Saving the Integratron Archive [Patreon Preview]

Welcome to other world I'm your host, Jack Wagner, and before this episode I have a very exciting announcement. As many of you know, last year one of our episodes sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole learning about a building called the Integra Tron and the guy who built it, George Van Tassel. One thing led to another and I ended up meeting a man named Don McKinney out in the desert who owned many of George Van Tassel's belongings. This included hundreds of real-to-real tapes of his channelings, the original blueprints of the Integra Tron, the original Integra Tron model, hundreds of photos, film, books, manuscripts, documents, it was a lot. Don told me that he had been preserving this collection on his own throughout the years, but recently is become hard to keep up with and he needed help. I decided to fly out our producers Theo Schaefer and Theo Kranz and we went out into the desert to help Don preserve this incredible historical collection. We are out there for about a week and very quickly realized how big of a project this was and it was also clear that this collection really belonged in a museum, a museum that had the resources to completely preserve it, restore it, but also make it available to the public. At that point myself and historian Daniel Paul set out in search of a museum that might be interested in acquiring this collection and that's where we left off in the last episode we did about this whole project. Well, today I am happy to announce that the collection has found a home. The Don McKinney collection has been acquired by the Huntington Museum. I cannot tell you how thrilled we are about this. The Huntington has been one of my favorite museums for a long time and the collection is in excellent hands. They've already begun restoring some of it and it's really incredible to see. In fact, some of the collection will be on exhibition this October as part of the Strange Science event that the Huntington hosts. Additionally, I believe myself and Daniel will be speaking on two of the nights of that exhibition so maybe we'll be seeing you there. Anyway, we have been working at this for a year and a half by now. It's really been a year and a half long sidequest and I really want to thank everyone who listens to this show and especially those of you who support us on Patreon because you literally enabled us to do this work and ultimately preserve a piece of paranormal history. So in this episode I am joined by Daniel Paul, Theo Schaefer and Theo Cranst to celebrate. Talk about this whole project and go on some completely unrelated tangents. If you want to go back and follow along with us on this journey, it all started for us on episode 122 which was called Hum over Ohai and there was a couple of follow-up episodes after that as well as a little video I made when we went out and met Don. So let's get this episode started, thanks again to all the listeners and everyone involved. If you want to hear the full episode is available now on Patreon and you're listening to another world. All right everybody, welcome to the other world Patreon. I am joined by Theo Schaefer, Theo Cranst and historian Daniel Paul. The team behind our George Ventassel project which is finally making some major moves. I guess the final move which I have just announced it has arrived at the Huntington. Welcome to the podcast Daniel and hello Theo and Theo. Hello. Hello. Congratulations guys. Congratulations to you. Congratulations to all of you. How are you feeling Daniel? I am very happy, this is so special. If it didn't happen I knew that the collection would have been in good hands with Don and Dale but the fact that it's at the Huntington and that they were so happy and excited about that is even better so that the whole world can see it from now on. I know. I'm over the moon about this and it's been killing me that it's taken so long because we've known about this for a while and have not been able to say anything. The announcement has been delayed over and over again but I've known, well we could recap a little bit but first of all I guess we should explain what the Huntington is, the significance of it and the Theo's, you have not even gone to the Huntington yet. I hope you get to come and see it sometime soon. Me too. Yeah it's on my list. I'd love to go. Where do you live? Where do the Theo's live? I'm in Queens, New York. New York and I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Oh my gosh. Yeah so they flew out there. They flew out to help me with Don. Amazing. Yeah so just to recap, obviously an episode called "Hum Over Ohio" I think it was called. Sent us down the rabbit hole of the Integratron that's how I met Daniel to learn more about this building and then at the end of talking to you Daniel you mentioned this guy Don out in the desert who had all of George Van Tassel stuff or at least a huge chunk of it. And that's what piqued my interest and the next thing I know I talked to Don and shortly after that me and the Theo's were headed out to the desert to go help him out with this crazy project. Yeah and you guys can probably help me speak to this by member when we are out there. We quickly realized that this was like an overwhelming project, not only that it should be in a museum and we would need the resources of a museum to properly restore an archive and like preserve this collection. I remember all of us feeling that. As soon as he opens one of the boxes and there's about 40 real to real tapes and all of them are about an hour and a half or even like double that. And we only had two days, I was like oh we can't even come close to archiving this. What's going to happen and then yeah as soon as we kind of started going through them we're like this is there's a lot of history here that we we're not even fully aware of like I don't think we even really know like what all the connections are in those tapes and stuff. We did our best to like get a copy made in case his house flooded or burned to the ground or something like that just to keep it safe but it was one of those were instantly I was like oh you know even after digitizing this there's so much information on these it would really requires not even just that like the model the blueprints all the photos like everything. Yeah. It was amazing what he had. Yeah. And of course Dawn always wanted it to be in a museum. I mean we'll get to this but he is over the moon as well and very emotional about this. He is very emotional and I really I was going to say I really credit you three for you know sort of pushing the fact that this needed to be an museum from from my perspective I don and Dale were doing the best they can and they did a lot I mean don invested a lot of money in it. He built a climate controlled room for everything and I thought that was actually pretty substantial for for one guy and his wife to undertake but and and I had honestly I had some pretty good confidence that dawn would take care of things pretty good there as best as he could and you know he tried to be thoughtful with everything but obviously you know thinking ahead in the future what would happen and you know nobody lives forever what happens down the road and I really got to credit you guys for your vision to think about look you know this needs to be this would be better served somewhere else even though dawn's doing a great job and I really am thankful that you thought to to put that out in the universe. So shortly after those episodes we began our hunt and pretty quickly into it Daniel had some interest from the Huntington which I mean for me that was like beyond even what I was thinking in my wildest expectations because I'm such a huge fan of this museum. For those who don't know I guess we should explain what the Huntington is. The Huntington for those who don't know I'm sure Angelinos are people who live in California know this but it's basically a huge privately owned museum and botanical gardens here in Los Angeles they have multiple museums on the property but they have I think they're famous for owning the blue boy and pinky those are their big paintings but they have so many seven so many pieces of like European 17th century art they have a massive massive research library with tons of rare books and recently they've been buying up tons of archive collections which Daniel knows all about I've always been a big fan of this museum it's my favorite one in Los Angeles especially just to go on a nice day and walk around. So I'm so excited that it ended up here and and in particular I think what's nice about is that the Huntington has a huge endowment we'll talk about the Huntington's but it's basically a museum that was started by this very rich guy Henry Huntington who was like a railroad tycoon their private museum with this huge endowment so what's amazing about that is that they're gonna be around forever and they're gonna have the the means of preserving this collection forever and they've already done an amazing job preserving that I guess we'll talk about that as well but sure me and Daniel got to check out what they've done with it already it's kind of insane Daniel you saw you saw the model right yes yes I yes I did it looked brand new so they they restored the model it looks like you said brand new and one of the very loved things about what they did is Don had made a leather strap around the base of the model. Yes. Explaining the Integra Tron and Solganda and they're going to keep that on and credit Don as the artist, which I think is so lovely. That's amazing. That's awesome. And they're keeping that at the base. Basically a circular base, do they call it like a lazy Susan? Is that inappropriate to say, "I'm sorry." I don't know. I think it's still woke to say lazy Susan. It's a circle that spins and then there's a base around it with Don made this leather decor and there's a clear, I think it's plexiglass dome and the Integra Tron models inside that. And so George Van Tassel made the Integra Tron model. It's the same model that was at all the 1950s interplanetary spacecraft conventions. He used the model to raise money to finish the Integra Tron and there it is in the conservation lab and it looks absolutely brand new and absolutely gorgeous. They did an incredible job. They didn't insane job. They also told me how much they've spent so far restoring the model. I'm not going to say it on this podcast, but it is a lot of money. Really? Yes. Jack, did you hear the funny story about it that Jenny or Ann pulled, I guess, when they were working on the model, they had a bunch of conservators up there. I think they were from Europe touring the Huntington and they had some of the old paintings out, some of the classics. I don't know if they had one of the Thomas Gainesboro paintings out or one of the older, 18th or 19th century paintings that are a big part of the Huntington's art holdings that Henry Huntington and self collected and his wife collected. And apparently they had one of those out to show these conservators from Europe. The Integra Tron model was off to the site and they all just started asking about the Integra Tron model and kind of the big classical painting was secondary to this model which they were all very curious about, which I think is so great. The hype, the hype is already going on this. It's completely unannounced, but they told me that apparently they've already been getting emails and calls about it, like people asking, I think a lot of people asking about like the audio, like, hey, can I use some of the clips from my band, but there was also people emailing the Huntington. I don't know how it could have gotten out. They've been really, really locked down about this information, but people are emailing after finding out that the blueprints might be there saying like, you guys don't know what you have in terms of like the technological side of it. Like they could theoretically rebuild the original vision of the Integra Tron. That's funny. But I have no idea how it could have leaked. It certainly wasn't me, but apparently they've already gotten emails about it. [BLANK_AUDIO]