Speaker 1: Get in with Technology Textuff from dot Com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today
Speaker 1: in the studio once again, I am joined by my
Speaker 1: Horrid Thinking co host, Joe mcclarmick. Joe Lokan, Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: How you doing? I am just doing fantastic. My brain
Speaker 1: is full of bats and spirits from beyond. Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's good that that happened this week, since we are
Speaker 1: celebrating Halloween this week, and as part of our Halloween celebration,
Speaker 1: Joe had come up with a suggestion for an episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. I said, Joe, what do you want
Speaker 1: to cover? And and you came up with a topic
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, like spookily quickly. I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: this for a while. In fact, I've been thinking, next
Speaker 1: time I go on tech Stuff, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about electronic voice phenomena, right, e v P? E v P? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is that? Well, first of all, for those of
Speaker 1: you who are long time listeners of tech Stuff, you
Speaker 1: might think that sounds a little familiar, and that's because
Speaker 1: we touched on e v P. Chris Pallette and I
Speaker 1: did back in an episode recorded way back in February two,
Speaker 1: thou ten called ghost Hunting Technology, and in that episode,
Speaker 1: I opened up by saying, before we get into this,
Speaker 1: I gotta let you guys know I'm a skeptic. Well,
Speaker 1: you'll be amazed to know that in the four years
Speaker 1: since I recorded that episode, you have become a medium. No,
Speaker 1: I'm still a skeptic. Okay, well I am a skeptic too.
Speaker 1: I I don't suggest the topic of electronic voice phenomenon
Speaker 1: because I believe that there's something to this, But I
Speaker 1: suggested because I believe it's fascinating. It is fascinating, and
Speaker 1: it's also it's not just something that is uh very
Speaker 1: popular topic on various Internet forums as well as YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: It's also something that features heavily into ghost movies. Right,
Speaker 1: There's there's always that scene in a ghost film where
Speaker 1: someone is going back over recording and hearing things that
Speaker 1: were not heard during the initial investigation. Yeah, but wait,
Speaker 1: let's back up, because some people might not be familiar
Speaker 1: with this term. Well, why don't you paint a picture
Speaker 1: with your words, Joe? Okay, Yeah, what are we actually
Speaker 1: talking about when we say the words electronic voice phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Here's one scenario you walk into a graveyard on a
Speaker 1: cool autumn evening with your portable audio recording system as
Speaker 1: I do, which makes it a little bit less romantic,
Speaker 1: But there you go. Your idea of what a romantic
Speaker 1: evening is. Quick walk through the local graveyard tells me
Speaker 1: more about you than I was prepared for. But pray continue.
Speaker 1: I take after the tradition of Dr Septimus Pretorious in this.
Speaker 1: If that's I enjoy a midnight snack in a crypt okay,
Speaker 1: and well you know I can get a little Victorian
Speaker 1: every now and then. Let's let's continue on with your scenario. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're bringing along some kind of audio recording system.
Speaker 1: This could be a digital audio recorder or just an
Speaker 1: old cassette tape deck with a microphone, or even the
Speaker 1: built in mic on your video camera. And you placed
Speaker 1: the audio recording device near the grave of a famous
Speaker 1: murderer or a Civil war general, or a reputed witch,
Speaker 1: or maybe a reputed Civil War general witch who murdered people.
Speaker 1: That would be a really cool grave to see. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I just need to go to Oakland Cemetery.
Speaker 1: There are some crazy graves in Atlanta. There are also
Speaker 1: the Decatur cemetery is very cool anyway, So you set
Speaker 1: up the device, you press record, and you leave it alone.
Speaker 1: Or you could record while you ask questions, an attempt
Speaker 1: to go to spirit into speaking, So you could sit
Speaker 1: there and just say, how did you die? Do you
Speaker 1: have anything to say? What's in your famous banana pudding recipe?
Speaker 1: They'll never tell The answer is I have banana newt
Speaker 1: And then later, when you come home, you play back
Speaker 1: the audio and lo and behold in the quiet moments
Speaker 1: between your questions, or sort of just floating ambiently throughout
Speaker 1: the cemetery air while you're recording, our little rumblings of
Speaker 1: static and bumps and creeks and mysterious tones, and they
Speaker 1: all seem to form words, maybe even words directly answering
Speaker 1: your questions. So that is electronic voice phenomenon. It's the
Speaker 1: discovery of some sort of voice, something with purpose, not
Speaker 1: just random noise that is, at least in theory, trying
Speaker 1: to communicate with someone. Sure, And that's not the only
Speaker 1: way you could discover an electronic voice. So you don't
Speaker 1: just have to record in a graveyard. You could record
Speaker 1: anywhere you think there might be something trying to communicate
Speaker 1: with you, or sometimes people record radio transmissions. They say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you know, my radio, my HAM radio,
Speaker 1: or even just my FM receiver, and and here's what
Speaker 1: I caught in the static and in some frequency band
Speaker 1: that's supposedly not occupied. Uh well, well, have more to
Speaker 1: say about that later in the episoite. Right, So, what
Speaker 1: do e v P enthusiasts typically seem to believe is
Speaker 1: going on here? Well, the most common claim I've seen
Speaker 1: is pretty straightforwardly what you'd expect. It's that there were spirits.
Speaker 1: They're attempting to communicate from the other side of the
Speaker 1: wall between life and death, beyond the veil, as it's
Speaker 1: often referred to. There you go. And so the web
Speaker 1: and YouTube have actually made it a lot easier to
Speaker 1: experience this for yourself. So they're just a ton of
Speaker 1: YouTube videos, their whole channels devoted to cataloging supposed e
Speaker 1: v P and I really recommend going and listening to
Speaker 1: a few. If you're at a computer right now, you
Speaker 1: can just pause for a minute and go watch one
Speaker 1: of these or something. And for those of you really
Speaker 1: curious about this phenomenon, we are going to include some
Speaker 1: examples of the sort of things that you would normally
Speaker 1: be scouring if you were trying to find this. This
Speaker 1: meaning we are not necessarily going to be inserting messages.
Speaker 1: But we're not necessarily not going to be inserting messages
Speaker 1: really love. That's up to our audio producer NL Okay,
Speaker 1: so that'll come up when it comes up. The question
Speaker 1: I guess for today is when you when you seem
Speaker 1: to hear words being formed in these strange audio anomalies,
Speaker 1: is it really a transmission from beyond the grave? Are
Speaker 1: angels and ghosts and other disembodied beings communicating to us
Speaker 1: by leaving anomalies on our audio recording equipment? Or is
Speaker 1: something else going on? Now? Just I mean not that
Speaker 1: I'm a Mr. Spoiler, but my own personal view is
Speaker 1: the second option that there's something else going on. Well
Speaker 1: mine too, But I think we should explain why. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And part of it would be, you know, a little
Speaker 1: walk down memory lane to look at some of the
Speaker 1: developments of what led to the E v P craze
Speaker 1: in the first place. Right, Well, I can imagine that
Speaker 1: when audio equipment was new, you know, the ability to
Speaker 1: record audio and play it back, This must have been
Speaker 1: kind of a strange world. For people, I mean, they've
Speaker 1: never had anything like that before. Like once a sound
Speaker 1: was ephemeral before. Sure, once it happened, it was gone.
Speaker 1: It was like a meal or something. You know. You
Speaker 1: could try to imitate it by going back a second time,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't perfectly capture it. It was like going
Speaker 1: to see a stage production. Right, You're going to see
Speaker 1: a stage production, and no matter how well rehearsed that
Speaker 1: production is, no two performances are going to be identical,
Speaker 1: and so the moment that you experience of watching a
Speaker 1: stage production is a unique moment. By definition, It's never
Speaker 1: going to be exactly the same way again, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I love theater so much.
Speaker 1: The same sort of thing was that, until the invention
Speaker 1: of devices that could actually record sound to a medium
Speaker 1: so it could be played back later, every sound was
Speaker 1: like that. It was You heard it that one time
Speaker 1: and that's it. Yeah. So what it suggests to me
Speaker 1: is that this very well could have been a creepy
Speaker 1: phenomenon to people. We grew up with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're used to it, But I mean, might it back
Speaker 1: then have been inherently kind of spooky? Yeah, it certainly could.
Speaker 1: Have been, and in fact it led people to ask
Speaker 1: interesting questions that to us may seem quaint, you know,
Speaker 1: since we have the benefit of hindsight, but at the
Speaker 1: time you could really understand. You know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: taking something that was viewed as non permanent and making
Speaker 1: it permanent. This is this is almost a kind of
Speaker 1: magic when it first happens, right, I can see the
Speaker 1: magical approach to it. Yeah, like Mr Edison, am I
Speaker 1: going to hear a ghost talking on this wax phonograph?
Speaker 1: And someone in fact asked him that very question, essentially
Speaker 1: saying did he think it would be possible to ever
Speaker 1: invent something that would be capable of contacting the dead?
Speaker 1: And his response was, it is possible to construct an
Speaker 1: apparatus which will be so del k that if there
Speaker 1: are personalities in another existence or sphere who wished to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us in this existence or sphere,
Speaker 1: this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity
Speaker 1: to express themselves than the tilting tables and wraps and
Speaker 1: Uiji boards and mediums and other crude methods now purported
Speaker 1: to be the only means of communication. So I thought
Speaker 1: the plural of medium was media. Well not for not
Speaker 1: for the these kind of mediums. Did you hear about
Speaker 1: the tiny criminal psychic who escaped prison? She was a
Speaker 1: small medium at large. That's great, thank you. Uh now
Speaker 1: that we I just had like fifty people and subscribe
Speaker 1: to my podcast. But that's okay. I I promised it's
Speaker 1: the last time I'm gonna make a terrible joke like
Speaker 1: that for this episode. Um, I can't make any grand promises.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's interesting that he was. He was
Speaker 1: very clear, clearly stating that if such a thing does exist,
Speaker 1: then there's no reason and why this wouldn't give them
Speaker 1: another opportunity. That makes perfect sense. Sure, well, I mean
Speaker 1: I can see it too, Like, for example, if people
Speaker 1: claim to hear ghost voices with their ears, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's going on there is that there has to be
Speaker 1: an actual sound that's exciting the Well maybe, I mean
Speaker 1: it could be that they're imagining the sound, but I
Speaker 1: stipulated if people are actually hearing, of course, then again
Speaker 1: what is actually hearing? Well, okay, now we're getting into
Speaker 1: too many questions about perception versus reality. But if you
Speaker 1: have a recording instrument there you can at least find
Speaker 1: out if there was in fact a phenomenon that could
Speaker 1: be perceived as opposed to one that was imagined to
Speaker 1: be perceived in the head of the person who claims it. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if I say, I keep hearing this
Speaker 1: low moaning voice in my house, and I set up
Speaker 1: a recording device and I tell people I just heard it,
Speaker 1: and you listen back and there's nothing on the recording,
Speaker 1: and that might suggest that the problem could be in
Speaker 1: my head, not outside of my head. And of course,
Speaker 1: if spirits could speak from beyond the grave, something like
Speaker 1: this might in theory be useful. For example, take the
Speaker 1: Houdini example. You know, before Harry Houdini died. He the
Speaker 1: story goes that he and his wife set up a
Speaker 1: system where he gave her a secret message and nobody
Speaker 1: else knew the message, and he said, look, if I can,
Speaker 1: if it's possible for me to return from beyond the
Speaker 1: grave and let you know that there is an afterlife,
Speaker 1: I'll come back and tell you the secret message, and
Speaker 1: that way you'll know it's really me. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: I don't think that she ever claimed that happened, but
Speaker 1: I think they did every Halloween. Yeah, But if she
Speaker 1: set up a recording device and could even if you
Speaker 1: couldn't hear normally, she might be able to hear through
Speaker 1: some kind of anomaly in the audio the secret message.
Speaker 1: If it was the message, well, okay, that'd be good evidence.
Speaker 1: But no such thing had happened. Now to continue on
Speaker 1: our timeline of e v P, because of course, Edison
Speaker 1: just said that the devices he was making could potentially
Speaker 1: be used for such a purpose if in fact any
Speaker 1: phenomena existed, right, So, uh, he was not coming out
Speaker 1: and saying there are ghosts. He was just saying that, well,
Speaker 1: if ghosts exists, then there's no reason why I can't
Speaker 1: record them. Um, well, you have a man by the
Speaker 1: name of Friedrich Jorgenson who publishes a book titled Voices
Speaker 1: from Space and in the late Sounds. In the late fifties,
Speaker 1: he started recording sounds by setting up a microphone on
Speaker 1: his windows sill for the purpose of recording bird song.
Speaker 1: But he claimed that when listening to the recordings that
Speaker 1: he had made, he was hearing voices saying things, um, nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, huge or whatever. But he was picking up
Speaker 1: little things, and he started to suspect that in fact,
Speaker 1: the microphone was starting to pick up stuff that is uh,
Speaker 1: otherwise undetectable. So it was picking up things that were
Speaker 1: not perceivable in his environment, according to his story. He
Speaker 1: also claimed in nine that he received a message about
Speaker 1: a central investigation station in space. So, um, there's there's
Speaker 1: also some interesting You can't diagnose people obviously, right, especially
Speaker 1: with well, first of all, I am not qualified to
Speaker 1: diagnose anybody in anything. Second into the past. Secondly, yeah,
Speaker 1: diagnosing into the past is always a mistake. But with
Speaker 1: those caveats in mind, it doesn't sound on It sounds
Speaker 1: to me like a form of schizophrenia. Uh, people who
Speaker 1: believe that they have heard things from outside of themselves
Speaker 1: saying stuff, whether that's you know, instructions to do things
Speaker 1: or just saying things that only they can hear. Uh,
Speaker 1: it sounds very similar to that. However, he was claiming
Speaker 1: that he was picking them up on a microphone, which
Speaker 1: clearly would be beyond that. Right that now, now it's
Speaker 1: perceptible to other people, it's not something that's just in
Speaker 1: his head necessarily. Uh. In the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: another man named Constantine rawd Ive, who was a student
Speaker 1: of Jurgenson's, begins to make e VP recordings of his own,
Speaker 1: and he allegedly recorded more than one hundred thousand audio
Speaker 1: tapes worth of phenomena. He published in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: his findings under the title and herberaths vered Herbauer, which
Speaker 1: is what is innaudible becomes audible. The English title for
Speaker 1: the book was Breakthrough an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication
Speaker 1: with the Dead. So while I didn't see that Jurgensen
Speaker 1: was specifically stating that he was hearing messages from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave, that's that was rawd Eve's interpretation certainly that
Speaker 1: these were spirits that were attempting to communicate. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of interesting stories, especially from psychologists who
Speaker 1: looked into rod Ive's approach and try to use a
Speaker 1: scientific methodology to test whether or not UM there were
Speaker 1: some confirmation bias or other issues going on. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about some of the psychological explanations for e VP phenomena.
Speaker 1: I don't know that's like a t M machine, but whatever, UM,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we'll talk about those towards the end. Two
Speaker 1: was when the Association trans Communication is founded. This is
Speaker 1: an actual nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of all
Speaker 1: forms of trans communication, which is communication across the veil
Speaker 1: with an emphasis on instrumental transcommunication and its subset electronic
Speaker 1: voice phenomena instrumental trans communication that sounds so legitimate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it sounds better than like Quiji board, right, So um,
Speaker 1: At any rate, uh, there are people and there are
Speaker 1: smart people who are really looking into this uh and
Speaker 1: trying to see what if anything of substance you know,
Speaker 1: ectoplasma or otherwise happens to actually be there. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we have the idea on one hand that there are
Speaker 1: real voices that are coming from real agents that may
Speaker 1: be people in space or or are most often thought
Speaker 1: of as spirits or ghosts of some kind, communicating through
Speaker 1: electronic media. What's the other side of the case. The
Speaker 1: other side of the case is that there is no uh,
Speaker 1: there is no supernatural source for this and from this stuff.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of natural sources that could explain many,
Speaker 1: if not all, of the e v P that are
Speaker 1: out there. Right, The argument is not necessarily that it's
Speaker 1: not supernatural. It's just that you don't need to resort
Speaker 1: to that. There are plenty of things that could explain
Speaker 1: the fact that you seem to be hearing voices in
Speaker 1: electronic media, which and the argument using the acam's razor
Speaker 1: approach is saying, if you have an explanation that does
Speaker 1: not require something that is herefore too unknown to science
Speaker 1: in order for it to have happened, then chances are
Speaker 1: the more mundane explanation is in act correct. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what are those possible mundane explanations? I think we should
Speaker 1: break it down sort of into three categories, which would
Speaker 1: be the input, the output, and then the interpretation. That's
Speaker 1: the way I sort of see it. So let's start
Speaker 1: with the input. I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways that the way you record audio in the
Speaker 1: first place can create all sorts of anomalies, so that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just expect to hear blank, white noise. You
Speaker 1: would expect to hear random noises, you know, strange things. Sure,
Speaker 1: what could influence that? Well, Uh, it depends on so
Speaker 1: many things. For one, it depends on what medium you're using. Right,
Speaker 1: If you're using magnetic tape, magnetic tape already has like
Speaker 1: a hiss associated to it, and that's before you've even
Speaker 1: started to put anything to the tape. If you've ever
Speaker 1: listened to magnetic tape and it's you know, a quiet
Speaker 1: section where there was no sound being recorded, it's just
Speaker 1: the tape playing. You'll still hear that hiss noise, So
Speaker 1: that already has a base level there. Uh. Digital records
Speaker 1: a little bit different. Of course, it all depends upon
Speaker 1: the quality and and sensitivity of the microphone. I've seen
Speaker 1: some people on message boards at least advising against high
Speaker 1: quality audio recording equipment, right like somehow the higher higher
Speaker 1: quality the recording, the less likely ghosts are gonna talk
Speaker 1: to you. Or maybe it's the higher quality the audio,
Speaker 1: the less likely you're going to get any artifacts that
Speaker 1: can be misinterpreted to be messages from beyond the grave. Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe that's me editorializing a little. Um. There's also the
Speaker 1: idea of raising up the microphone sensitivity, just cranking it
Speaker 1: up as high as you possibly can, in order to
Speaker 1: pick up any possible noises, and you don't. From from
Speaker 1: one perspective, that makes sense. You're saying, oh, I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that if something is being uh communicated,
Speaker 1: even if it's really really faint, I want to be
Speaker 1: able to pick it up. And one of the one
Speaker 1: of the widely held beliefs that I don't think it's
Speaker 1: ever adequately explained. Is that ghosts have a real hard
Speaker 1: time speaking up. Yeah, you know that whatever whatever chance
Speaker 1: you know, it takes. Yeah, that that is I almost
Speaker 1: should have said that at the beginning, that this is
Speaker 1: a very common feature of this is it's not like
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear really loud noises. You're gonna hear kind
Speaker 1: of faint variations in the static and and little tiny
Speaker 1: things that that are barely making it through. They advise
Speaker 1: you to wear headphones and turn the volume way up, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, uh, turning up that sensitivito the microphone.
Speaker 1: You know, we did an episode not too long ago
Speaker 1: about audio production and talked about microphone sensitivity and how
Speaker 1: you want to set it so that you can get
Speaker 1: a decent recording. This is ignoring all of those those messages,
Speaker 1: it's ignoring all of those tips in order for you
Speaker 1: to try and maximize the chance that you're going to
Speaker 1: get a hit. Uh. The issue here is that by
Speaker 1: turning up that sensitivity, you turn up what is called
Speaker 1: the noise floor. This is just the natural noise that
Speaker 1: electronic devices make. Um. You know the fact that you're
Speaker 1: using electronics in the first place, means you do have
Speaker 1: this ground level of noise, and when you have the
Speaker 1: microphone sensitivities at a certain level, you pretty much don't
Speaker 1: pick up on it. But the higher you turn it up,
Speaker 1: the more likely you're gonna pick up some of that noise.
Speaker 1: So I thought it might be interesting for us to
Speaker 1: do a little moment here where Noel's going to insert
Speaker 1: a segment where he just he turns the microphone sensitivity
Speaker 1: way up. Uh, And so folks were gonna have that
Speaker 1: play right now. Um, you can adjust the volume on
Speaker 1: your on your various MP three players or whatever so
Speaker 1: that you don't go deaf in case there is a
Speaker 1: loud noise. Well, Noel does this. So no just adjusted
Speaker 1: the the gain essentially on our microphones, and we sat
Speaker 1: here and listen to it, and to us it sounds
Speaker 1: like white noise. I mean, obviously if we listened to
Speaker 1: it again and again, we might find something interesting there.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk more about that towards the end of
Speaker 1: the episode. But that that's kind of an example, you know,
Speaker 1: just the idea of cranking that microphone sensitivity way up. Um.
Speaker 1: Another issue using electronic media in the first place is
Speaker 1: the idea of encountering a ground loop. So ground loops
Speaker 1: is that's when you've got a current connecting two points
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to be the same electric potential, but
Speaker 1: in fact they're different potentials. That is what creates hum
Speaker 1: and noise and interference. It can happen with just you know,
Speaker 1: if you're using that cheap audio recording equipment. This is
Speaker 1: the sort of stuff that can happen. You're probably familiar
Speaker 1: with this if you play electric guitars. Yeah, you're essentially
Speaker 1: you're you're inviting artifacts and distortion and pops and whistles
Speaker 1: and hums to get into your recording, which you know.
Speaker 1: I can see why people who are big into e
Speaker 1: v P say we should be using this equipment because
Speaker 1: otherwise you're not going to get stuff, and not getting
Speaker 1: stuff might be an indication that there's nothing there another
Speaker 1: thing that could be creating anomalies at the beginning, at
Speaker 1: the recording phase. This is sort of the most obvious,
Speaker 1: in the least interesting, but if you watch some of
Speaker 1: these e VP videos on YouTube, you'll see that it
Speaker 1: influences some of them. They're sometimes recorded in spaces that
Speaker 1: are one currently full of people and too prone to
Speaker 1: cause echoes. So unless it's at like a mind convention,
Speaker 1: chances are there's gonna be some people talking. Even then,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be will moving around and making noise. But
Speaker 1: so a good example would be, say a recording taken
Speaker 1: in a church full of people worshiping or visiting the church,
Speaker 1: and you told me that you actually saw a video
Speaker 1: that was this particular example, right, Yeah, And in these
Speaker 1: cases there are constantly echoes of voices reverberating throughout the space,
Speaker 1: and the microphone will pick up little pieces of them
Speaker 1: with varying intensity and fidelity based on just all the
Speaker 1: constantly changing variables that influenced the propagation of sound waves
Speaker 1: in a place with echoes like the church. Along the
Speaker 1: same lines, when microphone sensitivity is high, think about all
Speaker 1: of the auditory anomalies created simply by the sound of
Speaker 1: physical friction. Yeah, I think we've got a little example
Speaker 1: of that in our our own version there, right, So,
Speaker 1: a slight wind or a breeze over the microphone, Uh,
Speaker 1: the adjustment of the experimenter's hand or body or clothing
Speaker 1: against the microphone or the base on which the microphone
Speaker 1: is held, or just the microphone moving against the surface
Speaker 1: it's sitting on. Yeah, all these things create different weird
Speaker 1: little bumps and creeks and static. You may have heard
Speaker 1: in some of our podcasts where one of us accidentally,
Speaker 1: like while shifting our weight, you know, gives the table
Speaker 1: just a little kick and then you hear the thump
Speaker 1: that goes through. Noel's very good at taking most of
Speaker 1: those out, but once in a while, I think one
Speaker 1: slips through. So you know, that's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's an example of the sort of stuff that
Speaker 1: could be you know, very much amplified with this sort
Speaker 1: of approach where you're specifically looking for an anomally so
Speaker 1: anomaly hunting is a big problem with this. Actually, another
Speaker 1: thing is I mean, what about all of those radio
Speaker 1: signals bouncing around out there. Yeah, so it turns out
Speaker 1: we're using radio for a lot of stuff. Walkie talkies,
Speaker 1: actual radio broadcasts, cellular phones. So, uh, Joe, I don't know,
Speaker 1: did you ever play with like toy walkie talkies when
Speaker 1: you're a kid. Did you ever pick up anything besides
Speaker 1: the actual other walkie talkie? Yes? I think I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would pick up CB radio like I could actually
Speaker 1: occasionally hear truckers talking and I would freak out because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, who the you know, Brian's voice sure
Speaker 1: got deep shut really quickly, and apparently Smokey's on his
Speaker 1: tail or something. I don't know what's going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, radio interference is a thing, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes it can be really subtle.
Speaker 1: And uh, here's another example, Joe. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: driving someplace and listening to a radio station and then
Speaker 1: start to encounter a second radio station on that same frequency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you until you get to a frequency that is
Speaker 1: obviously stronger than the other one, you get this kind
Speaker 1: of interference and competing noise. Same sort of thing can
Speaker 1: happen you. You might think that you're tuned into an
Speaker 1: unoccupied radio frequency, but it may be that you're just
Speaker 1: enough in the range of a radio broadcast station that
Speaker 1: you can pick it up very faintly and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of noise, but there actually is some signal there too.
Speaker 1: The signal might not always be obvious, but occasionally you
Speaker 1: might get a word or two, and that can be misleading.
Speaker 1: You might think that you're getting messages beyond the veil,
Speaker 1: but really you're getting messages three counties over. There's also
Speaker 1: a phenomenon called ion a spheric ducting. This is when
Speaker 1: radio signals can actually travel through the iono sphere much
Speaker 1: further than they normally would, when little pockets or ducts
Speaker 1: form in the ionosphere. Now these don't these these aren't permanent.
Speaker 1: It's not like you have this you know, incredible uh
Speaker 1: pathway from one point to another all the way across
Speaker 1: the Earth. But occasionally they can form. So it's possible
Speaker 1: that once in a while, if you're really listening out
Speaker 1: for something, that you might pick up radio signals that
Speaker 1: have traveled a really long distance to the point where
Speaker 1: you might get things in other languages that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 1: And that can really be you know, freaky if you're
Speaker 1: not expecting it. Um, but know that's that's all a possibility.
Speaker 1: The recordings of Rawdive are really good examples of radio interference. UH.
Speaker 1: The one time that he agreed to make a recording
Speaker 1: in a room that was specifically screened from radio interference,
Speaker 1: he did not record any voices. So obviously the idea
Speaker 1: of proving a negative is a tough one. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't necessarily say that in every other case, UH,
Speaker 1: this was an example of radio interference. But the fact
Speaker 1: that in the one case where they they very methodically
Speaker 1: blocked it out, nothing happened is problematic. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to introduce another stage of audio recording at which you
Speaker 1: could be introducing strange anomalies and and undecipherable sounds, and
Speaker 1: that would be at the output stage, so after you've
Speaker 1: done the recording. Obviously, recording doesn't just go straight from
Speaker 1: the microphone to your ears. A lot of times you're
Speaker 1: going to run it through something sure before you finally
Speaker 1: listen to it. So it's possible to create strange sounds
Speaker 1: inadvertently in a perfectly mundane recording just by putting it
Speaker 1: through sound post processing software, especially if you're trying to
Speaker 1: equalize volume or use any kind of automated subroutine that
Speaker 1: did just the volume of the wave. And though it's
Speaker 1: harder to see how this could happen by accident, you
Speaker 1: can obviously create strange sounds by adding you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of music centered effects like compression or reverb or distortion.
Speaker 1: Sure well, yeah, and just just playing with equalizer settings
Speaker 1: right like where you you think, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: boost this particular frequency range because I want to have
Speaker 1: a lot more base in this particular, or you know,
Speaker 1: I need to I need to bring the trouble up, uh,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff occasionally that you know, what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're boosting the volume of the frequencies at
Speaker 1: that range, and sometimes you're you're recording will have stuff
Speaker 1: that at its settings when you were recording, there wasn't
Speaker 1: anything perceptible. But as you start to boost that volume,
Speaker 1: you start to hear more of that noise, not just
Speaker 1: the signal, but the noise that's at that frequency, and
Speaker 1: that's where you start maybe picking out things that you
Speaker 1: didn't know were there, and so therefore they seem like
Speaker 1: it was a purposeful communication, when in fact it may
Speaker 1: just be noise. It may just be random noise that
Speaker 1: was recorded but not perceptible at the levels that you
Speaker 1: had said at at the time of recording. Right. But
Speaker 1: everything we've said so far only gets us to the
Speaker 1: fact that these recordings aren't just blank, like the fact
Speaker 1: that they will have strange things that sound off. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just flat static sound, but you'll hear a
Speaker 1: little anomalies, noises, creaks and cracks and bumps. The next
Speaker 1: stage is how do you go from that towards why
Speaker 1: why do you hear a little crack in a in
Speaker 1: a bunch of static and think I think it said
Speaker 1: my name. Well, assuming that you're actually well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you could have the radio interference, so you could actually
Speaker 1: have you could actually have real words on there. But
Speaker 1: I'm saying apart from that one, just the ones where
Speaker 1: they're all different kinds of anomalies and the sound recording gotcha.
Speaker 1: So we're listening. Let's say you're listening to something that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be white noise, but you're starting to pick
Speaker 1: up on something that sounds like someone talking through the
Speaker 1: white noise, and uh and it it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you're you're having to listen to it over
Speaker 1: and over again. There's several things that are possibly at play,
Speaker 1: and one is our good old buddy paradolia. Audio paradolia
Speaker 1: in this case, right, So, paradolia refers to something that
Speaker 1: you will immediately recognize as soon as we define it.
Speaker 1: It's the human tendency to find patterns and significance in
Speaker 1: random stimuli. So just looking at the grass you could
Speaker 1: see a face, or looking at the clouds, the most
Speaker 1: common example exactly you look at that one looks like
Speaker 1: a dog and yeah, um, you look at the knots
Speaker 1: in a tree and oh, there's a face in that tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you write a book called Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: and does incredibly success full. Uh. Yeah, we're hardwired to
Speaker 1: recognize patterns. Part of that is, you know, babies are
Speaker 1: really good at recognizing human faces, and uh, when baby
Speaker 1: see human face, they tend to react in a way
Speaker 1: that makes, uh, most humans feel protective of that baby. Sure,
Speaker 1: so that's there's a possible survival instinct there. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's not just that we're hardwired to recognize patterns,
Speaker 1: but I think it's that we're hardwired to beyond the
Speaker 1: special lookout for intelligent agents. Well it's certain, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see what you're saying. So on the lookout it's
Speaker 1: the reason you're very likely to see a face in
Speaker 1: the tree instead of see a mountain in the tree. Like,
Speaker 1: we're on the lookout for things that act independently and quickly,
Speaker 1: like animals and like other people, and potential threats that
Speaker 1: the big one. You can see an obvious advantage to this,
Speaker 1: because if you see something in the bushes that could
Speaker 1: be a tiger, or it could be another person who
Speaker 1: wants to steal your stuff. Is it better to air
Speaker 1: on the side of and it's probably nothing, or is
Speaker 1: it better to air on the side of better get
Speaker 1: away from that? Well, there's obviously a survival advantage to
Speaker 1: airing on the side of I don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: but it could be something that wants to get me
Speaker 1: and and and in that case, it's when you're on
Speaker 1: the lookout for things that have agency. Yeah, there's definitely
Speaker 1: that's definitely playing a part in it. It's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. And plus, if you're if you are
Speaker 1: looking for it, actively looking for it, you want to
Speaker 1: find something, right, That's there's there's the desire if you're
Speaker 1: actively looking for something, then that that is based upon
Speaker 1: the idea that you want to find whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're looking for, and so that desire can also definitely
Speaker 1: feed into it. Right. But the examples we've talked about
Speaker 1: so far are visual. If you translate the same thing
Speaker 1: to an auditory phenomena, then what you it is auditory paradolia.
Speaker 1: So if you hear a sound calling out in the distance,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, is it the wind going through that tree,
Speaker 1: or is it somebody warning me of danger. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where again, if you're looking
Speaker 1: for it, you're more likely to hear it as being significant. Right.
Speaker 1: But even if you're not looking for it, we can
Speaker 1: be pretty susceptible to that sort of thing where we
Speaker 1: start to we start to attribute significance where there may
Speaker 1: not be any there. Um and uh. A great example
Speaker 1: of this is the idea of backmasking, the idea of
Speaker 1: putting in secret messages, recording them and then laying them
Speaker 1: down backwards. In an audio track, you said putting in
Speaker 1: I think you should have meant interpreting, Well, well, they're
Speaker 1: reading out there are The idea is that they've been
Speaker 1: put in purposefully, whereas in rock record in reality, in reality,
Speaker 1: it very rarely happened. Occasionally it did happen. People would
Speaker 1: put in messages backwards, but it was almost always a joke,
Speaker 1: like uh, weird Weird Al I think has backwards recordings
Speaker 1: on like half his albums, where if you play backwards
Speaker 1: it will say things like congratulations, you just screwed up
Speaker 1: your record player. That kind of thing like that. That's
Speaker 1: the sort of backwards messages that you might get. But um,
Speaker 1: but the idea of back masking really took off in
Speaker 1: the eighties the during the Satanic Panic. That was an
Speaker 1: era where there was this huge concern that Satanists were
Speaker 1: corrupting the youth and turning them to their wicked ways,
Speaker 1: and that pretty much everything that kids enjoyed was was
Speaker 1: actually the the tool of the Satanist movements. So rock
Speaker 1: and roll music was a big one, and there was
Speaker 1: the this this idea that UH musicians have been putting
Speaker 1: in secret messages to get kids to do terrible things
Speaker 1: if they listened to it. Somehow they shouldn't listen to
Speaker 1: those DeBie Gibson records. And you definitely shouldn't have listened
Speaker 1: to those Debbie Gibson records. I was a Tiffining fan myself.
Speaker 1: The idea being that somehow we were subconsciously being able
Speaker 1: to interpret this backwards messaging, and therefore it would get
Speaker 1: through to our subconscious and we would do terrible things.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you try and listen to backwards
Speaker 1: messages and trying to figure out what is being said,
Speaker 1: I pretty much guarantee you you're gonna be a percent wrong,
Speaker 1: because it's it's really hard to tell. Well. But also
Speaker 1: I pretty much guarantee you you're you're going to find
Speaker 1: stuff that sounds like words in a funny way. Oh sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If if you were to play anything backwards, even if
Speaker 1: there's there was never let's say that the stuff that
Speaker 1: came out had no message in it at all. Right,
Speaker 1: you could argue that even the lyrics didn't have a
Speaker 1: message in some of these songs in the eighties. But
Speaker 1: let's say you play it backwards and you're just listening
Speaker 1: for something and mustering cat bail. We still you could
Speaker 1: very easily start to imagine that you're hearing things that
Speaker 1: have significance even if there is no significance there. And
Speaker 1: it makes it way easier if someone else tells you
Speaker 1: what you should be listening for, especially if like on
Speaker 1: a YouTube video and has an example of this and
Speaker 1: then has captions up well. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: e VP videos that I found on YouTube actually do
Speaker 1: have captions. They come pre preloaded with the person who's
Speaker 1: presenting this telling you what they think it says. And
Speaker 1: when I was listening to it, I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I never would have arrived at
Speaker 1: those words listening to it on my own. But now
Speaker 1: that I'm watching them on the screen hearing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can sort of hear that. Okay, So now we've
Speaker 1: got a couple of competing hypotheses. We've got we've got
Speaker 1: ghosts actually talking through audio recording equipment, and we've got
Speaker 1: audio anomalies coupled with our tendency to see patterns and
Speaker 1: especially like uh, intelligent or agency created patterns where they're
Speaker 1: not there. How do we test which one of them
Speaker 1: is actually the reality. Well, again, it's really hard to
Speaker 1: to prove a negative, right, It's hard to sit there
Speaker 1: and say, uh, there is no message in this recording.
Speaker 1: If one person is claiming up and down that yes,
Speaker 1: there is a message here, and someone else is saying, no,
Speaker 1: there isn't a message there, you're not really making any progress.
Speaker 1: One thing you could do, if you wanted to be
Speaker 1: really clever, is you could create a test where you
Speaker 1: present people with white noise. There's no message, it was
Speaker 1: purely random white noise generation, nothing else of significance is
Speaker 1: in there. But tell people that it's actually a message
Speaker 1: and then asked them to write down anything they hear
Speaker 1: and see what happens. Because that's what David Ellis did. Now,
Speaker 1: David ellis still a lot of investigation of e VP phenomena,
Speaker 1: again using the redundant phrase, but at any rate, he
Speaker 1: did a lot of investigation in this area, and he
Speaker 1: held this test where he got a group of people
Speaker 1: together and he said, we're gonna play for you a lecture.
Speaker 1: It's an old lecture that's been recorded ages ago, and
Speaker 1: the qualities course, yeah, sort of like that, like it
Speaker 1: was some sort of lecture of that sense, and it
Speaker 1: was a publicly given lecture, but the recording has degraded,
Speaker 1: uh to the point where we can't recapture anything that's said.
Speaker 1: We just want to you to write down any words
Speaker 1: or phrases that you do here so that we can
Speaker 1: start to piece this back together. And don't worry about
Speaker 1: trying to get everything because it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: But if you hear anything specific, write it down. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, the people who listened to this white noise
Speaker 1: that had no message in it started writing downwards and
Speaker 1: phrases they thought they had heard, and there was no
Speaker 1: real significance to the words or phrases except for whatever
Speaker 1: happened to be on their mind at the time, suggesting
Speaker 1: that in fact, this was purely psychological, so showing that
Speaker 1: this is in fact a possible Like if this is
Speaker 1: possible to play people a recording that has no significance
Speaker 1: to it, but they find significance in it, Isn't that
Speaker 1: more realistic a conclusion? And then to say something that
Speaker 1: we haven't proven exists is communicating in unknown mechanism electronically.
Speaker 1: Probably yeah. I mean if again, if you sit there
Speaker 1: and say, here's this, here's this real life situation we
Speaker 1: can point to where real people who there was no
Speaker 1: supernatural element to this experiment, right, he would be told
Speaker 1: it was an old recording. Well, unless they unless someone
Speaker 1: would come along and say, well, the ghosts put messages
Speaker 1: in your white noise recording to throw off the experiment.
Speaker 1: But that would only work if the group all wrote
Speaker 1: down the same words and phrases, and they didn't. But
Speaker 1: of course people don't even do that with these supposed
Speaker 1: e VP recordings, which is another If you were to
Speaker 1: remove the captions, I can guarantee you people would come
Speaker 1: up with different messages from them. That comes up to
Speaker 1: the verbal transformation effect. That's another issue that's related to this.
Speaker 1: That was a term coined by Richard M. Warren, who
Speaker 1: was a professor of psychology way back in one and
Speaker 1: he wrote about this tendency for listeners to perceive changes
Speaker 1: of distinct speech upon repetition. In other words, the more
Speaker 1: often you listen to something, the more likely you would
Speaker 1: perceive something that wasn't actually said. This ties into yet
Speaker 1: another aspect common to the way these e VP recordings
Speaker 1: are presented, which is that they're looped all the time.
Speaker 1: If you go watch on YouTube, people will they'll play
Speaker 1: it once and then they'll have a caption or something
Speaker 1: that says listen, I think it said whatever, and then
Speaker 1: they'll play it five times in a row. He also
Speaker 1: looked at rowd Ive's work and said that rod I've
Speaker 1: when he was listening to stuff, Um would come up
Speaker 1: with certain words like Lenin was like l E n
Speaker 1: I n as in the name like Ladimir. Yes, he
Speaker 1: was coming up with the name Lenin with this one
Speaker 1: selection of noise and saying that was definitely what was
Speaker 1: being said, and he had been listening to it over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. But when presented to other
Speaker 1: people who had not listened to it before and did
Speaker 1: not know the interpretation, they were coming up with totally
Speaker 1: different sounds, like boo doo or clue lu or you know,
Speaker 1: they hadn't. It didn't sound remotely like linen to them.
Speaker 1: And and part of that is because one they had
Speaker 1: not listened to it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And too they had not been told what to listen for.
Speaker 1: And so if you're not told what to listen for
Speaker 1: and you come up with a totally different interpretation, how
Speaker 1: can anyone be certain that the words they are perceiving
Speaker 1: are in fact actual words. I want to offer an
Speaker 1: observation of my own about these recordings, just e VP recordings,
Speaker 1: which is that very often the phrases that are interpreted
Speaker 1: are not long sentences. They're very short. They're like one
Speaker 1: to three words at a time. And also, I would
Speaker 1: say that what is common among the interpretations is more
Speaker 1: rhythmic than uh than what would be the opposite, like
Speaker 1: the vowel sound ones and stuff like that. So imagine
Speaker 1: you've got an audio anomaly and you ask ten different people,
Speaker 1: assume this is a word, what does the words say?
Speaker 1: I think what will be very common to almost all
Speaker 1: of them is the number of syllables in the word.
Speaker 1: And then apart from that, it's going to be very different.
Speaker 1: And so it's something about the rhythm of the word
Speaker 1: that seems to be central and how people are interpreting things.
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense to me, because
Speaker 1: I feel like you're really not likely to hear something
Speaker 1: that sounds like a vowel in an audio anomally, You're
Speaker 1: more likely to hear a little percussive elements that seem
Speaker 1: to be the beginnings and ends of hard consonance. If
Speaker 1: you filter through white noise, you can start to create
Speaker 1: some some vowel sounds, depending on how you're filtering it.
Speaker 1: But then that that's almost like an artificial like that's
Speaker 1: almost like trying to manufacture these kind of recordings. And again,
Speaker 1: if it's one of those where it's picking up little
Speaker 1: tiny snippets of radio communication one way or another, it
Speaker 1: may be that you are actually hearing bits or entire
Speaker 1: words or short phrases. But uh As, a lot of
Speaker 1: researchers have pointed out that if the if the dearly
Speaker 1: departed are trying to communicate with us, they are really
Speaker 1: really bad at saying anything of significance, Like if they're
Speaker 1: able to talk most of the most of the time,
Speaker 1: the phrases that are coming by have no real impact
Speaker 1: or meaning to them, and so especially if it's the
Speaker 1: ones where exactly so. And finally, I think another thing
Speaker 1: that's playing here in psychology is just if you again,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for the communication of spirits from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave, it already you know, that's built upon a
Speaker 1: presumption that there is a thing beyond the grave to contact. Sure,
Speaker 1: and the fact that e VP phenomenon are probably not
Speaker 1: real voices doesn't necessarily like disprove and after life or no. No,
Speaker 1: it just means that there's really no reason to assume
Speaker 1: that these are ghosts talking to you in the noises
Speaker 1: in your audio tape. And and it just it does
Speaker 1: end up like if you pursue this, it does mean
Speaker 1: that you are, uh, you're you're normally hunting, just like
Speaker 1: we were saying, poor and when you when you hunt
Speaker 1: for anomalies, you will find them. I mean that that
Speaker 1: does happen. But it doesn't mean that the anomalies are
Speaker 1: significant in any way. And that's the issue there is
Speaker 1: that again, it doesn't mean that like even if no
Speaker 1: e v P ever in the history of mankind was
Speaker 1: truly significant, that doesn't That's not like the nail in
Speaker 1: the coffin of the afterlife for a terrible, terrible phrase,
Speaker 1: but it means that that potential avenue doesn't have any
Speaker 1: real merit to it. And ultimately this is if this
Speaker 1: is the foothold you're using on which to base your
Speaker 1: belief afterlife, it might be an incentive for you to
Speaker 1: really cling to it. Yeah, and it's it's again, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where the mechanism for that communication
Speaker 1: as always really shaky. I mean that that's the truth
Speaker 1: for any kind of paranormal research that I've found, because
Speaker 1: since we don't have the scientific evidence to support whatever
Speaker 1: the claim is um yet. I mean, maybe one day
Speaker 1: we will, but if we since we don't have it,
Speaker 1: then it requires some fancy footwork on the part of
Speaker 1: people who are looking into it to try and explain
Speaker 1: how their methodology is supposed to be effective. Like if
Speaker 1: if I if I tell you, Joe, that there's an
Speaker 1: invisible but still orange flying monkey that is constantly following
Speaker 1: you around, but you are unable to perceive it in
Speaker 1: any way. But I tell you that this one little
Speaker 1: needle will move when it comes close to it. Whenever
Speaker 1: the monkey is really close to you, the needle will move.
Speaker 1: But I don't explain how that's supposed to happen or
Speaker 1: what the mech an is m there is. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to prove that something is there first to
Speaker 1: be able to show you that a tool can detect
Speaker 1: its presence. You can't. You can't say that this tool
Speaker 1: detects the presence of something you haven't proven to exist.
Speaker 1: So you know it's it's that made the same argument
Speaker 1: in our ghost Hunting episode years and years ago. And
Speaker 1: uh again, it's not to say that these things don't exist.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't believe in them, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that I'm right. I just haven't seen any evidence
Speaker 1: for it. And if I were to see evidence that
Speaker 1: was very compelling, I mean, this would require extraordinary evidence.
Speaker 1: But if I did, then I would like to think
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, yeah, you know what, I was
Speaker 1: wrong and this is really exciting and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to learn more about how to study it. But so
Speaker 1: far I have not seen that. I was just trying
Speaker 1: to think what would be really good evidence for the
Speaker 1: truth of spiritual basis for e VP Ghostbusters three, and
Speaker 1: you know, with Harold Ramos, that would be that would
Speaker 1: be it. I was trying to see if Harold Ramos
Speaker 1: would contact us from beyond the grave and the silence
Speaker 1: while I stared at you. Okay, No, So that just
Speaker 1: was really awkward as opposed to UH as as as
Speaker 1: opposed to enlightening. Um no, I mean I I think
Speaker 1: that it would have to be uh something that could
Speaker 1: be uh replicable by different people using very strict approaches,
Speaker 1: so that they could all kind of come to the
Speaker 1: same conclusion. So in other words, like even then, I
Speaker 1: guess it would be hard to to be conclusive about
Speaker 1: the source of it. Yeah, I mean to me, what
Speaker 1: would mean? Yeah, I guess you could do some kind
Speaker 1: of radio isolation thing. Well, yeah, let's let's like, here's
Speaker 1: a theoretical instance that I could imagine making me change
Speaker 1: my mind. Let's say that you have multiple independent teams
Speaker 1: who are from varying backgrounds. So you might have some
Speaker 1: people who are ghost hunters, you might have some people
Speaker 1: who are deeply skeptical, all using their whatever equipment there
Speaker 1: they want in order to pick up the phenomena uh,
Speaker 1: And they all pick something up, and they all interpret
Speaker 1: it to be a meaningful communication, and they are able
Speaker 1: to eliminate the possibility that was radio interference. Then I'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, that's that's really hard to argue away.
Speaker 1: I would have a hard time saying like this is
Speaker 1: there is nothing there. I would at least say there's
Speaker 1: something they're worth looking into. Whether it ever turns out
Speaker 1: to be something significant still remains to be seen. But
Speaker 1: that would definitely get me thinking, yeah, I'm there with you.
Speaker 1: I think I'd be mostly convinced by that. And then
Speaker 1: my question would be like, why are ghosts from a
Speaker 1: few hundred years ago so tech savvy? Well they might.
Speaker 1: They might just be saying, how do you work this thing?
Speaker 1: How do you how do you skip? The next time
Speaker 1: I can't get out of the Yeah, exactly, you press information.
Speaker 1: It's asking me for my iTunes account. I don't have one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, it's an interesting it's an interesting subject.
Speaker 1: I think largely for the human factor, you know, the
Speaker 1: people who are really really invested in this, and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, who knows. Maybe one day they'll turn
Speaker 1: around and again present proof that makes me eat all
Speaker 1: my words and I'll gladly say, let's really look into this.
Speaker 1: But so far that has not happened, and uh, I
Speaker 1: don't expect it to. But you know, never say never. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: they make some great YouTube videos. They do make some
Speaker 1: great YouTube videos, and for that we are thankful. Uh guys,
Speaker 1: Happy Halloween. This was a fun topic to look into.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future topics of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff or future guests, maybe there's somebody you've always
Speaker 1: wanted to hear uh join on the show, or maybe
Speaker 1: someone in the past that you want to have come back.
Speaker 1: Let me know. Send me an email. My email addresses
Speaker 1: tex stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
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