A podcast about conspiracies — both real and imagined. Every week, investigative journalist Joseph L. Flatley highlights stories that will make you reassess what you think you know about America.
In this bonus episode of my other podcast The Inner Empire, I read my recent article, “The Uses of Manson,” originally published in Failed State Update (https://lennyflatley.substack.com/p/the-uses-of-manson).
Charles Manson has been used to explain everything from the collapse of the 1960s counterculture to the supposed workings of a CIA mind-control program. But the stories people tell about Manson often reveal more about the storytellers than their subject. In that sense, his story gets at one of the central concerns of The Inner Empire: how beliefs are manufactured, circulated, and eventually mistaken for reality.
Be sure to subscribe to Failed State Update at: https://lennyflatley.substack.com/ (https://lennyflatley.substack.com/)
15 Aug 2026
Introducing The Inner Empire
From Joseph L. Flatley, creator of A Paranoid's History of the United States.
THE INNER EMPIRE is a podcast that pulls together a lot of what I’ve spent years reporting on and thinking about: cults, the occult, conspiracy culture, and the platforms that have inserted themselves directly into our daily life.
Here’s the simplest way I can put it: for five hundred years, people have known how to install a belief in someone’s mind: magicians did it with ritual and symbol, cults did it with repetition and isolation, ad men did it with images. What’s changed is that the same basic mechanism now runs automatically, every time you open an app, with nobody at the controls. This show is about tracing that mechanism across history and figuring out how it ended up running our lives without anyone deciding it should.
Enjoy this introduction. Be sure to subscribe so you can hear new episodes when are released.
Available wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to sign up for my newsletter, Failed State Update: https://lennyflatley.substack.com/ (https://lennyflatley.substack.com/)
9 Sept 2025
BONUS: Journalist Nick Schou on the legacy of Gary Webb
Journalist Nick Schou discusses Gary Webb's legacy and the CIA-Contra-Cocaine conspiracy in this interview.
Who has been a guest on A Paranoid's History of the United States
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Nick Schou
John Doe
Candace Owens
Seth Rogen
RAND Corporation expert
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
4.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 42 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
54
Social presence
90
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
Host of A Paranoid's History of the United States?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
