Corey Dansereau, a doctoral student in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford, returns to talk with me from a philosophical perspective about “mind control” and what it means to control or be under control. We also talk a bit about conspiracy theories of the “deep state” — a secret, shadowy group allegedly controlling the world outside public view and outside democratic accountability. We zero in on the idea of an “esoteric deep state” — a shadow government that may or may not be incarnated in human bodies, a spiritual governing body that could overlap with the visible human government.