Anarchist praxis in the 17th century (a love story)

Tristan flies solo without Scott (now on baby duty) and brings in Phil and Kevin from the Pixelit podcast to crack open Nan Madol, the stone complex sitting on a coral reef in Pohnpei. Ancient Aliens says it was built by giants from the stars who ran a hybrid breeding program before culling the survivors. The actual story is way better: a feudal dynasty extracted so much labour from its people that they got overthrown, after which the survivors built one of the most deliberately decentralized political systems in the pre-modern Pacific. Then the episode follows a much weirder thread: how Helena Blavatsky's occult race theory became Lovecraft's cosmic horror, became a Cthulhu tabletop sanity mechanic, became Erich von Däniken's plagiarism, became the History Channel's "romance television for men" pitch deck, and became modern Great Replacement panic.

Get new episodes early and support the show on Patreon and Nebula!

Subscribe to It's Probably (not) Aliens for weekly episodes about cool ancient history! And give us a 5-star review if you have the time. It really helps us out!

Tristan Johnson Bluesky | Twitter | YouTube

Scott Niswander Bluesky | Twitter | YouTube

Follow the show on Bluesky or Twitter for more updates!

Ask us questions and send us topics to talk about at ProbsNotAliens.com

Music by Rod Kim | Cover art by Skutch | Edited by Max

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.