The Nonsense Bazaar

Who among us hasn't had apocalyptic visions with a head full of mushrooms? Terrence sure did. This week we're looking at one of the pillars of the legendary psychedelic evangelist's cosmology: Timewave Zero. After Terrence McKenna and his brother Dennis had their noggins rocked by psilocybe cubensis mushrooms in Colombia, Terrence returned from the jungle with "some funny ideas," ideas around a self-similar fractal waveform, calculated through doing fancy wizard math on the I-Ching, the ancient Chinese divination system. According to McKenna the resulting waveform could be overlayed on top of human history and showed a steady, relentless march...

Who among us didn't have at least a touch of the mad scientist fantasy as a kid, right? Most of us, probably. And who among us failed to ever have anything come of it? Most of us, probably. Not David Hahn. David Hahn had himself a notion to build a fast breeder nuclear reactor in his mother's potting shed. And by golly, he did. By cobbling together stolen fire alarms, camping lanterns, and parts financed by selling stolen hubcaps, along with a whole lot of good old-fashioned bullshitting, David Hahn managed to build a small, functional, fast breeder nuclear...

Admit it, there aren't nearly enough creatures in your life. Weird creatures, cute creatures, mean creatures, there's a whole wide world of creatures out there. And today we're talking about three of them. And with a subtitle like "Water Monsters," you might be thinking we're talking mythical beasts, Nessie's or Champ's or the Kraken. Nope. We're talking real live creatures, but these dudes are most certainly monsters. In this episode, we talk about three animals each with attributes that most certainly qualify them as monsters (especially considering the etymological root of "monster" that Willow digs up), the electric eel...

Sometime during the 20th century, hot dogs became forever linked with an American pastime—Competitive eating—and with the most American holiday, the Fourth of July. One could argue that the business of “major league eating” is everything wrong with consumer capitalism. Because it is. However, today we’ll be taking time to celebrate the absurdity of it all by discovering how Nathan’s Fourth of July hot dog contest began and why it persists.

Keep The Nonsense Bazaar ad-free and away from debasement on a Coney Island boardwalk by joining our Patreon! You'll get access to our bonus se...

These days you can't shake a stick without running into some version of Gnostic Christianity. Why is that?  Gnosticism is absolutely wild and psychedelic, that plays a part. But did counterculture collectively decide one day that Gnosticism was pretty groovy? Well, apart from fragments of texts, writings about Gnosticism from the Catholic church's perspective (heresy!), and underground currents of mystic knowledge, mainstream culture didn't really know anything about what the Gnostics believed until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices, a jar of 13 papyrus scrolls containing 52 books from Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and other mystic traditions. The collection was discovered in E...

Sequoyah had to deal with some rough stuff this week so in lieu of chaining him to his keyboard and squeezing an episode out of him like an old citrus, we're unlocking an episode of our bonus series where we dive into the weird, disturbing, and hilarious world of internet tulpamancy. What's a tulpa? Well a tulpa (aka "tupper," apparently) is a thoughtform entity created by the power of belief that gains external agency and sentience. It's a concept from esoteric Tibetan Buddhism by way of Theosophy. But we're not talking about that side of it. We're talking about...

Who among us can honestly say we've never been tempted to fake our own deaths? You know, get away from it all, start over as fresh as a newborn babe. Today we'll be looking at individuals who were pronounced dead only to miraculously come back or, in the case of Kaycee Nicole Swenson, who never existed in the first place. From England's 'Canoe Man' to the ridiculously dressed Violet Charlesworth to Lil Tay, you'll learn why faking a death is not a very smart thing to do.

Pay us so we don't have to commit fraud and...

We had a weird day. So this week we're talking about some of the things we've been thinking about recently: nature, defiant optimism, Catholic UFO propaganda, how Willow thought Sequoyah went missing but he was actually just napping, and much more. The state of the union is strong... and ridiculous. 

Support The Nonsense Bazaar on Patreon and get access to our bonus series The Corkboard Bizarre and our patron Discord server starting at just $5 a month!

https://patreon.com/thenonsensebazaar

This week It’s a touch of the ol’ divine madness in Middle America as we take a look at the highly entertaining and very American art form of revival preaching. From the big top on the frontier to Aimee McPherson, the sexiest preacher who’s ever lived, to Oral Roberts’ saying God was going to kill him if he didn’t get eight million dollars, the tradition of the revival is a type of performance art in a league of its own. It also fills a pretty interesting role in culture. We also learn a whole lot about the very...

Finding yourself with one foot in reality and the other in dreamland is frightening, especially if you were alive in the 1940s when the solution was to remove all your memories by either drilling a hole in your head or hooking your brain up to the medical equivalent of a car battery. Today’s episode takes us back to that time to explore a book of case studies titled Oneirophrenia and how the author, a physician named Ladislas Meduna, sought treatment for these patients.

Know what keeps us engaged in the waking world? Cold hard cash. It al...