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