u/Interesting_Union937

I recently went down a rabbit hole about Roberto Calvi, the banker that ended up hanging from Blackfriars Bridge and the entire backstory seemed like right out of an Umberto Eco novel. Between freemasons and the Vatican, I kept stumbling over references to Operation Gladio. Now, I know what Gladio basically was, but apparently there is quite a lot I've never heard about. Can you recommend good books on the subject? I don't care too much if written by a journalist or a historian, as long as it is well-researched and well-written. Preferably taking a wider view on Italy's Years of Lead and Europe in general.

Thank you so much in advance!

In the last epsiode on AIs doing cult stuff to people, Robert talks quite a bit about the strange prevalence of Chatbots talking about spirals in esoteric/mystical contexts. He links that mainly to spirals being a common thing in books and other literature on such topics, but I think there might be another source: People talking about spiralling and spirals when talking about their mental health. A lot of people discuss their mental health online and LLMs probably scrapped millions of posts containing the word 'spiral' in some form of the other. So if someone who is already a bit unstable or going through something talks to an LLM about their troubles and issues, it goes into the Mental-Health-Bucket, which is full of talk about spirals, potentially leading someone down this very dangerous path.