George van Tassel was the original UFO contactee. He claimed to have been visited by aliens from Venus in 1953, which led to him hosting thousands of people at the annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention for almost 20 years. He channeled “Ashtar, ”a figure still popular in “Galactic Federation” conspiritualist circles today, and spent 25 years building a time machine based on telepathic communications with aliens. 

Julian unpacks the wild story of van Tassel’s airstrip, the Mojave Desert’s Giant Rock, and how the FBI may have been involved in his mysterious death and subsequent disappearance of his cellular rejuvenation equipment.

This is part of a series of free-standing episodes that excavates the history of pseudoscience and conspiracism beneath contemporary New Age spirituality.

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