Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
Speaker 1: Paul Mission Controlled Decond. Most importantly, you are you. You
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. Our Our show today kicked off with
Speaker 1: something pretty interesting. Before we started rolling. You see our
Speaker 1: trustee rider die on the ones and twos. Paul Mission
Speaker 1: Controlled Decond showed us a series of pretty fascinating photographs
Speaker 1: that I think maybe we can discuss a little later
Speaker 1: in the show. Let's let's set this up. Okay, uh,
Speaker 1: Let's set this up with an easy example. Picture this.
Speaker 1: You're in a dark room. There's another person standing on
Speaker 1: the opposite side of this room. You're too far away
Speaker 1: to touch each other. You cannot see each other, but
Speaker 1: you're close enough to maybe hear each other speak. There
Speaker 1: is no source of normal mundane light, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: on the far side of this room, you can see
Speaker 1: something a vague profile, a dimly lit silhouette of some sort.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's changing color or size, or vibrating differently as
Speaker 1: the person across the room experiences a range of various emotions.
Speaker 1: Have you just seen an aura? I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: like the easiest textbook, quintessential example of experiencing or perceiving
Speaker 1: an aura. It's it's something that's pretty common. Have you
Speaker 1: guys ever in your life had some kind of experience
Speaker 1: where you thought we saw something like that. I once
Speaker 1: had a black light poster? Is that the same thing?
Speaker 1: This is a bit weird, and I just have to
Speaker 1: quickly tell the story. One time I was I was
Speaker 1: at a local Kroger, the one that was affectionately known
Speaker 1: as Murder Kroger here in Atlanta, classic Kroger, it's still
Speaker 1: murder Kroger. I was going down one of the aisles
Speaker 1: and um, an older woman was there shopping alone, and
Speaker 1: as I'm passing her, I just said, you know, a
Speaker 1: pleasantry to her or something, and she turned to me
Speaker 1: and she had this, uh, kind of confused look on
Speaker 1: her face, and she told me that my aura was
Speaker 1: was golden and so bright, and I just went okay
Speaker 1: by and then left and well, and and yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to think of it, like it seemed mind.
Speaker 1: I don't know what golden auras meant at that time.
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with my wife about it, and
Speaker 1: we had this really interesting conversation about what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today. And I didn't realize it. But
Speaker 1: this the belief in these things or us specifically with
Speaker 1: humans and sometimes with animals and other living creatures. It's
Speaker 1: a belief that is far and wide. And I did
Speaker 1: not realize this. Yeah, some version of it is uh
Speaker 1: is spread far and wide, or as the idea that
Speaker 1: uh there there is something like a subtle anatomy to
Speaker 1: living things, right, maybe not tangible, but they're nonetheless. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. I've had similar um, I have had experiences
Speaker 1: with similar things that I am still at a loss
Speaker 1: to explain. But we're we're going to do our best
Speaker 1: today too. Unpack. Unpack is the academics would say, of
Speaker 1: the aspects and facets of ours. But we have to
Speaker 1: start at the beginning, right, So what exactly are these things?
Speaker 1: Here are the facts? So in ancient Greek and Latin,
Speaker 1: the word aura means wind, Breeze or Death. That's my
Speaker 1: favorite board game, Wind Breeze or Death. That's the original
Speaker 1: really uh and and you know, okay, let's let's let's
Speaker 1: simplify it. So wind, breeze and death are all forces
Speaker 1: that like exist, but you can't really touch them, right,
Speaker 1: Like this is just me kind of editorializing here a
Speaker 1: little bit, But the belief of an aura really kind
Speaker 1: of simplifies down to the idea of an energy field
Speaker 1: of vibration, something emanating uh from or between all living things. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is like a lot of concepts in the
Speaker 1: sort of ephemeral kind of spiritual realm, very much present
Speaker 1: among different cultures, different religions, different geographical locations throughout the
Speaker 1: ancient world. Um. Towards the end of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you started having spiritualists, mediums, fortune tellers, and the like
Speaker 1: using the word aura to specifically describe a very visual
Speaker 1: phenomenon um, which is kind of what we think of
Speaker 1: as an aura today. Yeah, light that emanates around or
Speaker 1: out of someone. And we've talked yeah, not exactly. And
Speaker 1: we we've talked about spiritualism before on this show pretty
Speaker 1: extensively in in you know how that came about at
Speaker 1: least modern spiritualism in the in the eighteen hundreds there
Speaker 1: and there was a specific person, man named Charles Webster
Speaker 1: lead Better, who actually popularized the term aura for the
Speaker 1: Western world. At least he's he's cited as popularizing it.
Speaker 1: And he first white guy status. Yeah, exactly. That happens
Speaker 1: a lot. We're talked about on the show a lot um.
Speaker 1: He was studying theosophy in India and he, you know, said,
Speaker 1: and you know, believed that he was a clairvoyant of
Speaker 1: some kind and that he could perceive something like this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And clairvoyance, as we all recall, is not the same
Speaker 1: thing as precognition. Uh. You know, the most basic form
Speaker 1: of clairvoyance is the idea that someone can be aware
Speaker 1: of things that are happening at a remove right. You
Speaker 1: you know, when you know the exact moment of sibling
Speaker 1: is injured in a car accident or a child, or
Speaker 1: you hear you know what someone is saying a continent.
Speaker 1: In a way, you have some sort of insight into
Speaker 1: the hidden world. And that's what that's what this guy believed.
Speaker 1: He had been a pret to the Church of England. Uh.
Speaker 1: He later went on to use his clairvoyance as he
Speaker 1: saw it, and his uh his experience in India to
Speaker 1: inform his writing. He wrote a book called Man Visible
Speaker 1: and Invisible in nineteen o three, and then in nineteen
Speaker 1: ten he writes a book called The Inner Life, and
Speaker 1: this lays out his interpretation of what kind of becomes
Speaker 1: the the fertile soil of the modern belief in in Auras.
Speaker 1: He he does something pretty sneaky here. He takes his
Speaker 1: interpretation of the concept of chakra right and he remixes it.
Speaker 1: You know, he does some DJ Khalid with it. But
Speaker 1: unlike DJ Khalid, he does not credit the source of
Speaker 1: his knowledge. He takes his own ideas, he puts them
Speaker 1: with these ideas he learned from ancient belief systems in India,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't really give credit where it's due for
Speaker 1: the for the Indian belief systems that he's somewhat plagiarizing.
Speaker 1: And then over the years, just like just like other
Speaker 1: authors picked up the mythos of HP Lovecraft and added
Speaker 1: to it, other authors take this guy let Beiter's ideas
Speaker 1: and they make them their own. And this actually it's
Speaker 1: weird because for a long time in the West this
Speaker 1: was somewhat obscure. It was like it was like a
Speaker 1: minor point and also ran in the spirituality movement, and
Speaker 1: then in the nineteen seventies, late nineteen seventies, early eighties,
Speaker 1: the New Age movement picks this up. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: it's a little different in the New Age movement, but
Speaker 1: again at the root, it's all kind of the same thing.
Speaker 1: And it even traverses into the world of paranormal research
Speaker 1: and paranormal leaf and in there you're really talking about
Speaker 1: a an energy field, some type of visible or invisible
Speaker 1: to the naked eye energy field, but an energy field
Speaker 1: that exists around all humans, animals, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: living things, sometimes objects that have been touched or were
Speaker 1: significant in some action or to some person. Even when
Speaker 1: you when you think of objects, even like a whole house,
Speaker 1: right or or a whole church or a castle or
Speaker 1: some other location can have an aura to it. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times kind of as I was mentioning
Speaker 1: earlier about this golden aura thing that murder Kroger Lady said,
Speaker 1: um auras tend to be described as having a certain
Speaker 1: color or hue to them, and they have a certain size,
Speaker 1: whether or not they're going out further from the person
Speaker 1: or just right around their silhouette. And even some auras
Speaker 1: are or at least some descriptions of ours are said
Speaker 1: to have a vibe ration, as we said at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, a certain frequency at which that
Speaker 1: I that light kind of moves. This is interesting because
Speaker 1: you will find many practitioners of aura perception of saying
Speaker 1: that there are there there's a certain geography to it,
Speaker 1: or a certain anatomy about it, right like ouras have
Speaker 1: seven layers aligned in one way or another with chakra points,
Speaker 1: or that they that certain colors always indicate certain things
Speaker 1: in our pal polls or of photographs. That that he
Speaker 1: showed us, Thank you for doing that, Paul, before we
Speaker 1: went on the air. He had a violent spot I
Speaker 1: believe he was saying, and that indicated a specific emotional
Speaker 1: tendency or present emotion. And the thing about this is
Speaker 1: that in the realm of the paranormal, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: mat or in the realm of what's called psychic healing,
Speaker 1: practitioners believe they can perceive this energy field that is
Speaker 1: as much a part of your anatomy as your hand
Speaker 1: or um, your That's the thing on the what's the
Speaker 1: funny name for the elders, the weyness or your weenness. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's like your spiritual weakness. It's it's a little flap
Speaker 1: of skin on the tip of your elbow that has
Speaker 1: no feeling. You can pinch it as hard as you
Speaker 1: please and you won't feel a thing, and it's called awenness. Well,
Speaker 1: now we all know. The more you know or is
Speaker 1: the spiritual weakness. Uh, we promised, we we are giving this.
Speaker 1: We are treated this with respect. So people will say
Speaker 1: that they have some sort of innate gift to perceive
Speaker 1: or us and they'll often it's going to be very
Speaker 1: important later. They'll often say that this is a family gift, right,
Speaker 1: I had a great aunt or I had a you know,
Speaker 1: ancestors who also perceived uras. That's pretty common actually, when
Speaker 1: you talk to people and they feel like they're in
Speaker 1: a safe space to disclose that information. But then you'll
Speaker 1: also hear people say that they have meditated or trained
Speaker 1: in the art of perceiving an aura. So maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't have the innate ability where they hadn't naturally just
Speaker 1: always practiced it, but they were able to study such
Speaker 1: that they could arrive at this perception that's interesting because
Speaker 1: you can't you can't usually do that with other sensory inputs.
Speaker 1: You can't practice looking at stuff in a way that
Speaker 1: makes your vision better, you know what I mean? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, um, they're even they're even people who
Speaker 1: say that they've either trained like that like you're talking
Speaker 1: about Ben, or they have a gift that is strong
Speaker 1: enough to where they can actually look at your aura
Speaker 1: and then tell things about you read that aura as though. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a set of or a give insights into
Speaker 1: not only your personality what you're going through, but maybe
Speaker 1: your past, maybe your future. Um, in the same way
Speaker 1: a dendrochronologists could read a trees life right by which
Speaker 1: is true. I don't know why I quote did quotations
Speaker 1: for that, but it's true by looking at tree rings.
Speaker 1: If you cut a section of a tree or maybe
Speaker 1: one that's been felled all the way and you're looking
Speaker 1: at all the rings, um, you can see what's happened
Speaker 1: to that tree. These people say they claim to be
Speaker 1: able to read you, So it's sort of like leftover
Speaker 1: layers of psychic energy or something that represent things that
Speaker 1: you've been through in your life or maybe traumas or
Speaker 1: you know, you're you theoretically could look at someone and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I see like palm reading or something like the idea
Speaker 1: that you can read the tea leaves of this, Uh,
Speaker 1: this aura is that that's sort of what the gist is.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I had always thought about it as
Speaker 1: closer to dream interpretation. That's that's the way I had
Speaker 1: thought about it until realizing in this episode, really, until
Speaker 1: realizing that there are practitioners who who claim at least
Speaker 1: to be able to get very specific information from it,
Speaker 1: like one to one, this color in this place, that
Speaker 1: this vibration and this frequency means this. And everybody who
Speaker 1: just heard that and automatically wants to dismiss it as
Speaker 1: cold reading, please save your emails for the end of
Speaker 1: the show. But we get it. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: I believe that or it's true. It's just I didn't
Speaker 1: understand that was even a claim, right right, And the
Speaker 1: dendo chronologist is is a great comparison because what's what
Speaker 1: happens can feel very similar, you know, I see based
Speaker 1: on this says the practitioner that you experienced a great
Speaker 1: personal trauma and that it affects you in the modern day.
Speaker 1: And I think most people at to a certain age
Speaker 1: have experienced some great emotional trauma that affects them in
Speaker 1: the modern day. But I don't want to sound I
Speaker 1: don't want to sound you know, just dismissive of this.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't throw out everything until we dig down into it.
Speaker 1: What's what's strange is that it reminds me of psychometry
Speaker 1: a little bit. There's there's a fantastic there's a fantastic
Speaker 1: film called Vibes with uh Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldbloom. Uh, okay,
Speaker 1: looking into that right now? Is eighties right? Or is
Speaker 1: it like early early nineties or I can't I can't remember, man,
Speaker 1: But I love this because as psychic powers uh as
Speaker 1: a as a huge plot point. It is not uh
Speaker 1: what most people would call a good or watchable film,
Speaker 1: but Jeff Jeff Goldbloom's character has a power called psychometry.
Speaker 1: Psychometry is like reading the area as a physical both
Speaker 1: things you can touch. You can touch something and get
Speaker 1: an impression of the last person who touched it, when
Speaker 1: the last location was at And the more emotionally charged
Speaker 1: this kind of thing is, the more vivid the impressions
Speaker 1: so you touch a murder weapon and it's a visceral
Speaker 1: experience for some people. Who but for some people when
Speaker 1: they describe encountering auras, they can also have a very
Speaker 1: visceral emotional experience based on their their proximity to what
Speaker 1: they perceive as an aura, and they can well, there
Speaker 1: are claims that they can also manipulate people's auras, you know,
Speaker 1: as as a form of therapy. As a form of therapy. Right,
Speaker 1: but but this okay, so if this stuff is true,
Speaker 1: Vibes has a what is this tomato meter? But it's
Speaker 1: got a five point seven on IMDb, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's worth it is the critics versus the people,
Speaker 1: Matt and I would say, you know, that depends on
Speaker 1: which side of the fence you fall. But the people
Speaker 1: are often wildly out of sync with the critics, which
Speaker 1: I think is a good thing. Just folks, list, just
Speaker 1: just check out the trailer of for Vibes. Don't watch
Speaker 1: the whole thing. You'll never forgive me for the hours
Speaker 1: of time you will lose. Uh It's it's actually true story.
Speaker 1: Uh I. I had a romantic relationship that that kind
Speaker 1: of ended in a nascent stage because We were watching
Speaker 1: a film with my house and I said, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: do you like eighties movies? Output on a fun wind
Speaker 1: and and it was vibes, and she was like, this
Speaker 1: is your idea of a good film. This is not
Speaker 1: gonna work out. I think he kind of buried the
Speaker 1: lead here to ben. Peter Fall is in it basically
Speaker 1: playing Colombo, So yes, you got you got gold Bloom
Speaker 1: as gold Bloom, which is all he can do. Cyndi
Speaker 1: Lauper as Cyndi Lauper, which is all she can do.
Speaker 1: And Colombo as Colombo and vibes and energy and pyramids
Speaker 1: and crystals and all that good stuff. I'm gonna watch
Speaker 1: it this weekend. Uh, you know, I enjoy bad things.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be right there with you in spirit. Then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch it too, and then maybe it'll affect
Speaker 1: our auras. So if any of this stuff is true,
Speaker 1: then we are we have been as a species on
Speaker 1: the precipice of a brave new world of medicine. Right.
Speaker 1: We could heal people, We can diagnose things in ways
Speaker 1: that we currently can't. So it's no surprise then that
Speaker 1: aura is more than some other psychic or paranormal phenomenon
Speaker 1: have been the subject of pretty hardcore research, pretty fascinating stuff,
Speaker 1: widely varied incredibility. There have been tons of attempts to
Speaker 1: cap sure auras, somehow to manipulate them, to affect them,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it most importantly, to document them in the
Speaker 1: first place. This is where we see one of the
Speaker 1: most famous examples of weird photography. It's something called curly
Speaker 1: in photography. You guys have heard of this, right, that's right,
Speaker 1: and honestly we can tell you right now. Originally for
Speaker 1: this episode we were going to focus just on that,
Speaker 1: but there's so much interesting stuff surrounding auras in general.
Speaker 1: That's why you're getting this episode right now, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you all about curly and photography after a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor, and we're back. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, a man by the name of Simion Davidovich
Speaker 1: curly in figured out that he could capture these kind
Speaker 1: of strange glowing clouds emanating from objects if he placed
Speaker 1: them directly on photograph paper and then zapped them with
Speaker 1: the high voltage shock across the object itself. Um, and
Speaker 1: some of these are really cool looking, like super psychedelic,
Speaker 1: colorful images. One of the most famous comes from a
Speaker 1: leaf that has been damaged partially and in the photo
Speaker 1: you can see the physical leaf, but it also appears
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of energy, uh, kind of remaining
Speaker 1: in the shape of the torn areas, like a fant
Speaker 1: phantom leaf, you know. Uh, well, so we could call
Speaker 1: that an aura. Right. It's definitely one of those things
Speaker 1: that when you first stumble upon it and look at
Speaker 1: it it it pushes you towards believer in the slightest
Speaker 1: even if you're the most skeptical person ever. You see
Speaker 1: that image of the leaf and the part of it
Speaker 1: that is gone, that is still there in some way. Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're My mind at least was reeling when I
Speaker 1: first encountered this. Is this the one that's like it's
Speaker 1: cut pretty cleanly, and then then it's just like there's
Speaker 1: like an outline literally completing the leaf. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: believe it might someone check me on this, but it
Speaker 1: might even be in the X files intro. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is this is one of those common It's almost a
Speaker 1: business card for the paranormal at this point. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it is legit. It's a real photograph. It's not photoshopped.
Speaker 1: It's not. Um, it's not a hoax. The only controversy
Speaker 1: about this comes in the form of the interpretation figuring
Speaker 1: out how this phantom leaf came to be. Like, you
Speaker 1: can see it, you can search for it on your
Speaker 1: browser choice, and yeah, it looks like it looks like
Speaker 1: the ghost of a leaf is partially visible inside the
Speaker 1: physical body of a leaf. And it's completely understandable how
Speaker 1: this lead various parapsychologists, psychics, and others to conclude boom
Speaker 1: we always said, or as we're real and now we
Speaker 1: have documentation about them. However, this is why we didn't
Speaker 1: do a full episode just on curly in photography. It's
Speaker 1: actually we figured it out, well, other people figured it out.
Speaker 1: And you know, this has been leaned on pretty heavily
Speaker 1: by parapsychologists and psychics who believe that this was the
Speaker 1: real deal. Um, but you know, we we have seen
Speaker 1: later studies that indicate that Curly in effect that we
Speaker 1: see is really more a product of moisture remaining within
Speaker 1: the object and the way electricity interacts with that. Then
Speaker 1: it is some sort of spiritual phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know that sounds like a very skeptical answer. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you are a true believer of this, that
Speaker 1: kind of explanation isn't going to cut it to make
Speaker 1: you think, well, no, this is all b s or
Speaker 1: this is all just a natural phenomena of electricity and
Speaker 1: water sent actually so yeah, the true true believers just
Speaker 1: didn't didn't go along with it. There are still millions
Speaker 1: of people who have claimed to perceive something like aura's um,
Speaker 1: even if it's just one time in passing, or if
Speaker 1: it's just a part of their everyday life, that they
Speaker 1: believe they are constantly seeing auras on on people, things, animals, places,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. But there's especially each thin right,
Speaker 1: You're you're right, matt Um. Knowing that a shock of
Speaker 1: electricity on a moist object causes gas ionization and that
Speaker 1: alters the electric charge of this photographic paper film. Knowing
Speaker 1: how that process works doesn't dissuade people, say, people who
Speaker 1: are convinced, you know, people who truly believe they have
Speaker 1: seen or are seeing auras. But add to that the
Speaker 1: fact that there is no credible, reproducible science experiment that's
Speaker 1: been able to prove the existence of auras in a
Speaker 1: way that both satisfies the skeptics and the psychics alike.
Speaker 1: So what gives is there anything like an actual aura?
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. Oh I knew it would
Speaker 1: feel it. Yeah, there are there are a few proposed
Speaker 1: causes of at least some things we will call auras.
Speaker 1: But we have to get the downers out of the
Speaker 1: way first. People really want to believe cool stuff. I
Speaker 1: do everything. Everybody. Yeah, everybody wants to believe cool stuff,
Speaker 1: everyone except nerds. But sometimes we love this idea of
Speaker 1: cool stuff so much that we can convince ourselves we
Speaker 1: see something that isn't actually there. And this is not
Speaker 1: to say that anybody is purposely deceiving anyone. It's just
Speaker 1: possible for us to deceive ourselves through one method or another.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's also the very your real occurrence
Speaker 1: and possibility that the perception of an aura can be
Speaker 1: explained in some kind of mental health fashion. People can,
Speaker 1: for a vary number of reasons, hallucinate or have an
Speaker 1: illusion of perceiving something like an aura um although you know,
Speaker 1: for for a lot of people this would be an
Speaker 1: episodic thing, right, or or a single occurrence where I'm
Speaker 1: I'm having I'm going through something from a mental health perspective,
Speaker 1: and it is causing me to perceive this um rather
Speaker 1: than it is just always happening right generally that that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it lands in every case, but generally, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It could also be something where there is a physiological
Speaker 1: condition with the eye, is right, or the connection between
Speaker 1: the eyes and the brain, or look, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say it, drugs, after images, catching waves and streaks. People
Speaker 1: have encountered that sort of stuff and that we can
Speaker 1: explain to a large degree through science. But we also
Speaker 1: know there's a really trippy thing here. We also know
Speaker 1: that physiological and psychological factors come into play here in
Speaker 1: a very weird intersection that a lot of people aren't
Speaker 1: aware of. Uh. There's someone named Bridget Perez who is
Speaker 1: writing for the Skeptical Enquirer and noted that there is
Speaker 1: a specific enzyme in every single person which is known
Speaker 1: as catacholt oh methyl transferrase or c o MT. It
Speaker 1: breaks down the dopamine in your brain, and it's it's weird. Okay,
Speaker 1: So everybody's got this right, but we have different versions
Speaker 1: of it. So some both have a allele with the
Speaker 1: c o MT gene of a certain type, right, and
Speaker 1: having this certain type of alleal can cause higher levels
Speaker 1: of suggestibility or hypnotize ability, I guess, the ability to hypnotize.
Speaker 1: And this this means that the capacity to see auras
Speaker 1: well to be accurate, the capacity to believe you are
Speaker 1: seeing auras may have a proven neurochemical and genetic basis,
Speaker 1: which means you may be inheriting this perception from from
Speaker 1: your earlier family members. That's an incredible idea, just passing
Speaker 1: down the ability to see auras, or even just passing
Speaker 1: down the feeling or perception that you are seeing or else.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if you go in for it at
Speaker 1: all in terms of belief, I mean, why shouldn't it
Speaker 1: be any different than any other inherit ble trait, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, or an inheritable talent, even it
Speaker 1: seems like musical talent, you know. I obviously it has
Speaker 1: to do with nurture as much as it does nature
Speaker 1: and practice, but you know, the inherent ability to be
Speaker 1: a good performer or singer or whatever tends to be
Speaker 1: passed down, it seems. I think that's fascinating. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of stuff you see in fiction
Speaker 1: with like wizards being you know, sons, the children of
Speaker 1: wizards getting inheriting that gene like in Harry Potter and stuff.
Speaker 1: But isn't there Maybe it skips a generation sometimes and
Speaker 1: then you end up like there's that one generation that
Speaker 1: doesn't get it. That would be a bummer to be
Speaker 1: in that one. But yeah, there, I mean, there's another
Speaker 1: interesting thing just to bring in here quickly, and it's
Speaker 1: the concept that we've talked about a couple of episodes
Speaker 1: before this relating to genes and seemingly other worldly powers
Speaker 1: or abilities. When you're thinking about UM, the keys that
Speaker 1: are locked away in your d n A that's handed
Speaker 1: down through your family, that you may be more or
Speaker 1: less likely to experience something or to develop something like UM,
Speaker 1: like schizophrenia or a type of schizophrenia, or a type
Speaker 1: of hearing voices or those kinds of things that you
Speaker 1: know we've talked about before are linked back two. Not
Speaker 1: in every case. When a lot of cases humans throughout
Speaker 1: history experiencing divine inspiration or outside inspiration from a muse
Speaker 1: or from something like that, where it's UM being spoken
Speaker 1: to from some outside source, when in reality, or at
Speaker 1: least according to the science, it's all happening in your
Speaker 1: head or in one's head. But again, it's really tough
Speaker 1: to prove that so far as we know, I mean,
Speaker 1: shout out to Graham Hancock if we we still haven't
Speaker 1: done an episode on the miss the full crazy stuff
Speaker 1: about genetics, right. We talked a little bit about epigenetic
Speaker 1: which humanity is still working out. But I love the idea.
Speaker 1: I just want to put it on the air there.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that all that junk DNA we
Speaker 1: have is somehow a message from an ancient civilization. Did
Speaker 1: you guys ever hear that one? I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: it's too early in the day. But this is like
Speaker 1: a Saturday night at a bar conversation, not a not
Speaker 1: remember Saturday night at the bar that was cool? I
Speaker 1: don't actually you do. I'm gonna be honest. I like
Speaker 1: not having to be social. That's fair. That's fair. It's
Speaker 1: a fact for me. Sometimes I'm fine with it and
Speaker 1: sometimes I miss it. But I used was reoccurring dreams
Speaker 1: for years, starting when I was like six years old,
Speaker 1: when I woke up and I was the only person
Speaker 1: on the planet and I thought it, Yeah, I was stoked,
Speaker 1: and I thought I thought that this was the dream
Speaker 1: that everybody had. I didn't know that people had different dreams. Wow,
Speaker 1: just yeah, yeah, okay, look I have a lot to
Speaker 1: learn about human being. But anyway, anyway, yes, jeans, right,
Speaker 1: we have found we have found this proof and we
Speaker 1: know that we are iterations of our ancestry expressed in
Speaker 1: ways that we may not fully understand right within our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: Another example of this that could also explain at least
Speaker 1: some encounters with ours would be synasthasia. If you're one
Speaker 1: of the people who are hearing this podcasting colors, then
Speaker 1: you know exactly what we're talking about. For everyone else,
Speaker 1: we'll fill you in after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and the sponsor is going to be very green, prepare
Speaker 1: yourself or orange. You know that's the hand orange and
Speaker 1: green and orange. Yeah. Well, we have to get through
Speaker 1: the a break and we're back. So do certain letters
Speaker 1: have a color in your mind? Or or tactile sensation
Speaker 1: is j fuzzy to you? Right? Does s have sinuous scales?
Speaker 1: Do sounds have taste? You know what I mean? They're
Speaker 1: they're There are people in the world, um that I
Speaker 1: am actually one of them who have this condition called synesthesia,
Speaker 1: and I imagine everybody has it. To some degree, our
Speaker 1: sensory experiences that are usually separate, you know, uh, sound, touch, smell, taste, uh, site,
Speaker 1: those kind of things. They when you have synaestasia, you
Speaker 1: experience it. Those things kind of their wires cross and
Speaker 1: they exist as they exist as one related sensation. So
Speaker 1: you imagine every time you hear a phone ring the
Speaker 1: old school, you know, like house bones, when you hear
Speaker 1: one of those rings, you taste toast. Yeah, wow, buttered toast?
Speaker 1: Why this is isn't isn't isn't that? Also? What like
Speaker 1: people having stroke report sometimes like a certain sense of
Speaker 1: tasting bitter almonds or oranges, or smelling burnt toast almonds.
Speaker 1: Essentially sense it's crossing over there in that case too.
Speaker 1: And and cynestesia has always felt like a superpower of
Speaker 1: some sort to me, And like maybe that's just because
Speaker 1: I've never experienced it. I honestly don't know if it's
Speaker 1: more of a blessing or a curse or if it's
Speaker 1: on an individual level just how you decide to look
Speaker 1: at it. Um, I'd love to talk more about it
Speaker 1: with the ben. I know we've mentioned it before on
Speaker 1: the show. You know, I think about somebody like Daniel Tamot,
Speaker 1: who there's a book called Born on a Blue Day
Speaker 1: and it's all about um gentleman Daniel Tammitt. And it's
Speaker 1: it's amazing what he can do with what his mind
Speaker 1: does when he thinks about numbers and a couple of
Speaker 1: bunch of other things. I believe, Correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
Speaker 1: but I believe he is a gentleman who sees numbers
Speaker 1: as a specific shape and a color. And when he
Speaker 1: when numbers get larger and larger and larger for him,
Speaker 1: they become these intricate things. But his mind, because he
Speaker 1: can visualize numbers in this way when he combines them
Speaker 1: in various um, you know, forms of mathematics, he literally
Speaker 1: sees the answer as a thing and as a as
Speaker 1: an object and then interpret to that object as, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's these numbers, and that's this number, that's this other
Speaker 1: new number. It's it's fascinating. Yet, and I'm really glad
Speaker 1: you mentioned this because in his mind, like you said,
Speaker 1: I think it's every digit from zero to tend thousand
Speaker 1: or something like that, maybe even higher, every single one
Speaker 1: has in his head a very well defined three dimensional
Speaker 1: shape with a unique color and texture, maybe a weight.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. So he is he
Speaker 1: is three D modeling in real time these concepts and uh,
Speaker 1: and he's legitimate. Yeah, this is this is a real thing.
Speaker 1: He is also very rare. That is a very extreme
Speaker 1: form of what we're describing. But I guess just having
Speaker 1: even one individual with their mind functioning in that way,
Speaker 1: um makes it makes me feel as those synaesthesia could
Speaker 1: be maybe harnessed even further. I don't know, And I
Speaker 1: don't mean to speak Yeah, I don't need to speak
Speaker 1: out of turn here because I have no concept of
Speaker 1: what it would be like, but it feels like you
Speaker 1: could harness it for something great or evil maybe, well
Speaker 1: at least in terms of processing power of the mind, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what if we were in a world, uh,
Speaker 1: thousands of years in the future where AI has been
Speaker 1: considered too dangerous and we can't use quote unquote thinking computers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm describing Dune. I know. I saw the new trailer.
Speaker 1: That's what happens in Dune. It's not a spoiler, and
Speaker 1: they have yeah, yeah, it's good, you'll like it, and
Speaker 1: they instead use these things called mentats. Once you remember
Speaker 1: from the earlier you know the earlier doing iterations, and
Speaker 1: what's happening here is very similar in ways to what
Speaker 1: a mentat does. So I think we can build real ones.
Speaker 1: I think there are a ton of laws preventing us
Speaker 1: from doing that, and I don't know whether it would
Speaker 1: be ethical. But that's a that's a longstanding point of difference,
Speaker 1: uh to you and I'm at. I don't have as
Speaker 1: much of a problem with the ethics. I am not
Speaker 1: as conflicted forwards as the future. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Do what thou wilt? That will be the whole of
Speaker 1: the law. Okay, But but yeah, there's but you're right
Speaker 1: there there are tons of things, like I can't remember
Speaker 1: which episode we've mentioned this on, there are tons of
Speaker 1: things we could do, very unethical things to change how
Speaker 1: our abilities as human beings expressed. Right. We know there
Speaker 1: are people with nearly unbreakable bones, people with super strength,
Speaker 1: people who were tetrachromats, right, which I think could also
Speaker 1: maybe be related to the idea of sensingora's But then
Speaker 1: then there are people like Daniel T. Hammitt. But synesthesia
Speaker 1: is something that people can experience in a one off
Speaker 1: Maybe you have been under the influence of something and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you've experienced music in a new way.
Speaker 1: That's a very common anecdote people report, and it's a
Speaker 1: real thing. But there's an issue with this explanation. If
Speaker 1: people who are seeing auras are Synis states, and they're
Speaker 1: they're seeing they they are perceiving something through their unique
Speaker 1: sensory array, then why don't they perceive the same thing.
Speaker 1: I always think of this. That amazing author, Vladimir and Nopakov.
Speaker 1: He he was a sinnistate, and he obsessively cataloged all
Speaker 1: the connections he encountered. You can. He has stuff like, okay,
Speaker 1: so I thought of the letter oh, which is obviously
Speaker 1: this pale pearl opalescent, kind of smooth mirror like thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, oh yeahs. And so he wrote this down
Speaker 1: for all these letters sounds. They compared his notes to
Speaker 1: other members of his family who also had cynistasia, and
Speaker 1: their answer was essentially, what is wrong with you? You're crazy?
Speaker 1: Oh it is like fluffy, and it's kind of um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of red and it bounds. It's like always
Speaker 1: like a futon were saying, are, however, is fully pearl
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you described. My apologize they can't
Speaker 1: remember that far back. But yes, it's amazing that that
Speaker 1: is amazing that he had members of his own family
Speaker 1: would going back to jeans. They're uh, going back to
Speaker 1: the DNA shared by those family members and they didn't
Speaker 1: see the same thing. Man. Wow, yeah, And what does
Speaker 1: that mean? It's common. It means that whatever is happening
Speaker 1: in the brain, while the process may be similar, uh,
Speaker 1: the end result for the conscious mind is unique. It's distinct.
Speaker 1: There was no true color for the letter Z, right,
Speaker 1: or no true ubiquitous tactile surface for the letter and
Speaker 1: a P or J or whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: And so in this is interesting because multiple studies about auras,
Speaker 1: people who feel the perceive ouras have ended up describing
Speaker 1: different things about the same person or animal or object,
Speaker 1: different colors, different vibrations and so on. So well, I
Speaker 1: was going to say, there's certainly some people the odists
Speaker 1: who say, well, yeah, obviously, because it's not real and
Speaker 1: they're lying. But I think maybe it's in some cases
Speaker 1: at least it's going to be more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: And so it makes sense that people throughout history with
Speaker 1: some form of this condition would have no other way
Speaker 1: to explain their experiences. So in the context of their
Speaker 1: society and their time, something like an aura seems a
Speaker 1: very reasonable explanation for what they are perceiving. There's one
Speaker 1: last twist. I know, it sounds like we are completely
Speaker 1: debunking auras. It sounds like science is more or less
Speaker 1: disproven the concept of auras, at least as proposed by
Speaker 1: leap Beater in his in his crew. There just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be objective evidence for them, at least none
Speaker 1: that can be found in controlled studies. And again, there
Speaker 1: are load and loads of experiments about this. It's possible
Speaker 1: to that when we think of an aura, we may
Speaker 1: be experiencing other sensations. Radiating body heat. I'm sure everybody
Speaker 1: has encountered this before. You get a hand close enough
Speaker 1: to someone but not quite touching them, and you can
Speaker 1: feel the heat, just like if your hand was close
Speaker 1: to a light bulb. But here's the twist, you see,
Speaker 1: It turns out people don't just emit heat. We do
Speaker 1: have auras. We emit light. Yeah, it sounds insane, but
Speaker 1: it's true. And I am looking at a study that
Speaker 1: was posted in The Guardian at a picture of a
Speaker 1: person emitting small amounts of light. And it looks at
Speaker 1: first glance like a fleaer image or something that you
Speaker 1: would see that that is measuring heat, but it is not.
Speaker 1: It is measuring light output in a darkened room. It
Speaker 1: is the craziest thing ever and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: discuss it. Yeah. In two thousand and nine, a team
Speaker 1: of Japanese researchers found that human beings, like some deep
Speaker 1: sea fish, are bioluminescent. We're very dim walking light bulbs,
Speaker 1: and the problem is that our eyes are just a
Speaker 1: little too weak to catch the light we're emitting. Uh,
Speaker 1: they said, they waxed a little poetic in their study,
Speaker 1: which is published in p l Os. One said the
Speaker 1: human body literally glimmers. The intensity of light emitted by
Speaker 1: the body is one thousand times lower than the sensitivity
Speaker 1: of our naked eyes. So that that being said, they
Speaker 1: had to use really really really sensitive instruments to monitor um.
Speaker 1: The participants in their study, which were five male volunteers,
Speaker 1: UM and they were monitored for twenty minutes every three
Speaker 1: hours inside a completely dark room for three days straight. UM.
Speaker 1: They found that all of the volunteers glowed throughout the day.
Speaker 1: The brightest spots appeared around the forehead, the neck, the cheeks. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was a peak luminescence, I guess in the
Speaker 1: late afternoon, and the bioluminescence seemed dimmest at night. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's an important caveat here that this was not
Speaker 1: infrared radiation caused by heat. Um. These people's bodies and
Speaker 1: yours are actually emitting photons of visible light, if very
Speaker 1: very small, very hard to detect by the human eye. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's there. Yeah, and and um. This is according
Speaker 1: to a journalist, Elliott Bentley. There's a quote here, the
Speaker 1: result of highly reactive free radicals produced through cell respiration
Speaker 1: interacting with free floating lipids and proteins. Good luck understanding that.
Speaker 1: But it's a natural phenomenon. Essentially, it's a set of
Speaker 1: natural processes that is causing this small amount of light
Speaker 1: to be omitted. Yeah, these molecules interact with fluorophones. These
Speaker 1: are excited molecules. I love that. That's a scientific term,
Speaker 1: excited molecules. So they're excited. They interact with these fluoro
Speaker 1: floors and those can emit a photon and then boom,
Speaker 1: boom boom. You are actually glowing. You're glowing right now
Speaker 1: while you listen to this, you know that's that's pretty
Speaker 1: cool to think we're all kinds of we're all kind
Speaker 1: of like the superhero Dazzler right on a much lower level.
Speaker 1: But the the team thinks that people's heads glow the
Speaker 1: most because they're the part of the body that generally
Speaker 1: sees more sunlight and this affects the melanin inside the
Speaker 1: skin and it triggers the illuminating reaction better than other areas.
Speaker 1: This is weird, Okay, very quickly walk with me on this.
Speaker 1: It appears to be linked to our metabolisms. We burned
Speaker 1: the most energy in the late afternoon, so that's when
Speaker 1: we glow the most brightly. The coolest part about the
Speaker 1: is that one day we may be able to scan
Speaker 1: the surface of a person's body checking their light levels,
Speaker 1: which already sounds kind of new way to right, and
Speaker 1: this could help us pinpoint possible medical conditions that express
Speaker 1: themselves through variations in the metabolism. So what does this
Speaker 1: mean for today's show? It means that essentially, yes, human
Speaker 1: beings do have auras, and we are learning to read them,
Speaker 1: just not the kind of oreas we we thought, and
Speaker 1: we're not not the kind of reading we imagined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes sophisticated scientific equipment to read these auras that
Speaker 1: are one thousand times less bright than your eye can perceive.
Speaker 1: So it's highly unlikely that anyone would be able to
Speaker 1: perceive your aura just with their naked eye the way
Speaker 1: that so many have reported to do so, unless there's
Speaker 1: again something at play that we don't understand but still fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: And it's not it's not a definitive. No, we're on
Speaker 1: the we're on the forefront of some very very exciting
Speaker 1: things here, and this is where we want to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Do you see or have you seen auras?
Speaker 1: What was your experience, like, what were the circumstances? How
Speaker 1: how have you explained it in your mind? Have you
Speaker 1: met someone who appeared to influence them one way or
Speaker 1: another your own field of energy? Were you walking like
Speaker 1: a good pal matt through a grocery store and someone
Speaker 1: stopped you and said that you shine with a golden
Speaker 1: hue would make my days a sweet thing? I mean,
Speaker 1: that is such a sweet thing to hear. But also
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, maybe maybe I need a blot
Speaker 1: or something, and maybe it's maybe it's jaundice. You have
Speaker 1: like some sort of like radiative jaundice. So I was
Speaker 1: wearing makeup. No, it's just here. I think it's just
Speaker 1: your inner goodness glowing out from within your golden boy
Speaker 1: for that lady Dennis Reynolds Golden God type of thing.
Speaker 1: I feel like I found us to and always sunny
Speaker 1: reference per episy find to be tools. Sorry, yes, so,
Speaker 1: so we do want to hear from you, you know,
Speaker 1: whether you think this is bunk, whether you think there
Speaker 1: is more to this story. How do you explain these
Speaker 1: experiences to yourselves or how do your loved ones explain
Speaker 1: this to you? Let us know you can find us.
Speaker 1: We're all over the internet, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We like
Speaker 1: to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy,
Speaker 1: where you can see a thread of people talking about
Speaker 1: how they our voices don't match our faces and they
Speaker 1: don't listen to this shouldn't be coming out of here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see a lot of that too on our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel right in real time. It's the faces, you know,
Speaker 1: glaring back at you. And that's YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: conspiracy stuff and uh something we don't mention enough that
Speaker 1: that I think we should bring back if you want.
Speaker 1: You can get stuff they don't want you to know,
Speaker 1: pretty and not a mug or or a T shirt
Speaker 1: or like a mouse pad or whatever. Just go to
Speaker 1: h T public dot com and search for stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. And there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: cool stuff there. And I think we're going to release
Speaker 1: some new items in the relatively near future. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: url is t T E public dot com. Slash stores
Speaker 1: slash stuff they don't want you to know. Good luck.
Speaker 1: You can also, you can also give us a call
Speaker 1: directly where we are one eight three three st d
Speaker 1: w y t K. Please let us know your thoughts
Speaker 1: on any and everything under or over the sun. And
Speaker 1: important note here let us know whether you are okay
Speaker 1: with us using your story or your feedback on air. Yes,
Speaker 1: and if you do end up on the YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: please comment with your interpretations of our auras in whichever video,
Speaker 1: just just put it in the comments. Tell us what
Speaker 1: you think, uh, and specifically what I want to see.
Speaker 1: Somebody's gonna win the the fun prize the when they
Speaker 1: give us, when they give us Scullies aura. If you
Speaker 1: see Scully in a video, tell us exactly what her
Speaker 1: aura looks like. This has been a subject of great
Speaker 1: contention between all four of us for some time. It
Speaker 1: has all right. I think that's it. If you don't
Speaker 1: want to connect with us in any of those ways,
Speaker 1: you can always leave us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy and iHeart radio dot com Stuff they
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