Badlands Media

Spellbreakers Ep. 170: First in Space - A History of the German Space Program, Part I - The Early Years

Forget the "well, actually" crowd. Yes, the Germans were central to the space race, and host Matt Trump is leaning all the way into it. In Part I of this new series, Matt traces humanity's first object to ever cross into outer space back to a test launch from Peenemunde on June 20, 1944, two weeks after D-Day, and the weapon it became, the V2. But the real story starts decades earlier with Jules Verne, whose 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon" predicted Apollo and Artemis with eerie accuracy, and inspired a young Transylvanian Saxon named Hermann Oberth to turn science fiction into the actual rocket equation. Matt also dives into the strange, tangled connections between Oberth, Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, and the silent film "Metropolis," and what that film really reveals about how the Nazis saw themselves. Next week, the warriors arrive: Wernher von Braun.

MAHA News [6.12] RFK Resigning Rumors, Ron Johnson on COVID Vax, Screwworm, Sunscreens

Jordan Sather and Nate Prince tackle a rumor mill moment first: Robert Malone claims RFK Jr. is set to resign as HHS Secretary in July, and HHS immediately fires back calling it fake news. Jordan, who has tracked Malone's track record before, is skeptical but keeping receipts. Then things get heavy fast. Senator Ron Johnson calls the COVID vaccine cover up a scandal bigger than Watergate, and a powerful clip from a Children's Health Defense event captures the moment people realized the system was lying to them. On a lighter note, RFK and Ben Greenfield talk biohacking basics: sunlight, breathwork, and why you do not need fifty bottles of skincare products. The FDA approves a new sunscreen ingredient after 25 years, and Jordan explains why most drugstore sunscreens are trash. Plus, ivermectin shows real promise in cancer treatment, screwworm creeps back into Texas, and a new study links ultra processed food to a 60 percent higher dementia risk. Coke and Hershey are apparently on board with MAHA now. Sure.

Geopolitics with Ghost Ep. 113: Iran Deal, Levin Meltdown & Gabbard's Bio Lab Bomb - 6/12/26

Episode 113 opens with Ghost's "cyclone" theory in full motion: Trump occupies both sides of the Iran narrative at once, threatening to bomb Tehran while announcing a deal is two or three days away. Ghost breaks down the Apache helicopter incident, Trump telling the Wall Street Journal it "wasn't a big deal," and the Oval Office gaggle where Trump casually reveals he has been working directly with Iran for months. Trump questions whether Netanyahu should even run for reelection while Netanyahu's own cabinet discusses fighting Iran alone in total isolation. The Strait of Hormuz bombshell follows: Trump claims the US secretly moved oil through it for months without Iran knowing, and a congressional hearing exposes the contradictions. Then comes the deal itself: 49 Tomahawks, a leaked 14-point memorandum, and Trump's furious denial of the leaked terms. Mark Levin spirals from celebrating bombing to demanding the text of the deal, while Israel confirms it is not party to the agreement. Erdogan and Netanyahu trade threats, and Ghost maps a possible Greece-Israel-Ukraine alliance against Turkey. The episode closes with Tulsi Gabbard's declassification of 120 US-funded bio labs across 30 countries.

The Daily Herold: 6/12/26 - Biolab Declass Confirmed, Iran Deal Whiplash & FISA Fails

Jon Herold comes in Friday with the most material he has had all week, starting with Tulsi Gabbard's first round of declassification on US-funded biolabs. The release is four pages confirming what Russia disclosed back in 2022 and what the community has been saying for years while getting called conspiracy theorists for it. Jon uses the moment for some honest self-reflection: if this is true now, was it not equally true four years ago, and what does that say about how these stories tend to play out? Buried in the documents is a repeated mention of Black and Veatch, which Jon traces directly to Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca investments in Metabiota, adding a fresh wrinkle to Hunter's current media tour. The Iran deal saga continues its now-familiar whiplash: bombing threats, then cancellation, then Trump calling the leaked terms completely fake while JD Vance pushes back on the reporting. FISA 702 failed in the House with real Republican defections that Mike Johnson conveniently left out of his floor speech. The FBI raided an Ohio voter registration group, and Jon's live dig into their tax filings turns up a board stacked with Jim Mattis, John Kerry, and Dave McCormick paying themselves enormous consulting fees. Also, Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire and Jon is still working on it.

Badlands Daily: 6/12/26 - Iran Deal On, Off, On Again, Hormuz Secretly Open All Along

CannCon and Chris Paul close out the week with a show that whiplashes in real time right alongside the news itself. Trump tells Fox News in the morning that bombing Iran will continue and be bigger than ever, then hours later announces on Truth Social that strikes are canceled and a memorandum of understanding has been signed with eleven countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In the Oval Office, Trump reveals the Strait of Hormuz has secretly been open the entire time, with hundreds of millions of barrels of oil quietly moved out at night while radar was jammed, directly undercutting the media narrative that blamed gas prices on a closed strait. Within the hour, Trump posts again accusing Iran of lying about the deal terms and says the war may be back on. Chris Paul makes the case that the discombobulation itself may be the point, an invitation to step back and simply observe rather than form beliefs from contradictory information. CannCon and Chris also dig into the Hill's reporting on a growing GOP civil war, with Massey, MTG, and Ro Khanna appearing together in ways that suggest either organic coalition building or a scripted third party operation. JD Vance heads to Europe to finalize the deal before a View appearance back home.

Badlands Story Hour Ep. 171: The Godfather II

Chris Paul and Burning Bright tackle Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 sequel The Godfather Part II, considered by many to be the greatest film of all time and certainly the greatest sequel. Starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, and John Cazale as the unforgettable Fredo, this is one of the rare second installments that completely flips the tone of the original and absolutely earns it.
The conversation circles the dual storylines of young Vito building an empire from immigrant nothing in New York and Michael unraveling the same empire from inside his Tahoe compound. Burning Bright argues that De Niro's Vito chases power because he saw what power does to people, while Michael only knows how to hold onto power he was handed, making him a pale shadow of his father even as he ascends to greater heights. They unpack the Fanucci scene as a perfect lesson in how abstract power collapses the moment someone calls the bluff, the Hyman Roth and Meyer Lansky parallel with Cuba in 1958 as a preview of what may be coming again, the Joker analog for Michael's endgame of just winning, and Kay's spite abortion as a stunning window into how openly anti family the 1970s really were.

SITREP Ep. 158: Trump's Iran Whiplash, Jay Clayton at DNI & The Psyop Targeting Normies

CannCon and Alpha Warrior unpack one of the most disorienting twenty four hour stretches of Trump's second term. At sunrise the President posts that the US will be hitting Iran very hard tonight and seizing Karg Island and Iran's oil markets the way it did with Venezuela. Four hours later he cancels the strikes after saying a deal was approved by Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Egypt. The guys replay the old Ghost in the Machine psyop videos to frame what they are watching and read straight from the Fifth Generation Warfare book on Target Audience analysis.
Alpha makes the central argument of the show. The roller coaster is not aimed at us. The red pilled are not the target. The normies are. Trump is balancing global power to a reset point while breaking decades of conditioning about who our allies and enemies are.
The second half digs into Jay Clayton being named the permanent DNI. UPenn, Sullivan and Cromwell, the firm of John Foster and Allen Dulles, Bear Stearns, Alibaba, the Tren de Aragua RICO case, and his CNBC appearance hours before the announcement.

Quite Frankly Ep. 55: Coma Dreams, Cotard's Syndrome & Booking a Better America 250 Concert

Frank and Jay reconvene a week after the Spring Fling to debrief the prime rib, the perfectly timed thunderstorm, and the InBody machine that exposed Frank's visceral fat number. Jay walks through why subcutaneous fat is largely cosmetic, why visceral fat is the real metabolic concern, and why intermittent fasting plus protein pacing beats simple caloric restriction.
Then the brain section gets weird. Listener emails arrive about Foreign Accent Syndrome: a 70 year old American who started speaking with a Norwegian accent before dying of a brain tumor, a Massachusetts stroke patient who woke up sounding like she was from Oslo. Frank pulls up Cotard's, the walking corpse syndrome where the sufferer is unshakably convinced they are dead and putrefying, and Capgras, where loved ones become identical imposters. A coma survivor writes in about six weeks of demons in his peripheral vision after a ten day medically induced blackout.
The second hour pivots to the America 250 concert collapse. Brett Michaels, Martina McBride, Milli Vanilli, and the Commodores pulled out, so Frank and Jay reopen the lines and book a better lineup live on air, decade by decade, with the help of callers.

Taking it Back Ep. 131: Carmelo Anthony Conviction, Random Attacks & The California Fraud Reveal

This is the penultimate Taking it Back, and Adel Nero and Zak Paine make the most of it with Frank Val on vacation. The bulk of the hour is a long unflinching breakdown of the Carmelo Anthony conviction for stabbing Austin Metcalf, with both guys arguing the disproportional response to a shoulder push has nothing to do with self defense and everything to do with a victim mentality that has been engineered into a generation of young people. They walk through the OJ Simpson juror parallels, the Jasmine Crockett "it was only a four inch blade" defense, and the new trend of black assailants in Tampa and Jacksonville assaulting random white strangers and claiming they were on the jury. From there, the conversation pivots to what the guys see as the cultural roots of the problem: fatherless homes, gangster glorification, and self imposed segregation in universities. They close on the California primary, where Spencer Pratt's voters are reportedly receiving mass signature rejection letters while Q's "watch California" drop hangs over the whole election fraud reveal everyone has been waiting for. Heavy hour, sharp commentary.

Badlands Book Club: The Creature From Jekyll Island - Chapter 5, Part 2 & Chapter 6

CannCon and Ashe in America wrap Chapter 5 and charge straight into Chapter 6 of G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island, and the bailout game goes fully global. The World Bank's humanitarian branding evaporates completely as Griffin walks through country after country: Tanzania, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, all self-sufficient before the loans arrived, all economically wrecked after. Chapter 6 then lays out the international bailout game in four clean rules and names it what it is: a mechanism to perpetuate debt forever until nations surrender their monetary sovereignty to a world central bank. The Council on Foreign Relations gets formally introduced as the brain trust behind all of it, with members on record calling for the deliberate erosion of American wealth, sovereignty, and living standards. NAFTA, GATT, the EU, and the WTO get exposed as architecture for world government, not trade. And a Reagan cabinet meeting confirms what everyone suspected: nobody believed the loans would ever be repaid. The only thing that mattered was protecting the banks.