In 1958, teenage runaway Lana Ponting was sent to one of Canada’s most notorious psychiatric institutions: The Allan Institute. There, she became part of a series of secretive and controversial experiments designed to break down and rebuild the human mind through electroshocks, drugs, and barbaric treatments. Decades later, Lana is one of the last known survivors. Her memories are fractured but what she remembers is enough to expose something far bigger than one hospital.

In Project Mind Control, criminal psychologist Dr Julia Shaw follows Lana’s story into a shadow world of covert CIA involvement, missing Indigenous children, and allegations that orphaned and vulnerable kids were supplied for experimentation. What emerges is a disturbing pattern: an international effort to weaponize psychology and control human behaviour. The truth may never be complete but the crimes demand to be uncovered.

Launching March 17th

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Dr Julia Shaw meets Lana Ponting, in the 1950s she was a teenage runaway. That rebellion led her to be admitted into the notorious psychiatric institute, where she becomes the subject of a series of experiments that fundamentally alter her memory. And change her life forever.

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Dr Ewen Cameron is the man behind mind control experiments, and the person Lana Ponting holds responsible for her fractured memories. As Lana tries to piece together what happened to her at The Allan, she makes some shocking discoveries.

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Lana’s revelations about a friend she made at The Allan open an entirely new investigation. One spearheaded by a group of indigenous women called the Mohawk Mothers, who believe there are bodies buried under The Allan.

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The work of Dr Ewen Cameron caught the attention of the American intelligence agency, the CIA…but did he ever know who was bankrolling his work? And what other projects were the CIA funding?

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A self portrait triggers a young woman to be sent for psychiatric treatment, forever changing her life. Alyssa Ryvers tells the story of her mother Carol — a patient of Dr. Heinz Lehmann, the man who revolutionised psychiatry with a drug he found in a journal while sitting in his bathtub. But was he helping his patients?

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Hervé Bertrand was sold for $10 to be experimented on. His story leads us deep into Quebec's darkest secret: the Duplessis orphans, thousands of healthy children reclassified overnight as mentally ill. And will the Mohawk Mothers uncover the truth?

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Explore the overlooked oddities that deserve a deep dive and the downright bizarre gems buried in the notebooks of journalists and friends Poppy Damon and Luke Jones. From each side of the Atlantic, Poppy in New York and Luke in London, they uncover the world’s strangest stories, from true crime to conspiracy theories and all the wonderfully weird in between.

Produced by the the team behind Project Mind Control, get new episodes of Strangely every Tuesday. To listen to the rest of this episode go to https://alwaystruecrime.komi.io/ and uncover the world's oddest, most fascinating stories.

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