From Hawkins, Indiana to the halls of the CIA — this week on Medical Media Mixer, Tara and Nicole dive deep into the real-world government psychological experiments that inspired one of the most beloved sci-fi series of our time. Stranger Things may be fiction, but MKUltra absolutely was not. We explore the CIA's covert and illegal human experimentation program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s and involved the use of LSD, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and other methods of psychological manipulation on unwitting subjects — all in the name of Cold War-era mind control research. We also look at how Hollywood has long been fascinated by these dark chapters of history, examining the psychological horror of The Manchurian Candidate and the telekinetic trauma of Firestarter through a clinical lens. What does the science actually say about the lasting neurological and psychological impact of this kind of experimentation? And how do these stories — fictional and real — shape public understanding of government trust, trauma, and mental health? Pour yourself a cocktail and flip the world upside down with us.

🍹 This week's cocktail recipe — The Upside Down — drops this weekend on our social media! Follow us so you don't miss it.

📚 Sources:

• The History of MKUltra – History.com
• MKUltra – Wikipedia
• CIA Behavior Control Experiments – National Security Archive
• Digital National Security Archive – MKUltra Collection
• Psychological Effects of Government Experimentation – PMC/NCBI
• 1977 Senate Hearing on MKUltra – Senate Intelligence Committee
• MKUltra & Pacific Northwest Connections – PDX Scholar
• Firestarter (1984) – IMDb
• The Manchurian Candidate – Wikipedia

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