from the LSD, could they tell this was 1955? You're gonna go to the police in 1955 and tell them that last night you hired a prostitute and the next thing you knew, a talking crocodile was asking you to dance. And you can't remember any. Anything else, including the address where all of these crazy things allegedly happened? No. No way. Those men wouldn't talk. And the people run an Operation Midnight Climax knew it. In that room, drugs slam out of their minds. These men were teased, pleasure, manipulated and interrogated. The work of keeping the world safe from the red menace of conduct. Communism was a slippery business for sure, and maybe never more literally than in that room on Chestnut Street. And all the while, George White is watching, watching, watching and taking notes and pouring himself a fresh martini. You know the expression, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Here's a man that clearly lived to breathe that philosophy. George White had this to say about his time in the city, CIA and Operation Midnight Climax. He said, quote, I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and the blessing of the all highest? So let's pause here and take a moment to celebrate our beloved voice actor and star of the true weird stable, Mr. Don Morgan.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Who narrowly dodged being forced to play this man because we weren't yet writing the show that way.

[C]

But we would if we. If Sherry has a reprehensible character, we go, who should we get to play this? Well, let it be Don. Poor Don.

[B]

Sometimes I'll Be. I'll be frolicking about in the meadow of human history and I'll be like this dickhead. Oh my God. I'm writing this for Don. He's played. He's played the worst of the worst. But yes, we would have written this episode so differently. We would have written his story and cast on to tell it. I think that's another thing. That's another way we improved. We have not as human beings. Max and I don't feel like we've improved much as humans, but I think we've improved.

[C]

We've done a better job of telling how we haven't improved. I tell you what, Sherry, let's. Let's take a break here.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Well, so shall we pick up with where we. Pick up where we left off?

[B]

This is a delicious kind of pain.

[C]

Yeah, this is awful.

[B]

Okay. Wow. My first take on White was the man had to be a voyeur on some level, if not by nature, then definitely by experience. And remember that George White wasn't just following orders. He designed the setting for the Hong Kong experience. Down to making all of the decor decisions for his bug brothel on Chestnut Street. It's kind of hard to not look at that whole scenario and not see very personal preferences at play. Did White unconsciously design the setting based on his own sexual fantasies? Or was he inspired by every single Hollywood whorehouse trope from the movies to Miss Kitty and Gunsmoke? Or is it possible that humans are actually genuinely hardwired to be aroused by crimson velvet curtains and vaguely raunchy French paintings? It's not my jam. But you do you Pepe Le Pew. So while our government is dosing unsuspecting men with lsd. I'm sorry, but that cannot be stated strongly enough, I have to say, because we actually did know better in 1955 and this was some Bond villain level illegal experimentation on human beings. And our government was running creepy wired up brothels and leaning hard on sex workers to do all of their dirty work, literal and otherwise. Did they at least manage to learn anything useful? Anything. Anything at all. And please, I'd also like you to remember that White not only had a dorm fridge and a portable toilet tuck behind his two way class, he was slurping down pictures of booze while watching the action. I am begging you, please don't act like my ex husband would be all argumentative for the sake of being annoying. Af and tell me that this was pure science, please. When in the frickety fracking name of Einstein. Have you seen science done like this.

[C]

I'm just. Jerry. The only thing that I can think is they destroyed a lot of those MK Ultra files, as we've discussed.

[B]

Most of them.

[C]

Yeah, most of them. Because, you know, and here's the thing. I'm sure that he wasn't behind that glass writing anything down. I just think he was getting drunk and watching what was going on and getting off.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. I. I'm not believing that. That this was all science.

[B]

So this is another. This is another example, Max, to your earlier point of. We were. We were shackled to our radio backgrounds.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because I need a picture of martinis. I am so hopped up on this ep. Like, we're going so fast.

[C]

It's going way. Yeah. There's no. There's no sense of breathing in it. There's no sense of dramatic pausing. But in our defense, we. We. We didn't know what we were doing when we started this. And we. So we sort of learned exponentially. We just went, oh, maybe we should try this, or maybe we should try that.

[B]

We for sure learned as we went. But it's interesting. And if you didn't know. If you were listening to this and didn't know that radio was the reason, like in radio, you can't have a pause. You can't have silence. You can't have dead air.

[C]

You can't. You can't.

[B]

And we do. The kind of radio we do. You know, it's like lifestyle. It's upbeat. We're like that. There's a really funny Saturday Night Live skit about morning radio. We're not that bad. But, you know, from an energy level, that's kind of what's expected of us in our day jobs.

[C]

Have some.

[B]

You gotta be like, yes. Oh, my God, B caller number five. And that doesn't really work here. And it took us a hot minute to learn that. Okay, maybe.

[C]

Maybe the first year,

[B]

for God's sake. Than the CIA was with Operation Midnight Climax. So what, if anything, did the CIA learn? Here it is. If you want to do to spill some secrets, you do not need to dose him with acid time to a headboard and rock every inch of his hallucinating world. He'll tell you whatever you want to know in the post coital afterglow while y' all share a smoke. For the love of. Of God. My great grandmother could have saved the feds millions if they'd only asked her. She knew that the mind boggles. So eventually they shut it all down, and it was a pretty good time for white while it lasted. The sex workers were making extra cash and the tripping johns were having, well, an experience unlike any other. Right. By 1965 though, the party was official, officially over for Operation Midnight Climax.

[C]

I'd say that it's a commitment experience like nothing ever. You're going to a brothel, you're hoping to get laid in step, you're dosed with lsd. Oh my God.

[B]

Look. You know, you can tell sometimes in just little throwaway moments in these episodes like that we really are a pair of cockeyed optimists who are looking for the silver lining.

[C]

We are.

[B]

Oh, well, this man was completely psychologically brutalized, but he got himself quite a handy. You know, like, we're over here, like, looking for something. The place that was hiding MK Ultra, that hung on till 1972, at least officially, because there are people out there who believe that MK ULTRA never really ended. Of course, there are also people out there who believe that most of Congress is made up of reptilian aliens and skin suits.

[C]

We still believe that.

[B]

I'm not here to argue with either group because I'm not a masochist. Well, I am. And George White? What became of him? Maybe it was all those pictures of martinis, but he died of cirrhosis of the liver ten years after.

[C]

Oh, what a shock.

[B]

I know, right? His widow and third wife eventually took his boxes of papers and files and donated them to Foothills Junior College in California, where the contents no doubt had a whole lot of people whispering wtf? To themselves. She didn't realize, I guess, what was contained in those boxes of papers. But it didn't take long for the government to catch on. And today, Georgia White's documents are archived at Stanford University. Operation Midnight Climax. George White perched on his portable toilet behind his two way mirror, the Tripping Johns. Straight up Austin Powers territory. It's so very crazy and so very true. It's your tax dollars at work, everybody. Wtf?

[C]

There was that swooshy thing. Do you hear it?

[B]

Next time on True Weird Stuff. My entire family lost more than 12 years max. I'm not sure that I could survive a second round of this. Let's never do this again.

[C]

Let's never do this again with any other episode. And to any of you who listen through this, thank you so much for listening to those episodes when we first released them them.

[B]

Because we just so sorry. Yeah, we just that trust me, our shame is great and unending and hopefully

[C]

I. I think that we're. We've gotten better with it and I think we're continuing to get better. So.

[B]

Well, you know, we want to be better. And that's. We're trying to get better. That was pretty painful. Well, I think we've learned, though. I think we've learned. And if I. I'm tempted to. I'm tempted to tell this story now again, differently, to add to our body of MK Ultra episodes. But the other thing was. So, okay, here's some inside baseball. When we started true weird stuff, people were like, a podcast shouldn't be longer than five minutes. And we were like, yeah, no, we, as. We're the kind of podcast listeners, we. We like to go deep. We'll binge. We want to listen to, like, a whole season. We want to listen to hour after hour of content. So we were like, yeah, no, we're not. We can't do. We don't even want to try to do a five minute. What can you accomplish in five minutes? Then it was, well, you don't need to have so much detail in your stories. Well, that's my hyper fixation. Yes, I do. I do need to have that much detail.

[C]

I think the first episode where we sort of hit it a little bit was the Bloody Benders, and you wrote it. So this was about a family that were killing people in, I don't know, the Midwest. Kansas, Kansas, Kansas, Midwest. People would come. They were sort of a family of serial killers. And you wrote it. This is what it would be like if you were about ready to be killed by them and went through the explanation of all that. And I think that was. That was when we started to realize that, you know, we might be able to tell the story in different ways.

[B]

And I just reject, Like, I just. To me, when. When. When someone tells me a story and there's no context, it leaves me with more questions than answers. Yeah, yeah. But then why did he do that? Well, why did. Why was he chosen for that job? Well, why did that person not confess? And so it's all the little details that are on kind of the outside of the story that tell it for me. And when I think about, like, we did an episode on. On Elmer McCurdy, that episode's called A Real Stiff. There's a Broadway show based on the guy called Dead Outlaw. Now, when we did that episode, one of the best details in that was not central to the story, but it ended up being our favorite thing. And I can't imagine leaving it out. And that is the Undertaker's Kids used to take Elmer McCurdy's heavily embalmed body, put roller skates on the feet and push them up and down the sidewalks of town for fun. You didn't need to know that to know Elmer McCurdy's story. But that is the exact kind of detail that is like time travel. Suddenly you're sucked back to a time and place. There's no tv, there's no radio. There are no phones. There are no playgrounds. These kids, when they're not at school or doing chores, have got to amuse themselves somehow. And this town looked the other way while children played with a corpse. To me, that's a detail worth having in a story that. So that is.

[C]

That's one of my favorite stories.

[B]

Oh, I love. I love Elmer McCurdy. So we have tried to be better. And you know what? We have to look forward to, Max, Just think, at some point, we'll listen to episodes we're making right now that we feel much better about.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And those will make us cringe and throw up.

[C]

They probably will.

[B]

So there's always that, y'. All. Thank you. Twas for listening to the show, even when it's unbearable, which.

[C]

And thanks to whoever named the people that listen Tweedos. We were calling them true weirdos then. I think it was. It was one of the listeners to this podcast that came up with the Tweedo thing.

[B]

Yeah, they said, no, we're Tweedos. You're very patient, Tweedos.

[C]

You are. You really are.

[B]

Let me apologize for how terrible things are. We're trying. We're trying to improve.

[C]

And thank you for listening. And based on recent episodes, but not the one that we just talked about, Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcast, because it helps us with getting discovered. Just a few minutes to do that. It really does help us try to

[B]

rate and review a more current episode, though.

[C]

Yeah, not this one where you go, oh, my God, what terrible production.

[B]

I'll stick a pin in it, because I. Although we told the Operation Midnight Climax story, there's more to it.

[C]

Oh, is there more to William?

[B]

Well, there's more him, because, remember, he was a journalist that got tapped. See, that was the other thing about the CIA in its early days, and especially in the Cold War MK Ultra days. They, you know, now, like, someone who works on this show may have relatives who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in some capacity, and they recruit on college campuses. And, you know, it's. It's a pretty specific skill set that. That pulls you into the CIA's orbit. But back in those early days, you remember when we did the episode on how magic mushrooms entered recreational drug culture. The CIA was in that one too. And they just, they, they were like, who do we know who, who, who is adjacent to this mushroom guy? Let's recruit that person and turn them into a CIA agent. Like, a lot of the folks who worked on these MK Ultra programs weren't, you know, government or espionage or top secret folks. They, they were somebody that could get the CIA closer to something they wanted. And so when you recruit like that, you know, when you bring in a journalist and tell him to run Operation Midnight Client Climax, you're not dealing with, you know, like a former lieutenant in the United States Navy. You're dealing with a guy who is going to piss into a bucket and drink martinis and watch people have sex, which is what happened.

[C]

It is.

[B]

So that's the other cool thing. Interesting little fun thing about that era in the CIA, because people hear these stories today with 20, 26 years and go, well, how could that person even get hired? Well, it was a different time.

[C]

It was.

[B]

Y', all, thank you. Thank you so much. We will endeavor to improve. We do appreciate your listening. We'll see you on the next episode of True Weird Stuff.

[C]

And if you listen to us on Apple podcast, hit the plus button in the top right corner. And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered, and we really appreciate it. If you subscribe, rate and review True

[B]

Weird Stuff, hit our website trueweirdstuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it, and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for [e-mail]

[C]

and follow true Weird Stuff on Instagram.

[B]

True Weird Stuff is in NOW Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Carrie Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Fur. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axelin. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and zane Nash.

[C]

Copyright 2026 Now Media.

[B]

All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.

[A]

You think a ticket for not wearing your seat belt is the worst that could happen until you crash? Click it or ticket paid for by Nitza.