Sean Peter | AntiWarhol, Culture Creation, & The Pop Art Syndicate

00:01 The Higher Side Chats doesn't start with underwear ads or guilt-tripping donation pleas, nor would I ever commit the cardinal sin of podcasting and interrupt the flow mid show to shill you an unrelated sponsor. But the free first hour episodes do have to start with a little PSA before we get into it to ever so quickly remind slash inform listeners both old slash new that you're about to get into what I'm sure is a great first hour of high level interview but that means you're missing half the show If you like what we do around here, get yourself a THC Plus membership and listen to the full two hour interviews as they were really designed to be and I know that you would enjoy them most. Give a little and actually get more in return of the thing your actually engaging with

00:45 5 episodes every month, plus forum access, community comments, downloads to all the closing cover songs a Plus Show RSS feed to use with any private RSS feed supported app and the occasional joint session bonus shows which include messages you might leave me about your own theories experiences or otherworldly encounters at TheHigherSideChats.com slash voicemail If you're not quite sure, if you just want to feel us out or if you're only here for this particular episode. No worries! New first-time subscribers get a 7 day free trial when you sign up at thehiresidechats.com Cancel any time Try it out because its so important to feed the things that you want to grow and starve the things that gotta go And with that said lets get on with it already huh?

01:37 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man society would recover from its troubled times. From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a- I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats Here we go Hireside Chatters, another beautiful day in the neighborhood. From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and as we all dive down various rabbit holes and explore the depth to which The Capstone Cabal has control over nearly everything many of us eventually stumble over some sector of entertainment or the arts that just seems a little fishy

02:24 Maybe it's the high number of 60s counterculture rock stars that come from military intelligence families. Or the simple fact that any Hollywood film that depicts the US Military must be signed off on by the US Military, or the news that politicians and elite families are making multi-billion dollar investments in new Netflix content. It seems when we expand these themes out across the wider entertainment industry and throughout the ages It starts to look like the notion that anyone can work hard, develop their talent and rise to the top is little more than a fantasy told to aspiring artists and naive children. The reality seems to be that very little is left up to chance, whether it's early pulp writers or the latest Hollywood blockbuster, the stories and themes in the art we're presented with have often been crafted for more than just entertainment by more than just the so-called creator

03:15 Well, over the years we've talked about old writers guilds full of household names that didn't advertise those connections. Musicians with backgrounds that don't really match the lore around them. Directors that seem to have deeper reasons for the subject matter they cover and many forms of fabricated art and cultural figures But we've never talked about Andy Warhol. Though his impact and the money involved was not arbitrary, and after reading the book of today's guest Sean Peter it doesn't seem too organic either! The book is called Anti-Warhol and it's a nonfiction deconstruction of the Andy Warhol myth, and details the methods by which Warhol's backers created and promoted warholism. It's a wild ride that certainly showed me a world in a chapter of history that I didn't know much about so let's do this thing! The anti-warhole author art underworld revealer and connector of many dots Sean Maman welcome to the higher side

04:10 Thank you, Greg. That was great! I appreciate it. Oh well thank you for doing this i've certainly learned that there's a lot of shady stuff going on in the art world and Warhol himself always seemed like less than a genuine figure to me but i never really took the time to dive into the level that you do in the book and it's just more icing on the culture creation cake And even your own entry point into this seems a little unexpected. Tell the people how this investigation into Andy Warhol of all people unfolded? Well, I was doing a book on women and that was researching feminism

04:53 And I came across a woman named Valerie Solanas. And, I didn't realize that she was an assassin! She had attempted to kill Warhol the day before RFK was killed. She shot Warhol and at first I thought it might be fake. The deeper I researched into her handler And just kind of went from there. I said if he was important enough that they wanted to kill him, what else was there that I didn't know? Because I had never really given the man much thought. I had seen him once in a nightclub when I was in New York but I had never really... He was on my list of you know 150 celebrities that I've seen in my life so it wasn't

05:46 I had never really given him much thought and I couldn't believe what I found. It took me 17 months right on yeah it seemed like a dense study for the hard to impress Sean Peter although the book is quite impressive and when it comes to Valerie Solanas shooting an artist seems like a strange thing to do tell us a little more about her and why they say she would uh shoot Andy Warhol Yeah, Valerie Solanas her big thing was the Society for the Cutting Up of Men called SCUM. So she was a hardcore feminist who believed that the ideal world of the future would be 99% women and 1% men as playthings and she hated all men you know in theory at least because she did have boyfriends

06:46 So she was in a Warhol movie, around 65-67 and she gave him a copy of her play which was called Up Your Ass. And Warhol lost it, his team lost it somewhere in the office. And she was supposedly so upset about that that she killed him. She tried to kill him. Right and that's the conventional motivation but It seems like you suggest there could be a deeper motivation or even an MKUltra style brain hacking could be involved? Right! There was a guy

07:28 who has a military background, you know civil air patrol that kind of thing and the family name for this fellow is the name of a company in Australia that sells some military equipment. So that was kind of my clue that The Handler... This guy bailed her out of jail after the shooting he bailed her out for ten thousand dollars which in today's money And even Valerie Solanas said, there's something wrong with him and stay away from me and you're controlling me. She was maybe a little bit crazy she thought that he had put a tracking device in her uterus so... You know there was just something funny about it something fishy about it

08:24 Right, right. And I do have the guy's name here. Do you not like it to be said in interviews? I don't think we need to say it We could say it but he since he still alive and when I emailed him for comment He didn't reply Let's keep it let's not say it okay. We can call him Jeff though right yeah Jeff is all right Yeah, Jeff sir all right Well yes and the book apparently she had said that he might be part of some quote mafia or power click, and you even ask the question why haven't any of the warhol or salon is biographers. Looked into this because this is a odd chapter of the story and I also had this quote here where you mentioned that salon us

09:15 took a 1968 California trip and visited Jeff, and most likely spent some time at this particular home that he lived at that was previously owned by a Bohemian Club member. And that's interesting! Then of course the family company sells military equipment to police departments in Australia... These are the kind of people who have connections and the know-how to create Manchurian candidate MKUltra controlled assassins, as weird as that sounds. And a lot of that seemed to peak in the 60s. Right? When she was in Warhol's office with the gun she said I have to do this which I think was a really strange thing to say. She said I have to do this

10:08 Yes, that's definitely strange. And those are the little things that a lot of these people say but the media doesn't pick up on it We might read it on some obscure blog But it never reaches the mainstream and then they get kind of tucked away and we just don't hear these things Yeah It was weird and he lived in San Francisco In a neighborhood where you could take a five-minute car ride and be on the Presidio And that was the MKUltra training ground in the 60s, the Presidio Army Base. Yes another important point how close that was! Yeah it's a supposition but it certainly is very very possible right and I can understand how

10:51 Digging into this led you down a vast warhol rabbit hole from the events prior to the events after and his whole life and what still goes on today which hopefully will get into all of it but I also want to point out that The Factory, which was his studio. That was what they called it It's address was 33 Union Square and so often we see these weird number codes. I mean, Jared Kushner bought a building at 666 Fifth Avenue or something like that? Greg, Greg! Was that in my book? 33 Union... Yeah it is That's crazy. Well, these number codes in general they do seem to be little winks to the Insiders Club and I'm sure you've noticed this before. Well, I didn't even...I'm shocked! There were so many details that one flew by me. Yeah your book is quite dense. 33 Union Square. Unbelievable Yes So to back it up a little bit

11:54 If I was listening to this interview cold, like a lot of people probably are. I would need a refresher on even the mainstream story of Andy Warhol or the Warhol myth as we might call it What are the cliff notes to his life and his works that people should know about before we get into the weeds? Right! The mainstream story... Andy Warhol grew up with just his mother and two brothers in Pittsburgh and he went to Carnegie Mellon Art School, where he came out as gay. He moved to New York when he was about 23 in the early 1950s and he got very lucky the daughter of the Time Life people—the people who started Life Magazine—the Germans who started Life Magazine under Henry Luce with Henry Luce's money hired him

12:53 illustrate advertisements. So he was reasonably talented, he was able to copy the style of a guy called Ben Shahn an artist called Ben Shahn and Ben Shahn did something called blooded line and he was accused of being a communist so during the 1952 CBS convention He had done all their artwork and he was banned So Andy Warhol was kind of the alternate choice. He had the same style as Ben Shahn, who was very popular but had been discredited as a communist with the McCarthy era so that's how Andy Warhol kind of got his start. So we fast forward to the early 60s and he comes out with The Campbell Soup which is an idea that he got from someone else

13:53 basically manually photoshop Polaroids and pictures out of magazines. So he would copy Marilyn Monroe's publicity picture, and colorize it or who else did he do? Campbell Soup, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy So he would do all these famous stars and he became popular as a pop artist. When people think of pop art, which was also manufactured they think of Andy Warhol He had a music band called The Velvet Underground and in the 70s he was shooting celebrities And then he died in 1987 They built a museum for him

14:46 And during the 2000s and up to 2019, which is the last numbers that I have. He was the number one exhibited artist in the world for the last 20 years or so he would have about 200 exhibitions a year and most people just think of Campbell Soup. Campbell Soup can when they think of Andy Warhol Right. Well, that is some great background and so people know the kind of money we're talking about I've heard you say that he was worth close to a billion dollars when he died and that's just him That's not even counting all the money that flowed through his little operation And the people who got rich being a part of it right? He had a billion dollars worth of art When he died in 1987, he was about 57 years old and

15:40 He had a billion dollars worth of art in his own storage. Wow! Yeah, and basically the reason he had all that money was because he didn't just make one picture of Campbell's Soup or one picture Marilyn Monroe. He would copy them use screen printing so you would make 100 or 200 300 copies of Muhammad Ali's picture They were like posters. Right, he wasn't even a painter or any kind of thing like that he just copied posters and colorized them it seems like not that difficult to think to do Yeah, he would take a Polaroid blow it up and then have his workers colorize it

16:31 And let's talk about pop art as a movement and a term because someone might be thinking, why do this? Why would the big machine get this puppet artist to come onto the scene and fabricate all this art and manufacture this pop art movement. What would be the purpose of it all? Why would the culture shapers focus in on this genre, in this space, in the arts? Talk to us about your thoughts on the why behind all this. Well, it's right there in the language, pop art. What does it mean to pop something

17:10 It means to break it. So pop art was, it was a way of saying the real artist someone who paints someone who creates from their own imagination that wasn't cool anymore. It was cool to just copy someone else's work and not really care and just do like a half-ass job that became cool That had to be one of the reasons they pushed it right right it's like he was being rewarded for creating art with no depth and no purpose no creativity kind of.

17:56 a genre of art that's empty of any meaning or, probably more importantly political statement. Art often speaks truth to power or has some raw truth contained in it but pop-art is just nothing which is of course what the elite want It doesn't play to the emotions, it doesn't motivate someone to rebel and by elevating Warhol especially during this time period they could drown out the real, potentially powerful art. You think that's kind of the motivation? There were a lot of artists that literally did get shunted aside. Ben Shahn was one of them. He seemed like a pretty sincere and good guy. There were other artists—Ed Reinhardt, Eugen Fahlstrom

18:49 Oydvind Falstrom was a contemporary of Warhol who was supposed to be in a group show with him and he got banned because his art was too meaningful. It was an event for making art out of cash, the connections were so strong They actually used the paper from the factory in the Bronx, New York City that made money. That printed the money not just for the United States but printed the money for Mexico, Brazil, Cuba and several other countries so they brought the paper and the artists paid imitation dollar bills and Warhol's was

19:42 half-assed of all of them. He just kind of drew a one and a dollar, and that was it—and the letters won. You know, O N E. And Oisín Fallström's money which was censored was more political. It had a picture of Nixon, and it was antiwar and kind of antigovernment, and they kicked Fallström out of the show So that was kind of like a classic example of, that was tangible example. Right? Yeah. Exhibit A for the exact point that we're presenting to people which is like control the culture control the alternative culture and the art scene and you can control a lot of people's passion or quell their passion for anything important.

20:33 Yeah, and years later the official publications—the official art publications actually even stated Oisín Fallström would have been more successful if he had just played along with the guys like Warhol or the not-so significant political messengers. If you had just stayed away from that and been more you know, meaningless I guess. Right right and going back to Life and Time magazines you do talk about them in the book and how from the ground up they seem to be intelligence connected and there were major players that were building these to serve a purpose most likely and of course Time and Life

21:22 are still influential today, at least Time is. You got the Times Person of the Year every year that's kind of like giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize you just give them the accolade and show that they're meaningful and tell all the sheeple hey this guy made an impact this year and obviously they get to decide who that is but talk to us about the background of Life & Time Magazine and just how full of these kinds of people it is and if course if they're the ones who signed off on Warhol in the beginning, that also makes a lot of sense. Henry Luce was in Skull and Bones if I'm not mistaken? A lot of these guys were Yale Harvard has a lot to do with the culture control so Luce and a guy named Haddon they were like Yale and Harvard buddies they started the magazine with oil money

22:21 the Harkness family. They started the magazine with oil money in the 1920s and Tina Fredericks was the woman who was the daughter of Kurt Safranski, who came over from Germany with a group of guys and managed to convince Henry Luce to do a picture news magazine. And for many years they had a lot of influence I can go into Gloria Steinem wrote for Life Magazine. Hold on, let me light it up somehow. Yeah so Life magazine was kind of like the CNN or the mainstream news today, the MSNBC and the CNN of today, the largest circulation magazine in America

23:22 It was all Rockefeller money and purely establishment. They gave Warhol an article, I think it was 1957 they gave him a feature of paintings of shoes He was making a lot of money drawing shoes in the 50's he was making $100 dollars per shoe so he pulled in the equivalent of half million dollars a year today He was drawing shoes. And the guy who hired him to draw the shoes was a guy named Peter Pizarro, and he was involved with the US State Department and putting American magazines into Russia—that's also interesting! America and Russia were supposed to be these great enemies

24:14 But they had an exchange program in the 50s where the Russians had a magazine in America and America had a magazine in Russia. And the guy who was in charge of that was the man who hired Warhol to do The Shoes. Right on, and you also mention Fred Hughes as his handler slash business manager. How did they get connected? Warhol's first handler was a guy named Gelsauer, who was also a Yale Harvard fellow. And he ended up helping a family called the Demeniles who were huge oil family, Schlumberger and Demenile. And they were kind of Fred Hughes' mentor during the 60s and they handed him off to Warhol around 1967

25:18 They had a party at Philip Johnson, famous architect kind of pet architect of the Museum of Modern Art in Rockefeller. And they handed Hughes off to him and Fred Hughes was the heir when Warhol died. Fred Hughes was in charge of the foundation and eventually it took two or three years for Fred Hughes he lost control of the foundation and we can go into that as well.

25:55 Yes, I definitely want to get to the foundation chapter of the story because it is a lot of money and a lot of corruption. But backing it up to Warhol's life at the beginning of the book you have an anonymous writer who wrote the preface entitled The Andy Warhol Suicide Club. And he talks about maybe eight to ten instances or so. It makes me think Andy Warhol was a member of the Clinton family with all his death but But this gets pretty strange, doesn't it? Talk to us about the Andy Warhol Suicide Club. Right one of Warhol's favorite artworks is something called Electric Chair and it's just a photograph of the electric chair he just kind of scratched at a little bit and it became a famous work of his. It's a picture of the chair that the Rosenbergs

26:48 who were also accused of being communist spies. The Rosenbergs were executed in that chair in the early 50's and, sorry Greg it's four in the morning I lost my train of thought what did you? No worries we weren't talking about the large degree of suicides that Warhol seemed to be surrounded by. Okay okay take two yeah the preface to the book was written by a fellow who wanted to remain anonymous because he had written a mainstream biography of Andy Warhol and actually told me, I hate the guy and I never want to talk about him again. Here's the preface don't contact me anymore." It's like i'm through with him The tragic thing was that Andy Warhol seemed to have almost a kind of fetish for death so people around him would kill themselves

27:47 There was a woman named Edie, and she was in some of his movies. And she killed herself and afterwards Warhol would say I wish I had seen it. I wish I had watched it. And his early movies were these grainy S&M kind of films He was one of the first people to mainstream porn as far as the culture goes. Warhol kinda made porn was the first one to make it kind of okay or socially acceptable on a very introductory level. But he was into, you know, S&M and dark stuff. Yeah it reminds me of stories I've heard before that are similar

28:38 police officers or people tasked with looking at really, really dark imagery in law enforcement. They tend to have higher suicide rates and it just made me think about the fact that Warhol is into all this stuff had several lovers a couple of colleagues and even a researcher commit suicide and it's like, what is going on around this guy? Is it a weird dark energy that sucks people in or are they getting to this level where they're seeing really dark depressing super soul crushing imagery and films that send them over the edge. I think we... Here we are in the 21st century were kind of used to it

29:26 But in the early 60s, I think we're coming out of a... It's coming out of somewhat more innocent time. At least for the people who weren't involved in World War II. We're kind of an innocent, more wholesome environment and if people see The Dark Side at that time it must have had a much stronger frightening impact on people Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that there's definitely something in there that is probably part of why they're all these deaths around him and You also write about Andrew Crispo who you say was Warhols criminal art world colleague and He even has a story where it seems like he was accused of murder The murder weapon was found in Crispos Art Gallery But this other guy

30:23 he was palling around with actually said he pulled the trigger and help to set the body on fire but it says you only did it because chris bowe told him do it in a guy spent three decades in prison and chris bowe didn't spend any time in prison because his lawyer was roy cone who is a name we have heard many times around here But apparently the prosecutor in the case of this murder had his own as you say sadomasochistic sex life secrets and was blackmailed by Roy Cohn. Another thing we've heard many times that is how Roy Cohn had his success, he would find the dirt on people and use that against them. And it's just crazy that we see this Andrew Crispo guy being

31:11 a client of Roy Cohn, being involved in a murder and being apparently good buddies with Warhol and partner in crime. In a lot of cases. Yeah. Crispo would advertise in Warhol's magazine they would go to parties together Warhol would send his colleagues there for art projects. He knew the guy, they were friends, they were in the same circle. Crispo's a very interesting character. His best customer was a man named Theissen, German named Theissen. That family goes all the way back to Nazi era and they were money laundering and tax cheating

31:58 all through the, you know, the 70s and 80s. And Crispo he did do I'll correct you they didn't get him on murder but they got him on tax evasion so he did do three years in the 80s and when he came out of jail his lover had gotten Crispo's Southampton mansion into Architectural Digest magazine the same month that Crispo got out of jail. So you would think that was a nice present, you know? Here Andrew I've got our house into architectural digests isn't that nice but what happened was the house burned down. Crispo more than likely hired someone to burn the house down

32:48 to collect the insurance money and having the article in Architectural Digest helped him get a higher payout from the insurance company. And his first lawyer didn't ask for enough money So he hired another lawyer and he got $10 million, if I remember. And the lawyer who didn't get enough money at all died a year or two later dead. Crispo went out and bought another house, another mansion in Charleston South Carolina few years later. And Crispo became bankrupt and they had to sell the house and they sold it to The Thorntons

33:31 The Thornton family is another connected family, Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor Company. And it's just unbelievable the amount of criminality involved. Yes! on the subject of Warhol's dark art. I just happen to have this note taken down from your book, but you say on November 25th 2009 in the U S district court of the Eastern district of Pennsylvania one family sued The Warhol Foundation and warholes protege Paul Morrissey for filming their father then 14 year old Richard Tolek

34:13 smoking pot and self-mutilating on camera for another film that Warhol had made in 1964 called All Aboard to Dreamland. All Aboard to Dreamland? All aboard the dream land choo choo maybe Yeah, all aboard the Dreamland choo-choo train. All aboooard! Yeah I mean that's pretty crazy. All aboard the insanity train you know? Right right So crazy let's give that 14 year old some pot and film it You know yeah and whatever self mutilating means cutting himself i assume Oh my god yeah Probably encouraged to do so

34:57 More than likely. Yeah, Warhol had wished that Edie had killed herself on camera while he was filming it He actually had expressed that at some point It's just incredible the amount of damage That one group could do Yes and when I was trying to think of analogues or other figures that maybe fit this Warhol archetype One that came to mind is hunter s thompson now i actually used to really like hunter s thompson and think he was this. Counterculture rebel that was just really some kind of alternative idol of mine in high school and early college but the older i've gotten the more unlike this guy actually quite a scumbag listen to his interviews and things you said, add.

35:51 Yeah, he's maybe written some things that seemed like raw truth to me at the time but then you learn that one of the accusers in the Franklin scandal said that allegedly it was Hunter S. Thompson who filmed some snuff porn, and you hear these other stories like when the Manson murders happened apparently they found boxes of tapes and celebrity homemade porn in Roman Polanski's house, and then of course Roman Polanski is a pedophile who doesn't get charged and escapes out of the country. It just seems like in the milieu of Hollywood and military intelligence and skull and bones

36:30 These figures we might know they lead double lives and sometimes a guy like warhol or a guy like hunter s thompson is brought into the degree that they start using their talents or abilities for camera work or whatever it is our roman plans keys directorial abilities for this dark underground. sex tape culture that's probably mostly used for blackmail, but I don't know it just seemed like Warhol and Hunter S Thompson there's a lot of similarities to the shape of their careers and the way they were brought into the system and positioned as these counterculture icons that one should look up to if you're into the punk rock lifestyle. And

37:18 you know, when you dig deeper they probably were involved in some very dark things. Probably the darkest of things. Yeah getting back to how Warhol was positioned his gallery owner was Leo Castelli who was in the OSS which was the British created precursor to the CIA and there's so many characters who were his advisors, who were also in this milieu. Warhol was commissioned just before the attempted assassination... Warhol was commissioned by a guy named Racklen to do kind of the official version photograph montage of the JFK assassination, the official story and it's just bizarre. Warhol had also done portraits of Nelson Rockefeller

38:22 and Nelson Rockefeller's wife. And it's just, so he was like the core painter for these dark forces and you're right there's something going on there was the party of the century I mean we don't see on the surf... If I asked most people, what do you think of Warhol? They're just gonna say soup cans or he ate a Whopper during the Super Bowl. And they're not gonna understand what's just below the surface if you just dig a little deeper and say who were the catalysts, who were the managers? And that's something you could do with any celebrity

39:06 It couldn't hurt to figure out who was their manager, who gave them their first break. How did it happen? Right there always seems to be a deeper story there So with Hunter Thompson somebody must have brought him in Somebody must have... What do they say with skull and bones you know he was tapped Somebody must've tapped him on the shoulder I mean, we've all gotten these opportunities. Haven't we Greg? Have you ever been tapped? No! Has somebody ever encouraged you to go over to the dark side? That would be a compelling story if it were true but unfortunately it's just me adjoining the microphone doing this thing Yeah yeah well...I've turned down one or two taps myself and

39:58 It's very subtle and nobody would ever know. Nobody would ever know that that's how it started." Hmm. I've heard you say that in a previous interview, that of course anyone who has a little bit of talent and then also will lie down with the dog can make it once you sign off to play in the game and You have said in that interview you were invited to lie down with the dog We'll use the tap analogy here But what is that about? So I told that story okay, well you believe it's already I don't again I don't listen to my own Well, I'm sure people would like to know just a little more context for that. What can you tell them about potentially getting a tab? Well, you know, for many years I was a photographer and one of my clients or one of my models was connected politically in a very large city in California

40:58 the daughter of a prominent mayor family, or prominent politician. So I shot her she was already close to you know 50 years old and she invited me to our house a few weeks later and i just had a really funny feeling like that I should leave And I feel like that was just a thing where if i had stayed and played along maybe, I would have gotten the chance to photograph more celebrities and be closer into that dark world. It felt to me like instead of rising, I would actually be taking one step down. You know what i mean? So on the surface it would look like I was taking steps upward but in real life I would be taking steps downward

41:50 Right on. Yeah, it's kind of a paradox Well it is quite interesting I also heard you say in previous interview that apparently you have a friend who was in the upper crust or the Illuminati to use the catch-all term The term that you use I don't know if this is the same model You work with or more of a friend who said was in the alumni This was a good friend A really good friend and I learned a lot Yeah, no. A really good friend who we were friends for a long time and the main point was that she would suffer it wasn't an enjoy I don't think being in the Illuminati is actually a very enjoyable experience for most people with even a shred of conscience if you have a conscience it's very difficult but some people are actually born into Illuminati families

42:47 So, they kind of put into the program at a young age. She told me that her niece was placed in front of a mirror at two years old to do personality splitting. I just couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. Oh she also told me—I'll reveal for the first time—she told me there was a tunnel between Berkeley and Stanford under the San Francisco Bay, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah! So it's not easy. It's not an easy life. Right One of her family members was a psychic and was advising the wealthy and powerful in New York on different things so these are things that most people don't quite grasp the enormity of darkness

43:45 Right, and I like getting more confirmation that elite families consult magic practitioners and occultists and fortune tellers. They certainly do! Yeah they do. They do. Wow, while we're on this little segment about your personal anecdotes...I've also heard you say that you've been to the Bohemian Club and played the Bohemian Club golf course? Now THAT'S interesting Yeah, I got into golf for a few years and I played at the Northwoods Golf Course which is adjacent to the Bohemian Grove. I'd been to the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. I've been inside and seen the huge maybe 15-foot 10 foot owl statue that they have inside the Bohemian Club in San Francisco

44:40 But I played the Northwood Golf Course, and it has little owl statues at every hole. And Northwoods was the name of the operation—Operation Northwoods—which was going to shoot down an airliner and blame it on the Cubans in order to start a war with Castro and take back the casinos So I figure they must have cooked up the plan on the golf course while they were playing golf. Right, man that seems like an exclusive place to be maybe not the course itself but the club for sure how'd you gain access there? Well in San Francisco that's interesting because these are just normal places of doing business by day so by day

45:31 I was just doing normal business. When i was in the club, I was there for a half hour or an hour doing my job and just observing the photographs on the wall. And the golf course is an open course So I played. I'm sure when the celebrities play or the power brokers play, they probably rent the whole course and it's closed to the public for that period of time. I was also in Opus One which is a winery owned by the Rothschild family in

46:10 the wine country of San Francisco. And when I was there, I also got a creepy feeling you know it's an open winery you know you can go from one winery to another have a glass of wine relax it's a nice day with the family and that's why I was up there It was just kind of like a family weekend excursion let's go to the wine country this weekend but when I was there The Opus One Winery is like a ziggurat like a pyramid a lower basement and you could just feel that there's a Saturday night or Sunday night when they close that thing off and they do their rituals. It just had that bad feeling. Oh man! You can kind of sense it

46:57 Wow, it seems like we could just do an interview on your little anecdotes from life. Seems like you've picked up on quite a few little interesting details along the way? Yeah so we stole in our little bit of rebellion, we drank the wine usually the wine was free at many of the wineries they would just kind of have a tasting and it would be free but at the Opus One Winery It was $10 for a glass, so we splurged and we drank the wine and kept the glasses. So for a couple of years I had Opus 1. I drank my wine out of Opus 1 glasses."

47:38 That'll show them. Yeah, yeah I kept the glass Well before we get out of this first hour I want to make sure that this gets said because the art world itself as a whole is a hotbed for laundering and Embezzlement and for people who don't know I've been told that the way it works is kind of like this you have elite family Rockefeller type who hire some obscure artists to do some work then they get their rich, elite art appraiser buddy to certify that the art is actually worth $300,000 or whatever and then they quote unquote

48:20 donate it to a museum. Also, people probably playing on the same golf course if you know what I mean and then they're able to write that off and really it's money creation out of nothing. And then people go, people pay tickets to get into the art museum and they look at this so-called art that's just like either one line or just something stupid, like a paint bucket splattered on there. And they say I don't get it! I feel like I could have painted that and then the culture says well you just don't get it this is not for the simple blue collar worker to understand this is art and really it is just a big giant scheme to create money out of nothing

49:05 and launder, and dodge taxes. And it's a whole ecosystem that seems to be doing this." Would you say that's fair? Yeah! And the people that are complicit in this I sometimes wonder how aware they are of their complicity on the academic side we can talk about Warhol's Brillo Box there was an art critic named Danto who wrote this whole long piece in the early 60s about how it's a Brillo box, but no it's art. And you have to really think and if you can't see it as art then there is something wrong with you or your not academically high enough to understand

49:58 that this is art. And I wonder if those reviewers, I think some of them are complicit and they are paid off and they do know that they're creating value out of nothing for the investors who've been wink-winked this is the artist we're going to promote You know, that was really the case with Warhol. They really were winking all over the place that this guy's a sure thing and Miles Mathis I'll give him credit for this he wrote a decent article about how art is basically used for Monday laundering as chits

50:44 So the art on the wall that we see is really just in the eyes of the elite. It's just a casino chip, it's just a shit symbolic of money and they do trade it using money laundering so when when a silly painting goes for 30 million dollars that's really a way transferring money between parties for other things, for nefarious underground things whether it's human trafficking or drugs or weapons. Or things that can't be placed on the books. So it is kind of a receipt so its not art, It's a receipt for means of exchange for the underground elite economy

51:36 I like it. Yeah, and you would have to assume that the art houses the big art houses that we've heard of before They have to be somewhat in on it And I think even in your book you allude to the fact that some of the bidding might be not so genuine Yeah, I mentioned that one of the guys who ran Sotheby's which is one of the top two or three auction houses for art he actually did some prison time and He did nine months in jail. He didn't get away with it completely, so yeah they're totally in on it one of the Warhol kind of guiders was a fellow named Richardson. Warhol photographed him gave them Polaroid and all that but Richardson had been ahead of Christie's in the 70s and yeah they're definitely in on

52:35 The scam has run its course. Enough of us have become aware of it, and now what they're doing with NFTs is so obviously fake maybe they really are not even trying to hide it anymore I mean come on It's a JPEG from what I can gather Right So the solution Greg, I do want to leave a solution Sure is artists need to just make their art, be happy. Don't plan on becoming a millionaire doing this don't plan on being in a big show or going to you know Art Basel in Switzerland and finding a gallery that's not the measure of success it's really just

53:26 Do it to please yourself and your friends and your family. Find a cafe that's looking for art on the wall, put it up there and have a little party with some friends or maybe some people you can invite. And just appreciate it on a smaller scale. Yeah! Stay independent. Don't feel less... You should feel worthy just as an artist and creator You don't need the validation of fame and fortune. It's an empty bag, as Ted Turner once said about fame. It's an empty bag pretty much so just make the art be happy. A friend of mine sent me some art they're starting to work on this new style and it's just fun! It's just nice

54:25 You know, just do it for fun. Right? Hang it on the wall in your own space, your own house, you're own apartment. And the art industry does not have to sign off on you for you to make a living doing what you want to do I mean... If you have a real talent for something like art, you basically have a money printer if you use it correctly. And not necessarily in the laundering and embezzlement way but you can create something of value out of nothing and exchange it for money! That's kind of a beautiful thing that's kinda magical act in a sense if you have a talent We should all work on our talents and get outside of the rat race because the old 9 to 5 is not really

55:06 helping anybody in this Rothschild Rockefeller debt-based system a rule. And you can even get out of the money system and trade your art for eggs or potatoes or plants, or somebody can fix your plumbing in exchange for painting? It's true It's true. Well, man I could talk to you all day you know a lot about a lot and this Warhol book seems to be just one of the things that you've dug into to a pretty impressive degree but i also know you had a little trouble with your online store so as we're closing it out where can people get this book if they're interested? Yeah why don't they just google or yandex

55:57 Yeah, they can just search for anti-war haul. My site will come up and if they want to email me and they've listened to this show I'll send them the book for free right now Oh man what an offer Yes people want...I feel like you know What is it walk the walk? You know yeah Walk The Talk so if people read the book they like it If they want to donate, then they can send me an email later and we'll figure out a way to do a donation. Maybe in six months or a year when I've got another book, I'll send an email to the folks who have gotten the first one and ask them if they want the second one. Okay! They won't email all of the time. And what's the email that should use to get in contact with you? It's better if they just go to...

56:51 This one will always be up there, we hope. I don't think i'm going to get banned but just search for Auntie Warhol Sean Peter and my site will come up and they can go to the site. The one page is very simple easy to load get the book from there, send me an email from there. Okay so you got your email up on that page? Yeah that's the best way and I'll send it for free and people can read it if they like it, they can get back in touch with me and donate Right on well that is certainly appreciated! I will say thanks on behalf of all the people who take you up on the offer And we have talked about culture creation and culture seeding from many different angles and in many different industries

57:41 but never in the art world itself and never with Warhol. And it just seems like it's another example of how this goes on, the book connects so many dots of that era I'm sure people will find a lot to like and it was a pleasure to talk to you today man take care yourself! Yeah Greg thank you very much I appreciate it Sean Peter The Anti-Warhol Writer & Art World Exposer So to me this was really good and unexpected. I liked not only the book but the tangents and personal anecdotes, and i just find Sean to be a compelling character! I'm glad his book is out there it's unique its info rich and to offer it up for free to anyone who wants to read it...I mean wow books are a lot of work but clearly he cares about the truth enough to let it spread unencumbered and I salute him for it

58:39 I totally appreciate the sentiment we ended with as well. To use your talents for fun, of course doesn't pay the bills but you can certainly have fun! Use your talents and take advantage of resources like Venmo to make it really easy to be your own boss and use your skills in a way that YOU see fit...and in a way that YOU enjoy without paying no nevermind to this so-called art world Also, I had that quote that i read about the 14 year old boy smoking weed and self mutilating And it had the title of this quote-unquote film as all aboard to dreamland choo-choo And it just sounded weird so I looked it up to see if it was All aboard the Dreamland Choo-Choo or just what it is but apparently It Is all Aboard To Dreamland comma Choo-Choo

59:31 But more interestingly, that is originally the name of a Shirley Temple song. So maybe that's a wink to things that might have happened in her day who knows? But this film is only six minutes long! I could not find it to view but I imagine it's not much except for that single scene So it's not like this is one extreme scene in a full-length two hour feature film. It's just a clip of this 14 year old boy smoking and self mutilating with what I read was a scalpel on his leg, and then they called it art! Wow

1:00:16 Also, whenever I say something that the guest isn't even aware of. I always go back and double check because I hate to be wrong And on the invoking 33 in his factory address i found this The factory was Andy Warhol's New York City studio, which had three locations between 1962 and 1984. The original factory was on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan. He then relocated his studio to the sixth floor of the Decker Building at 33 Union Square West where he was shot in 1968 by Valerie Solanas

1:00:54 The factory was revamped and remained there until 1973. It then moved to 860 Broadway at the north end of Union Square, and in 1984 Warhol moved his remaining ventures no longer including filming to 22 East 33rd Street a conventional office building so yeah not even just once but twice he invoked 33 Now it's feeling a little more intentional, but that's just interesting. As for the Plus show? What are the free listeners leaving on the table? Well... We got into extensive evidence of myth-making and false quote attribution which is pretty interesting when you break it all down The reasons to prop Warhol up beyond just money

1:01:43 Art and Pizzagate, how the Warhol family got screwed after his death. Bonesman and the Andy Warhol Foundation, The Manuscript Club, Ivy League Darkness and mapping out their network. Warhol in proximity to the Montauk Project and Brookhaven Lab and his agents close connection Thoughtforms and Black Budget projects Ancient Civilizations and Intercontinental Underground Tunnel Networks What happens when the players realize it's all a game? The Warhol-Swiss connection. Sean's expat advice, Sean's deep dive into Twilight language and word magic, Emoji sigil magic, the question of if Warhol was killed and replaced like Paul McCartney, And Sean's insights into Chinese government culture and prospect of war

1:02:34 So that is an action-packed plus show. Remember, you always got a seven day free trial come on in the water's fine help me help you and all that You will enjoy the full two hour shows why wouldn't ya? You're already here but big thanks for those who do keep the THC train on the tracks couldn't do it withoutcha As for the calendar I'm pre recording this wrap up And i don't really know where its gonna land so suffice to say check the calendar at highersidemeetups.com See if there are events in your area to meet your new friends. If not, you can always make them! The Texas date for me is going to pop up very soon probably near Dallas... Probably a little more than a week away but we'll see and with that I'm getting out of here Your move art world embezzlers myth-making maniacs and culture creating cabals! Your fucking move!

1:03:36 of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class. We've overcome their shinin', now we're calling your highness and the world, save me THC! They destroyed the bonds of friendship and respect between only people left. Even look them

1:04:18 and make a fortune. Same what they tortured, and a world meet THC Look for Jesus instead Jesus can tell me if it's true our chance to They built some crazy garbage called the blood of these working class overcome their shining calling

1:05:22 highness and the world save me THC And that is another show complete! Remember, as much as you enjoyed this which is just the free first hour I hope you'll become a Plus Member to hear the full two-hour interviews. You also can engage with other Plus Members in the comments and the forums and you'll find your answer to one of the most common questions I get which is where can I find those cover songs that you use at the end of the show? Well they are free downloads for Plus Members too

1:06:05 And without Plus Members, I can't hire the occasional musician to bring these odd cover song ideas to fruition. Plus members are how I'm able to do what I do without ads and without the big machine being on my back! We can fit so much more into a two-hour interview and I'd do my best to make it worth your time and money." The conversation only gets deeper, weirder, and more controversial in that private hour. How could it not be the way things are going? But the best way to sign up is at TheHigherSideChats.com, where new first-time subscribers always get a free 7 day trial because I'm just that confident! There's no PayPal on the website but if you need to use PayPal then sign up through Patreon and you get all of the same episodes

1:06:48 Our website is a credit or debit system, but you can also scope out the other options like a few various cryptos Cash or check mailed to the P.O box And I'll even barter with most people if you have your own business and produce something nice that my wife Or kid or taste buds might like But the architects of consensus reality have made it clear that these themes and topics aren't really welcome on the main stage. And so this is how we secure a little counterculture corner for ourselves, and I hope you'll join PLUS because that's the only way it works! Besides, you can cancel any time right on your profile page. The most common concern I hear is people just being unsure if THC Plus will work with their podcast app and the answer is probably yes! But if not we have several high-level app recommendations for whatever phone you use and the website is made for mobile too

1:07:40 We're trained to tip a waitress for bringing us a sandwich, but that tip doesn't give you access to a second sandwich. Really I'm not asking for any more than that and think I offer better service. Come get your second serving of tasty conspiracy goodness in exchange for that small token of your appreciation. Beyond that let it also be known we have grown and survived as long as we have by word-of-mouth I don't care so much about social media likes or follows, but tell the right people about THC. And not just listeners but the high level figures who are better suited to sit down with me than most other hosts. And if you can help me with any of these things, I can work to bring you better shows which is just a win-win for both us! Informative, entertaining and action packed

1:08:24 It also never hurts to thank a guest you liked if you have the time either. We want them to know people are listening so they're willing to come back down the road too! Thank YOU for spending some time with me and cheers to a better tomorrow!