The episode opens in 1959 Montreal, where a woman described by everyone as looking like Elizabeth Taylor stumbles out of the imposing Allan Memorial Institute in an oversized hospital gown ^{[1] — Carter Roy "A disoriented woman in a hospital gown claws her way up Mount Royal, trying to escape the Allan Memorial Institute. She's caught, sedated, …" 00:06 Play} . Disoriented and weakened by the treatments she's been subjected to, she makes a desperate run up Mount Royal, unable to follow a straight line, clawing at the earth to keep moving. But her body fails her. The nurses close in, and the next thing she knows she's back inside, sedated, and receiving electroshock therapy — again and again, until she can no longer remember why she was even there in the first place. This is the story of Dr. Ewen Cameron and the Montreal Experiments, also known as MKUltra's Subproject 68. Host Carter Roy frames the episode with a content warning — drug use and torture — before welcoming listeners to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.

The episode pauses for a cluster of sponsor messages. A detailed pharmaceutical read promotes Tremfya, a prescription medication for adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, listing administration options and safety considerations. This is followed by an advertisement for Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, a new AMC and AMC+ series described by Vulture as 'the most momentous event in fictional rock history,' airing all new Sundays at 9. A brief Carvana spot closes the break, advertising the ability to sell your car with a pickup service.

Carter Roy sets the scene: 1943 Montreal, and the founding of the Allan Memorial Institute, a grand mansion on Mount Royal backed by the Rockefeller family and McGill University ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Founded in 1943 with Rockefeller backing, the Allan Memorial Institute was supposed to revolutionise psychiatric care. Within a decade it w…" 04:54 Play} . The founders dream of a hospital where patients come and go freely, treated with the latest science and genuine compassion — no more asylums, no more squalor. They select Dr. Ewen Cameron, McGill's own pioneering psychiatry professor, as the Institute's first director. By all outward appearances, the Allan achieves its goals — it is recognised as a world leader in mental healthcare. But as Carter Roy ominously notes, the world's favourable assessment only holds because the world has no idea what is being done to patients inside those walls. The contrast between the Institute's idealistic founding and its dark reality is the central tension of the entire episode.

Born in Scotland and settled in Montreal as a professor of psychiatry, Cameron is chosen to lead the Allan Memorial Institute because of his pioneering research into mood and brain disorders ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Before Cameron ever ran the Allan Memorial Institute, he was subjecting patients to 107°F temperatures for an hour and restricting epilepti…" 07:40 Play} . His stated aim — finding a cure for schizophrenia — sounds admirable. But his methods raise immediate red flags. In one experiment, Cameron exposes patients to extreme heat of up to 107°F for a full hour, concluding only that schizophrenic patients respond to heat just like everyone else — a result anyone could have predicted without harming a single person. In another, he restricts epileptic patients to just 20 ounces of water per day to study whether dehydration reduces seizures. The side effects are severe: acidosis, dangerous weight loss. One epileptic patient dies. The results are unremarkable. Carter Roy makes the damning observation explicit: all of this happens before the CIA gets involved. The ends, he says, do not justify the means.

In 1951, Cameron reads a theory by British psychiatrist Dr. William Sargent arguing that communists have unlocked mind manipulation through extreme stress ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Cameron took two ideas — communist brainwashing theory and a novelty language-learning pillow device — and fused them into 'psychic driving…" 09:50 Play} . This sparks an idea: if extreme stress can make someone susceptible to persuasion, could it also wipe the mind clean, creating a blank slate to rebuild from scratch? Cameron calls this theoretical technique psychic driving. His second inspiration is less academic — a novelty sleep-learning device called the Cerebrophone (later the Dormophone), designed to teach languages overnight by repeating phrases under the pillow. Cameron merges the two concepts: first he conducts traditional therapy to identify a patient's psychological weaknesses, then records a deeply negative scripted message — sometimes in the patient's own voice, sometimes a family member's — and plays it on a continuous loop for 10 to 20 hours a day, for days on end. An example message directed at a patient named Gertrude attacks her relationships, her jealousy, and her need for control. Carter Roy plays a distorted version to illustrate how Cameron further manipulated the tapes: sped up, slowed down, given an echo. The effect on patients is visceral — agitation, screaming, feelings of hearing voices inside one's own head. To prevent them from escaping the recordings, Cameron drugs them, uses hypnosis, or in one case physically secures headphones beneath a helmet so a patient cannot remove them.

Among the many patients trapped in Cameron's psychic driving web is Val Orlikow, a new mother who seeks treatment at the Allan for postpartum depression ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Val Orlikow came to the Allan for postpartum depression and idolised Cameron. He dosed her with LSD without explaining what it was, then le…" 15:30 Play} . She believes Cameron is a visionary, genuinely capable of helping her. Cameron's response is to dose her with LSD — a substance she has never heard of — before beginning her psychic driving session. He leaves her alone to navigate the experience. Val later likens it to Alice in Wonderland: she takes an unknown substance and feels herself shrink and fall into an impossibly deep hole. But unlike Alice, she does not land in fantasy. She says it was more like descending into hell. Carter Roy also notes the general pattern: patients beg Cameron to stop. Many grow distraught. Others fight the headphones. Cameron interprets all of this distress as a positive sign — evidence of 'contra-traitz,' dormant positive traits, rising to the surface. When he decides the 'breaking up' phase is complete, he switches to a new tape with a positive message — one he records himself, lending his own voice to tell patients they are liked and capable. It is a chilling asymmetry: the attack recordings were in the patients' own voices; the healing ones are Cameron's.

Before the CIA targets Cameron, they are watching his colleague Dr. Donald Hebb, whose voluntary sensory deprivation studies at McGill are producing startling results ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Dr. Donald Hebb paid student volunteers $20 a day to lie in a plywood sensory deprivation box. After about 3 days, they began hallucinating…" 17:40 Play} . Hebb pays student volunteers $20 a day to lie in a plywood box in near-total sensory isolation. After about three days, hallucinations begin. No one lasts more than six days. The CIA finds Hebb insufficiently willing to push the envelope, and their investigation leads them to Cameron — who has already been doing his own, far darker version. Cameron keeps his patients in sensory deprivation for over a month, combining it with psychic driving tapes so the only input patients receive is their own distorted voices. CIA head psychologist John Gittinger sends an undercover agent to persuade Cameron to apply for funding through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology — a front organisation. Cameron applies immediately, and his work becomes Subproject 68 of MKUltra, one of the programme's largest subprojects. Carter Roy notes it is quite possible Cameron never knew who was actually bankrolling him. In 1957, Cameron signs a contract with the Society, proposing to continue psychic driving and to introduce a new, far darker technique — depatterning.

The episode pauses for two sponsor messages. The Home Depot promotes its Fourth of July savings event, with select appliances starting at $398 and free delivery on appliance purchases of $398 or more — valid June 17th to July 8th. This is followed by a Red Bull Athlete Challenge spot, inviting listeners to share their summer fitness goals for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bull experience.

No one at the Allan Memorial Institute wants to walk past the Sleep Room ^{[1] — Carter Roy "The Sleep Room was so feared that patients would press against the opposite wall just to pass it in the hallway. Inside, patients were kept…" 23:00 Play} . Patients press their backs to the opposite wall just to maximise the distance between themselves and those doors. Inside, people are kept in drug-induced comas for 21 to 22 hours a day, woken only to eat, use the bathroom, take more sedatives — and receive electroshock therapy. Cameron uses a specialised technique called Page-Russell, designed by its pioneers for once-a-day maximum use. Cameron administers it two or three times per day, at higher voltage. Then the patient is put back to sleep. Often, psychic driving tapes play while patients are unconscious, so their only waking or sleeping sensory experience is their own distorted voice attacking them. This can go on for up to two months straight. The stated goal is total depatterning: Cameron wants patients to lose all memory of who they are, why they came to the hospital, even their own sense of existing in time and space. In many cases he succeeds — but his patients emerge unable to dress or feed themselves, regressing to infantile behaviour. Families report that their loved ones come home forever changed. Harvey Weinstein, now a psychiatrist and human rights scholar, describes his father returning from the Allan and spending most of his time on the couch, barely able to talk. His father, as he had known him, was simply gone.

While running the Sleep Room and conducting psychic driving sessions on unwitting patients, Cameron also held the presidencies of the American, Quebec, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Associations — simultaneously ^{[1] — Carter Roy "While conducting his secret experiments, Cameron simultaneously held the presidencies of the American, Quebec, Canadian, and World Psychiat…" 26:50 Play} . He published papers on his work, including a 1958 study titled 'Effect of Repeated Verbal Stimulation upon a Flexor-Extensor Relationship,' in which he tested whether looping audio messages could make patients' arms move involuntarily. Three out of four patients showed slight muscle movement — a finding that in another context might seem benign, but in the MKUltra context of creating human puppets is deeply disturbing. The sample size of four, Carter Roy notes, is so small the study would have been scientifically worthless regardless of the results. But the episode's most devastating irony is yet to come: Cameron was one of only 10 psychiatrists worldwide asked to evaluate Rudolf Hess at the Nuremberg Trials ^{[2] — Carter Roy "Cameron was one of just 10 psychiatrists worldwide asked to evaluate Rudolf Hess at the Nuremberg Trials. He helped found the ethical frame…" 28:20 Play} . He found Hess mentally fit to stand trial. He was present at the birth of the Nuremberg Code — the landmark ethical framework requiring fully informed consent in human experimentation. And then he violated every principle of it on his own patients.

In 1964, with no public explanation, Cameron abruptly resigns from the Allan Memorial Institute. It is the same year MKUltra is formally shuttered ^{[1] — Carter Roy "CIA paid Cameron over $60,000 USD: By the time MKUltra ended in 1964, the CIA had paid Dr. Cameron over $60,000 US to conduct experimental …" 29:40 Play} . By then, the CIA has paid him over $60,000 US for his experiments on unwitting patients. Just three years later, in 1967, Cameron has a heart attack while on a mountain climbing trip. He is 65 years old and does not survive. He will never be questioned, never face a courtroom, and never live to see the reckoning that follows. His death effectively closes one door on accountability — but another is about to open, slowly, as journalists and lawmakers begin to pull at threads the CIA hoped would never unravel.

The unravelling begins in December 1974 when reporter Seymour Hersh publishes an explosive article in The New York Times revealing the CIA's illegal domestic operations ^{[1] — Carter Roy "Val Orlikow came to the Allan for postpartum depression and idolised Cameron. He dosed her with LSD without explaining what it was, then le…" 15:30 Play} . Congressional hearings follow, and MKUltra is publicly exposed. But the connection to Cameron's work in Montreal takes longer to emerge. It is the summer of 1977 when David Orlikow — a member of the Canadian parliament — reads a newspaper and suddenly understands why his wife Val was never the same after her treatment at the Allan. She had gone there for postpartum depression. She had come out unable to concentrate enough to read books or write letters — her two greatest loves. For years she had clung to the belief that Cameron at least wanted her to get better. Now she learns the tapes, the electroshock, the LSD — all of it was part of a CIA mind control programme. She feels as though Cameron regarded her as nothing more than a fly. And she is, as Carter Roy puts it, mad as hell.

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Val Orlikow's parliamentarian husband David connects the family with Joseph Rauh, a celebrated US civil rights attorney who believes suing the CIA is winnable ^{[1] — Carter Roy "When Val Orlikow and her parliamentary husband David learned the truth about MKUltra, they hired famed civil rights attorney Joseph Rauh an…" 34:15 Play} . Rauh's team gathers 8 additional plaintiffs — including Harvey Weinstein — and files suit at the end of 1980. His strategy is to prove the CIA knew Cameron's experiments were dangerous and funded them without oversight. He deposes Sidney Gottlieb (the CIA's 'poisoner in chief'), John Gittinger (the original MKUltra programme officer for Subproject 68), and Robert Lashbrook (who approved the funding). Two smoking guns emerge: a speech in which Cameron himself calls his experiments brainwashing, and Gittinger's admission that the CIA approached Cameron — directly contradicting the agency's claim that Cameron sought them out. But then a journalist reveals that the Canadian government was also funding Cameron — and paying even more than the CIA had. Canada, which had been helping Rauh, goes silent immediately, terrified of being dragged into the suit. The CIA leverages this against the plaintiffs. After eight grinding years and CIA delay tactics, a new CIA director forces a settlement: roughly $70,000 per person. The Canadian government later settles with 77 victims — without admitting fault.

After Cameron left the Allan, his successor ordered an impartial review which concluded his methods were no more effective than any standard treatment and caused lasting memory damage even a decade later ^{[1] — Carter Roy "In a 1963 keynote speech, Cameron publicly admitted that none of his electroshock, psychic driving, or induced-coma treatments ever success…" 38:45 Play} . Cameron himself came to the same conclusion — in a 1963 keynote speech, he admitted that none of his shock treatments, psychic driving, or induced comas had ever successfully eliminated a patient's unwanted symptoms for good. MKUltra as a whole found no reliable method of mind control. Yet the damage Cameron caused did not stay confined to Montreal. In 1963, the CIA and US Army published the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, a top-secret guide to breaking 'resistant sources' ^{[2] — Carter Roy "In 1963, the CIA published the secret Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, a guide to breaking 'resistant sources.' It recommen…" 39:40 Play} . It recommended sensory deprivation and explicitly cited McGill University experiments. Similar techniques were later used in Argentina, in Chile, and in Northern Ireland in 1971, where Operation Demetrius saw 14 men — the Hooded Men — subjected to sensory deprivation torture; all were released without ever being convicted. Some say Cameron laid the blueprint for torture. As for his motive, Carter Roy offers one theory: Cameron desperately wanted a Nobel Prize and was never considered truly talented by his peers — Dr. Hebb dismissed him as a product of office politics, not genuine research ability. He achieved fame, but at the cost of dozens of lives. The Allan Memorial Institute building still stands, now used by McGill University, and is reportedly one of the most haunted places in Quebec.

Carter Roy wraps up with a reminder that new episodes of Conspiracy Theories arrive every Wednesday and encourages listeners to follow the show on Instagram at @theconspiracypod. He credits the sources used for this episode: Project Mind Control by Jon Lyle, CBC's podcast Brainwashed, and Eminent Monsters for the BBC. The episode's production team is acknowledged — written and researched by Mickey Taylor, edited by Justin Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered and sound designed by Alex Button. Carter Roy signs off with the show's signature line: 'Remember: the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.'

The episode closes with two final sponsor messages. The UPS Store promotes its mailbox service as a solution for missed deliveries, offering three months of free mailbox services with a new annual agreement and directing listeners to theupsstore.com/offer. Ryan Reynolds then appears for Mint Mobile, joking about the illegality of printing $15 bills before directing listeners to mintmobile.com/offer for unlimited premium wireless at $15 per month, followed by a brief Verizon legal disclaimer.