This version of The Weekly Leo covers material released in the last week, from 25 July 2026 to 29 July 2026.

Angelus

• 26 July 2026 – Angelus

Messages

• 25 July 2026 – Video Message of the Holy Father to the young people of the Prelature of Chota and Cutervo in Peru
• 25 July 2026 – Video Message of the Holy Father to the 12th Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences [Jakarta, 20–26 July 2026]
• 25 July 2026 – Video Message of the Holy Father on the occasion of the 2nd ‘Rejoice’ Meeting – National Youth Day [Lamego (Portugal), 24–26 July 2026]

Speeches

• 29 July 2026 – ‘Cantico di pace’ Prayer and Fellowship Gathering

Social Media

• x/Pontifex
• instagram/Pontifex

This August, I’m teaching a four-week course for the Rhine Education Center on Psi and Christianity. We’ll look at telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, mind over matter, and the survival of the soul after death. For 2,000 years, Christians have been wrestling with the very phenomena that parapsychologists study today. Audit it or take it for a grade. Tuition $119 ($109 for Rhine members). Visit RhineEdu.org to register.

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Sixty-five million years in the past, Pike can save a planet or keep his own future — not both. Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler take on Strange New Worlds S4E1: dinosaurs, Martians, and the ethics of time travel.

https://youtu.be/JXuutDo372g

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Dozens of unrelated children said shining, winged figures stood over them as an EF5 tornado destroyed Joplin. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli weigh cryptids, trauma, folklore, and guardian angels behind the butterfly people.

https://youtu.be/k_6kqDpNXIQ

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

• Butterflies at the Window: A Story of Butterfly People and Miracles in the Storm by Sandi McReynolds
• 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado by Randy Turner and John Hacker
• “The Butterfly People” (2023 documentary), directed by Greg Fish
• “The Butterfly People of Joplin,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• The Butterfly People (Trailer)
• 2011 Joplin EF5 Tornado – Unedited broadcast beginning 9 minutes before historic disaster
• First Person video of Joplin MO tornado 5-22-11
• Joplin 2011 EF5 Tornado – Weather Channel On Air Coverage
• NWS Service Assessment, Joplin, Missouri, Tornado, May 22, 2011
• Butterfly Garden and Overlook (Nature Sacred)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church §§328–336
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 113
• “Inside the Mysterious ‘Butterfly People’” (All That’s Interesting)

• Please spread the word about the podcast. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Purchase the books and other material from this and other episodes at the Mysterious World Bookstore.
• Join the conversation at the Starquest Facebook page and the Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World Facebook page.
• Be part of the StarQuest Discord community at SQPN.com/discord
• Send your feedback or comments to feedback@mysterious.fm or send a tweet to @mys_world
• You can also leave a voice message on the Mysterious Feedback Line at (619) 738-4515

Chapters:

• 0:00:00 – MYS427
• 0:00:12 – Intro
• 0:00:47 – Cold open: The butterfly people of Joplin
• 0:01:39 – Joplin, Missouri — close to home for Jimmy
• 0:03:04 – The Enhanced Fujita scale
• 0:04:25 – The day of the storm
• 0:08:06 – The funnel touches down
• 0:09:06 – On the ground: six minutes across the city
• 0:12:35 – St. John’s Regional Medical Center
• 0:14:14 – The next morning and the death toll
• 0:16:16 – A wave of survival stories
• 0:17:09 – The children’s accounts
• 0:18:57 – Todd Frankel’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporting
• 0:21:52 – Firsthand accounts: the documentary and the trauma center
• 0:25:37 – Emily Huddleston
• 0:27:38 – The city responds: mural, memorial, and the soul as butterfly
• 0:29:43 – The stories keep circulating
• 0:30:35 – Where the account stands today: the documentary and the books
• 0:32:43 – Thank you to Patrons
• 0:33:15 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
• 0:33:36 – Sponsor Mysterious World
• 0:34:38 – The five theories
• 0:35:44 – Reason Perspective — Theory 1: A cryptid species
• 0:36:40 – Theory 2: The natural explanation
• 0:40:09 – Theory 3: Folklore
• 0:44:09 – Child witnesses and suggestibility
• 0:45:32 – Historical parallels and the third man factor
• 0:46:06 – Theory 4: Near-death experience
• 0:48:05 – Where reason lands
• 0:49:29 – Faith Perspective — Theory 5: Guardian angels
• 0:51:13 – Wings, light, and color: what angels look like
• 0:52:59 – The Catholic tradition and child witnesses
• 0:53:42 – The 2024 Vatican norms
• 0:55:02 – Were the butterfly people guardian angels?
• 0:56:36 – Bottom Line
• 0:58:24 – Further Resources
• 0:59:13 – Mysterious Feedback: #416 Jesus’ Most Misunderstood Prophecy
• 1:04:24 – Your mysterious feedback
• 1:05:00 – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
• 1:05:04 – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
• 1:05:56 – Thank you to Melanie for voiceover work
• 1:05:59 – Next Time: Fifth Friday Weird Questions
• 1:07:08 – Follow the show
• 1:07:21 – Get your Mysterious merch
• 1:07:30 – Show notes
• 1:07:37 – Become a Patron
• 1:07:45 – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
• 1:08:11 – Outro

This Episode is Brought to You By:

Rosary Army. Featuring award-winning Catholic podcasts, Rosary resources, videos, and the School of Mary online community, prayer, and learning platform. Learn how to make them, pray them, and give them away while growing in your faith at RosaryArmy.com and SchoolOfMary.com

The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States. Using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more by visiting GradyGroupInc.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

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This version of The Weekly Leo covers material released in the last week, from 16 July 2026 to 19 July 2026.

Angelus

• 19 July 2026 – Angelus

Letters

• 16 July 2026 – Letter of the Holy Father Leo XIV on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men in the United States

Speeches

• 18 July 2026 – Concert in honour of Pope Leo XIV (Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo)

Social Media

• x/Pontifex
• instagram/Pontifex

Radiation from a black hole turns the crew into a shipful of obsessives in Enterprise S2E9, “Singularity.” Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler ask whether you can really build a whole plot on a pun.

https://youtu.be/xs8WyG6dPs0

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He spent his career debunking fake mesmerists and mediums — then dreamed his brother’s funeral weeks before it happened. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli trace Mark Twain’s strange turn toward telepathy and ask what the Catholic has to say about it.

https://youtu.be/FCpm1H55MNw

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

• Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography
• Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (Univ. of California Press, 2010)
• Clara Clemens, My Father, Mark Twain
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Univ. of California Press, 1969)
• Upton Sinclair, Mental Radio
• Psi Encyclopedia, “Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)”
• Mark Twain, “Mental Telegraphy: A Manuscript with a History,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1891
• Mark Twain, “Mental Telegraphy Again,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, September 1895
• Mark Twain, “My Platonic Sweetheart,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, December 1912
• Chantel Tattoli, “Mark Twain’s Mind Waves,” Paris Review, August 25, 2020
• Troy Taylor, “Mark Twain and the Supernatural,” American Hauntings

• Please spread the word about the podcast. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Purchase the books and other material from this and other episodes at the Mysterious World Bookstore.
• Join the conversation at the Starquest Facebook page and the Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World Facebook page.
• Be part of the StarQuest Discord community at SQPN.com/discord
• Send your feedback or comments to feedback@mysterious.fm or send a tweet to @mys_world
• You can also leave a voice message on the Mysterious Feedback Line at (619) 738-4515

Chapters:

• 0:00 – Intro
• 1:32 – Twain’s Early Life, the Civil War, and His Journalism Career
• 6:01 – Fame, Marriage, and the Move Into Fiction
• 9:30 – The Moral Climax of *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
• 16:27 – Later Novels, Bankruptcy, and Family Tragedy
• 17:55 – Twain’s Formative Skeptical Experiences (Mesmerism, Phrenology, Spiritualism)
• 22:37 – Coining "Mental Telegraphy"
• 25:35 – The Harper’s Essays and Joining the SPR and ASPR
• 28:09 – The 1858 Precognitive Dream of Brother Henry’s Death
• 33:54 – Recurring Dreams and "My Platonic Sweetheart"
• 37:29 – Ghost Reports at the Hartford House
• 38:08 – The William Wright "Nevada Silver Bonanza" Letter Case
• 42:33 – Thank you to Patrons
• 43:05 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
• 44:27 – More Mental Telegraphy Cases: Frank Millet, Henry Morton Stanley, and the Lotos Club
• 48:37 – The Simultaneous Invention Argument
• 54:51 – An Apparition of a Living Friend in Montreal
• 57:34 – Livy’s Turn to Spiritualism and Twain’s Felt Presence After Jean’s Death
• 59:33 – The George Bernard Shaw Mental Telegraphy Case
• 1:00:28 – The Halley’s Comet Coincidence
• 1:02:34 – Reason Perspective
• 1:04:51 – Faith Perspective
• 1:06:37 – Bottom Line
• 1:07:36 – Further Resources
• 1:08:21 – Mysterious Feedback: #415 The Mattress Store Conspiracy
• 1:14:37 – Your mysterious feedback
• 1:15:15 – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
• 1:15:22 – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
• 1:16:03 – Next Time: The Butterfly People of Joplin
• 1:16:17 – ★ – Get your Mysterious merch
• 1:16:33 – ★ – Show notes
• 1:16:41 – ★ – Become a Patron
• 1:16:49 – ★ – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
• 1:17:15 – ★ – Outro

This Episode is Brought to You By:

Rosary Army. Featuring award-winning Catholic podcasts, Rosary resources, videos, and the School of Mary online community, prayer, and learning platform. Learn how to make them, pray them, and give them away while growing in your faith at RosaryArmy.com and SchoolOfMary.com

The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States. Using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more by visiting GradyGroupInc.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

This version of The Weekly Leo covers material released in the last week, from 20 June 2026 to 12 July 2026.

Angelus

• 12 July 2026 – Angelus

Homilies

• 20 June 2026 – Pastoral Visit to Pavia’ Celebration of the Liturgy of the Word and Veneration of the Relics of Saint Augustine (Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro)

Speeches

• 11 July 2026 – ‘Lunch with the Pope’ at Borgo Laudato si’ in the Pontifical Gardens of Castel Gandolfo

Social Media

• x/Pontifex
• instagram/Pontifex

A powerful alien entity invades Voyager’s minds and gives each crew member exactly what they secretly want: **Janeway** gets a visit from the fiancé she left behind on Earth. **B’Elanna Torres** gets Chakotay. **Tuvok** gets Vulcan. And Kes gets a nightmare version of Neelix to fight her way through in engineering. When it’s over, the alien vanishes without explanation, the Bothan ships disappear, and no one can account for what just happened. Voyager moves on.

[**Dom Bettinelli**](https://sqpn.com/team_member/domenico-bettinelli-jr/) and [**Jimmy Akin**](https://sqpn.com/team_member/jimmy-akin/) unpack “Persistence of Vision,” Season 2, Episode 8 of *Star Trek: Voyager* (originally aired October 30, 1995), written by executive producer **Jeri Taylor**.

The episode is built like a Twilight Zone psychological slow-burn — hallucinations bleeding from Janeway’s holonovel into the real ship, the crew picking up fragments of other people’s fantasies, the tension ratcheting up as one by one the bridge falls. Jimmy grants the build works. But he argues the episode is ultimately all style and no substance: it leads viewers to expect a Star Trek resolution and then yanks the rug out without ever having established that no resolution was the point. Unlike a well-constructed mystery-box ending, the show gives no early signal that we shouldn’t expect answers.

The alien’s implied power level only makes the silence more baffling. Reading the minds of an entire crew and tailoring individualized fantasies simultaneously — Jimmy compares it to an omega-level telepath from Marvel — and then simply vanishing? Dom wonders if this is Q-level territory. The questions pile up: Was he working with the Bothans? Was he even in engineering? How did any of this work?

The conversation detours into holonovels — Jimmy still can’t figure out how they’re supposed to work. Unlimited freedom? A set plot? Some middle ground? Dom argues the writers were theater kids who never reckoned with the fact that what they’re describing is an RPG, not a novel. The episode also marks the final appearance of Janeway’s Victorian holonovel, which writer Jeri Taylor had planned to continue and resolve; fan indifference ended it.

A more sobering thread runs through the episode: Jimmy’s research into why **Jennifer Lien** left the show. The official explanation — the writers ran out of stories for Kes — wasn’t the real one. Lien was dealing with schizophrenia, mirroring the situation of *Babylon 5*’s **Michael O’Hare**, who left that show after his paranoid symptoms were aggravated by a storyline about government agents torturing his character. Jimmy notes the parallel grimly: an episode built around a telepath suffering body-horror and psychological assault may have been the last thing Jennifer Lien needed to film.

Guest star **Carolyn Seymour** (Mrs. Templeton, knife in hand) gets her due: a British actress of Estonian and Irish heritage who has played cold, menacing roles across multiple Star Trek series.

https://youtu.be/E-xR2tM9ics

Direct Link to the Episode.

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https://youtu.be/TLm2wOTEUkU

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

• Auditory Effects of Microwave Radiation by James C. Lin (Springer, 2021)
• The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life by Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden (Morrow, 1985)
• A New Breed: Satellite Terrorism in America by John Hall (Strategic Book Publishing, 2009)
• Mike McPhate, “United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers,” The New York Times, June 10, 2016
• Sharon Weinberger, “Mind Games,” The Washington Post Magazine, January 14, 2007
• Allan H. Frey, “Human Auditory System Response to Modulated Electromagnetic Energy,” Journal of Applied Physiology 17 (1962)
• Kenneth R. Foster, David C. Garrett & Marvin C. Ziskin, “Can the Microwave Auditory Effect Be ‘Weaponized’?” Frontiers in Public Health 9 (2021): 788613
• U.S. Army, Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons (1998; declassified 2006)
• Federation of American Scientists archive, “Voice to Skull Devices” (CALL thesaurus entry)
• U.S. Patent 4,877,027, Wayne B. Brunkan, “Hearing System” (1989)
• U.S. Patent 6,587,729, O’Loughlin and Loree, “Apparatus for Audibly Communicating Speech Using the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect” (2003)
• U.S. Patent 5,159,703, Oliver M. Lowery, “Silent Subliminal Presentation System” (1992)
• National Security Archive, “The Moscow Signals Declassified: Microwave Mysteries, Projects Pandora and Bizarre”
• Lorraine Sheridan and David V. James, “Complaints of Group-Stalking,” Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology 26 (2015)
• U.S. Senate, Project MKULTRA, Joint Hearing, August 3, 1977

• Please spread the word about the podcast. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Purchase the books and other material from this and other episodes at the Mysterious World Bookstore.
• Join the conversation at the Starquest Facebook page and the Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World Facebook page.
• Be part of the StarQuest Discord community at SQPN.com/discord
• Send your feedback or comments to feedback@mysterious.fm or send a tweet to @mys_world
• You can also leave a voice message on the Mysterious Feedback Line at (619) 738-4515

Chapters:

• 0:00 – MYS425
• 0:43 – Hook: what if the voice in your head is real?
• 1:39 – The real origin of the tinfoil hat (Julian Huxley’s "The Tissue Culture King")
• 3:25 – Meet the targeted individuals (TIs)
• 4:31 – Case study: Timothy Trespas (*New York Times*, 2016)
• 6:02 – Case study: Harlan Girard and "the voices" (*Washington Post Magazine*, 2007)
• 10:54 – More TI accounts: a Phoenix mother and Dr. John Hall
• 12:54 – What is V2K, and where does the name come from?
• 14:22 – Related terms: microwave auditory effect, synthetic telepathy, silent sound, LRAD
• 15:59 – The Frey effect: Allan Frey’s 1962 discovery
• 18:13 – From clicks to speech: the 1973 Walter Reed demonstration
• 19:41 – The Moscow Signal and Project Pandora
• 23:08 – MKUltra and the precedent for non-consensual research
• 25:16 – Three key patents: Brunkan, O’Loughlin/Loree, and Lowery
• 30:02 – The Army’s own "voice to skull" thesaurus entry
• 32:00 – Other programs: BioEffects, Medusa, Active Denial System, and LRAD
• 34:20 – "Voice of God" operations and the Waco proposal
• 36:14 – Can the microwave auditory effect be weaponized? (Foster et al., 2021)
• 38:16 – Thank you to Patrons
• 38:47 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
• 40:08 – Reason Perspective: five theories of what’s really happening
• 41:17 – …what the physics actually permits
• 43:22 – …what the documentary record does and doesn’t establish
• 44:44 – …could silent sound technology explain it?
• 45:56 – …could LRAD explain it?
• 47:22 – …conventional medical and psychiatric explanations
• 49:51 – …gang stalking and the Sheridan and James study
• 52:08 – …when belief turns to violence: Aaron Alexis and Myron May
• 54:14 – …how widespread is this really?
• 57:23 – …why so many people believe it’s happening to them
• 59:53 – Faith Perspective: is it ever moral to use V2K?
• 1:03:14 – …how to respond when someone says they’re hearing voices
• 1:04:44 – ★ – Bottom Line
• 1:06:27 – ★ – Further Resources
• 1:07:21 – ★ – Mysterious Feedback: #414 Ancient Christian Ghosts
• 1:14:43 – ★ – Your mysterious feedback
• 1:15:18 – ★ – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
• 1:15:32 – ★ – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
• 1:16:19 – ★ – Next Time: Mark Twain, Super Psychic
• 1:16:41 – ★ – Share the show, write a review
• 1:16:55 – ★ – Get your Mysterious merch
• 1:17:01 – ★ – Show notes
• 1:17:04 – ★ – Become a Patron
• 1:17:13 – ★ – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
• 1:17:38 – ★ – Outro

This Episode is Brought to You By:

Rosary Army. Featuring award-winning Catholic podcasts, Rosary resources, videos, and the School of Mary online community, prayer, and learning platform. Learn how to make them, pray them, and give them away while growing in your faith at RosaryArmy.com and SchoolOfMary.com

The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States. Using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more by visiting GradyGroupInc.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.