In this bonus episode of The Inner Empire, I read my recent article, “The Uses of Manson,” originally published in ⁠Failed State Update⁠.

Charles Manson has been used to explain everything from the collapse of the 1960s counterculture to the supposed workings of a CIA mind-control program. But the stories people tell about Manson often reveal more about the storytellers than their subject. In that sense, his story gets at one of the central concerns of The Inner Empire: how beliefs are manufactured, circulated, and eventually mistaken for reality.

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