1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:03,440 Speaker 1: Hey everybody, today, we've got a special treat for you. 2 00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:05,880 Speaker 1: This is a live episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, 3 00:00:05,920 --> 00:00:09,480 Speaker 1: recorded on Friday, October six that the Hudson Mercantile in 4 00:00:09,480 --> 00:00:12,639 Speaker 1: New York. This was an event associated with New York 5 00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:14,360 Speaker 1: Comic Con, not a part of the con, one of 6 00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:17,720 Speaker 1: those adjacent happenings. We had a nice, friendly crowd come out. 7 00:00:17,720 --> 00:00:20,599 Speaker 1: It was really good to see y'all. And uh so, 8 00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:28,680 Speaker 1: without any further ado, here's the episode. Welcome to Stuff 9 00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:37,920 Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind from housetop work dot com. Hey everybody, 10 00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:43,680 Speaker 1: how you doing? Hey, nice cozy crowd. Did everybody grab 11 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:47,120 Speaker 1: some some shirts or some buttons or shirts and buttons? 12 00:00:47,720 --> 00:00:51,360 Speaker 1: Stuff is legit free. Yeah. In fact, we don't want 13 00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:54,000 Speaker 1: to bring any of it back home, so grab more 14 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:56,600 Speaker 1: of it until there's none. You can't regift it for 15 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:04,600 Speaker 1: Christmas or Halloween. Car for Halloween. Yeah. So this is 16 00:01:04,600 --> 00:01:06,920 Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Own podcast. How many of 17 00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:11,280 Speaker 1: you guys listen to this show? You know to expect Okay, cool, 18 00:01:11,319 --> 00:01:13,399 Speaker 1: But who's a newbie here who's never heard us before? 19 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:17,360 Speaker 1: Get ready? The pressure is uncle I press you then, 20 00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:21,319 Speaker 1: uh we're pretty weird. Um, we might make you uncomfortable. 21 00:01:21,959 --> 00:01:26,200 Speaker 1: I hope you're who Who's Well, we'll get into this 22 00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:28,840 Speaker 1: at the beginning. But yeah, so basically we're recording. This 23 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:32,200 Speaker 1: is gonna publish next week. Uh So we're gonna start 24 00:01:32,200 --> 00:01:34,920 Speaker 1: the show like we normally do, and it's recording over there, 25 00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:39,080 Speaker 1: and then we'll just proceed as normal and then hopefully 26 00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:44,639 Speaker 1: afterwards we'll have a couple of minutes to hang out. Yeah, definitely, Okay, cool, 27 00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:48,240 Speaker 1: all right, well let's kick it off. Hey, welcome to 28 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:50,520 Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, 29 00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:53,360 Speaker 1: and I'm Christian Saga and I'm Joe McCormick. So if 30 00:01:53,400 --> 00:01:55,560 Speaker 1: you are not familiar with us, if you're one of 31 00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:57,520 Speaker 1: those newbies out there who raised your hand, we are 32 00:01:57,560 --> 00:01:59,520 Speaker 1: the hosts of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, 33 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,320 Speaker 1: which is a science podcast of the How Stuff Works 34 00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:04,880 Speaker 1: office in Atlanta. The core of our show is science, 35 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:07,720 Speaker 1: but we take a pretty interdisciplinary approach, so we get 36 00:02:07,760 --> 00:02:13,399 Speaker 1: into philosophy, religion, mythology, history, pop culture of course, and 37 00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:15,880 Speaker 1: that's where we're going tonight. So, because we're here at 38 00:02:15,880 --> 00:02:17,520 Speaker 1: the same time as New York Comic Con, how many 39 00:02:17,520 --> 00:02:19,400 Speaker 1: of you are actually going to New York Comic Con? 40 00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:22,920 Speaker 1: So a lot. Okay, we were worried. There was like 41 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:26,200 Speaker 1: confusion about whether or not you could come if you 42 00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:29,639 Speaker 1: weren't a part of New York Comic Con. Yeah, were 43 00:02:29,639 --> 00:02:34,400 Speaker 1: you confused? I was confused? All right, is anybody here 44 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:40,960 Speaker 1: in costume? No? Yeah? Okay, sort of okay, Um. So yeah, 45 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:42,919 Speaker 1: So we that we were doing this at the same 46 00:02:42,919 --> 00:02:44,480 Speaker 1: times New York Comic Cons, So they were like, can 47 00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:47,240 Speaker 1: you do something pop culture related? And we talked about 48 00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:50,919 Speaker 1: it for a bit um and we decided, hey, how 49 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,840 Speaker 1: about the science of the show Stranger Things, because we 50 00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:58,919 Speaker 1: have fans of Stranger Things out there. Yeah, let's dude, 51 00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:02,760 Speaker 1: raise your hand if you have not seeing Stranger Things. Okay, Okay, 52 00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:07,919 Speaker 1: we're gonna try. But we're gonna talk about how science 53 00:03:07,960 --> 00:03:11,280 Speaker 1: relates to the show. We might drop a couple of things, 54 00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:14,360 Speaker 1: because that's one of the really cool things about Stranger 55 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:16,960 Speaker 1: Things is that, you know, it's a fabulous show that's 56 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,600 Speaker 1: chock full of nostalgia, but they do a great job 57 00:03:19,919 --> 00:03:24,720 Speaker 1: of bringing some science and some tantalizing pseudoscience, uh into 58 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:28,480 Speaker 1: the show, sometimes just as kind of window dressing, but 59 00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:32,680 Speaker 1: but it adds to just the potency of the show. Yeah, 60 00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:36,480 Speaker 1: we actually have a quote from a physics expert. Later 61 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:40,720 Speaker 1: on he spoke to them and basically said, those guys 62 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:43,600 Speaker 1: did their homework, so that that made it even more 63 00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:45,800 Speaker 1: fun for us to cover this for an episode because 64 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:48,480 Speaker 1: there's a lot to dig into. Right. So season two 65 00:03:48,640 --> 00:03:51,200 Speaker 1: is coming up. We're big fans of the show, so 66 00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:54,560 Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about a few subjects related to plot 67 00:03:54,560 --> 00:03:57,280 Speaker 1: points in the show. We're going to be talking about 68 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:01,880 Speaker 1: Parallel Universe, is government psychic research, and the real life 69 00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:04,160 Speaker 1: figure in the history of twentieth century science who we 70 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:07,480 Speaker 1: think inspired. Is it fair to say he's the favorite 71 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:10,360 Speaker 1: character of all three of us? Dr Brenner. Oh yeah, 72 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:15,280 Speaker 1: played by the one and only Matthew Modine. Hey, do 73 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:17,720 Speaker 1: you guys remember when Matthew Modine used to follow us 74 00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:19,800 Speaker 1: on Twitter? He did follow us on Twitter for like 75 00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:22,920 Speaker 1: a week and a half and when that was like 76 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:26,600 Speaker 1: the highlight of our careers. Uh So, Matthew Modine followed us, 77 00:04:26,600 --> 00:04:28,479 Speaker 1: and Robert and I did a high five, and then 78 00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:31,280 Speaker 1: like maybe a month later he unfollowed us. And then 79 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:33,640 Speaker 1: a month after that, Stranger Things came out and we 80 00:04:33,640 --> 00:04:37,440 Speaker 1: were like, what's going on here? We watched the show 81 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:40,680 Speaker 1: and we were like, wait a minute, Matthew Modine is 82 00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:43,200 Speaker 1: playing John C. Lily in this and John C. Lily 83 00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:44,760 Speaker 1: is one of our favorites, Like if you ever listened 84 00:04:44,760 --> 00:04:46,200 Speaker 1: to the show, we bring him up pretty much every 85 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:49,800 Speaker 1: episode and we have a whole episode all about him. Yeah, yeah, 86 00:04:49,839 --> 00:04:52,000 Speaker 1: we do. And some of you might be wondering who 87 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:54,160 Speaker 1: is John C. Lily? What does he look like? Well 88 00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:56,760 Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain some of this, but also you all 89 00:04:56,760 --> 00:04:59,520 Speaker 1: have tiny pocket computers in your possession. We will not 90 00:04:59,560 --> 00:05:01,680 Speaker 1: be a finn did if you look up John C. 91 00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:04,320 Speaker 1: Lily or if you need a refresher on what Doctor 92 00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:09,400 Speaker 1: Brenner looks like, I will refresh you though. Uh. Doctor Brenner, 93 00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:13,720 Speaker 1: of course, played by Matthew Mdeen. Silver hair, as you recall, glorious, 94 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:18,680 Speaker 1: glorious silver hair. Uh you know slim tank. Pardon his hair? 95 00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:22,600 Speaker 1: Do you think it's natural? Oh? Yeah, silver, that's the 96 00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:28,560 Speaker 1: actual color. Yeah. But Brenner, as he's uh presented in 97 00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:33,840 Speaker 1: the show, he's obsessed with, I think, connecting with other minds. 98 00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:36,240 Speaker 1: So for part of that show, it's connecting with human minds, 99 00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:38,719 Speaker 1: and then it becomes more about connecting with these extra 100 00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:43,839 Speaker 1: dimensional minds. Andy he initiates this contact with other people 101 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,119 Speaker 1: with extra dimensional beings through an isolation tank, a float 102 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:51,240 Speaker 1: tank and uh and and then uses that float tank 103 00:05:51,279 --> 00:05:55,440 Speaker 1: to enhance Eleven's psychic powers. Okay, so give me the 104 00:05:55,480 --> 00:05:58,039 Speaker 1: compare and contrast essay, how does that compare with the 105 00:05:58,120 --> 00:06:00,920 Speaker 1: real John C. Lily? Okay, So for starters, John C. 106 00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:04,800 Speaker 1: Lily invented the isolation tank. Everybody out there, if you've 107 00:06:04,839 --> 00:06:07,720 Speaker 1: ever gone and floated somewhere, you can thank John C. 108 00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:10,960 Speaker 1: Lily for bringing this into the world. In addition, he 109 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:14,000 Speaker 1: was a pioneer in the field of electronic brain and stimulation. 110 00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:16,960 Speaker 1: He mapped the pain and pleasure pathways of the brain, 111 00:06:17,440 --> 00:06:21,720 Speaker 1: and he founded an entire branch of science sixploring interspecies communication, 112 00:06:22,760 --> 00:06:25,919 Speaker 1: mostly between humans and dolphins. He also got into a 113 00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:28,800 Speaker 1: good bit of trouble with all that, but we'll touch 114 00:06:28,839 --> 00:06:31,680 Speaker 1: on that a little bit later on. He also really 115 00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:34,160 Speaker 1: dirty details, So you should you should listen to the 116 00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:36,479 Speaker 1: episode that we did just right. We did an episode 117 00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:38,200 Speaker 1: a year ago. I'll give you I'll give you a 118 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:41,040 Speaker 1: quick hint and then we'll just move on because we're 119 00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:42,920 Speaker 1: not going to talk about this here. But it involves 120 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:46,800 Speaker 1: sexual relations with dolphins. And it's pretty great. Yeah, they're 121 00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:52,800 Speaker 1: not really between Lily himself, but one of Lily at 122 00:06:52,839 --> 00:06:55,840 Speaker 1: the time was too busy taking massive quantities that all 123 00:06:55,920 --> 00:06:58,120 Speaker 1: us to be floating himself. He didn't have time for 124 00:06:58,160 --> 00:07:00,760 Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, and and and using this experience to 125 00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:04,599 Speaker 1: try and connect with the alien intelligence of dolphins. So 126 00:07:05,040 --> 00:07:08,599 Speaker 1: we have these two, these two figures right and on 127 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:12,240 Speaker 1: again Brenner on the show is this, uh, you know, 128 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:13,920 Speaker 1: very well put together an old guy in the old 129 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:17,400 Speaker 1: fashioned suit. If you look up pictures of Lily, you 130 00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,080 Speaker 1: will find images of a man and like an older 131 00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:24,040 Speaker 1: man in brightly colored like loud shirts and sometimes the 132 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:27,880 Speaker 1: coon skin cap. He dresses up like he's like about 133 00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:30,200 Speaker 1: to fight the Battle of the ALBUMO. Yeah. He he 134 00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:34,120 Speaker 1: is dressed like you would expect a counter culture Timothy 135 00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:37,440 Speaker 1: Leary esque figure to dress. And so you might say, well, 136 00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,960 Speaker 1: Brenner doesn't look anything like that. What possible connection could 137 00:07:40,960 --> 00:07:42,880 Speaker 1: there be? Well, I was looking at a two thousand 138 00:07:42,920 --> 00:07:46,800 Speaker 1: sixteen interview with Observer dot Com, and Matthew Modine himself 139 00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:50,160 Speaker 1: mentioned that the Duffer Brothers originally envisioned Brenner as quote, 140 00:07:50,200 --> 00:07:53,640 Speaker 1: an unshaven man in jeans and plaid shirts. And then 141 00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:56,520 Speaker 1: Modine worked with the Duffers to sort of flesh this 142 00:07:56,600 --> 00:07:59,680 Speaker 1: out and change it. Uh. Modine says that he drew 143 00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:03,640 Speaker 1: on elements from Anna Atome, Alfred Hitchcock, Carry Grant, and 144 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:07,120 Speaker 1: Lawrence Olivier and stuff to blow your mind. Well, he 145 00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:10,760 Speaker 1: clearly clearly followed us on Twitter solely so that we 146 00:08:10,760 --> 00:08:12,360 Speaker 1: could help him figure out how to dress for this 147 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:17,280 Speaker 1: TV show alleged. Allegedly, Uh, Matthew, are you here? No, 148 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:19,720 Speaker 1: I don't think he showed. Not yet. Well, hopefully by 149 00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:22,160 Speaker 1: the help him in like him in might be late. Okay. 150 00:08:22,280 --> 00:08:26,160 Speaker 1: The crazy part though, is that this this version of 151 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:28,360 Speaker 1: a lily S figure that we get on Stranger Things. 152 00:08:28,480 --> 00:08:32,160 Speaker 1: He may not resemble that counterculture uh John C. Lily, 153 00:08:32,200 --> 00:08:35,920 Speaker 1: but he definitely resembles the establishment John C. Lily that 154 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:38,839 Speaker 1: came before him. So there's like a John cy Lily 155 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:42,120 Speaker 1: arc where he first he's this buttoned up guy, and 156 00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:45,040 Speaker 1: then later he becomes this cross between sort of like 157 00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:47,880 Speaker 1: George Lucas in the seventies. And if you've ever seen 158 00:08:47,880 --> 00:08:51,800 Speaker 1: the Mystery Science Theater episode Final Sacrifice, remember the old 159 00:08:51,840 --> 00:08:54,840 Speaker 1: prospector Pepper Pepper. Yeah, yeah, he did kind of look 160 00:08:54,880 --> 00:08:57,600 Speaker 1: like Pepper but when he was younger, he was just 161 00:08:57,679 --> 00:09:01,760 Speaker 1: kind of this square looking but scary I will say, 162 00:09:01,840 --> 00:09:06,080 Speaker 1: scary government scientists. Um, let me just take a minute 163 00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:09,680 Speaker 1: to to roll through some of the uh, basically, the 164 00:09:09,679 --> 00:09:12,400 Speaker 1: background of John C. Lily So. John C. Really earned 165 00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:15,840 Speaker 1: his physics degree from cal Tech in ninety eight, his 166 00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:20,160 Speaker 1: doctor in Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania nWo, and 167 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:23,920 Speaker 1: as a faculty member he studied biophysics and psychoanalysis at 168 00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:27,480 Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania, and he was primarily interested in 169 00:09:27,520 --> 00:09:30,760 Speaker 1: the physical structures of the brain and the seat of 170 00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:33,440 Speaker 1: the conscious self. So even when he was before he 171 00:09:33,480 --> 00:09:37,760 Speaker 1: got all um enlightened, uh, he was, he was still 172 00:09:37,880 --> 00:09:41,040 Speaker 1: very interested in connecting with other minds. That was always 173 00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:44,280 Speaker 1: this thing, whether it's physically or via the use of 174 00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:48,040 Speaker 1: LSD later on. But despite the unorthodox nature of his research, 175 00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:51,040 Speaker 1: he did do a fair amount of working for the man, right, Yes, 176 00:09:51,120 --> 00:09:54,199 Speaker 1: a fair amount. Basically he wanted to pursue his own 177 00:09:54,200 --> 00:09:57,360 Speaker 1: agenda and if the man was going to use him to, 178 00:09:57,760 --> 00:10:01,160 Speaker 1: you know, to create ways to torment and and extract 179 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:03,600 Speaker 1: information from Cold World War spies, and he was on 180 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:08,240 Speaker 1: board until he started cutting up the brains of macaques 181 00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:10,840 Speaker 1: and dolphins. Yeah. So he did this for about a 182 00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:15,160 Speaker 1: decade working for the National Institutes of Mental Health or NIM. Uh. 183 00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:18,440 Speaker 1: Did he make those really smart rats? Well, mostly he 184 00:10:18,440 --> 00:10:20,599 Speaker 1: worked on maccaux uh. And he had he did a 185 00:10:20,679 --> 00:10:25,520 Speaker 1: lot of invasive cortical visa section. So again, not already 186 00:10:25,520 --> 00:10:28,160 Speaker 1: he's off to some kind of nefarious work. I think 187 00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:29,959 Speaker 1: a lot of us would agree. He had a pretty 188 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:34,160 Speaker 1: high security clearance. J Edgar Hoover allegedly knew him by name, 189 00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:38,800 Speaker 1: and his projects that he was involved with included reprogramming 190 00:10:38,840 --> 00:10:44,000 Speaker 1: or brainwashing, sleep deprivation, and the operant control of animals 191 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:48,400 Speaker 1: via wires and planted in their brain. Yeah. So some 192 00:10:48,440 --> 00:10:52,240 Speaker 1: pretty scary stuff. And according to de Graham Burnett's excellent 193 00:10:52,280 --> 00:10:56,160 Speaker 1: O Ryan article A Mind and Water, Lily's unpublished paper 194 00:10:56,280 --> 00:11:00,280 Speaker 1: Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as reconnaiss sen and 195 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:05,280 Speaker 1: Intelligence Devices UH included this quote. Uh he wrote of 196 00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:11,040 Speaker 1: quote A Coort Covort, he wrote a covert and relatively 197 00:11:11,160 --> 00:11:14,960 Speaker 1: safe implantation of electrodes into the human brain for the 198 00:11:15,040 --> 00:11:19,000 Speaker 1: quote push button control of the totality of motivation and 199 00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:21,959 Speaker 1: of consciousness. So, but just to be clear here, he 200 00:11:22,040 --> 00:11:26,040 Speaker 1: didn't put electrodes in the brain of eleven year old 201 00:11:26,040 --> 00:11:30,319 Speaker 1: girls with shaped heads. Uh, there's no arts that he actually, 202 00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:32,440 Speaker 1: you know, did any of this to human being, But 203 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:34,760 Speaker 1: he was he was up for it. If if I think, 204 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:37,520 Speaker 1: if he would have been given me okay, is like 205 00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,200 Speaker 1: you feel like putting an implant in somebody's brain this weekend, Yeah, 206 00:11:41,559 --> 00:11:43,200 Speaker 1: he would have been. He would have been game because 207 00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:45,360 Speaker 1: you really get the impression that he was. He was 208 00:11:45,760 --> 00:11:48,880 Speaker 1: all in on anything scary the government wanted him to 209 00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:51,960 Speaker 1: do so long as it, you know, pursued his interest 210 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:55,800 Speaker 1: in connecting with other minds. This ended up leading him 211 00:11:55,800 --> 00:12:00,360 Speaker 1: to conducting some experimentation with dolphins in Florida, and it 212 00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:03,240 Speaker 1: was here where he began to have this empathic connection 213 00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:05,920 Speaker 1: with dolphins. He began to like, he performed a vivisection 214 00:12:05,960 --> 00:12:08,640 Speaker 1: on on a dolphin, and due to some of the 215 00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:12,120 Speaker 1: quirks of dolphin physiology, you could not actually put the 216 00:12:12,120 --> 00:12:14,520 Speaker 1: dolphin under for this, so it was like a live, 217 00:12:14,679 --> 00:12:18,640 Speaker 1: conscious davisection of the dolphin's brain. And this this had 218 00:12:18,679 --> 00:12:21,160 Speaker 1: a profound impact on Lily. He ended up going down 219 00:12:21,160 --> 00:12:25,240 Speaker 1: this path um of promoting the welfare of dolphins, promoting 220 00:12:25,280 --> 00:12:29,120 Speaker 1: the the higher intelligence of dolphins. So he really he 221 00:12:29,200 --> 00:12:32,000 Speaker 1: really helped bring about a cultural shift in how we 222 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:35,760 Speaker 1: perceive this animal, that it's not just another dumb animal 223 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:37,719 Speaker 1: in the water, but it's something that we should we 224 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:40,480 Speaker 1: should value, that we should protect even and we wouldn't 225 00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:42,520 Speaker 1: have we wouldn't have Flipper if it were not for 226 00:12:42,640 --> 00:12:45,439 Speaker 1: John C. Lily. So actually, this is a good point. 227 00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:47,560 Speaker 1: I probably should have brought this up earlier. But there 228 00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:51,200 Speaker 1: are two movies that you've probably seen that are very 229 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:54,720 Speaker 1: heavily based on John C. Lily's life, the first of 230 00:12:54,760 --> 00:12:58,520 Speaker 1: which is Altered States. Uh, and we'll talk more about 231 00:12:58,520 --> 00:13:00,280 Speaker 1: that later when we get into the isolation to banks. 232 00:13:00,520 --> 00:13:02,880 Speaker 1: But has anybody seen the film The Day of the 233 00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:08,560 Speaker 1: Dolphin with George C. Scott? No one, Scotts all right, 234 00:13:08,760 --> 00:13:11,160 Speaker 1: so this isn't you go find it. This is a 235 00:13:11,160 --> 00:13:13,679 Speaker 1: movie where George C. Scott essentially plays John C. Lily 236 00:13:13,720 --> 00:13:17,040 Speaker 1: and he teaches dolphins to talk and and to love 237 00:13:17,360 --> 00:13:19,880 Speaker 1: and to love. Yeah, so like they call him fa 238 00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:23,640 Speaker 1: he's their father and they say things like fall loves pa. Uh. 239 00:13:23,679 --> 00:13:26,160 Speaker 1: It's great. Go watch it if you want to see 240 00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:29,920 Speaker 1: George C. Scott just hanging out with dolphins. But the 241 00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:32,920 Speaker 1: other thing that we wouldn't have without him. He didn't. 242 00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:35,160 Speaker 1: He didn't influence this movie in terms of that it 243 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:39,079 Speaker 1: was about him. But the creature from the Black Lagoons, right, Yeah, 244 00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:43,800 Speaker 1: the guy who played the creature worked on Flipper and 245 00:13:43,880 --> 00:13:46,959 Speaker 1: worked with John C. Lily while he was down in Florida, 246 00:13:47,040 --> 00:13:49,280 Speaker 1: So yeah we can. We can thank him for the creature. 247 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:52,320 Speaker 1: And I would argue that if if anyone ever gets 248 00:13:52,360 --> 00:13:54,880 Speaker 1: around to actually remaking the creature from the Black Lagoon, 249 00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:59,240 Speaker 1: they should. They should take inspiration from John C. Lily 250 00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:03,280 Speaker 1: story and from Altered States and use that to bring 251 00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:05,520 Speaker 1: us a proper creature film. Yeah, you get a creature 252 00:14:05,720 --> 00:14:09,360 Speaker 1: from the lack Black Lagoon with LSD and isolation tanks 253 00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:11,800 Speaker 1: and dolphins throwing some dolphins. I'm on board. Yeah, yeah, 254 00:14:11,840 --> 00:14:14,840 Speaker 1: it'd be great Instead of like Tom Cruise running around, 255 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:19,880 Speaker 1: I want to just doing exposition for thirty minutes. Wait, 256 00:14:19,920 --> 00:14:22,960 Speaker 1: so I have a question about y'all's predictions for Stranger Things. 257 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:25,720 Speaker 1: Do you think in upcoming seasons we're going to see 258 00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:29,920 Speaker 1: Matthew Modine's character follow the same arc as John C. 259 00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:32,640 Speaker 1: Lily throughout his life, So will he coming back? He'll 260 00:14:32,680 --> 00:14:37,760 Speaker 1: come back in future seasons Hawaiian shirts, Beard long ponytail 261 00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:41,400 Speaker 1: gained a significant amount of weight doing you know LSD 262 00:14:41,600 --> 00:14:43,720 Speaker 1: orgies and stuff. Yeah, I hope, so, I hope by 263 00:14:43,760 --> 00:14:47,240 Speaker 1: season four he is is wearing the coonskin hat and 264 00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:49,160 Speaker 1: and helping the kids out. So I didn't think about this, 265 00:14:49,760 --> 00:14:55,560 Speaker 1: but I mean, you know, this is a ending was 266 00:14:55,680 --> 00:14:58,240 Speaker 1: left open. Let's put it that way. Maybe he's from 267 00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:01,920 Speaker 1: a parallel universe, this other Matthew Modine. Oh my goodness, 268 00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:05,800 Speaker 1: we could have multiple um doctor Brenners in one versions 269 00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:08,240 Speaker 1: of Brenner and Lily together at once. I like it 270 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:13,800 Speaker 1: floating in a tank taking LSD. Thank So I want 271 00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:17,280 Speaker 1: to shift now to explore a different element of stranger things, 272 00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:20,680 Speaker 1: which is of course the government psychic research being conducted 273 00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:24,400 Speaker 1: at Hawkins Laboratory, Hawkins National Lab. I think in the 274 00:15:24,440 --> 00:15:27,400 Speaker 1: show that they say is being carried out by the 275 00:15:27,440 --> 00:15:29,880 Speaker 1: Department of Energy. Uh so I want I'm gonna put 276 00:15:29,920 --> 00:15:32,160 Speaker 1: you in a scenario. See if you can go into 277 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:35,680 Speaker 1: this place with your mind. Imagine you are a Defense 278 00:15:35,760 --> 00:15:39,840 Speaker 1: Department analyst in about the spring of nineteen seventy and 279 00:15:39,920 --> 00:15:42,600 Speaker 1: so you're just gonna be washed head to toe in 280 00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:46,480 Speaker 1: cold war paranoia. You've heard these rumors about a secret 281 00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:50,240 Speaker 1: electronic warfare device saimed at the American embassy in Moscow, 282 00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:53,800 Speaker 1: And there are also these rumors about weird LSD mind 283 00:15:53,840 --> 00:15:56,720 Speaker 1: control experiments going on over at c I A. You 284 00:15:56,800 --> 00:15:59,760 Speaker 1: get the sense that we're in an age of unconventional 285 00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:03,160 Speaker 1: war are fair, where these strange new technologies are going 286 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:06,360 Speaker 1: to change the balance of power across the globe and 287 00:16:06,400 --> 00:16:10,640 Speaker 1: you don't want to fall behind. Sounds like right now, Yeah, 288 00:16:10,720 --> 00:16:13,600 Speaker 1: except I guess a little less focused on like social media, 289 00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,280 Speaker 1: and you know it's Facebook for drones and more on 290 00:16:17,560 --> 00:16:21,640 Speaker 1: like controlling people's minds and killing people with electronics with 291 00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:25,240 Speaker 1: electromagnetic beams. Well, the thing is in an age before 292 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:28,080 Speaker 1: social media, Like let me, social media is kind of 293 00:16:28,120 --> 00:16:32,240 Speaker 1: this weird and sorcery that connects all of these minds together. 294 00:16:32,280 --> 00:16:34,160 Speaker 1: And before you had that, you the only thing you 295 00:16:34,160 --> 00:16:39,240 Speaker 1: had was the possibility, however distant of of psychic communication, right, 296 00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:41,360 Speaker 1: I mean, why would we need to do psychic research 297 00:16:41,440 --> 00:16:45,040 Speaker 1: now when you can just get in somebody's news feed? Yeah? Anyway, 298 00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:50,000 Speaker 1: I mean sadly, I mean the research is it's remarkably 299 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:53,400 Speaker 1: cold alter someone's mind through I mean, not in a 300 00:16:53,400 --> 00:16:56,480 Speaker 1: science fictional way, but in a very very scary real 301 00:16:56,520 --> 00:16:59,000 Speaker 1: way that went to a scary place. Okay, now let's 302 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:01,200 Speaker 1: go back to the Cold War where it's fine. So 303 00:17:01,520 --> 00:17:04,280 Speaker 1: you're this analyst in nineteen seventy. One of your superiors 304 00:17:04,280 --> 00:17:06,639 Speaker 1: calls you in for a meeting in a secured room. 305 00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:10,320 Speaker 1: There is a projector screen and somebody puts up. Somebody 306 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:13,159 Speaker 1: gets a film going, and a title card announces that 307 00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:16,840 Speaker 1: the following experiment took place at the Oktomski Military Institute 308 00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:19,840 Speaker 1: in Leningrad on March tenth of this year. Then you 309 00:17:19,880 --> 00:17:23,240 Speaker 1: see a forty something woman, big bun of dark hair. 310 00:17:23,600 --> 00:17:26,359 Speaker 1: She seated at a table, and next to her is 311 00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:29,840 Speaker 1: a man identified as Ganadi Sergeyev, who is a military 312 00:17:29,960 --> 00:17:34,200 Speaker 1: Soviet military physician, and seated uh so on the table 313 00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:36,320 Speaker 1: in front of the woman. Somebody comes in and they 314 00:17:36,359 --> 00:17:40,679 Speaker 1: set down a small jar containing a throbbing black lump. 315 00:17:41,520 --> 00:17:44,679 Speaker 1: It's a frog's heart and it's still beating now. The 316 00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:48,399 Speaker 1: film explains that the extracted amphibian heart has been placed 317 00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:50,840 Speaker 1: in what's known as Ringer's solution. It's a solution of 318 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:54,160 Speaker 1: salts that can keep muscles pumping even after they've been 319 00:17:54,359 --> 00:17:58,040 Speaker 1: separated from circulation. Uh, and from their electrical stimuli in 320 00:17:58,040 --> 00:17:59,479 Speaker 1: the body. It's kind of like how if you if 321 00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:01,480 Speaker 1: you ever seen the trick where you salt frog's legs, 322 00:18:01,560 --> 00:18:04,560 Speaker 1: they'll start to twitch um. And it's known that the 323 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:07,560 Speaker 1: Ringer's solution can keep a frog's heart beating, usually for 324 00:18:07,600 --> 00:18:10,919 Speaker 1: about an hour. The heart is connected by wires to 325 00:18:10,960 --> 00:18:13,960 Speaker 1: an electro cardiogram and e KG and so is the 326 00:18:13,960 --> 00:18:17,479 Speaker 1: woman seated at the table, and then Dr Sergeyev tells 327 00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:20,520 Speaker 1: her to begin. So the woman puts her hands on 328 00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:24,040 Speaker 1: the table and she glares at the beating frog heart, 329 00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:27,520 Speaker 1: and her heart rate increases and her blood pressure increases. 330 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:31,480 Speaker 1: And the film also claims that quote heightened biological luminescence 331 00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:35,720 Speaker 1: radiated from her eyes, which I can imagine that she 332 00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:38,560 Speaker 1: was doing the like psychic powers thing, like holding her 333 00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:42,480 Speaker 1: temples really heard and squinting, but you know, her eyes glowed, 334 00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:44,480 Speaker 1: that's what they say. I mean, it's hard to tell 335 00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:48,560 Speaker 1: in black and white, right, But anyway, after about seven 336 00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:51,600 Speaker 1: minutes of this just staring at this throbbing black lump, 337 00:18:51,840 --> 00:18:56,600 Speaker 1: the frog's heart abruptly seizes and stops beating. Then she 338 00:18:56,720 --> 00:19:00,479 Speaker 1: does it with a second frog heart when yeah, so 339 00:19:00,520 --> 00:19:04,720 Speaker 1: they bringing another. Somebody's got an ice cream scoop back there, 340 00:19:04,760 --> 00:19:10,600 Speaker 1: and they're just going to town on the table. I 341 00:19:10,640 --> 00:19:12,840 Speaker 1: think a melon baller would be more appropriate. I think 342 00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:16,119 Speaker 1: you can really get him there with the Uh. Yeah, 343 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:19,000 Speaker 1: so she's I don't know what frogs did to her, 344 00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:21,600 Speaker 1: but she's she's killing the hearts and I guess the 345 00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:24,919 Speaker 1: frogs probably don't mind at this point. But next she 346 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:29,920 Speaker 1: turns her attention to what's identified as a skeptical doctor 347 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:32,760 Speaker 1: in the room, and he doesn't believe any of this, 348 00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:37,200 Speaker 1: but she concentrates on raising his heart rate telekinetically, and 349 00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:39,760 Speaker 1: this goes on for about five minutes before Dr Sergeyev, 350 00:19:39,880 --> 00:19:43,320 Speaker 1: the attending physician he steps in, says the experiments becoming 351 00:19:43,320 --> 00:19:45,919 Speaker 1: too dangerous and he calls it to a halt. This 352 00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:52,560 Speaker 1: sounds like scanners. It's going to scan everyone in this room. Yeah. Um. 353 00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:55,919 Speaker 1: It also sounds like such an obvious trick. It's such 354 00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:58,800 Speaker 1: an obvious performance. It seems a little over the top. Right, 355 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:03,480 Speaker 1: we're bringing so buddy who doesn't believe, will show him anyway. 356 00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:07,679 Speaker 1: This woman didn't explode. Yeah, this woman really existed. Her 357 00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:12,119 Speaker 1: name was Nil Coolaghina, also sometimes mistakenly known as Nina Coolaghina. 358 00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:14,919 Speaker 1: Her life was truly remarkable in some ways. Cool Agana 359 00:20:14,920 --> 00:20:18,159 Speaker 1: was born in Leningrad in nine She enlisted in the 360 00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:20,200 Speaker 1: Red Army along with the rest of her family when 361 00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:24,000 Speaker 1: she was fourteen, and she served as a tank radio 362 00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:27,040 Speaker 1: operator on the Eastern Front of World War Two and 363 00:20:27,160 --> 00:20:30,960 Speaker 1: was awarded the Soviet Military merit metal. Can you just imagine, 364 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:33,119 Speaker 1: It's like when you were fourteen, were you ready to 365 00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:36,480 Speaker 1: get in a tank and fight Nazis? It's like, it's Nazis. 366 00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:40,840 Speaker 1: You know your fourteen get in the tank, let's go. Yes, 367 00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:45,080 Speaker 1: that is exactly how much held. No, No, I can't 368 00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,720 Speaker 1: Did she drive the tank psychically? I don't think so. 369 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,320 Speaker 1: I think she operated the radio, But she did believe 370 00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:53,800 Speaker 1: that she'd been psychic since childhood, so who knows if 371 00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:57,000 Speaker 1: it played into her military career. But she only killed 372 00:20:57,040 --> 00:21:01,560 Speaker 1: the hearts of German frogs. I don't know the answer 373 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:06,879 Speaker 1: to that. Christian uh so anyway, Uh yeah, So she 374 00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:09,240 Speaker 1: she's had this career and in the nineteen sixties, after 375 00:21:09,320 --> 00:21:11,560 Speaker 1: the war's over, cool againa She makes a name for 376 00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:14,240 Speaker 1: herself again when she shows up on Russian state TV 377 00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:18,080 Speaker 1: performing these demonstrations of psycho kinesis. Where they'd like, have 378 00:21:18,119 --> 00:21:20,879 Speaker 1: a big glass box it's all sealed off, and somebody 379 00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:23,080 Speaker 1: put a salt shaker or something inside it, and she'd 380 00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:25,080 Speaker 1: stare at it and then move it with her mind, 381 00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:28,720 Speaker 1: or so they claimed. Uh, Now, everything I just described 382 00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:32,360 Speaker 1: to you cool Aghina, the frog Heart tape, that's all real. Uh, 383 00:21:32,400 --> 00:21:34,959 Speaker 1: it's at some point the Defense Department really did have 384 00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:38,679 Speaker 1: analysts investigate this psychic kill tape. The question is, of course, 385 00:21:39,160 --> 00:21:42,280 Speaker 1: what's going on in the film. Uh, if you're this 386 00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:46,120 Speaker 1: hypothetical analyst in nineteen seventy, what do you do? Obviously, 387 00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:48,239 Speaker 1: if if you're like me and I think like us, 388 00:21:48,280 --> 00:21:50,800 Speaker 1: generally you assume, well, this is probably some kind of hoax. 389 00:21:50,840 --> 00:21:54,080 Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not personally very keen on the existence 390 00:21:54,119 --> 00:21:58,000 Speaker 1: of psychic powers. Either she's some kind of skilled illusionist 391 00:21:58,080 --> 00:22:01,200 Speaker 1: hoaxing the Russians or the Russia and stage the whole 392 00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:03,679 Speaker 1: thing as a hoax on us, trying to trick us 393 00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:07,320 Speaker 1: into wasting money on parallel research. If that was the case, 394 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:12,320 Speaker 1: it worked, it worked. So yeah, if even if you 395 00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:14,520 Speaker 1: are skeptical of what's going on, there are going to 396 00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:17,840 Speaker 1: be people in the room with you who say, well, 397 00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:21,400 Speaker 1: we can't be sure and we sure as hell can't 398 00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:26,879 Speaker 1: allow us psychic assassin gap, So bring on the age 399 00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:30,399 Speaker 1: of psychic research. Actually, the funny thing is some amount 400 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:33,480 Speaker 1: of paranormal research had already been being funded by the 401 00:22:33,520 --> 00:22:36,120 Speaker 1: government of the United States since at least going back 402 00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,239 Speaker 1: to the nineteen fifties. There had been interested in it 403 00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:42,280 Speaker 1: at CIA and UH and in a few places here 404 00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:44,040 Speaker 1: and there. But it was in the early nineteen seventies 405 00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:47,280 Speaker 1: that the psychic research really got underway. Well, this, this 406 00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:49,040 Speaker 1: is when we really got to the point where the 407 00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,000 Speaker 1: government could throw just tons of cash down the well 408 00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:56,119 Speaker 1: after it, right right, Yes, So yeah, rich country worried 409 00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:59,280 Speaker 1: about weapons gaps, worried about falling behind in this technology 410 00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:01,760 Speaker 1: race I described up at the beginning. Everybody's paranoid about 411 00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,159 Speaker 1: the Russians getting an edge, so they're like, well, we 412 00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:06,600 Speaker 1: might as well train some psychic spies and assassins and 413 00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:08,400 Speaker 1: see if it works. Do you think we have something 414 00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,640 Speaker 1: like that going on now? But it's like a social 415 00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:17,879 Speaker 1: media assassination gap. I don't want to. But the crazy 416 00:23:17,880 --> 00:23:20,080 Speaker 1: thing about the psychic research is we know it continued 417 00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:24,520 Speaker 1: until at least the nineteen nineties and maybe even later. 418 00:23:25,359 --> 00:23:28,600 Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Right, like some people in here we're 419 00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:33,480 Speaker 1: alive then yeah. Anyway, So in Stranger Things, we've got 420 00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:36,960 Speaker 1: this plot element of the character played by Millie Bobby Brown. 421 00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:40,400 Speaker 1: Of course eleven. She's the product of government psychic research. 422 00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:43,120 Speaker 1: And if you want to know whether psychic powers are real, 423 00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:45,959 Speaker 1: I can't answer that for you. If you're interested in 424 00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:49,479 Speaker 1: my opinion, I'm extremely doubtful. But if you're interested in 425 00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:52,720 Speaker 1: whether the US government really did psychic research projects like 426 00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:55,040 Speaker 1: the kind we see in Stranger Things, the answer is 427 00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:58,359 Speaker 1: pretty much absolutely yes. They did stuff like that, not 428 00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:00,679 Speaker 1: so much with kidnapped children, and they did it with 429 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:04,160 Speaker 1: consenting adults who claimed to be psychics. But all all 430 00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,520 Speaker 1: the types of experiments we see are mirrored by real, 431 00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,639 Speaker 1: real life research. So um, I want to talk briefly 432 00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,840 Speaker 1: about a couple kinds of science psychic research that we're 433 00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,240 Speaker 1: done by the government. Research on psychokinesis, which of course 434 00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,320 Speaker 1: was being able to move things with your mind, and 435 00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:23,679 Speaker 1: then research on remote viewing, which is seeing without the eyes. 436 00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:25,840 Speaker 1: And I should also mention a couple of books that, 437 00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,800 Speaker 1: if you want to go deeper on this subject, were 438 00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:31,320 Speaker 1: also important sources for me when I was working on this. 439 00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:35,240 Speaker 1: If you just want to slim and hilarious investigation into 440 00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:39,280 Speaker 1: a grab bag of government paranormal research. John Ronson's two 441 00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:41,760 Speaker 1: thousand four book The Men Who Stare At Goats is 442 00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,480 Speaker 1: excellent and full of really funny stuff. This is the 443 00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,359 Speaker 1: one upon which the movie is based, right, yes, exactly. Uh, 444 00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:48,800 Speaker 1: though there's a lot of stuff in the book. I 445 00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:50,879 Speaker 1: think that doesn't make it into the movie. For a 446 00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:54,159 Speaker 1: more detailed history of US government psychic research programs, you 447 00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:56,080 Speaker 1: can check out a book just published this year called 448 00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,600 Speaker 1: Phenomena by the journalist Annie Jacobson. This book is great 449 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:03,240 Speaker 1: for all the interviews and historical documents she pulls together. Uh, 450 00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:06,600 Speaker 1: though I do want to warn you that she takes 451 00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,240 Speaker 1: kind of a believers line on it. Like I think 452 00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:13,000 Speaker 1: she is far too generous to the possible existence of 453 00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:17,440 Speaker 1: psychic psychic phenomena and generally has the attitude that ESP 454 00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:21,359 Speaker 1: is real and these experiments prove it. That's surprising given 455 00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:25,160 Speaker 1: her her pedigree. Well, it's a good history either way. 456 00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:27,320 Speaker 1: I mean, we all want to live in that world. 457 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,240 Speaker 1: But I mean, when it comes down to it, like, 458 00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,600 Speaker 1: nobody has has taken James Randy up on his million 459 00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:36,800 Speaker 1: dollar prize, right, and he gets kind of rough treatment 460 00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:39,240 Speaker 1: in this book. James Randy, if you're not familiar with him, 461 00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:43,440 Speaker 1: is a stage magician, illusion illusionist who is a big 462 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,080 Speaker 1: antagonist of all these people who claim to be real psychics. 463 00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,320 Speaker 1: And he's like, for years he did this thing where 464 00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:51,760 Speaker 1: he had lots of money set aside for anybody who 465 00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:55,120 Speaker 1: could come demonstrate the reality of psychic powers or esp 466 00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:59,240 Speaker 1: or telekinesis anything like that under controlled laboratory conditions, And 467 00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:01,800 Speaker 1: a lot of times what people would say it was like, oh, 468 00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:05,000 Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, if if there are skeptical scientists 469 00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,280 Speaker 1: who don't believe in my powers present, they won't work. 470 00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:13,720 Speaker 1: I wish I could use that superpower limitation. Can you 471 00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:18,520 Speaker 1: imagine saying that in a job interview? Or or what 472 00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,720 Speaker 1: if like of all X men can only use their 473 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:27,240 Speaker 1: powers in the positive environment? Yeah right, so yeah, man, 474 00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,639 Speaker 1: school would be rough and they all live in a school. 475 00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,480 Speaker 1: Uh So. A lot of the government funded psychic research 476 00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,040 Speaker 1: of the kind like we see in Stranger Things. It 477 00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,400 Speaker 1: took place at a think tank in northern California called 478 00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:43,119 Speaker 1: the Stanford Research Institute or s r I, especially starting 479 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:46,520 Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two and in nineteen seventy two, s 480 00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:50,000 Speaker 1: r I was the second largest research institute working for 481 00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,480 Speaker 1: the Defense Department. Number one, of course, was the Rand Corporation. 482 00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:56,560 Speaker 1: I found out not actually named after Iron Rand kind 483 00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,440 Speaker 1: of a disappointment. Is named after Danny Rand from Iron 484 00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,240 Speaker 1: Fist because everybody like that Netflix show. So did you 485 00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,920 Speaker 1: say he actually has has a corporation? Yeah, this is 486 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,480 Speaker 1: we're talking about this earlier. Does anybody know if the 487 00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:10,919 Speaker 1: guy who created iron Fist was just like a huge 488 00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:16,040 Speaker 1: fan of Atlas Shrugged. We couldn't figure it out. We 489 00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:20,800 Speaker 1: thought we maybe we'd ask around, Okay, anyways, without checking 490 00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:25,280 Speaker 1: that out for us anyway. So yeah, So the the 491 00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:27,439 Speaker 1: sr I was doing all this research, and it had 492 00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:29,240 Speaker 1: been it had been founded right after World War two, 493 00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:30,879 Speaker 1: so it had been around for a while before it 494 00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,240 Speaker 1: got deep into the psychic research. But this was a 495 00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,160 Speaker 1: serious government think tank that did real research. They got 496 00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:38,960 Speaker 1: budgets reaching up to like seventy million dollars a year. 497 00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,320 Speaker 1: That's in like nineteen seventies dollars, So some real money 498 00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:44,280 Speaker 1: is going into this kind of stuff. And a major 499 00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:46,560 Speaker 1: figure in this history, especially at s r I, is 500 00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:50,880 Speaker 1: a guy named Harold how put Off. Now how put 501 00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:53,280 Speaker 1: Off was an sr I reach researcher who had worked 502 00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:55,760 Speaker 1: on laser physics, and he'd done these n s A 503 00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:59,399 Speaker 1: supercomputer projects in the past, and the early nineteen seventies 504 00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:05,960 Speaker 1: put Off really interested in research about psychic powers in plants. 505 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:10,360 Speaker 1: So there was this guy named Grover Cleveland Cleve Baxter. 506 00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:19,800 Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland, Cleve Baxter, like Cleve. Did he rename himself 507 00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:21,960 Speaker 1: or did his parents? Just like? I think it was 508 00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,639 Speaker 1: just his name. What I love about this name is 509 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,359 Speaker 1: that it sounds like one of the fake NFL player 510 00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:31,960 Speaker 1: or is it college football player names from the Keen 511 00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:36,000 Speaker 1: Pel Peel sketch, you know where they all have ridiculous names. Yeah, 512 00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,600 Speaker 1: Cleve Grover Cleveland Cleve Baxter that I'm going to just 513 00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:42,080 Speaker 1: start adding Cleve Baxter after minor Well, it makes me 514 00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,760 Speaker 1: think of Clive Barker, right, so it's like Clive Barker, 515 00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:50,480 Speaker 1: Clive Barker. Yeah. So this guy was essentially he wanted 516 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:55,280 Speaker 1: to make psychic plants cineambites. Really not quite okay, so 517 00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,040 Speaker 1: let me get there. Baxter was a former CIA employee 518 00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:01,600 Speaker 1: who used to administer poly tests for the agency. He 519 00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:03,880 Speaker 1: was not probably not a cool guy. He was the 520 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:05,760 Speaker 1: kind of guy who like hook up new agents to 521 00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,520 Speaker 1: a polygraph and ask them questions like have you ever 522 00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:12,120 Speaker 1: smoked the marijuana? Are you a homosexual? And stuff like that. 523 00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:16,000 Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties, um and so, one night, after 524 00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,320 Speaker 1: hooking his lie detector machine up to a house plant, 525 00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:21,920 Speaker 1: he became convinced that plants could read our minds. Do 526 00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,600 Speaker 1: you think he was just bored and just sort of 527 00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:27,960 Speaker 1: going around the house and hooking up various things like 528 00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:33,200 Speaker 1: the nightstand and to punch bowl, and then oh, let's 529 00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:35,480 Speaker 1: try the fern. See what happens. It's impossible to know 530 00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:37,480 Speaker 1: for sure, but I think it's the opposite. I think 531 00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:40,240 Speaker 1: he was more like manic and trying to find any 532 00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:41,880 Speaker 1: kind of thing to do. And he just saw the 533 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:44,760 Speaker 1: lie detector machine, saw the house plant, put two and 534 00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:47,960 Speaker 1: two together, and made and set a plant on fire 535 00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:52,400 Speaker 1: to see if it would, you know, communicate with him psychically. Anyway, 536 00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,880 Speaker 1: he did worse than set it on fire, right, Wait? What? No? No? 537 00:29:56,440 --> 00:30:00,120 Speaker 1: Come next? Okay, So so this other guy from SR 538 00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:02,840 Speaker 1: how put off, So he got interested in this guy 539 00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,040 Speaker 1: Cleave call me Cleave Baxter's research, and put Off proposed 540 00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,360 Speaker 1: an experiment where he would grow an allergy culture and 541 00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,280 Speaker 1: then split it in half and then separate the two 542 00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:16,360 Speaker 1: cultures by five miles and then torture one of the 543 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:19,520 Speaker 1: algae cultures with lasers to see if the other one 544 00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,680 Speaker 1: would respond. This is the thing that blows my mind 545 00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:25,800 Speaker 1: that he had lasers to do it with, Like he 546 00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:28,720 Speaker 1: didn't just set it on fire, I don't know, punch 547 00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,320 Speaker 1: the algae like. He was a laser researcher. He'd done 548 00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:33,960 Speaker 1: lasers up and down, so he just had lasers laying 549 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:39,400 Speaker 1: around detecting machine. The lasers make it more science, I guess. Okay, 550 00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:43,680 Speaker 1: I see because because his methodology section in the paper. Yeah, 551 00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:46,640 Speaker 1: it ends. It lends a layer. Layer lends an air 552 00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,720 Speaker 1: of credibility if you're doing defense research right well, you know, 553 00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,840 Speaker 1: and if the lasers were not involved, it is. It 554 00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:56,120 Speaker 1: is a lot like, for instance, the power the powder 555 00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,560 Speaker 1: of sympathy, which we covered on the podcast. The supposed 556 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,280 Speaker 1: idea that that you could you could put a magic 557 00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,160 Speaker 1: powder on a blade that it wounded a dog and 558 00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,520 Speaker 1: it would make the dog yelp halfway around the world 559 00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,800 Speaker 1: and you could use this to uh navigate your sailing vessel. 560 00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:12,480 Speaker 1: This is a good thing to point out because a 561 00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:16,040 Speaker 1: lot of this research that was actually done in these 562 00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:20,480 Speaker 1: labs throughout the twentieth century sounds a lot like magical 563 00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:25,440 Speaker 1: potions and occult beliefs from like the eighteenth and nineteenth century, 564 00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:27,920 Speaker 1: except they've just sort of like put some science e 565 00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:31,760 Speaker 1: sounding words in there, but the principles are the same. Uh. 566 00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,080 Speaker 1: And so here's your science e sounding words. Pudof was 567 00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:37,880 Speaker 1: interested in whether a hypothetical particle in physics called a 568 00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:41,560 Speaker 1: tach eon could explain psychic communication between plants and humans. 569 00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:45,000 Speaker 1: Take eon is a hypothetical particle. Nobody's ever seen it before. 570 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,120 Speaker 1: But if it existed, what it would be is a 571 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,360 Speaker 1: particle that always moves faster than light. So no particle 572 00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:53,720 Speaker 1: with mass in our universe can move up, can accelerate 573 00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:55,760 Speaker 1: up to the speed of light. Attack eon would be 574 00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:59,800 Speaker 1: something that could never decelerate down to the speed of light. Uh. 575 00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:01,840 Speaker 1: And so he thought, yeah, maybe that's involved in psychic 576 00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:05,960 Speaker 1: phenomena anyway. Now this is where John Carpenter got the idea. 577 00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,160 Speaker 1: I assumed to have tachians communicate with people's dreams in 578 00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,520 Speaker 1: the past of darkness. What a great movie, the best 579 00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:16,560 Speaker 1: movie ever to feature a jar of satan. Okay, so 580 00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:19,479 Speaker 1: back to put Out put Off got in touch with Baxter, 581 00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:22,400 Speaker 1: and through being in touch with Baxter, he got to 582 00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:24,480 Speaker 1: know this guy who is an artist and a writer 583 00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:29,080 Speaker 1: and a self proclaimed psychic named Ingo Swan. And this 584 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:32,600 Speaker 1: where are these names coming from? These are real names, man. 585 00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:37,800 Speaker 1: This guy sounds like like a villain in a Ghostbusters movie. Ingo. Yeah, 586 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:39,840 Speaker 1: like he made the tower that will bring forth the 587 00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,400 Speaker 1: giant slore. Yeah. Yeah. He has like a book all 588 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,080 Speaker 1: about like the book of Ingo Swan. Well, this guy 589 00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,600 Speaker 1: apparently did he would like dress himself in old like 590 00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,840 Speaker 1: religious clothes. He found it second hand stores and stuff 591 00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,400 Speaker 1: like that. But I don't know, I kind of admire 592 00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,160 Speaker 1: that part of him, and it's like, yeah, you just 593 00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:58,960 Speaker 1: do you man well, And it sounds like you want 594 00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:00,800 Speaker 1: to wear a priest outfit, go for it. He sounds 595 00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,600 Speaker 1: like he was a showman too. And that's what we 596 00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:04,800 Speaker 1: keep seeing time and time again with these examples. As 597 00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:08,920 Speaker 1: you have you have scientists and some showman and uh, 598 00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,080 Speaker 1: and the scientists don't realize that what they have as 599 00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:15,000 Speaker 1: a showman exactly. So put Off in put Off in 600 00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,720 Speaker 1: excuse me, Swan, Ingo Swan. They have this meeting, and 601 00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,520 Speaker 1: this meeting kicks off this wave of paranormal research at 602 00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,719 Speaker 1: the s r I that will continue throughout the nineteen seventies. 603 00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,520 Speaker 1: So Ingo Swan, he was this self proclaimed psychic. He 604 00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:30,440 Speaker 1: said he had esp he said he could do psychokinesis, 605 00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,680 Speaker 1: and put off In Collies claimed that Ingo Swan demonstrated 606 00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,200 Speaker 1: all kinds of powers under test conditions that could not 607 00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:39,720 Speaker 1: have been faked. For example, they claimed that he was 608 00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:44,080 Speaker 1: able to demonstrate unexplainable psychokinesis, such as when he used 609 00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:49,160 Speaker 1: his mind to perturb a magnetometer inside a quark detector 610 00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:52,920 Speaker 1: buried under the basement of a research facility on Stanford 611 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,400 Speaker 1: University campus. And this led put On, I mean it, 612 00:33:56,560 --> 00:33:59,640 Speaker 1: that's incredible. If he could actually do that, if the 613 00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:05,600 Speaker 1: story is true, Wow, that's your mind. Yeah, I mean yeah. 614 00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,080 Speaker 1: So in the show we see these these experiments where 615 00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:10,360 Speaker 1: they're trying to get her to maybe kill a rabbit 616 00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:12,799 Speaker 1: in a cage or crush a coke can, which she 617 00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,239 Speaker 1: successfully does with the coke can. But yeah, this is 618 00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:17,920 Speaker 1: something that you couldn't fake. It would be dealing with 619 00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:21,160 Speaker 1: this thing deep underground, and the people at this experiment 620 00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,560 Speaker 1: claimed that he did it. Now, as as I've implied before, 621 00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:27,080 Speaker 1: I'm doubtful about the truth of these claims, but that's 622 00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,279 Speaker 1: what they said. They said, Wow, he moved this thing 623 00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,640 Speaker 1: and there's no way he could have faked it. So 624 00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:35,240 Speaker 1: this lad put off in a colleague named Russell targ 625 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,080 Speaker 1: Uh and a list of other sort of revolving collaborators 626 00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:42,520 Speaker 1: to work for years with defense and intelligence grants to 627 00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,680 Speaker 1: study psychic phenomena through the sr I. And then later 628 00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:49,200 Speaker 1: there were all these derivative programs in in the following decades, like, 629 00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:51,799 Speaker 1: for example, there was a remote viewing program run out 630 00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,799 Speaker 1: of the Army out of Fort Mead, Maryland. Now a 631 00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:56,719 Speaker 1: lot of this research would end up focusing on the 632 00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,600 Speaker 1: sp phenomenon known as remote viewing that we mentioned earlier. 633 00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,480 Speaker 1: That's see stuff you wouldn't be able to see with 634 00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:04,759 Speaker 1: your own eyes, and we see examples of this and 635 00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:08,759 Speaker 1: stranger things exactly. That's exactly what they're trying to do. Yeah, 636 00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:10,960 Speaker 1: like go to Russia and look at this guy and 637 00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,520 Speaker 1: tell us what he's saying. Those were the kinds of 638 00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:17,240 Speaker 1: experiments people wanted to do. In general. The most common 639 00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,960 Speaker 1: form through throughout the end of after the first year 640 00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:23,080 Speaker 1: or so, if this was what came to be known 641 00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,400 Speaker 1: as coordinate remote viewing experiments. So that would work like 642 00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:29,839 Speaker 1: this psychic is given a set of map coordinates, then 643 00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:33,200 Speaker 1: the psychic would say what they saw there at the map, 644 00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:36,359 Speaker 1: at the at the place on the map. You can 645 00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:38,960 Speaker 1: see maybe a few ways that this could be a 646 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,920 Speaker 1: little bit flawed as an experimental design, right, like if 647 00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:44,520 Speaker 1: somebody went to go get a map and look and 648 00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:47,000 Speaker 1: see what was there and then do some reading about it. 649 00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,440 Speaker 1: But there are some cases where the researchers again insisted 650 00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:52,200 Speaker 1: like no, no, no, there's no way they could have 651 00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,120 Speaker 1: done that. Uh, it's absolutely real. But I want to 652 00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,920 Speaker 1: give one example. So there was a remote viewer named 653 00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,520 Speaker 1: Pat Price, who was kind of normal name here, right. 654 00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:07,239 Speaker 1: He was famous for these amazingly detailed remote viewing results. Now, 655 00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:10,920 Speaker 1: Price was born a Mormon, but he became a scientologist 656 00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:12,799 Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and he claimed that it was 657 00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:16,160 Speaker 1: in the Church of Scientology that his powers were brought forth. 658 00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:17,840 Speaker 1: I guess he was having a session with the E 659 00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,560 Speaker 1: meter and all that, and he gained the power to 660 00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:26,640 Speaker 1: see things at long distances by radioactive E meter. How 661 00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:29,080 Speaker 1: he got recruited as a pretty good story, but often 662 00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,200 Speaker 1: Swan met him in the parking lot of a farm 663 00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:34,200 Speaker 1: where they were buying the office Christmas tree. Price sold 664 00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:36,360 Speaker 1: them a Christmas tree, and then they recruited him for 665 00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:40,360 Speaker 1: c I A Remote viewing experiments UH. In one case, 666 00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,399 Speaker 1: he supposedly was able to use remote viewing to give 667 00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:48,799 Speaker 1: intricate detailed descriptions of the inside of a restricted n 668 00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:52,760 Speaker 1: S A base called Sugar Grove in West Virginia. Price 669 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,480 Speaker 1: was also known for the remote viewing of details of 670 00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:58,600 Speaker 1: the Soviet facility in Kazakhstan known as u r d 671 00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,839 Speaker 1: F three for Unidentified Research and Development Facility three and 672 00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:07,080 Speaker 1: UH Price he drew illustrations of this gantry gantry crane 673 00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:09,440 Speaker 1: that were determined to be very similar to something that 674 00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:13,680 Speaker 1: was actually photographed at the facility, and internal analysis concluded 675 00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:17,040 Speaker 1: that he couldn't have done this. And I'm going to 676 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:19,840 Speaker 1: caveat this in a second, but they say he couldn't 677 00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,680 Speaker 1: have done this unless either he actually saw it through 678 00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,799 Speaker 1: remote viewing or he was informed of what to draw 679 00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:28,520 Speaker 1: by someone knowledgeable of u r d F three. Now, 680 00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:31,080 Speaker 1: I think maybe there could have been other possibilities. But 681 00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,719 Speaker 1: even if you only accept those two possibilities, you've got 682 00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,560 Speaker 1: to wonder about the second one. And many people in 683 00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:39,680 Speaker 1: these research circles did start to wonder like, could his 684 00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,280 Speaker 1: source of information be the disinformation arm of the KGB. 685 00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:46,719 Speaker 1: Could some of these psychics giving us this information be 686 00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:51,040 Speaker 1: feeding us disinformation running psy ops basically on our own programs. 687 00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,080 Speaker 1: But they didn't They didn't consider like maybe that he 688 00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,799 Speaker 1: was doing like a cold reading. Oh, I mean that 689 00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:58,200 Speaker 1: that's a whole other question. Cold reading, of course, is 690 00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:00,279 Speaker 1: the technique of you know, looking for Q who is 691 00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,640 Speaker 1: in the person you're talking to. It's a mentalism trick 692 00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,480 Speaker 1: and also playing you're also playing off their expectations of 693 00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,640 Speaker 1: your knowledge too. Yes, uh yeah, So so that's a 694 00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,360 Speaker 1: way of using people's reactions to the things you're saying 695 00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,200 Speaker 1: to give the impression that you're getting information that that 696 00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:16,920 Speaker 1: you couldn't possibly have. And really what you're doing is 697 00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:20,560 Speaker 1: getting sort of hits and miss verification through their body 698 00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:24,040 Speaker 1: language and their eyes and and little things they mentioned 699 00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:27,399 Speaker 1: that they don't realize they've they've given up. Uh so, yeah, 700 00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:29,600 Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions about what went on there, 701 00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:32,040 Speaker 1: But I want to mention a couple other examples of 702 00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,480 Speaker 1: government psychics who were doing this kind of stuff along 703 00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:37,280 Speaker 1: the lines that we see eleven doing in the show. 704 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,680 Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the performer Uri Geller, who here 705 00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,200 Speaker 1: is familiar with Uri Geller? Yeah, I think he didn't. 706 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:46,080 Speaker 1: He he's like a guy who would appear in Carson. 707 00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,800 Speaker 1: He's the Israeli guy who's been spoons. So he claims 708 00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,200 Speaker 1: to be a psychic, and he his biggest act in 709 00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:55,240 Speaker 1: his career was he would get a spoon and he'd 710 00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,919 Speaker 1: use psychokinesis, so he claimed to bend it. I don't 711 00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:01,200 Speaker 1: know what spoons ever did him, why he hates spoons 712 00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:03,360 Speaker 1: so much. She's been you know, thousands of spoons in 713 00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:08,040 Speaker 1: his career, and people seem to think this is really impressive. Uh. 714 00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:09,640 Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who are only a 715 00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:11,840 Speaker 1: little bit familiar with him don't realize that he he 716 00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,680 Speaker 1: claims his powers are real. You know. He's like, yeah, 717 00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:18,319 Speaker 1: I'm a real psychic. I'm not an illusionist. This is 718 00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:23,439 Speaker 1: not an act. But so, Ri Geller was tested extensively 719 00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:25,400 Speaker 1: by the s r I in the nineteen seventies with 720 00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,560 Speaker 1: these experiments like What's in the Box where they'd have 721 00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:32,080 Speaker 1: a box and they'd roll a die in the Yeah. 722 00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:34,600 Speaker 1: But here's the question. So Gwyneth Paltrow's head isn't there 723 00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:36,800 Speaker 1: which side of it is facing up? Is it or 724 00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:38,960 Speaker 1: left ear? Is it the bloody stump of the neck. 725 00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:43,439 Speaker 1: And that's what he would have to get. Yeah, which 726 00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:45,359 Speaker 1: side of the die is facing up? Another one would 727 00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:49,280 Speaker 1: be like can you look inside sealed aluminum film canisters 728 00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:52,160 Speaker 1: and say what's there? Is it ball bearings? Is it magnets? 729 00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,560 Speaker 1: And uh? And of course again we have these stories 730 00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:57,759 Speaker 1: by the people conducting the experiments, like put Off and 731 00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,200 Speaker 1: targ that he was able to get these result that 732 00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:03,200 Speaker 1: are just impossible for him to have gotten by chance, 733 00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:08,120 Speaker 1: impossible for him to have cheated. It's just too amazing. Um. Again, 734 00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:11,919 Speaker 1: you know all the all the asterisks about skepticism there, 735 00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:14,440 Speaker 1: and this is consistent throughout a lot of the literature. 736 00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:16,520 Speaker 1: Many of the people who worked on these recent research 737 00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:19,399 Speaker 1: projects have remained adamant over the years that they were 738 00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,600 Speaker 1: able to prove psychic powers were real. On the government's time, 739 00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:26,399 Speaker 1: and even some internal reviews on the value of these 740 00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:29,319 Speaker 1: programs seemed kind of optimistic, like to quote from one 741 00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,080 Speaker 1: report for the CIA put together in nineteen seventy five, 742 00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:35,239 Speaker 1: but the physicist J. A. Ball, who independently reviewed all 743 00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:39,200 Speaker 1: the data, quote a large body of reliable experimental evidence 744 00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:44,000 Speaker 1: points to the inescapable conclusion that extrasensory perception does exist 745 00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:48,439 Speaker 1: as a real phenomenon, albeit characterized by rarity and lack 746 00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:51,840 Speaker 1: of reliability. Just kind of that last part kind of 747 00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:54,680 Speaker 1: undercuts everything, doesn't it. Yeah, Because I mean, if it's 748 00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,120 Speaker 1: because if we were to take that on face value, 749 00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,000 Speaker 1: and I mean, on one hand, yes, it's amazing if 750 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,040 Speaker 1: psychic phenomenal were real, but then if it were not 751 00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,480 Speaker 1: dependable at all, I could be utterly useless for the government. 752 00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,640 Speaker 1: You can't send in a psychic assassin and it's like, oh, 753 00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,360 Speaker 1: there's like a ten percent chance he'll be able to 754 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:14,520 Speaker 1: blow somebody's head up with his mind. Uh, and then 755 00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:18,160 Speaker 1: nine chance that he's just arrested and you know, executed 756 00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,120 Speaker 1: on the spot, or even worse. I mean, how about 757 00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,920 Speaker 1: you're doing the remote viewing, right, You're the person who's 758 00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,719 Speaker 1: giving somebody the inside details of some Soviet research facility, 759 00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,480 Speaker 1: and what you're trying to sell is, well, my my 760 00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:34,799 Speaker 1: results are amazingly accurate about one out of a hundred times. Yeah. 761 00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,200 Speaker 1: And then and then it's not necessarily a situation where 762 00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:39,120 Speaker 1: they would be It's like, oh, I know, I don't 763 00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:42,040 Speaker 1: see anything. Sorry, it's you. You're They would be giving 764 00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:45,719 Speaker 1: you false information, perhaps just made up information. Uh, it 765 00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:49,120 Speaker 1: would be just completely unreliable for any government purposes. Yeah. 766 00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,040 Speaker 1: So another problem with all this research, I think is that, 767 00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:54,839 Speaker 1: based on my reading, it seems that while we keep 768 00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:57,520 Speaker 1: getting all these people involved in this research who say, yeah, 769 00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:59,920 Speaker 1: the phenomenon is real, psychics are real. We've shown it 770 00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:03,120 Speaker 1: over and over again in these tests, this research and 771 00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:07,359 Speaker 1: all of its administrative levels just seems crammed with people who, 772 00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:12,640 Speaker 1: in uh, the parapsychologist Gertrudge Schmider Schmidler's terminology are sheep, 773 00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,120 Speaker 1: meaning people who are committed in advance to the belief 774 00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:18,799 Speaker 1: that psychic phenomena are real, as opposed to her term 775 00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:21,560 Speaker 1: goats for people who believe in advance that it is 776 00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:23,960 Speaker 1: not real. Uh. You know, as as I've said before, 777 00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:26,120 Speaker 1: I think I'm kind of a goat. But if you 778 00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,200 Speaker 1: have a whole lot of people who believe very strongly 779 00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,399 Speaker 1: in a thing working on experiments to prove that thing, 780 00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,160 Speaker 1: you're probably not going to get a lot of objectivity 781 00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:38,480 Speaker 1: in your methodology. And so this is a criticism that's 782 00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,239 Speaker 1: been leveled against this research for a long time. I 783 00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:42,840 Speaker 1: want to give a couple of examples real quick, um 784 00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,839 Speaker 1: of the kind of sheep thing going on. So a 785 00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,480 Speaker 1: major figure in the remote viewing research conducted out of 786 00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:53,120 Speaker 1: Fort Mead in Maryland was was like, they would give 787 00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:56,279 Speaker 1: people these coordinates or these places to view and it 788 00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:58,960 Speaker 1: might be a place of strategic importance. Right, So here's 789 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,240 Speaker 1: a Soviet So there's even one story that these psychic 790 00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,279 Speaker 1: spies out of Fort Mead we're supposed to see what 791 00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:10,279 Speaker 1: was happening inside Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis. Now 792 00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:13,040 Speaker 1: you can you can easily imagine though the situation there is, 793 00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:16,880 Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to figure out how to how 794 00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:19,400 Speaker 1: to handle the situation, and then someone says, well, do 795 00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,279 Speaker 1: you want our psychics to take a crack at it? 796 00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:25,920 Speaker 1: And why not? Yeah, we're paying for them. We might 797 00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:27,920 Speaker 1: as well see what they got. And maybe they got nothing, 798 00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,040 Speaker 1: but out I don't know if I believe it's true. 799 00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,000 Speaker 1: I think I heard that Jimmy Carter was aware that 800 00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:37,960 Speaker 1: this had taken place, but yeah, uh yeah. Anyway, So 801 00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:40,719 Speaker 1: at Fort Mead, one of the major figures involved in 802 00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,680 Speaker 1: the remote viewing projects there was this guy named Ed Dames. 803 00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:45,799 Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of him before. He shows up 804 00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:48,759 Speaker 1: sometimes on uh, what's that show art Bell Coast to 805 00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,680 Speaker 1: Coast where they talk about UFOs and stuff. Uh. So 806 00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:54,480 Speaker 1: he was a guy who who worked on this project 807 00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,560 Speaker 1: for the Defense Department, and he was intensely interested not 808 00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:00,600 Speaker 1: just in the strategic targets, but in having his remote 809 00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:03,800 Speaker 1: viewing agents spy on stuff like the alien basis of 810 00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,759 Speaker 1: the Galactic Federation scattered throughout the Solar system, which are 811 00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:09,480 Speaker 1: the forward advanced posts of these aliens that are going 812 00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,760 Speaker 1: to colonize our our solar system. Okay, sounds reasonable. Yeah, 813 00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:15,759 Speaker 1: this is what happens when you when you build a 814 00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,279 Speaker 1: team of government psychics, right, I mean right, you end 815 00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:22,680 Speaker 1: up spying on the galactic impio. Yeah. And so there 816 00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:25,719 Speaker 1: were some people, you know, in various ranks who were 817 00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:27,800 Speaker 1: a little bit doubtful about whether that was a useful 818 00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:31,759 Speaker 1: research project. Uh in uh. In the Sorry and John 819 00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,160 Speaker 1: Ronson's The Men Who Sarah goatst Ronson claims that one 820 00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:37,560 Speaker 1: of Dame's personal remote viewing projects was using ESP to 821 00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:40,920 Speaker 1: determine the true nature of the Lockness Monster, which he 822 00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:47,880 Speaker 1: eventually determined was the ghost of a dinosaur. Yes like that? Yeah, 823 00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:49,640 Speaker 1: that's better than any of the other ones I've heard, 824 00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:52,160 Speaker 1: which is sadder that it's the ghost of a dinosaur, 825 00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,920 Speaker 1: that it's the last living dinosaur and it's all alone. 826 00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,319 Speaker 1: The last living dinosaur would have been would be far 827 00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:00,400 Speaker 1: sadder because it would be just like a dead and 828 00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:04,960 Speaker 1: hang out with its other dead ancestors. At least a ghost, 829 00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:08,680 Speaker 1: you can imagine, has delight in haunting people. Has there 830 00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:11,719 Speaker 1: ever been a ghost dinosaur movie. Oh, there's been a 831 00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,600 Speaker 1: there's a ghost shark movie, and we need to get 832 00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:18,120 Speaker 1: on that copyright that okay. One final anecdote also from 833 00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,160 Speaker 1: Ronson's The Men who Stare at Goats, and this is 834 00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:22,160 Speaker 1: I think exemplary of the kind of thing that may 835 00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:24,839 Speaker 1: have been going on to give people who are working 836 00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,439 Speaker 1: on these psychic experiments the impression that they were turning 837 00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,799 Speaker 1: up real phenomenon. Ronson interviews this guy who worked at 838 00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:34,080 Speaker 1: the Fort Meade project named Lynn Buchanan and uh. He 839 00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:37,759 Speaker 1: also interviews another remote viewer named Joseph mc mcmonagle, and 840 00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,640 Speaker 1: Buchanan tells Ronson the story about mcmonagle's amazing psychic powers. 841 00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:46,200 Speaker 1: One time there was a locked door at the facility 842 00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:50,080 Speaker 1: and at Fort Meade and mcmonagle used his psychic powers 843 00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:54,439 Speaker 1: to remote view what the key to the door looked like, 844 00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,640 Speaker 1: and then he made a sketch of the key from 845 00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,879 Speaker 1: that psychic vision, and then took it to a locksmith 846 00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:03,960 Speaker 1: and had the locksmith make a copy of the key 847 00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:06,759 Speaker 1: from the drawing, and the key worked and he was 848 00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:10,600 Speaker 1: able to open the door. If true, that would be amazing, right, 849 00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:14,799 Speaker 1: But in his interview with Ronson, mcmonagle admits that what 850 00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,520 Speaker 1: had actually done, what it actually happened there, was that 851 00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,439 Speaker 1: he had picked the lock, and he didn't want to 852 00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:23,840 Speaker 1: deflate morale among the other psychic spies, so he didn't 853 00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,680 Speaker 1: tell them that. He just let them believe that it 854 00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,759 Speaker 1: had been this psychic adventure and they have to be 855 00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:32,640 Speaker 1: in a positive environment. But it's it's a it's a 856 00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:35,200 Speaker 1: classic magician's trick here, right, I mean, it's it's you 857 00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,239 Speaker 1: can't see what I'm doing at this hand because all 858 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,960 Speaker 1: the stuff this one's doing, this one's busy running to 859 00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,839 Speaker 1: the locksmith, this one's picking the lock. Yeah. Uh So, 860 00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:45,920 Speaker 1: in in final explanation, I mean, there are a lot 861 00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:47,759 Speaker 1: of things that could have been going on in these 862 00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,400 Speaker 1: experiments that people claimed. We're giving these amazingly accurate results 863 00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:54,120 Speaker 1: and proving the truth of psychic powers. In some cases 864 00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:56,280 Speaker 1: you have to assume there may have been fraud or trickery. 865 00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,200 Speaker 1: It may have been disinformation at some level. It may 866 00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,000 Speaker 1: have been intern old psy ops campaigns. There may have 867 00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:06,040 Speaker 1: been hoaxers. I mean, plenty of skeptics alleged that the psychics, 868 00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,560 Speaker 1: like Uri Geller, we're just doing slight of hand tricks 869 00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:11,880 Speaker 1: and tricking the scientists. But also I think among the 870 00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:15,520 Speaker 1: researchers themselves, there is probably a strong tendency towards what's 871 00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:19,120 Speaker 1: known as cherry picking um, meaning that maybe sometimes the 872 00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,960 Speaker 1: remote viewers did have some truly amazingly accurate descriptions of 873 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:25,279 Speaker 1: stuff they wouldn't be able to see. But what if 874 00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:29,480 Speaker 1: these amazingly accurate hits were like four or five sessions 875 00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,040 Speaker 1: out of thousands, So you think that's what Matthew Modine's 876 00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:35,600 Speaker 1: up to and stranger things. He's just like like he 877 00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,279 Speaker 1: every for a thousand days, he makes a leve and 878 00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:39,920 Speaker 1: try to crush it. They just cut a lot of 879 00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:43,239 Speaker 1: the scenes out. Well, that's that's the director's cut. That's 880 00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,600 Speaker 1: one way remote viewing is different than psychogenesis. So if 881 00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,360 Speaker 1: you make somebody try to crush a coat can with 882 00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:49,879 Speaker 1: their mind without touching it a thousand times and they 883 00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,759 Speaker 1: can only do it once. I'm still impressed. Like, if 884 00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,120 Speaker 1: you can rule out some kind of intervention, like that's 885 00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,080 Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would would would would have 886 00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:00,959 Speaker 1: won the James Randy Prize. Could if you could without 887 00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,400 Speaker 1: any without touching it, just crushed that can with your 888 00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:05,640 Speaker 1: brain right with proper controls in place, and you can 889 00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:08,800 Speaker 1: do that. There, boom, you've got the prize. Psychic phenomena 890 00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:10,759 Speaker 1: are real. I'm still impressed. Even though you could only 891 00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:14,000 Speaker 1: do it once. With remote viewing, you know, you could say, 892 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,520 Speaker 1: I've got a picture here that you can't see, describe 893 00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:18,560 Speaker 1: it for me. If you do this hundreds of times 894 00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:20,480 Speaker 1: and a few times you come up with a pretty 895 00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:23,840 Speaker 1: accurate description, I'm not impressed. That's just I mean, you 896 00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,759 Speaker 1: could do that randomly. You're just monkeys and a typewriter. Yeah, 897 00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:32,160 Speaker 1: they're bound to pound it out eventually anyway. So one 898 00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,759 Speaker 1: difference between this type of government psychic research and the 899 00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:37,279 Speaker 1: stuff we see in Stranger Things is that I never 900 00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:39,640 Speaker 1: came across any examples. There may have been some some 901 00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:42,560 Speaker 1: out there, because there's still some classified stuff. But I 902 00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:46,759 Speaker 1: never came across any examples of psychics using an isolation 903 00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:49,160 Speaker 1: tank to enhance their powers, which is one of my 904 00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:52,600 Speaker 1: favorite set pieces on the show. That might be why 905 00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:54,759 Speaker 1: they didn't have a positive environment all the time. You 906 00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:57,359 Speaker 1: need an isolation tank to feel good about yourself. Well, 907 00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:01,400 Speaker 1: it's interesting you say that, because, um, well let's just 908 00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,960 Speaker 1: start with isolation tanks. Who here has has floated? Who 909 00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:06,640 Speaker 1: raised your hand? If you have floated, if you've been 910 00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:11,760 Speaker 1: in an isolation tank, should host the show. He's like, alright, 911 00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:15,400 Speaker 1: so keep your hands up, all right, Now, keep your 912 00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:17,279 Speaker 1: hand in the air. If you've been in one more 913 00:49:17,280 --> 00:49:24,000 Speaker 1: than once, All right, Okay, did you hallucinate? Okay, so 914 00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:28,240 Speaker 1: Robert has floated and I have floated, but only once. 915 00:49:29,680 --> 00:49:31,319 Speaker 1: I would love to try it. I tried it once 916 00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:36,040 Speaker 1: at home in the washing machine and no good. Well 917 00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:41,319 Speaker 1: we all float down. I'll float with you someday. Well. 918 00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:43,160 Speaker 1: I think that the show does a pretty great job 919 00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,640 Speaker 1: of explaining how it works. I mean, it's it's it's soft, 920 00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:47,480 Speaker 1: it's boy, and so you're you're floating in the in 921 00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:52,359 Speaker 1: the water. Um, it's uh. If you've done it before, 922 00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,960 Speaker 1: you know that the first time you float a lot 923 00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:57,040 Speaker 1: of it is about just getting used to the fact 924 00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:01,919 Speaker 1: that you're in this body temperature, you know, a high 925 00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:06,399 Speaker 1: salt mixture, and it's it's like stinging every sensitive part 926 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:08,960 Speaker 1: of your body, like cuts and scrapes you didn't realize 927 00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,840 Speaker 1: you had are crying out to you. No God, I 928 00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:14,000 Speaker 1: mean that seems like with all the other deprivation, that 929 00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:17,160 Speaker 1: would have the possibility of reducing your entire consciousness to 930 00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,680 Speaker 1: a hangnail. Yeah. Yeah, because it does play with your consciousness. 931 00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:22,920 Speaker 1: I mean that's why people climb into them, and that's 932 00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:25,600 Speaker 1: why John C. Lily was I mean, that's why he 933 00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:28,399 Speaker 1: invented it. That's why they were researching this at NIM. 934 00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:31,800 Speaker 1: Now we should we should clarify the the isolation tanks 935 00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,319 Speaker 1: that you see in altered states or in stranger things 936 00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,440 Speaker 1: are usually different than what you would just go to 937 00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,600 Speaker 1: it like a commercial place. So the ones that we've 938 00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:43,600 Speaker 1: floated in at least or horizontal and you're kind of 939 00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:47,400 Speaker 1: laying on your back so you can't smell. Yeah, I 940 00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:49,840 Speaker 1: sort of see, Yeah, you definitely smell. Because that was 941 00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:52,120 Speaker 1: like that distracted me from most of my first float, 942 00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:55,480 Speaker 1: was my only float was that was that. Wow, it 943 00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:57,319 Speaker 1: really smells salting in here. And I don't know why 944 00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:00,200 Speaker 1: I was getting into double float. That's what that The 945 00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:01,839 Speaker 1: thing they always say you need to float more than 946 00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:03,919 Speaker 1: one is because that first float is just about getting 947 00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,520 Speaker 1: used to bring and make it, will record it, Yeah 948 00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:11,319 Speaker 1: we should but uh yeah. The now, the tanks that 949 00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:15,399 Speaker 1: Lily was using at at NIM, they they were kind 950 00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,080 Speaker 1: of uh, kind of like they were very and then 951 00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:20,319 Speaker 1: they had a nightmare of quality to them. I guess 952 00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,360 Speaker 1: you'd say that the individuals were dressed in something that 953 00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:25,920 Speaker 1: kind of look like a gimp costume with these like 954 00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:31,200 Speaker 1: big blackout goggles. Uh yeah, kind of like a really 955 00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:35,520 Speaker 1: scary mask and uh and they were They found that 956 00:51:35,600 --> 00:51:38,399 Speaker 1: it had a pretty severe effect on the subjects because 957 00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:42,320 Speaker 1: you're essentially locking someone away with the inward facing mind 958 00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,440 Speaker 1: and it doesn't take much of that to um to 959 00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,960 Speaker 1: start playing with your your sensations and playing with your 960 00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:51,000 Speaker 1: thought process. I mean, it's the it's the reason that 961 00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:55,520 Speaker 1: solitary confinement it's such a hellacious thing to inflict on somebody. Yeah, 962 00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:57,560 Speaker 1: I mean I think that's widely considered a form of 963 00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,320 Speaker 1: torture now, Yeah, and this is basically what they wanted though, Yeah, 964 00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:04,919 Speaker 1: because they were researching quote a psychological stability of human 965 00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:08,600 Speaker 1: beings that are sustained isolation and reduced sensory implicity. Little 966 00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:11,319 Speaker 1: did they know, like forty years later people would pay 967 00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,200 Speaker 1: money to do this. Well, I mean this, this is 968 00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,880 Speaker 1: an area that parallels that. That duality with Lily of 969 00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:22,200 Speaker 1: establishment really counterculturally. Establishment really was all about, let's get 970 00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:25,439 Speaker 1: this thing and we're gonna take potential spies, will lock 971 00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:27,759 Speaker 1: them away in there, and when they lose their mind, 972 00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:31,640 Speaker 1: they'll tell us everything. And then counterculture Lily was like, no, 973 00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:35,240 Speaker 1: you need to lose your mind in here on LSD 974 00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,160 Speaker 1: maybe and then potentially talk to alien dolphins. Man. That 975 00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:44,200 Speaker 1: Lily mentality of like the self experimentation is something I 976 00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,200 Speaker 1: have this big conflict about because on one hand, it's 977 00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:50,080 Speaker 1: like I like admire it, you know, I'm like, somebody 978 00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:53,719 Speaker 1: wants to experiment on themselves. I'm like, that's confidence, that's courage. 979 00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,520 Speaker 1: At the same time, that's usually not good science, right, 980 00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,400 Speaker 1: because it's hard to be objective when you're experimenting on yourself. 981 00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:03,320 Speaker 1: It tends to who suggest an impatience that is generally 982 00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:06,879 Speaker 1: not compatible with scientific ricor right or trying to get 983 00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,279 Speaker 1: around ethical boundaries that would exist if you were experimenting 984 00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,400 Speaker 1: on others. Yeah, okay, so we can say Matthew Modine 985 00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:15,880 Speaker 1: as far as we know so far. And I refused 986 00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:17,840 Speaker 1: to refer to him by whatever. His character's name is 987 00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:22,600 Speaker 1: Matthew Modine, R printer whatever. Matthew Modine is a patient 988 00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:25,399 Speaker 1: doctor because he hasn't experimented on himself yet in this show. 989 00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:30,560 Speaker 1: It's true, they're probably saving that first. Um. Yeah, there's 990 00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,360 Speaker 1: really really got into it. He he when he floated 991 00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:40,799 Speaker 1: himself in this nightmarish contraption. Uh, he saw limitless possibility here. Uh, 992 00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:43,840 Speaker 1: in a way to just like to get in touch 993 00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:47,240 Speaker 1: with like the the the unaffected mind, like the mind 994 00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:52,000 Speaker 1: without any of the the weights of sensation and uh 995 00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:54,600 Speaker 1: and he ended up writing about it pretty much for 996 00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:57,960 Speaker 1: the rest of his life. His his writings are really 997 00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,640 Speaker 1: interesting if you ever give him a try, because the 998 00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,480 Speaker 1: he kind of waffles back and forth between being like 999 00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:09,400 Speaker 1: academic writing and being like stream of consciousness writing. But 1000 00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,080 Speaker 1: in a way he wrote while he was high and 1001 00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:16,400 Speaker 1: then I may also it's really hard to write. But 1002 00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:18,960 Speaker 1: I have a quick quote from him though. This is 1003 00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:22,880 Speaker 1: from Lily Tanks for the Memories Flotation Tank talks from 1004 00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:29,440 Speaker 1: the memories. Yeah, he had. He wore that coonskin cap, remember, 1005 00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,680 Speaker 1: and his favorite what were one of his favorite names 1006 00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:36,520 Speaker 1: for the tank itself was the womb to tomb wet box. 1007 00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:41,080 Speaker 1: So um, wow, we should we should all start incorporating 1008 00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:44,120 Speaker 1: track to our our daily conversation. Did Dad jokes from 1009 00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:48,120 Speaker 1: the plane? Yeah, but here's the quote he said, at 1010 00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:51,160 Speaker 1: the highest level of satory from which people return, the 1011 00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:54,600 Speaker 1: point of consciousness becomes a surface or a solid which 1012 00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,880 Speaker 1: extends throughout the whole known universe. This used to be 1013 00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:00,960 Speaker 1: called fusion with the universal mon end or God in 1014 00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:04,640 Speaker 1: more modern terms. Yeah, you have done a mathematical transformation 1015 00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:07,360 Speaker 1: in which your center of consciousness has ceased to be 1016 00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:10,680 Speaker 1: a traveling point and has become a surface or solid 1017 00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:13,919 Speaker 1: of consciousness. It was in this state that I experienced 1018 00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:18,120 Speaker 1: myself as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of 1019 00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,840 Speaker 1: other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was 1020 00:55:21,040 --> 00:55:25,400 Speaker 1: distributed around the galaxy a membrane. So it's fascinating about 1021 00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:27,880 Speaker 1: this to me. Where you give like a quick like 1022 00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:31,840 Speaker 1: uh foreshadowing, uh, is because my section is all about 1023 00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:35,760 Speaker 1: parallel universes, and he's essentially memorizing the language of parallel 1024 00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:40,759 Speaker 1: universes of the multiverse to describe this. Yeah, so um, 1025 00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:44,120 Speaker 1: that quote kind of sums up just how high minded 1026 00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:47,759 Speaker 1: and essentially mystical and magical, uh literally got with the 1027 00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:50,480 Speaker 1: isolation tank. Um, And we don't We're not gonna really 1028 00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:54,320 Speaker 1: go into the dolphin research, but uh, that becomes a 1029 00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,360 Speaker 1: whole area where he definitely kind of becomes a scientific pariah, 1030 00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,040 Speaker 1: certainly within dolphin research for are the rest of his career. 1031 00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:04,759 Speaker 1: So I'm curious what does rigorous research say about the 1032 00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:10,120 Speaker 1: real life effects of of using these isolation tanks. Well, 1033 00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:12,920 Speaker 1: we do have a fair amount of research to go 1034 00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,799 Speaker 1: on here and a lot of just personal antigoes from 1035 00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:20,839 Speaker 1: people who have floated a lot. Uh. Floaters often report hallucinations, 1036 00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:25,200 Speaker 1: out of body sensations, increased introspection because ultimately, you're you're 1037 00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:27,680 Speaker 1: locked in there, and you when you're not locked in there, 1038 00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:29,880 Speaker 1: but I mean you you're you feel doing you're right. 1039 00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:33,680 Speaker 1: If you're not locked in there, you do you feel 1040 00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:35,560 Speaker 1: as if the limits of your body are kind of 1041 00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,719 Speaker 1: harder to define because of the body tempature water you're 1042 00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:43,520 Speaker 1: floating in. Floaters, like sleepers, tend to experience decreased alpha 1043 00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:46,279 Speaker 1: waves and increased data waves in the brain. So this 1044 00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,480 Speaker 1: is the stuff of dreams, except you're still awake. Yes, 1045 00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:54,440 Speaker 1: uh yeah, you shouldn't fall asleep in There also sensory deprivation, 1046 00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:59,360 Speaker 1: even of a single sort, so just site or sound, etcetera, 1047 00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:04,560 Speaker 1: can produce hallucination. A voice or rumble heard in total silence, 1048 00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:07,160 Speaker 1: the light seen in total darkness, that sort of thing. Yeah, 1049 00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:09,680 Speaker 1: we've talked about this before with like the creepiness people 1050 00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,400 Speaker 1: report when they go in an antichoa chamber. This is 1051 00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:15,600 Speaker 1: like a room with acoustic properties, so that sound is 1052 00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:19,160 Speaker 1: really muffled, you know, nothing echoes. Everything's very very quiet. 1053 00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:22,240 Speaker 1: People feel like they're going crazy, and they're like they 1054 00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:26,440 Speaker 1: start to imagine they're hearing their own brain work and stuff. 1055 00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:29,160 Speaker 1: It troubles you. Yeah, And in fact, a two thousand 1056 00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:31,880 Speaker 1: and nine study publishing the Journal of Nervous and Mental 1057 00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:35,560 Speaker 1: Disease found that a near fifteen minutes of near total 1058 00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:40,320 Speaker 1: sensory deprivation was enough to trigger vivid hallucinations in many tests. 1059 00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:43,560 Speaker 1: Subjects now were those people who already had some kind 1060 00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:45,800 Speaker 1: of condition that would make them prone to hallucinations, but 1061 00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:48,280 Speaker 1: they were just normal people. I think these were just normal, 1062 00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:52,000 Speaker 1: you know, run of the mill, average, averagely you know, 1063 00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:55,880 Speaker 1: brought into the study people, but they were all psychic. No, 1064 00:57:56,600 --> 00:58:01,080 Speaker 1: not before the experiment. Yeah. Another two thousand and nine paper, 1065 00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:06,320 Speaker 1: this one from psychopharmacology, explore the possibility that sensory deprivation 1066 00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:10,880 Speaker 1: induces psychotic symptoms non pharmacologically, and the idea here is 1067 00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:15,760 Speaker 1: that sensory depth disturbs air dependent updating of one's worldview 1068 00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:20,520 Speaker 1: and leads to problems with top down perceptive constraints, resulting 1069 00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:24,360 Speaker 1: in hallucination. However, I do want to point out that 1070 00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:28,560 Speaker 1: this particular study, they used a sensory deprivation tank with 1071 00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:31,919 Speaker 1: a panic button, So they told people, are you're gonna 1072 00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:34,160 Speaker 1: get into this and you might start feeling it might 1073 00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:36,280 Speaker 1: just get too much for You're gonna feel kind of freaky, 1074 00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:40,000 Speaker 1: but you can panic and hit that panic button, whereas 1075 00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:44,040 Speaker 1: other studies have just had the scientists say, hey, when 1076 00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:46,480 Speaker 1: you've had enough, to tap on the lid and we'll 1077 00:58:46,560 --> 00:58:48,800 Speaker 1: let you out. So this is like if you went 1078 00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:52,320 Speaker 1: to yoga and they said here's a panic button just 1079 00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:54,320 Speaker 1: in case, Like you're probably not going to have that 1080 00:58:54,360 --> 00:58:56,320 Speaker 1: great a class. Yeah, It's like if you were going 1081 00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,480 Speaker 1: to yoga and you your your mom was talking to 1082 00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:02,320 Speaker 1: you before and said, now, hold on, I've heard that 1083 00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:05,120 Speaker 1: some people really hurt their neck doing that, or you know, 1084 00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:07,080 Speaker 1: or oh, I know a friend who hurt their risk 1085 00:59:07,200 --> 00:59:09,200 Speaker 1: doing yoga. Yeah, you're gonna go, and you're gonna be 1086 00:59:09,320 --> 00:59:12,959 Speaker 1: terrified that you're going to paralyze yourself on the mat. Yeah, 1087 00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:14,959 Speaker 1: like you're trying to figure out if your kid's gonna 1088 00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:17,280 Speaker 1: have nightmares for some reason. They're going to bed and 1089 00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,360 Speaker 1: you say, now, don't think about machete mimes. Don't just 1090 00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:22,680 Speaker 1: don't think about machete mimes and it will be fine. 1091 00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:25,320 Speaker 1: I mean, this is why priming is so important, uh, 1092 00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:30,720 Speaker 1: to you know, ancient traditions involving the use of psychedelic substances. 1093 00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:34,600 Speaker 1: It's important for modern practitioners who take a you know, 1094 00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:39,800 Speaker 1: a serious uh approach to the use of psychedelic substances, 1095 00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:43,960 Speaker 1: and and even even like meditative even yoga. It's it's 1096 00:59:44,000 --> 00:59:48,480 Speaker 1: about priming the individual for what's going to occur. And 1097 00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:52,040 Speaker 1: speaking of which, there's a nine seven study that I 1098 00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:55,360 Speaker 1: came across on prayer and mystic experience, and they found 1099 00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:58,880 Speaker 1: that when placed in an isolation tank, people with differing 1100 00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:04,280 Speaker 1: religious orientation sas related differing specific religious imagery, which is 1101 01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:08,640 Speaker 1: no surprise, but not in non religious imagery and other 1102 01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:13,120 Speaker 1: phenomenal experiences. So there's like more similarity among stuff not 1103 01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:16,800 Speaker 1: related to your particular beliefs. Yeah. Yeah, And I think 1104 01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:19,680 Speaker 1: this is interesting too in light of those of negative 1105 01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:24,040 Speaker 1: positive experiences in priming that we're talking about here. Uh, 1106 01:00:24,160 --> 01:00:27,880 Speaker 1: and even the aims of John C. Lily or fictional 1107 01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,360 Speaker 1: Dr Brenner even. I also think it's fascinating to think 1108 01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:36,800 Speaker 1: of isolation actulation chambers used as laboratory stand ins for prayer, 1109 01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:40,600 Speaker 1: because what is prayer but an attempt to communicate with 1110 01:00:40,720 --> 01:00:44,920 Speaker 1: an extra dimensional entity? And uh, and that's exactly what 1111 01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:47,880 Speaker 1: Dr Brenner is trying to do with eleven on on 1112 01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:50,880 Speaker 1: the show Stranger Things. Well, yes, it makes you think 1113 01:00:50,920 --> 01:00:54,200 Speaker 1: about how a lot of religious rituals are actually, you know, 1114 01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:57,080 Speaker 1: all throughout history, are used to bring about some form 1115 01:00:57,120 --> 01:00:59,360 Speaker 1: of an altered state of consciousness. I mean, you can 1116 01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:02,640 Speaker 1: think about even an act as simple as the repetitive 1117 01:01:03,040 --> 01:01:06,920 Speaker 1: activity of prayers, like the repetitive words you say in 1118 01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:09,880 Speaker 1: a prayer. If you've never tried this, just say the 1119 01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:13,280 Speaker 1: same sentence or the same word five hundred times in 1120 01:01:13,320 --> 01:01:16,480 Speaker 1: a row, you will probably achieve some kind of mildly 1121 01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:20,200 Speaker 1: altered state of consciousness, mainly because it starts to disrupt 1122 01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,880 Speaker 1: the part of your brain that automatically processes linguistic content. 1123 01:01:24,200 --> 01:01:26,360 Speaker 1: If you've ever like tried to not hear what a 1124 01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,880 Speaker 1: word means when somebody's saying words you, you can't do 1125 01:01:29,920 --> 01:01:31,680 Speaker 1: this on purpose. You can't help but hear what the 1126 01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:34,040 Speaker 1: words mean. But if you say the same word to 1127 01:01:34,080 --> 01:01:37,160 Speaker 1: yourself hundreds of times, you start to lose the connection 1128 01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:39,520 Speaker 1: between the sounds of the mouth and the meanings. And 1129 01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:41,480 Speaker 1: the beautiful thing about this is you do not need 1130 01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:46,040 Speaker 1: l s D or a swimming pool full assault, just 1131 01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:52,560 Speaker 1: repetition the way of the world. All right, Well, here's 1132 01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:55,760 Speaker 1: a question for you, Christian. Say you get into your 1133 01:01:55,960 --> 01:01:59,760 Speaker 1: flotation tank or your children swimming pool full of soli 1134 01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:06,440 Speaker 1: and you reach out to an extra dimensional entity. Where 1135 01:02:06,560 --> 01:02:10,680 Speaker 1: is that entity? Like, scientifically, where is the the you 1136 01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:14,720 Speaker 1: are here arrow for that being? Right? So, what we 1137 01:02:14,760 --> 01:02:18,400 Speaker 1: have to clarify here is the difference between you're talking 1138 01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:24,520 Speaker 1: about alternate dimensions or extra dimensions versus parallel universes and 1139 01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:29,040 Speaker 1: stranger things. Seems to be unclear on what's going on there? Right, Well, 1140 01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:31,720 Speaker 1: basically I guess what's going on with stranger things, and 1141 01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:35,480 Speaker 1: obviously is that this is this is a fairy realm. 1142 01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:39,360 Speaker 1: This is um this is a typical trope of a 1143 01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:44,040 Speaker 1: various you know, dimensional travel, uh, science fiction or fantasy. 1144 01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:48,360 Speaker 1: The upside down is is it's like they're the realm 1145 01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:51,040 Speaker 1: of shadows. As they draw that comparison, what is it 1146 01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:55,439 Speaker 1: in Zelda, It's like the Dark World or something? Man, Yeah, 1147 01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:57,480 Speaker 1: I mean it's a version of this world with slight. 1148 01:02:57,640 --> 01:02:59,880 Speaker 1: You know, it's dark and it's toxic and it's slight 1149 01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:06,000 Speaker 1: the altered Well, okay, so there's science fiction fans probably 1150 01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:08,080 Speaker 1: all in this room that are familiar with the idea 1151 01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:11,880 Speaker 1: of parallel universes or alternate dimensions. They've been in our fiction, 1152 01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:14,400 Speaker 1: our pop culture and comic books and TV and movement 1153 01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:18,320 Speaker 1: movies for decades now, right, what's your favorite fictional parallel 1154 01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:22,920 Speaker 1: universe of Mine's Crisis on Infinite Earths from TC comics. 1155 01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:26,120 Speaker 1: I like, because there's an infinite amount of them. I 1156 01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:29,200 Speaker 1: have to go with the Realm of the Goblin King 1157 01:03:29,240 --> 01:03:31,600 Speaker 1: and Labyrinth. Oh that's so good. I have to go 1158 01:03:31,680 --> 01:03:34,760 Speaker 1: with the Super Mario Brothers movie where they go to 1159 01:03:34,880 --> 01:03:37,680 Speaker 1: the other parallel dimension where Dennis Hopper is King Coopa. 1160 01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:40,480 Speaker 1: So but with all of those, it actually turns out 1161 01:03:40,520 --> 01:03:45,000 Speaker 1: that there is some basis in scientific theory for a multiverse. 1162 01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:48,400 Speaker 1: And I'm going to present you with three possibilities here 1163 01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:50,520 Speaker 1: and we can try to crack the nut of what's 1164 01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:53,439 Speaker 1: going on here in Stranger Things. So so, right after 1165 01:03:53,480 --> 01:03:57,840 Speaker 1: Stranger Things came out, Popular Science interviewed this theoretical physicist 1166 01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:01,160 Speaker 1: named Brian Green. Oh yeah, he's he's from New York City. Yeah, 1167 01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:04,360 Speaker 1: and they asked him about Stranger Things. And the first 1168 01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:06,520 Speaker 1: distinction he made is what I was just talking about. 1169 01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:09,320 Speaker 1: He's like, whoa, there's a difference between alternate dimensions and 1170 01:04:09,320 --> 01:04:13,240 Speaker 1: parallel universes. Don't don't just use those interchangeably. We kind 1171 01:04:13,240 --> 01:04:15,640 Speaker 1: of do in pop fiction. But but he wanted to 1172 01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:18,240 Speaker 1: clarify that different. So here's the difference. An alternate dimension 1173 01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:22,520 Speaker 1: implies you've got one universe, right, and that universe has 1174 01:04:22,680 --> 01:04:25,880 Speaker 1: more dimensions to it than what we can perceive, so 1175 01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:28,800 Speaker 1: beyond the three dimensions of space and the one dimension 1176 01:04:28,920 --> 01:04:31,880 Speaker 1: of time. So yeah, it's like, if you imagine that 1177 01:04:31,960 --> 01:04:35,480 Speaker 1: we are squares or triangles, and suddenly we encounter a 1178 01:04:35,640 --> 01:04:38,200 Speaker 1: cube or a sphere or something we just like, wouldn't 1179 01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:41,919 Speaker 1: be able to perceive this extra dimension of it exactly, Yeah, 1180 01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:44,680 Speaker 1: you wouldn't even be able to see it or cure 1181 01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:48,840 Speaker 1: any of your senses. Right. Whereas a parallel universe implies 1182 01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:53,760 Speaker 1: the whole multiversal proposal. This is that there are multiple universes, 1183 01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:57,000 Speaker 1: but each one of these universes has three dimensions of 1184 01:04:57,000 --> 01:05:00,560 Speaker 1: space and one dimension of time to them. Why should 1185 01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:03,400 Speaker 1: we trust this Green guy, Well, he's kind of a 1186 01:05:03,400 --> 01:05:06,800 Speaker 1: big deal in science. But remember the scene in Stranger 1187 01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,800 Speaker 1: Things when the teacher is using the analogy where he's 1188 01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:12,040 Speaker 1: talking about the tightrope walker on the tight rope and 1189 01:05:12,040 --> 01:05:16,000 Speaker 1: how there's a flea underneath it. That analogy originally comes 1190 01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:18,520 Speaker 1: from Green's book, which is called The Fabric of the Cosmos. 1191 01:05:18,520 --> 01:05:22,720 Speaker 1: So this guy that they basically researched him to figure 1192 01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:25,040 Speaker 1: out how to write this stuff about the upside down 1193 01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:27,360 Speaker 1: on the TV show, and in fact, Green himself says, 1194 01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:29,840 Speaker 1: whoever is writing this show is well versed in some 1195 01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:33,480 Speaker 1: of the popular descriptions of these ideas. Whether it's mine 1196 01:05:33,520 --> 01:05:37,120 Speaker 1: or not, it doesn't really matter. When he added, also, 1197 01:05:37,200 --> 01:05:39,400 Speaker 1: if there's a monster. Its head should open like a flower. 1198 01:05:43,000 --> 01:05:45,080 Speaker 1: His other book. If you've never seen a picture of 1199 01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:47,320 Speaker 1: the physicist Brian Green, he's a favorite virus on the show. 1200 01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:48,760 Speaker 1: He comes up a lot. You should look him up 1201 01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:52,240 Speaker 1: because I think he looks a lot like David DUCHOVNYA 1202 01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:57,040 Speaker 1: total tangent. Sorry, so all right, so let's stick with 1203 01:05:57,080 --> 01:06:00,400 Speaker 1: the three major theories though, and in Green out nzse. 1204 01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:02,520 Speaker 1: But some other people do as well. So the very 1205 01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:07,040 Speaker 1: first academic proposal of parallel universes came in nineteen fifty 1206 01:06:07,080 --> 01:06:10,760 Speaker 1: four by this guy named Hugh Everett the Third. And 1207 01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:14,920 Speaker 1: Hugh came up with what we now call many worlds theory. 1208 01:06:15,040 --> 01:06:16,920 Speaker 1: And he did this while he was a doctoral student, 1209 01:06:16,960 --> 01:06:19,240 Speaker 1: so he hadn't even graduated yet. And he's like, hey, 1210 01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:22,160 Speaker 1: this is my dissertation. There's parallel universes, and just like 1211 01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:26,720 Speaker 1: drops a big book and he says, look, they're they're 1212 01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:29,919 Speaker 1: related to ours, are branching off others branch off of them, 1213 01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:33,760 Speaker 1: YadA YadA. So to better understand this, though, I'm sorry everybody, 1214 01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:35,680 Speaker 1: We're gonna have to talk about some quantum physics for 1215 01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:37,760 Speaker 1: a little bit. It's it's a little painful, but I'm 1216 01:06:37,760 --> 01:06:39,680 Speaker 1: gonna try to boil it down and make it as 1217 01:06:39,720 --> 01:06:41,600 Speaker 1: easy for all of us as possible, because it does 1218 01:06:41,960 --> 01:06:44,280 Speaker 1: hurt my head a little bit. Come on positive thinking. 1219 01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:47,960 Speaker 1: It's not painful. It's everybody think positively in my psychic 1220 01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:50,920 Speaker 1: powers related to quantum physics. I do. But there is 1221 01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:53,200 Speaker 1: a famous quote about quantum physics where if it if 1222 01:06:53,240 --> 01:06:55,360 Speaker 1: it does not make your head hurt a little bit, 1223 01:06:55,440 --> 01:06:59,280 Speaker 1: you're you're not engaging with it properly, right, he said 1224 01:06:59,560 --> 01:07:01,960 Speaker 1: Richard I am and the famous physicist who said that 1225 01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:04,480 Speaker 1: if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand. 1226 01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:08,800 Speaker 1: I'm afraid I'm misquoting. I don't think so. So everytt 1227 01:07:09,360 --> 01:07:12,800 Speaker 1: was inspired by two scientists that were quantum physicists, and 1228 01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:16,720 Speaker 1: they were Werner Heisenberg and Neil's Bore. And Heisenberg suggested 1229 01:07:17,280 --> 01:07:20,880 Speaker 1: that if you just observe quantum matter, that we're affecting 1230 01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:23,800 Speaker 1: its behavior just looking at it. And he said subsequently, 1231 01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:25,960 Speaker 1: we can never be sure of what its attributes are. 1232 01:07:26,600 --> 01:07:29,600 Speaker 1: This is called the Heisenberg on certainty principle. So here 1233 01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:33,360 Speaker 1: here's an examswer. Here's an example. I cribbed from our 1234 01:07:33,400 --> 01:07:37,000 Speaker 1: colleague Josh Clark from stuff you should know. He has 1235 01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:40,920 Speaker 1: this great analogy and he says, imagine you're looking at Joe, 1236 01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:46,840 Speaker 1: specifically Joe, uh, and Joe is a human being who's solid. Okay, 1237 01:07:47,080 --> 01:07:49,840 Speaker 1: Now everybody look away from Joe, and then when you 1238 01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:51,960 Speaker 1: look back, all of a sudden, Joe is made out 1239 01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:56,560 Speaker 1: of gas. That hope it's right on gas. So that 1240 01:07:56,680 --> 01:07:59,920 Speaker 1: is essentially the idea behind the Heisenberg on certainty principle that, 1241 01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:03,280 Speaker 1: like the the attributes of the physical form change every 1242 01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:06,280 Speaker 1: time you stop looking at it and look at it again, right, 1243 01:08:06,640 --> 01:08:10,040 Speaker 1: And it's suggesting essentially that. And this is where Borer 1244 01:08:10,240 --> 01:08:15,000 Speaker 1: comes in. He's this Danish Danish physicist and he says, well, 1245 01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:17,360 Speaker 1: actually it doesn't exist in one state or the other. 1246 01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:22,000 Speaker 1: It exists in all states simultaneously. But like Heisenberg, he says, 1247 01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:24,479 Speaker 1: it's it's got to stay in one form as long 1248 01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:26,880 Speaker 1: as we're looking at it. So this is you've probably 1249 01:08:26,920 --> 01:08:29,439 Speaker 1: heard of. This is the Copenhagen interpretation. This is the 1250 01:08:29,479 --> 01:08:32,240 Speaker 1: idea that you know, a quantum event is both A 1251 01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:34,920 Speaker 1: and B at the same time until it interacts with 1252 01:08:35,040 --> 01:08:37,519 Speaker 1: something that forces it to collapse into one or the other. 1253 01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:41,280 Speaker 1: So ever comes along. He's working on his dissertation, and 1254 01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:45,240 Speaker 1: he argues, Okay, I agree with Bor on everything except 1255 01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:49,920 Speaker 1: for one respect. He says, measuring UH and observing quantum 1256 01:08:49,920 --> 01:08:53,479 Speaker 1: objects don't actually force it into a comprehensible state. What 1257 01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:56,920 Speaker 1: it does is it splits it into an entire other universe. 1258 01:08:57,280 --> 01:09:00,280 Speaker 1: And he says, this literally duplicates the universe every time 1259 01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:05,080 Speaker 1: you observe quantum matter, and then that subsequently splits every 1260 01:09:05,080 --> 01:09:09,320 Speaker 1: other time any action is taken or not taken related 1261 01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:11,519 Speaker 1: to it. So this is like the infamous stuff that 1262 01:09:11,560 --> 01:09:14,960 Speaker 1: you see in in you know, pop science, popular fiction, 1263 01:09:15,400 --> 01:09:19,040 Speaker 1: where there's a there's an altered universe where I'm a 1264 01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:22,000 Speaker 1: bank robber and not a podcast host, right, because I 1265 01:09:22,120 --> 01:09:25,880 Speaker 1: just didn't decide to rob that bank, And under many 1266 01:09:25,920 --> 01:09:28,160 Speaker 1: worlds there probably would be such a universe because there's 1267 01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:31,439 Speaker 1: an infinite number of quantum events to split the universe 1268 01:09:31,479 --> 01:09:34,160 Speaker 1: and infinite number of times. It's it's like the Library 1269 01:09:34,200 --> 01:09:36,439 Speaker 1: of Battle. It's the idea that it's a library that 1270 01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:40,559 Speaker 1: contains not only all books, but all possible books, right, right, 1271 01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:44,960 Speaker 1: So this is usually called daughter universe theory. Okay, now 1272 01:09:45,040 --> 01:09:47,479 Speaker 1: let's put it in stranger things terms. So let's say 1273 01:09:47,520 --> 01:09:50,680 Speaker 1: eleven is our quantum object. When you look at her 1274 01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:53,479 Speaker 1: once she appears to be a little girl, you turn away, 1275 01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:57,400 Speaker 1: you look again, maybe she looks like the demogorgon. That's 1276 01:09:57,479 --> 01:10:01,720 Speaker 1: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The new Bore was suggesting that a 1277 01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:05,640 Speaker 1: quantum eleven is both the little girl and the demogorgon 1278 01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:09,639 Speaker 1: at the same time, and all other other possible forms, 1279 01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:12,360 Speaker 1: like there's one where she's played by Carrie Fisher and 1280 01:10:12,400 --> 01:10:15,799 Speaker 1: she's she's that form simultaneously with the you know, infinite 1281 01:10:15,840 --> 01:10:19,439 Speaker 1: other ones. And then Everett comes along and he says, 1282 01:10:19,560 --> 01:10:24,160 Speaker 1: but wait, every time eleven is measured or looked at, 1283 01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:29,360 Speaker 1: say by Matthew Modine, then it causes a split in 1284 01:10:29,400 --> 01:10:32,519 Speaker 1: the universe, and this creates a daughter universe. And so 1285 01:10:32,600 --> 01:10:36,719 Speaker 1: subsequently there's just all these parallel universes that are based 1286 01:10:36,840 --> 01:10:41,200 Speaker 1: on the observation of the quantum eleven. Now it's crazy 1287 01:10:41,240 --> 01:10:44,519 Speaker 1: as this sounds, a lot of physicists actually do hold 1288 01:10:44,560 --> 01:10:47,320 Speaker 1: to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It's something 1289 01:10:47,360 --> 01:10:49,800 Speaker 1: that's popular. I know, recently on the show we talked 1290 01:10:49,840 --> 01:10:53,000 Speaker 1: about the Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. I know he favors 1291 01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:55,840 Speaker 1: the many worlds interpretations. So it is taken seriously by 1292 01:10:55,840 --> 01:10:58,720 Speaker 1: real physicist, and it's a good way of thinking that 1293 01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:00,559 Speaker 1: there's a lot of other universes is out there, but 1294 01:11:00,640 --> 01:11:03,360 Speaker 1: could you get between them? Yeah? Yeah, how does this? 1295 01:11:03,720 --> 01:11:05,120 Speaker 1: How does this? How do we get from here to 1296 01:11:05,200 --> 01:11:08,240 Speaker 1: demagorg Yeah? Many worlds doesn't really get into that as 1297 01:11:08,280 --> 01:11:10,880 Speaker 1: far as I could tell. But that's one possible explanation 1298 01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:13,519 Speaker 1: I guess for what the upside down is. Right. Another 1299 01:11:13,560 --> 01:11:16,960 Speaker 1: possibility is string theory. We've all probably heard this thrown around. 1300 01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:20,360 Speaker 1: It's related to Albert Einstein's theory of everything. It proposes 1301 01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:24,559 Speaker 1: that there's an even smaller level than quantum, uh, the 1302 01:11:24,640 --> 01:11:27,000 Speaker 1: quantum level, there's the sub quantum level. This is like 1303 01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:29,400 Speaker 1: an ant man where he shrinks down like so small 1304 01:11:29,439 --> 01:11:32,400 Speaker 1: that it just turns into the psychedelic nightmare, so small 1305 01:11:32,520 --> 01:11:34,759 Speaker 1: that the c g I budget for the entire film 1306 01:11:34,840 --> 01:11:38,840 Speaker 1: just implodes upon its approaches Infini. So the argument here 1307 01:11:39,000 --> 01:11:42,360 Speaker 1: is that all the essential building blocks of all matter 1308 01:11:42,439 --> 01:11:45,759 Speaker 1: and all physical forces exist on the sub quantum level. 1309 01:11:46,160 --> 01:11:48,160 Speaker 1: And here there are these things that are referred to 1310 01:11:48,200 --> 01:11:52,400 Speaker 1: as rubber bands basically that are strings, and they make 1311 01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:55,439 Speaker 1: up quantum particles. And then that makes up everything else, 1312 01:11:55,479 --> 01:11:58,160 Speaker 1: like everything in this room, every every force of nature 1313 01:11:58,240 --> 01:11:59,960 Speaker 1: is all made up of these strings. Well, it is 1314 01:12:00,040 --> 01:12:03,479 Speaker 1: the theory of everything exactly. That is exactly what it is. 1315 01:12:03,560 --> 01:12:06,880 Speaker 1: It is entirely theoretical, so there's no I should be 1316 01:12:06,880 --> 01:12:09,559 Speaker 1: clear about this. There is no evidence that this is true. 1317 01:12:09,960 --> 01:12:13,439 Speaker 1: Some scientists feel like this discredits it entirely, but it's 1318 01:12:13,479 --> 01:12:17,200 Speaker 1: worth bringing it up because string theory also ends up 1319 01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:21,439 Speaker 1: leading us into a theory of parallel universes. So this 1320 01:12:21,520 --> 01:12:26,639 Speaker 1: theory says, okay, they parallel universes exists like bubbles next 1321 01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:29,080 Speaker 1: to each other, and when they come in contact with 1322 01:12:29,160 --> 01:12:32,760 Speaker 1: one another, it's because gravity flows in and out of 1323 01:12:32,800 --> 01:12:35,839 Speaker 1: these bubbles back and forth to each other. But every 1324 01:12:35,880 --> 01:12:40,240 Speaker 1: time these universes interact, a big bang occurs, just like 1325 01:12:40,320 --> 01:12:42,599 Speaker 1: the one that created our universe. So every time they 1326 01:12:42,640 --> 01:12:45,040 Speaker 1: touch it creates another universe. But what we don't know 1327 01:12:45,200 --> 01:12:48,800 Speaker 1: is what happens when these you know, to to these 1328 01:12:48,840 --> 01:12:52,559 Speaker 1: actual bubbles themselves, like do do they explode? Is it 1329 01:12:52,640 --> 01:12:56,040 Speaker 1: really bad or is it totally benign? Well, this is 1330 01:12:56,360 --> 01:12:57,760 Speaker 1: it's worth of keeping in mind. Like and when it 1331 01:12:57,760 --> 01:13:00,920 Speaker 1: creates another universe, it's not it's not like a uh 1332 01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:03,639 Speaker 1: of a total fantasy universe where it's like, oh, here's 1333 01:13:03,640 --> 01:13:05,759 Speaker 1: the universe where everyone is a Nazi. Here's the universe 1334 01:13:05,760 --> 01:13:09,439 Speaker 1: where everyone has um you know, the sheep's head or 1335 01:13:09,520 --> 01:13:12,599 Speaker 1: something that sounds like a great universe. This is more like, 1336 01:13:12,720 --> 01:13:15,760 Speaker 1: here is a a new big bang in a new 1337 01:13:16,280 --> 01:13:19,160 Speaker 1: contained universe, and who knows what it it results in. 1338 01:13:19,240 --> 01:13:21,720 Speaker 1: It's very much like the Library of Babel where many 1339 01:13:21,760 --> 01:13:24,240 Speaker 1: of the books I mean, I guess the majority of 1340 01:13:24,280 --> 01:13:28,000 Speaker 1: the books in the Library of Babel are illegible, right, 1341 01:13:28,160 --> 01:13:31,680 Speaker 1: almost every single one. It's it's only the minority that 1342 01:13:31,720 --> 01:13:35,960 Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah. So Brian Green, remember him. He actually 1343 01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:40,720 Speaker 1: argues that the recent discovery of gravitational waves make this 1344 01:13:41,120 --> 01:13:44,519 Speaker 1: slightly testable, so it might actually have some evidence in 1345 01:13:44,560 --> 01:13:47,920 Speaker 1: the next couple of years. Uh. You might have noticed this. 1346 01:13:47,920 --> 01:13:51,160 Speaker 1: This week the scientists who discovered gravitational waves won the 1347 01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:54,160 Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. So that's probably why it's a big I mean, 1348 01:13:54,160 --> 01:13:57,000 Speaker 1: there's lots of recent points, but that's one of them. 1349 01:13:57,040 --> 01:14:00,960 Speaker 1: Maybe we'll find parallel universes. Uh. So they're hoping that 1350 01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:03,280 Speaker 1: they can test string theory with that. And then the 1351 01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:06,679 Speaker 1: idea here is essentially that as the universe expands, each 1352 01:14:06,720 --> 01:14:09,639 Speaker 1: one of these strings is getting stretched out, and as 1353 01:14:09,680 --> 01:14:12,800 Speaker 1: they're stretching, it produces a crack. And it's not an 1354 01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:16,920 Speaker 1: audible crack. It's a crack that exists through gravitational waves. 1355 01:14:16,960 --> 01:14:19,320 Speaker 1: So the researchers are hoping that now that they've discovered 1356 01:14:19,320 --> 01:14:23,320 Speaker 1: gravitational waves, they can test them and subsequently maybe fine 1357 01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:28,599 Speaker 1: strings and or sub quantum reality. That's fascinating. I mean, 1358 01:14:28,600 --> 01:14:30,680 Speaker 1: we've talked about string theory on the show before and 1359 01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:33,920 Speaker 1: never never come across a good way to test it today. 1360 01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:35,920 Speaker 1: It's always sort of one of those things where they say, 1361 01:14:35,960 --> 01:14:39,280 Speaker 1: maybe on the very on the next high energy particle collider, 1362 01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:41,360 Speaker 1: we'll get too high enough energies that we can test. 1363 01:14:42,040 --> 01:14:43,960 Speaker 1: But I hadn't heard of this. So in terms of 1364 01:14:44,000 --> 01:14:47,760 Speaker 1: stranger things, okay, if we're using string theory here, maybe uh, 1365 01:14:47,800 --> 01:14:50,120 Speaker 1: the upside down is one of these bubbles, and then 1366 01:14:50,160 --> 01:14:53,080 Speaker 1: the stranger things like real world is another bubble and 1367 01:14:53,120 --> 01:14:56,920 Speaker 1: they touched, and then that means that while they could 1368 01:14:56,920 --> 01:14:58,840 Speaker 1: pass back and forth between one another, they would have 1369 01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:01,639 Speaker 1: created another being bad big bang, So we might see 1370 01:15:01,800 --> 01:15:05,400 Speaker 1: a third universe. Okay, that's a possibility, and the and 1371 01:15:05,520 --> 01:15:07,720 Speaker 1: this and the upside down is just a universe that 1372 01:15:08,080 --> 01:15:10,599 Speaker 1: happened to turn out just like ours, except a little 1373 01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:15,280 Speaker 1: ikey looking. Sure. Okay, Now, the final theory is called 1374 01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:19,600 Speaker 1: eternal inflation. I love that name, and it argues that 1375 01:15:19,640 --> 01:15:23,200 Speaker 1: if you could zoom back and look at all of 1376 01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:27,439 Speaker 1: spacetime simultaneously, you'd find that some areas of space stop 1377 01:15:27,479 --> 01:15:29,880 Speaker 1: inflating the way that the Big Bang did, and that 1378 01:15:30,000 --> 01:15:33,120 Speaker 1: others continue at like a rapid pace. So some some 1379 01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:36,000 Speaker 1: parts are inflating, some aren't. They're all at different rates. 1380 01:15:36,160 --> 01:15:38,080 Speaker 1: And guess what. They use the bubble metaphor too. They 1381 01:15:38,080 --> 01:15:40,160 Speaker 1: couldn't come up with their own thing, so they've got 1382 01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:42,840 Speaker 1: this bubble metaphor. Our universe is a bubble. It's in 1383 01:15:42,840 --> 01:15:45,360 Speaker 1: a network of other bubbles. But the big difference here 1384 01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:49,639 Speaker 1: is that the universes in these potentially have different laws 1385 01:15:49,680 --> 01:15:52,440 Speaker 1: of physics than ours do. So this is a combination 1386 01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:57,040 Speaker 1: idea of parallel universes with alternate dimensions, which makes it 1387 01:15:57,080 --> 01:16:00,599 Speaker 1: a little more complicated, but it's essentially asking, like, what's 1388 01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:04,200 Speaker 1: going to happen if these bubbles collide? Right now? Astrophysicist 1389 01:16:04,280 --> 01:16:08,320 Speaker 1: Ethan Siegel came along in and he added a limitation, 1390 01:16:08,439 --> 01:16:11,000 Speaker 1: or maybe a complexity to this theory that I think 1391 01:16:11,240 --> 01:16:13,720 Speaker 1: makes it more fun. He says, well, here's the thing. 1392 01:16:13,960 --> 01:16:18,600 Speaker 1: Spacetime could go on forever in theory, but our universe. 1393 01:16:18,760 --> 01:16:21,920 Speaker 1: We know our universe is measurable and that it's under 1394 01:16:21,920 --> 01:16:25,800 Speaker 1: fourteen billion years old, so it's not infinite. Therefore, it's 1395 01:16:25,840 --> 01:16:28,800 Speaker 1: subsequently has to have a limit to the number of 1396 01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:33,559 Speaker 1: ways that particles can arrange themselves in the universe. So again, 1397 01:16:33,800 --> 01:16:36,759 Speaker 1: this is all these different possibilities that lead to physics, 1398 01:16:36,800 --> 01:16:42,559 Speaker 1: but not an infinite amount of them. Okay, there's another 1399 01:16:42,680 --> 01:16:46,400 Speaker 1: theory though, that's kind of buried inside of eternal inflation theory, 1400 01:16:46,400 --> 01:16:49,679 Speaker 1: and it's called brains universe theory, and brains is suppelled 1401 01:16:49,760 --> 01:16:54,680 Speaker 1: b A B A Barnes B R A N E. S. 1402 01:16:54,880 --> 01:16:56,880 Speaker 1: This is what you're referring to when I read the 1403 01:16:56,920 --> 01:17:00,599 Speaker 1: Lily quote. What he's talking about membrane membranes exact late. Yeah, 1404 01:17:00,680 --> 01:17:03,840 Speaker 1: So he's using language it's you know, steeped in this stuff. 1405 01:17:04,760 --> 01:17:08,000 Speaker 1: It imagines this though, that these universes are all intersecting 1406 01:17:08,160 --> 01:17:11,400 Speaker 1: and overlapping. But instead of using the bubble metaphor they 1407 01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:14,479 Speaker 1: say in brains theory, they say, well, it's like bread, 1408 01:17:14,840 --> 01:17:16,599 Speaker 1: it's like a bunch of slices of bread and they're 1409 01:17:16,600 --> 01:17:18,880 Speaker 1: all stacked on top of each other. Uh. And they 1410 01:17:18,920 --> 01:17:23,040 Speaker 1: call these brains, and each one of these brains has 1411 01:17:23,240 --> 01:17:26,840 Speaker 1: three dimensions. But if you refine the idea, and maybe 1412 01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:29,880 Speaker 1: there's some more complex versions of these brains, some have 1413 01:17:30,000 --> 01:17:33,720 Speaker 1: three dimensions, maybe some of them have seventeen dimensions, and 1414 01:17:33,760 --> 01:17:38,800 Speaker 1: when they overlap, what we would experience is in three 1415 01:17:38,800 --> 01:17:42,280 Speaker 1: dimensions because we are our bodies are physically only able 1416 01:17:42,760 --> 01:17:47,639 Speaker 1: to perceive that many dimensions plus time. So maybe what's 1417 01:17:47,640 --> 01:17:51,800 Speaker 1: going on in Stranger Things is actually these two universes 1418 01:17:51,800 --> 01:17:55,840 Speaker 1: have overlapped, and what they're experiencing in the upside down 1419 01:17:55,920 --> 01:17:57,640 Speaker 1: is sort of like the in the middle of like 1420 01:17:57,640 --> 01:18:00,760 Speaker 1: a ven diagram, right that will that would I like 1421 01:18:00,840 --> 01:18:04,200 Speaker 1: this theory because this would explain why there's a swimming pool, 1422 01:18:04,479 --> 01:18:07,519 Speaker 1: why they see like it just a shadow version of 1423 01:18:07,560 --> 01:18:10,320 Speaker 1: their own world. It's just like slightly different because they're 1424 01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:13,120 Speaker 1: not able to perceive all of these other dimensions of 1425 01:18:13,160 --> 01:18:16,320 Speaker 1: reality that are occurring around them. So here's where it 1426 01:18:16,320 --> 01:18:19,439 Speaker 1: gets exciting, because this theory has a lot of evidence 1427 01:18:19,479 --> 01:18:22,360 Speaker 1: that seems to make it look like it's possible. Uh. 1428 01:18:22,439 --> 01:18:25,080 Speaker 1: In two thousand five, a paper was published in Physical 1429 01:18:25,120 --> 01:18:28,080 Speaker 1: Review Letters that said, oh, we just found this big 1430 01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:31,439 Speaker 1: cold spot in space, and we detected it with NASA's 1431 01:18:31,640 --> 01:18:34,920 Speaker 1: w M a P satellite. Then in two thousand eight, 1432 01:18:34,920 --> 01:18:37,320 Speaker 1: two more studies were conducted to try to detect this 1433 01:18:37,439 --> 01:18:41,240 Speaker 1: as well, and they did this by looking at cosmic microwaves. 1434 01:18:41,280 --> 01:18:43,920 Speaker 1: And the reason why is because cosmic microwaves are left 1435 01:18:43,960 --> 01:18:46,400 Speaker 1: over from the Big Bang, and if cooled down to 1436 01:18:46,439 --> 01:18:48,880 Speaker 1: about two point seven Kelvin's is it's like a thing 1437 01:18:48,920 --> 01:18:51,640 Speaker 1: that we know, we can kind of measure it. Sometimes 1438 01:18:51,680 --> 01:18:54,160 Speaker 1: throughout the universe it's a little hotter, sometimes they're a 1439 01:18:54,200 --> 01:18:58,360 Speaker 1: little cooler, and that corresponds to fluctuations in the density 1440 01:18:58,400 --> 01:19:01,600 Speaker 1: of the early universe as it was growing after the 1441 01:19:01,640 --> 01:19:05,040 Speaker 1: Big Bang and clumping like thing mass was clumping together 1442 01:19:05,040 --> 01:19:08,800 Speaker 1: and forming gap galaxies. Okay, so they thought, may thine, 1443 01:19:08,840 --> 01:19:11,559 Speaker 1: this cold spot that we've just found, this could be 1444 01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:16,080 Speaker 1: where another universe has overlapped with ours while ours was 1445 01:19:16,120 --> 01:19:21,000 Speaker 1: inflating during the Big Bang. Then in the cold spot 1446 01:19:21,040 --> 01:19:24,519 Speaker 1: was detected again by the European Space Agency's Plank mission, 1447 01:19:25,040 --> 01:19:27,920 Speaker 1: and then more recently it was detected yet again by 1448 01:19:27,920 --> 01:19:31,680 Speaker 1: the Very Large Array Radio Telescope and they found that 1449 01:19:31,720 --> 01:19:33,840 Speaker 1: the cold spot and get ready for this. It's this 1450 01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:37,640 Speaker 1: giant void that is one billion light years across. It 1451 01:19:37,760 --> 01:19:40,920 Speaker 1: is huge. It is largely empty of of everything we 1452 01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:43,439 Speaker 1: understand to be in space. There's no galaxies, there's no 1453 01:19:43,600 --> 01:19:46,639 Speaker 1: dark matter as far as they can tell. So maybe 1454 01:19:46,720 --> 01:19:49,920 Speaker 1: this is evidence of a bubble collision or I guess 1455 01:19:49,920 --> 01:19:54,919 Speaker 1: a bread collision. These these universes have have come together, 1456 01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:57,880 Speaker 1: and that's the vandire craun Man. Do you think they 1457 01:19:57,880 --> 01:20:01,200 Speaker 1: could call it the bread zone? That that great? Yeah? 1458 01:20:01,439 --> 01:20:05,720 Speaker 1: So okay, here's the Stranger Things like attempt at explaining this. 1459 01:20:06,240 --> 01:20:09,439 Speaker 1: So maybe the Stranger Things universe and the upside Down. 1460 01:20:09,479 --> 01:20:12,320 Speaker 1: They're part of all of space and time that's around us, right, 1461 01:20:12,520 --> 01:20:15,920 Speaker 1: but they inflated at different rates and you can either 1462 01:20:15,960 --> 01:20:19,320 Speaker 1: think of them as bubbles or bread whatever works for you. Subsequently, 1463 01:20:19,479 --> 01:20:23,120 Speaker 1: the upside Down could have different laws of physics than 1464 01:20:23,200 --> 01:20:26,200 Speaker 1: we do. However, based on what we've seen in the show, 1465 01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:29,839 Speaker 1: the laws of things that have to be fairly aligned 1466 01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:32,920 Speaker 1: with ours, and not just because we don't see people 1467 01:20:33,720 --> 01:20:36,400 Speaker 1: defying the laws of physics, but like the universe of 1468 01:20:36,439 --> 01:20:41,720 Speaker 1: the upside Down is held together because we or would 1469 01:20:41,760 --> 01:20:45,840 Speaker 1: not a writer and hell Boy can only experience the 1470 01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:49,920 Speaker 1: upside down three three dimensions and then the fourth dimension 1471 01:20:49,920 --> 01:20:52,920 Speaker 1: of time. So maybe what we've seen in this show, 1472 01:20:53,040 --> 01:20:57,040 Speaker 1: the idea of the upside down is actually not another universe, 1473 01:20:57,040 --> 01:21:00,600 Speaker 1: but it's where two universes are overlapping. Huh. Well, that 1474 01:21:00,680 --> 01:21:04,200 Speaker 1: that opens up all sorts of storytelling possibilities for future seasons. Totally. 1475 01:21:04,240 --> 01:21:07,360 Speaker 1: If when you're in the upside down you can defy 1476 01:21:07,560 --> 01:21:11,439 Speaker 1: the your expectations of physics. Uh, if you just believe 1477 01:21:11,479 --> 01:21:16,599 Speaker 1: in yourself so positive vibes. Man hypothetical question if there 1478 01:21:16,640 --> 01:21:19,360 Speaker 1: could be other universes with different laws of physics than 1479 01:21:19,400 --> 01:21:22,559 Speaker 1: our own maybe maybe not, and if we could go 1480 01:21:22,720 --> 01:21:25,880 Speaker 1: to them? Uh, that seems very unlikely. But let's just 1481 01:21:25,920 --> 01:21:27,920 Speaker 1: say we did. You went to another universe at different 1482 01:21:27,960 --> 01:21:32,360 Speaker 1: laws of physics, would that universe immediately kill you? Yeah? 1483 01:21:32,400 --> 01:21:34,759 Speaker 1: Because if if I depend on and I do depend 1484 01:21:34,760 --> 01:21:37,000 Speaker 1: on the laws of the physics of this universe to 1485 01:21:37,040 --> 01:21:39,439 Speaker 1: hold my body together, right, I mean, how am I 1486 01:21:39,479 --> 01:21:42,720 Speaker 1: gonna go into a universe that has a maybe a 1487 01:21:42,800 --> 01:21:45,760 Speaker 1: drastically different structure. Yeah, Like, say you go to a 1488 01:21:45,880 --> 01:21:48,519 Speaker 1: universe with your body made of atoms and suddenly one 1489 01:21:48,520 --> 01:21:51,559 Speaker 1: of the four fundamental forces. The nuclear force is weaker, 1490 01:21:52,320 --> 01:21:54,439 Speaker 1: and so the atoms in your body are just not 1491 01:21:54,520 --> 01:21:57,599 Speaker 1: quite as keen to hold together. That seems like maybe 1492 01:21:57,600 --> 01:22:01,280 Speaker 1: that wouldn't be great. Yeah, but this is so again 1493 01:22:01,360 --> 01:22:03,880 Speaker 1: this points to the idea that they're overlapping, so that 1494 01:22:03,920 --> 01:22:07,160 Speaker 1: you've still got the forces of our universe overlapping with 1495 01:22:07,200 --> 01:22:14,000 Speaker 1: all of their forces. But hey, it's a television show. Yeah. Uh, 1496 01:22:14,040 --> 01:22:19,479 Speaker 1: maybe that's another episode though. Yeah. Alright, guys, there you 1497 01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:22,639 Speaker 1: have it. We have We've rolled through some science, uh, 1498 01:22:23,040 --> 01:22:26,639 Speaker 1: a little culture, a little history, some pseudoscience, all all 1499 01:22:26,680 --> 01:22:29,200 Speaker 1: of which seems to flow out of stranger things. And 1500 01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:32,840 Speaker 1: uh so then hopefully this helps enrich your appreciation of 1501 01:22:32,840 --> 01:22:36,000 Speaker 1: a show you already dig and maybe prepares you for 1502 01:22:36,120 --> 01:22:39,240 Speaker 1: some of the twist and turns in the upcoming season, 1503 01:22:39,280 --> 01:22:41,559 Speaker 1: which what airs at the end of this month. Yeah, yeah, 1504 01:22:41,600 --> 01:22:43,519 Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us tonight. Y'all got a 1505 01:22:43,520 --> 01:22:50,760 Speaker 1: lot of fun and uh, once more, everything on the 1506 01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:54,280 Speaker 1: table has to go, so don't don't be shy about 1507 01:22:54,320 --> 01:23:06,360 Speaker 1: grabbing some T shirts and some buttons. Thanks everybody for 1508 01:23:06,479 --> 01:23:08,800 Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it 1509 01:23:08,880 --> 01:23:32,800 Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com