Conspiracy Epistemology: An Interview With Max Good
Added 2025-03-20 21:00:07 +0000 UTCIn this episode we welcome another guest to the pod - filmmaker and researcher Max Good. You may know him from his truly excellent (and we mean really, truly excellent) documentary "The Assassination and Mrs. Paine." If you don't, you would be wise to watch the film ASAP, available wherever fine films are streaming. In his movie, Max presents some of the last-recorded interviews with key witnesses and researchers around the JFK assassination including Ruth and Michael Paine, the bizarrely well-connected couple who famously hosted Marina and Lee Oswald in their Irving, Texas home in the lead-up to November 22, 1963.
In this episode, we discuss Max's movie, what it was like confronting spooked-up witnesses like Ruth Paine and CIA-connected author Priscilla Johnson McMillan (author of the pro-Warren Commission 1977 book, "Marina and Lee"), and the importance of family history in deep politics. But that's not nearly all.
We spend much of the conversation situating our collective truth-telling work in the broader historical and political context in which we live. We talk about the right-wing appropriation of "conspiracy" discourse, the encroachment of technofascist oligarchs into the reality of political conspiracies, and of course Trump's promised JFK disclosure. We also benefit from Max's sincerity and generosity of spirit as he reminds us to meet people where they are, take a kind approach to potential allies out there in the world, and keep our eyes on the ultimate goal of a true people's movement to reclaim the mantle of democracy while shunning the billionaire class and their cynical faux-populism.
We hope it will be both an educational listen, and also one that balances off the bleak picture of our present moment with some hopeful thoughts for a more humane future
Comments
I'm reading "Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins about the assault on the Sukarno Communist and leftist supporters in early 1960's Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles names are prominent in the eventual massacre of over a million Communists, leftists, trade unionists, and anyone who was vaguely progressive. A great book, but with the warning: MAY ENGENDER NIGHTMARES IF YOU HAVE COMPASSION.
Harold Nicol
2025-03-29 17:53:46 +0000 UTCIt's wild: even J. Edgar Hoover was talking about Oswald impersonators early on. That's a great movie, too. I remember in the book JFK and the Unspeakable there's an anecdote about a family member of a security agent reporting that her insider relative said that movie was probably as close as you can get to true to fact.
Don and Dick
2025-03-28 15:21:25 +0000 UTCWatched the 1973 film "Executive Action" and back in 1964 when I was 15 years old, I knew something was rotten after Oswald was murdered before any testimony or investigation. But I hadn't considered an Oswald look alike in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
Harold Nicol
2025-03-22 19:15:40 +0000 UTC
