The Grateful Dead (Pt. 3): What The Epstein Files Tell Us About Bob Weir’s Bohemian Grove Ties and MK Ultra

Why was the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir a member of the secretive Bohemian Club? Maybe the answer lies in the Epstein Files or in early MK Ultra efforts? Listen to find out why a counterculture icon, one of the architects of the most consequential communities in music history, was part of a community that included conservative presidents and war criminals. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠ https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:43Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 1:14Speaker 03

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• 1:45Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:00Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about the other one. The prep school kid, the bag man, the devil's right hand. And it's also a story about Satanism and LSD and the CIA and MKUltra. About ritual sacrifice and the devils and the details of the Epstein files and on the grounds of Bohemian Grove. This is a story about the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, about a man who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 2:39Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Boot Scootin Booty MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "The Fate of Ophelia" by Taylor Swift. And why would I play you that specific slice of oversaturated Kelsey cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 10th, 2026. And that was the day Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir died, promptly sending me down the rabbit hole at Bohemian Grove.

• 3:19Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, the CIA, MKUltra, Nearly a Million Dead, Satanic Sacrifice, LSD, Jeffrey Epstein's Files, Bohemian Grove, and Bob Weir. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 4:06Jake Brennan?

  On January 10th of this year, 2026, Grateful Dead, Rat Dog, and Dead & Company guitarist, singer, and songwriter Bob Weir died. The statement from his family says that Bobby, as they call him, "transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues."

• 4:35Jake Brennan?

  Bob Weir was beloved by his family and by fans from around the globe. He not only helped mold the sound of one of the most influential and successful rock and roll bands of all time, he also helped create an institution, the Grateful Dead. An institution that built a community that will live on long after the band and its members. The Grateful Dead community is famously unique to the Grateful Dead, and no other band in music history has created or is associated with anything quite like it: the Deadheads. Aside from the unique fan behavior that defined Deadheads, following the band around from town to town,

• 5:16Jake Brennan?

  tape trading and bootlegging, the parking lot commerce, and the superficial characteristics of Deadheads, the tie-dye and nouveau hippie style, Deadheads are loyal, caring, curious, and civic-minded. They come from all different socioeconomic backgrounds: rich kids, poor kids, stoners and jocks, and frat boys and prep school kids like Bob Weir once was. Deadheads are from all over the political spectrum as well, mostly left, but some from the right, and of course libertarians and gonzo extremists that defy categorization. And now, 60-plus years after the group's first show on May 5, 1965, at Magoos Pizza

• 6:01Jake Brennan?

  Parlor in Menlo Park, California, under the name The Warlocks, the Grateful Dead's fans span generations, from great-grandparents who saw the band back in the day to teenage fans of the modern-day Dead & Company.

• 6:16Jake Brennan?

  The single most important element of the Grateful Dead, aside from the music, an improvisational form of Americana that owes as much to Bill Monroe's mandolin as it does to John Coltrane's tenor sax, the single most important element besides that music is the Dead community. And the one element of that community that has remained consistent from the time of the band's first shows as part of Ken Kesey's famed 60s acid tests until the recent run of Dead & Company shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas, the one element of that community that has remained consistent is the Grateful Dead community's commitment to openness, a sense of welcoming born of curiosity and kindness

• 7:00Jake Brennan?

  and compelled by a willingness to make the world a better place. Every Deadhead knows that community is the most important thing. Change, if that is indeed the goal, no matter one's own personal beliefs, starts from within and immediately extends to one's surrounding community. Bob Weir understood and lived this ethos, just as his fellow bandmates, Mickey Hart and Bill Kurtzman, continue to live, and just as Bob's past bandmates, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Ron Pigpen McKernan, and lyricist Robert Hunter, lived before they passed. When Bob Weir died, I thought first of the Dead community.

• 7:43Jake Brennan?

  Even before I thought of his bandmates, I wondered, how will the Deadheads take this? This death from the Grateful Dead will most surely spell the end of the band's live output. Somehow remarkably, Dead band members found ways to keep the community together after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, with touring efforts by Weir's Rat Dog, Phil Lesh's Phil and Friends, and most recently and most successfully with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kurtzman's Dead & Company, a group that's success came in no small part from its collaboration with musician John Mayer.

• 8:20Jake Brennan?

  It's hard to see how Dead and Company survives without Bob Weir. And with that, it feels like this may indeed be the end of the long, strange trip for Deadheads. My thoughts then turned to Bob Weir's place in the band as "the other one", nestled slyly up Jerry Garcia's sleeve as Jerry's ace, Jerry's rhythm guitarist, his figurative kid brother, the straight man to Jerry's psychedelic Captain Trips, Jerry's literal bagman Bobby, the dude from the Grateful Dead who looks so normal in his polo shirt and jeans that he was the one tasked to carry Jerry's heroin around on tour. And then I thought of Bob Weir the man, his background.

• 9:04Jake Brennan?

  An adopted child who never knew his biological parents growing up, who was raised privileged, the son of his adoptive parents in Atherton, California, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the United States. A prep school kid with easy bronzed good looks and athletic frame and old money hair. The polo shirt and cutoff jeans gave it all away for me back in the 1980s. And then I thought of Bob's post-Grateful Dead, pre-Dead and Company life. And those rumors, and the wild conspiracy theories. Rumors that once spread quickly became fact. The fact that Bob Weir, in his later years, was part of a different community altogether.

• 9:50Jake Brennan?

  A community whose members had vastly different ideas about freedom and kindness and change than Deadheads had. Much different ideas. A community, it can be argued, was responsible for much of the world's death and destruction throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. A community that bonds over not just communal ritual, but, as it's been alleged, over communal ritual sacrifice. I'm talking about Bob Weir's official membership in the community of Bohemian Grove.

• 10:49Speaker 01

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• 11:20Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems:

• 12:33Speaker 00

  cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anupala Assis Anaxas CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at IBM.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:19Jake Brennan?

  The Bohemian Club was started back in 1872. Mark Twain was among the club's earliest members, as were Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and other writers, journalists, musicians, and artists. As the 19th century turned into the 20th, so too did the Bohemian Club's membership from the arts world to the twin worlds of business and politics. Throughout the 20th and 21st century, its members have included every Republican president with the exception of Donald Trump. Not to mention secretaries of state and defense, your Henry Kissingers and Donald Rumsfelds, Alexander Hags and James Bakers. And then, there are

• 14:00Jake Brennan?

  the pre-Silicon Valley titans of industry, your Rockefellers and Forbeses. Those with American names that smack of birthright power and with pedigrees that reach back into the finest preparatory and Ivy League schools this country has to offer. Some of them rooted in the secret Skull and Bones Society at Yale from the early 20th century. The same men who made up the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the United States' first centralized intelligence agency, tasked with gathering and analyzing foreign intelligence on America's behalf during World War II. After the war, the OSS became the CIA, the

• 14:40Jake Brennan?

  Central Intelligence Agency. CIA directors William Casey, John McConne, and George H.W. Bush were all Bohemian Grove members. George H.W. Bush, as well as his son W., and Rumsfeld, and Cheney, and Reagan, and Casey, and Kissinger, and Nixon, Nixon, and Bob Weir. They were all part of the community at Bohemian Grove. The men who brought you weapons of mass destruction, Enron, Iran-Contra, the crack epidemic, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Watergate, Operation Mockingbird, MKUltra, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the assassination of John F.

• 15:20Jake Brennan?

  Kennedy. All those dudes, and the dude who brought you Sugar Magnolia, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir.

• 15:31Jake Brennan?

  Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre private campground canopied under the giant redwoods of Monterrio in Northern California. The Grove is owned by the all-male Bohemian Club from nearby San Francisco. Every year at the Bohemian Grove, under tight-knit security and in total secrecy, the Bohemian Club hosts a two-week camp, attended by 2,000 of the country's richest, whitest, most powerful men. What these men do each year at this camp has long been the subject of debate among journalists and conspiracy theorists alike. Everything from innocent, old-school frat-boy antics to child sacrifice. At least, that's what's alleged.

• 16:16Jake Brennan?

  And the community at the camp is instructed to follow a rule insisting that business talk is strictly prohibited. It's a rule that we know is duly ignored, however, for it was here at Bohemian Grove that the critical planning for the Manhattan Project took place on September 14, 1942, when physicists Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence met with Brigadier General Leslie Groves and Colonel Kenneth Cole to iron out the crucial technical aspects of the development for the atomic bomb. Three years after that meeting at Bohemian Grove, the world's first nuclear weapons were dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 200,000 people died.

• 17:01Jake Brennan?

  In keeping up with the tradition of ignoring the Grove's community rule prohibiting business talk, it was here at Bohemian Grove in July of 1967 that Richard Nixon kicked off his successful 1968 campaign for president with a lakeside chat to potential donors and supporters. One of them, another Grove member, the popular California governor at the time, Ronald Reagan, had pledged to Nixon after hearing his Grove talk to not challenge Nixon's presidential run. And by 1973, over 100,000 innocent Cambodians would be dead due to President Nixon's secret bombing campaign. And by '74, Nixon would resign in disgrace over the federal government's intelligence

• 17:46Jake Brennan?

  agency-designed Watergate coup d'etat, an historical event of epic proportions, one that would forever destroy the American public's trust in its government.

• 17:58Jake Brennan?

  It's easy to imagine a much different world were it not for the decisions made at Bohemian Grove. If only the community followed its number one rule prohibiting business talk.

• 18:12Jake Brennan?

  And the rule is there for a reason. Grove members attend their yearly retreat in part to shed the stress that accompanies their high-powered positions as masters of the universe. The Grove community is serious about the concept of "care", and boasts a motto nicked from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", that says, "Weaving spiders come not here", which is loosely translated to mean, "Leave all your scheming and power brokering and bullshit networking at the gate, so we can blow off steam and escape the pressures of running the world for a couple of weeks."

• 18:51Jake Brennan?

  To signal the community's seriousness about this concept of "care", i.e. giving too much of a fuck about your job when it isn't your time to give a fuck, the opening ceremony for every Bohemian Grove yearly retreat is the signature "Cremation of Care", an event where masked, robed members emerge from the woods, looking every bit the part of Eyes Wide Shut extras, to promptly take part in the burning of a massive human effigy under the intense, watchful eyes of a 30-foot concrete statue of an owl. The human effigy is named "Dull Care", and its theatrical burning is meant to represent the unburdening

• 19:34Jake Brennan?

  of community members' everyday pressures and professional burdens. Now, I like to imagine Bob Weir at opening night of the Bohemian Grove retreat, glancing upon the burning embers of dull care and relinquishing all his past frustrations with Jerry Garcia.

• 19:50Jake Brennan?

  Being forced to carry Jerry's heroin to manage his early 90s decline, the parking lot violence, dead and gone deadheads, Jerry's refusal to take any responsibility for any of it, his clinging to a juvenile definition of adolescent freedom, one that resulted in unnecessary deadhead mayhem, Jerry's own version of id-powered obstinance that was ironically much like that of a man Bob Weir was now sharing a cabin with, Donald Rumsfeld. That's right. Bob Weir and Donald Rumsfeld. Not only were at Bohemian Grove at the same time, but were part of the same camp, eating, sleeping, and socializing together

• 20:33Jake Brennan?

  as members of the quote-unquote "hillbillies camp." What exactly did the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and the architect of the Iraq War, George W. Bush's Donald Rumsfeld, get up to together at Bohemian Grove? Was it simple fraternizing? Or was it something much darker?

• 21:00Jake Brennan?

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 21:06Speaker 01

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• 21:36Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines,

• 22:52Speaker 00

  AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Annapola Assis Anaxas CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 23:38Jake Brennan?

  A lot is said to happen at Bohemian Grove, but the straightest explanation depicts Grove activities as basically a much larger, more posh Ivy League frat party from a bygone era. Less Animal House and more Skull and Bones. Grove members group themselves together into camps. There's the aforementioned Hillbillies, whose members not only include Bob Weir and Donald Rumsfeld, but George H. W. Bush and Walter Cronkite. Grateful Dead member Mickey Hart, like Bob Weir, was said to also be a Grove member and a member of the Hillbillies, though I found conflicting information listing Mickey as being part of the Rattlers.

• 24:22Jake Brennan?

  There's also Camp Mandalay, known as the Preeminent Camp. Some of Mandalay's famous past members include Kissinger and Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz. And there's the Caveman Camp, I guess unsurprisingly, this is the camp that housed Nixon. And the Owl's Nest Camp was populated by Reagan and fellow actor Eddie Albert from Green Acres. Clint Eastwood, from neighboring Carmel, took a bunk in the Roaring Camp while industry titans like the Rockefellers and Morgans bedded down in the Stowaway Camp. These camps, the Hillbillies, the Radlers, etc., there are also the entertainment. In addition to the cremation of Care and the Lakeside Talks, Bohemian Grove programming

• 25:07Jake Brennan?

  includes plays and performances staged by different camp members, often in drag, a tradition dating back to early Ivy League fraternizing and one that prompted President Richard Nixon to say about Bohemian Grove that it's, quote, "the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine," unquote. However, some claim that there's more than frat party antics at the core of Bohemian Grove traditions and that the drag performances are part of an overall Luciferian subversion of American morals, one that is best represented by the massive 30-foot owl statue that presides over the creation of Care effigy burning, which, it's alleged, isn't about cleansing

• 25:50Jake Brennan?

  one's connection to the pressures of the real world, but is instead a sacrifice offered to the Babylonian deity Moloch, who watches over the evil deeds of Bohemian Grove attendees. Conspiracy theorists claim that Bohemian Grove isn't a community, but is instead a secret religion in disguise, one that planned the New World Order as we've experienced it over the past century-plus through a series of malevolent deeds executed by compromised world leaders honey-trapped through local prostitution rings and massive orgies into pulling off some of the most dastardly murderous shit in global history, all because, well, you know, Satan, I guess.

• 26:36Jake Brennan?

  It's February 2026, and the world is freaking out right now over the redacted release of a trove of government files related to a more recent power player, the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The files paint a picture of a modern day master of the universe up to all kinds of secret evil behavior. It appears, and I say this in all seriousness, it appears in an almost indisputable way that Jeffrey Epstein was speaking in code about what is presumed to be sex with prostitutes and underage girls and getting chummy with some of the most powerful men and women in

• 27:15Jake Brennan?

  the world after, I repeat, after, he was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution and for soliciting prostitution.

• 27:28Jake Brennan?

  Epstein's post conviction conversations with other masters of the universe include an exchange with President Barack Obama's former Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard University Larry Summers, where the two discuss one of Summers' Epstein-related female relationships. There are conversations with the New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, referencing a quote unquote Ukrainian girl of an unknown age. In another email with the Dubai Sultan, a literal torture video is discussed. Barclays CEO Jess Staley speaks with Epstein about quote unquote Disney princesses, alleged code for young women. And former Obama General Counsel and Goldman Sachs attorney Catherine Rummler is in numerous

• 28:12Jake Brennan?

  emails with Epstein seeking career advice and flirting with the convicted sex offender while thanking him for numerous luxury gifts that he showered upon her. The files also prove that the current US Commerce Secretary under President Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, maintained a longstanding relationship with his neighbor Jeffrey Epstein, one that he lied to the public about just a few months ago, a relationship that included a trip to Epstein Island with his wife and children, again, after Epstein was proven to be a convicted child sex offender. Now, these are the verifiable, indisputable facts from the Epstein files, not the conjecture.

• 28:55Jake Brennan?

  The conjecture is nuts. Like the coded conversations about pizza and grape soda and jerky, whatever the hell those are in reference to. Or the fact that on December 6, 2018, the same day that Epstein found out that the Southern District of New York was renewing its federal investigation into his behavior, Epstein himself ordered 330 gallons of sulfuric acid, a powerful dehydrating agent known for breaking down organic materials like human skin and bone. What was up with that? Or the claim in the files by one alleged victim, who states that at the age of 16, she was used as a human incubator and impregnated by someone from Epstein's inner circle

• 29:38Jake Brennan?

  in an attempt to create a superior being. And that upon giving birth to that child, the baby was allegedly immediately taken from her by Epstein partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell. And then the baby was never seen or heard from again. In fact, the baby was referred to in the past tense. And the alleged implication, if we're to believe the victim, is that the baby was sacrificed. And the teen accuser states that hours after she gave birth, she heard Maxwell say that the baby was beautiful. Was. Now perhaps there are legitimate explanations for all of this. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are doing what conspiracy theorists do best,

• 30:20Jake Brennan?

  taking bits of information and, well, theorizing. I sincerely hope so. Or perhaps comedian Tim Dillon put it best when he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Maybe the Bohemian Grove rituals were innocent, but maybe one dude watching the cremation of care was like, 'Fuck this figurative sacrificial bullshit. Let's sacrifice some real babies.'" And maybe that dude ended up in Epstein's circle. And maybe the human effigy wasn't enough for the likes of Jeffrey Epstein's Masters of the Universe. Maybe the worst behavior from the Epstein files is just the natural outgrowth of Bohemian Grove. I hope not. I do not want to believe that.

• 31:03Jake Brennan?

  In fact, as of right now, I don't believe it. To date, as I write this, on February 17th, 2026, there's nothing in the Epstein files that proves child sacrifice. All that's been proven so far is the criminal and questionable behavior of a few women and a lot of rich and powerful men. Many of them nerds, like Bill Gates, who I'm guessing never got laid in high school or college, and these nerds who found themselves with loads of power as adults and the means to behave in truly disgusting ways. There's a corollary with Bohemian Grove, but it's less disgraceful and I believe more

• 31:45Jake Brennan?

  innocent, despite claims of child sacrifice and satanic rituals. Bohemian Grove was, I believe, just a bunch of former Ivy League tryhards who chose hard work over play as adolescents and responded as adults by going into the woods for a couple of weeks out of the year so that they could behave like the irresponsible kids that they were never allowed to be. But it still begs the question, what the hell was Bob Weir doing there?

• 32:41Jake Brennan?

  Unlike his Grateful Dead band members and much like most of his Bohemian Grove community members, Bob Weir was a prep school kid. And similar to most Deadheads, Bob Weir was a curious and open-minded individual. Bob Weir centered his life around the concept of community. There was the Grateful Dead community, and there was the community he lived in in Northern California. A community with political, social, and environmental causes Bob Weir supported throughout his life. In a mid aughts interview with a local paper, Weir said, "I believe in community everything. I practice that in my life. In a given year, probably

• 33:23Jake Brennan?

  20% of the gigs I play are benefits. I walk the talk, I work for the community, and the community works for me. It's been that way for 40 some years now, and it hasn't let me down. I think that what we discovered in the 60s is that community culture is a really good paradigm."

• 33:43Jake Brennan?

  With that community-focused thinking at the center of his life alongside the obvious principles of openness and curiosity, it's very easy for me to understand why Bob Weir was a member of not just the Deadhead community, but of the local Bohemian Grove community as well. Bob Weir's comments about his affiliation with Bohemian Grove, however, were vague, and I believe intentionally so, in keeping with the secretive wishes of the community. But that doesn't mean that his intentions were nefarious, despite some of the malevolent outcomes spawning from the retreat. There are a couple of reasons I believe Bob Weir became a member of Bohemian Grove. One obvious and one not so much.

• 34:29Jake Brennan?

  The obvious reason is that, given Weir's background of privilege, he was experienced enough to know that change can sometimes only happen from within existing power structures. And given that societal change for the better, for Bob Weir was part of his principled outlook on life, Weir understood that he was in a unique position to make a difference. All he had to do was don a robe and duck into the woods and pound beers with Don Rumsfeld and others once a year to make his case. And what's better? Bitching about the Iraq War to your friends who can't do anything about it? Or making your case directly to the Secretary of Defense? The other reason, I believe, is LSD.

• 35:13Jake Brennan?

  More specifically, the origins of LSD. If you've listened to the first DisgraceLand episode on the Grateful Dead, you'll hear all about how the band was unwittingly used by the CIA to indirectly spread the use of LSD throughout American culture in the late 60s. This was in part the result of the CIA's MKUltra program. Bob Weir was well aware that this program was designed by many of the men who were part of the Bohemian Grove community. In 2019, I released my Grateful Dead episode of DisgraceLand, and a few days later, was contacted by Grateful Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally, author of the definitive biography

• 35:56Jake Brennan?

  of the band, "A Long Strange Trip." Dennis explained to me that he and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter had some questions for me based on what I'd researched and wrote. Part of my thesis in that episode was that Grateful Dead manager and sound man Augustus "Ozzy" Stanley III, aka Bear, aka Bear Ozzy, himself an LSD chemist and distributor, was an actual CIA operative. Ozzy was the son of an FTC attorney and grandson of a US senator, the exact type of young man the CIA would choose to turn. I didn't prove my thesis, but I think I came pretty close based on what McNally told

• 36:39Jake Brennan?

  me Hunter believed before he died later that year. Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist, never believed Bear Ozzy's claim that Bear learned everything he needed to know about the recipe for processing LSD from what Bear pulled from the books he found in the UC Berkeley library. Because Robert Hunter, apparently, dove into the stacks at the UC Berkeley library himself, and what he found out was that the scientific information on LSD processing that the UC Berkeley library held was not part of the library until after Bear Ozzy made his first batch in 1965.

• 37:24Jake Brennan?

  So where did Bear get the recipe? And what I'm saying is, the LSD processing information wasn't there. I mean, it was, but it wasn't there until after Osley made his first batch. Therefore, it was theorized that perhaps Osley received his recipe from the CIA. And perhaps Bear Osley had a deeper relationship with the secret organization whose members, including many of its directors, were frequent attendees of Bohemian Grove. The same Bohemian Grove Bob Weir was inexplicably a member of. Perhaps, part of the reason Bob was a Bohemian Grove member

• 38:07Jake Brennan?

  was to uncover the truth about his former manager's relationship, if any, to the CIA. From actual members of the CIA who he attended Bohemian Grove with. Or perhaps, Bob Weir was just living in accordance with his principles to affect change in the community as best he could. In this case, from the inside. Among power players, he found himself in the unique position to not just entertain, but to himself influence. Either way, neither reason is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 39:04Jake Brennan?

  All right, thanks for hanging with me on another episode of DisgraceLand. Appreciate you guys. Listen, what do you think about all this? What do you think? Do you think Bob Weir was up to no good at Bohemian Grove? Or do you think my reasoning is the correct one? Give me your theories. Also, give me any wild information you guys have. Conspiracy information on Bohemian Grove. 617-906-66638. I want to know what you think about Bob Weir and Bohemian Grove. Send me a text, leave me a voicemail, leave a review for DisgraceLand on Apple Podcasts and win some free merch. Sign up on disgracelandpod.com for all access membership. You're going to get exclusive content and ad-free listening. All right, here comes some credits.

• 39:48Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 40:32Jake Brennan?

  Hey guys, time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgrace Land, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive

• 41:14Jake Brennan?

  true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot. I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 41:54Speaker 05

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