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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Man. Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norrie back

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Speaker 2: with Dan Shreiver as we are talking about his strange

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Speaker 2: book called The Theory of Everything Else. Dan, as you

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Speaker 2: were compiling the stories, which ones were some of the

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Speaker 2: strangest outlandish ones to you?

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Speaker 3: Ooh, there's many different kinds of that landish in the

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Speaker 3: theory world. Interesting one I wonder if you'd heard about

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Speaker 3: this is the inventor of PCR, Carry Mullis. Do you

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Speaker 3: know about his story.

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Speaker 2: I don't know that story now.

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Speaker 3: So Carry Mullis single handedly invented PCR, which, certainly in

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Speaker 3: the UK the PCR test during the pandemic is what

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Speaker 3: everyone was taking to tell you if you had corona

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Speaker 3: and would.

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Speaker 4: Keep you at home.

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Speaker 3: And so it's an invention that has changed the world

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Speaker 3: both for forensic police use it for DNA testing now

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Speaker 3: to give them an accuracy unlike any other time in history.

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Speaker 4: Archaeology uses it as.

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Speaker 3: Well for diagnosing whose bones might be the person. It's

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Speaker 3: really a game changer in chemistry. And then it was

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Speaker 3: used during this pandemic and the same year that he invented.

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Speaker 3: The PCR test is the exact same year that he

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Speaker 3: claimed that when he was going to the toilet one

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Speaker 3: night to his outhouse, walking down in the dark of

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Speaker 3: the flashlight, that he was confronted with a glowing English

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Speaker 3: speaking raccoon who then abducts him, he believes, into a

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Speaker 3: spaceship and he went missing for four hours. He remembers

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Speaker 3: waking up.

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Speaker 4: It was dawn.

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Speaker 3: He's on a completely different road. He hasn't got his flashlight,

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Speaker 3: and he looks down. There's nothing on his body to

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Speaker 3: suggest that he's fallen asleep into the There's no jew

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Speaker 3: there's no mud on him whatsoever. And it's this mystery

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Speaker 3: that sticks with him for the rest of his life.

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Speaker 5: And he was serious, right, yeah, and he and you know,

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Speaker 5: it's the curiosity that made him continue to look for

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Speaker 5: an English speaking raccoon that allowed for h him to

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Speaker 5: invent PCR, because when he had the idea for PCR,

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Speaker 5: everyone told him he was crazy.

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Speaker 4: They thought this is.

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Speaker 3: Not going to work at all, and he didn't listen

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Speaker 3: to them, and he stuck to it and he eventually

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Speaker 3: came to inventing it. But the raccoon thing is really

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Speaker 3: interesting because years later he was in a bookshop and

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Speaker 3: he saw Whitley Strieber's book Communion, and something spoke to

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Speaker 3: him about it, and he brought it home and he

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Speaker 3: thought the story was a bit similar because I think

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Speaker 3: Whitley had a thing where some owls came to him. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: kind of similar animal based thing. And he's at home

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Speaker 3: reading the book when he gets a call from his daughter.

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Speaker 3: This is Carrie Molliss's daughter, and this is something like

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Speaker 3: a decade later, I think from the incident.

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Speaker 4: And she says, Dad, you've got to read this book.

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Speaker 3: It's incredible. It's called Communion by Whitley Strieber. And he

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Speaker 3: can't believe the coincidence of that. He's literally they're reading

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Speaker 3: it in his house. He says, no, why you reading it?

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Speaker 3: And she said, I haven't told you about this, but

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Speaker 3: I had the weirdest experience at your house. I was

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Speaker 3: at your house, this this country house, which is where

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Speaker 3: he had the raccoon incident, and I was going to

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Speaker 3: the toilet at night and it just disappeared. And my

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Speaker 3: fiance spent the like four to five hours looking for me,

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Speaker 3: and he found me random road four or five hours later.

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Speaker 3: He's got goosebumps. He's thinking, this is exactly the same story.

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Speaker 3: So he says to it, did you buy any chance

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Speaker 3: talk towards glowing raccoon? And she said, no, what are

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Speaker 3: you crazy? But the story is exactly the same. So

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Speaker 3: that was one of the more interesting ones because this

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Speaker 3: is a Nobel Prize winner who invented PCR yet absolutely

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Speaker 3: had a moment that stuck with him for the rest

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Speaker 3: of his life that he continued.

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Speaker 2: To look for what percent of the stories in the book, Dan,

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Speaker 2: do you think are true? What percent or not you.

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Speaker 3: It's it's hard to tell the theories themselves. I've picked

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Speaker 3: ones that we haven't been able to difit inenttively say

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Speaker 3: whether or not they are true. If I'm talking about aliens,

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Speaker 3: you know, there's the that's down to the reader to

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Speaker 3: decide whether or not they believe that we're being visited

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Speaker 3: by aliens. What I'm more interested in is how his

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Speaker 3: belief in aliens shape the world and in what ways

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Speaker 3: have we sort of advanced as a result of people

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Speaker 3: thinking and who who are the secret believers that I

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Speaker 3: didn't know about?

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Speaker 4: Like I opened my.

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Speaker 3: Chapter on aliens with Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband. Both

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Speaker 3: them passed away now, but he was a huge believer

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Speaker 3: and he basically ran an exiled unit in Buckingham Palace.

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Speaker 3: He had monthly subscriptions to Flying Saucer Review. He had

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Speaker 3: an equerry who's a right hand person who went out

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Speaker 3: to look and meets up with someone who was supposedly

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Speaker 3: a humanoid extraterrestrial that was living in West London. He

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Speaker 3: used to bring RAF pilots into Buckingham Palace who had

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Speaker 3: seen UFOs while they were flying their planes and get

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Speaker 3: them to give first hand accounts. So somewhere in Buckingham

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Speaker 3: Palace there are pages of pages of first hand accounts

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Speaker 3: of UFO encounters. So they're sitting in the Royal Archives

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Speaker 3: that have not yet been released. And he had that

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Speaker 3: because of his uncle, Lord mount Batson, who also wrote

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Speaker 3: UFO firsthand accounts. There was a farmer who was working

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Speaker 3: or a bricklayer working on his land who claimed to

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Speaker 3: have seen a UFO land and Lord mount Batson took

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Speaker 3: this down as an account. He had his own serio

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Speaker 3: as to what UFOs were. He thought that UFOs didn't

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Speaker 3: have sentient humans inside, but the UFOs of shelves were sentient,

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Speaker 3: and that they would live on a planet of UFOs,

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Speaker 3: and the way that they would have children was to

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Speaker 3: bump into each other really sharply, knock off a chip

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Speaker 3: of the ufo and that would grow into a new ufo.

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Speaker 3: So there was all these theories going on within the

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Speaker 3: royal family that I just had no idea about. And

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Speaker 3: I found all that stuff quite fascinating.

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Speaker 2: How did you find these stories?

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Speaker 3: Well, they're all out there. They're just as I say,

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Speaker 3: like in the footnotes or there. Because you know, when

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Speaker 3: you're reading a biography on Prince Philip, you don't really

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Speaker 3: come across that story much. Again, everyone wants to sweep

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Speaker 3: this stuff under the carpet, but everyone has it. It's

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Speaker 3: all there, And I sometimes think the theory is, as

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Speaker 3: you say, it's kind of just a great dinner party chat. Marconi,

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Speaker 3: who invented the radio, or at least has a great

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Speaker 3: claim to inventing radio. So the very fact you and

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Speaker 3: I can talk across the planet right now is down

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Speaker 3: to this guy.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I was with him when he invented it.

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Speaker 4: By the way, Oh well there you go.

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Speaker 2: Okay, that's how far back I go. Danny.

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Speaker 3: He had this wonderful idea, which is he had a

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Speaker 3: theory that sound never dies, never goes away. Once I've

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Speaker 3: said these words, They're going to hang here on Earth forever.

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Speaker 3: They just get softer and softer and softer and softer

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Speaker 3: until the point that we can't hear them. So his

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Speaker 3: big dream before he passed away was to invent a

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Speaker 3: machine that could detect sound so sensitive that he could

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Speaker 3: find Jesus' soman on the mount.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 4: I just love that.

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Speaker 3: All sound is still here, that we could find everything.

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Speaker 3: So it's things like that. All these theories, they're more

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Speaker 3: outlandish because they're attached to someone who you wouldn't expect

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Speaker 3: to have these ideas.

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Speaker 2: And some of them are kind of strange and wacky,

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Speaker 2: like the raccoon person.

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Speaker 3: Exactly, or or like John C.

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Speaker 4: Lilly. Do you know about John C. Lily?

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Speaker 2: Tell me about that one.

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Speaker 4: John C.

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Speaker 3: Lily was a scientist who was attempting to cross the

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Speaker 3: species barrier with communication and try to teach Doltans to

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Speaker 3: speak English. In fact, he was so respected within the

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Speaker 3: scientific community at the very beginning of his career that

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Speaker 3: he was given funding by NASA as part of this project,

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Speaker 3: where his dream was to create a language adulten who

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Speaker 3: could speak English. So fluently that it could be given

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Speaker 3: a chair at the United Nations to speak on behalf

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Speaker 3: of all marine mammals. That was his was his plan,

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Speaker 3: and that's what they were funding. And he built this

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Speaker 3: house on the coast of America which he had flooded,

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Speaker 3: where he had lots of dolphin experiments. And in the

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Speaker 3: house you would have the dining room where the water

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Speaker 3: would be flooded up to the seat of a chair

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Speaker 3: if you were having your dinner, so dolphins could brush

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Speaker 3: past you and you could have communal.

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Speaker 4: Dinners and lunches and breakfasts.

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Speaker 3: He tried to invent a car that was a flooded car,

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Speaker 3: so that dolphins could be driving next to you on

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Speaker 3: the street in a water filled car, going to work

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Speaker 3: or wherever they were going. And these ideas were taken

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Speaker 3: so seriously that at the very first ever meeting of

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Speaker 3: what became SETI Exterterrestrial Intelligence, where Carl Sagan was and

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Speaker 3: Frank Drake and all these other sciences, he was part

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Speaker 3: of the group of twelve people that were invited to

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Speaker 3: this and gave the opening lecture because they believed he

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Speaker 3: was the closest person to having contact with aliens. Because

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Speaker 3: if dolphins were another intelligence that had risen on Earth

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Speaker 3: independent of us. Then if we could communicate with them,

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Speaker 3: maybe that would teach us about communicating with the universe.

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Speaker 3: So and then he kind of went off into psychedelics

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Speaker 3: and became very much part of the counterculture with Timothy

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Speaker 3: Leary and all that sort of stuff. In his career.

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Speaker 3: No longer was taken serious after that point, But to

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Speaker 3: begin with, this guy looked like he was going to

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Speaker 3: change the world.

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Speaker 2: What were some of your favorite stories in the book.

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Speaker 4: Dan, Wow, God, there are so many.

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Speaker 3: I really love the fact that the Beatles basically have

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Speaker 3: their drumming style, down to the fact that Ringo Starr

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Speaker 3: when he was a kid, had received multiple exorcisms from

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Speaker 3: his grandmother because she believed he was possessed by the devil.

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Speaker 3: And so how that plays out is she was known

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Speaker 3: as the Voodoo Queen of Liverpool. She was this lady

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Speaker 3: who would go around giving all sorts of different medicines

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Speaker 3: that she'd created, and she thought Ringo, because he was

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Speaker 3: left handed, must have the devil in him, and a

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Speaker 3: lot of people believed it was. Back in the day,

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Speaker 3: if you were left handed, schools here used to beat

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Speaker 3: kids into becoming right handed, and so she did all

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Speaker 3: these exorcisms on him as a child to get rid

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Speaker 3: of it, and it worked and he became right handed.

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Speaker 3: And to this day, Ringo still writes with his right hand.

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Speaker 3: And when he started learning to drum, he was a

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Speaker 3: right handed drummer, so he had a right handed drum kit.

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Speaker 3: But then as he grew older and left his grandmother,

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Speaker 3: he slowly started favoring the left hand again and would

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Speaker 3: lead with his left hand, but he never changed to

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Speaker 3: drum kit. He always stayed on a right handed drum kit.

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Speaker 3: But what it means is that when he needs to

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Speaker 3: get to all the drums are on the right side

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Speaker 3: of him. Instead of his easy path with the right

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Speaker 3: hand that leads the way, his left hand needs to

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Speaker 3: go underneath his right hand and lead the way that way.

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Speaker 3: And that little microsecond that it takes for him to

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Speaker 3: get to the drums gives the Beatles what is known

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Speaker 3: as the kind of the sloppy sound of the Beatles,

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Speaker 3: this really impossibly.

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Speaker 4: Hard drum beat to replicate.

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Speaker 3: Peele like Dave Grohl will be in the studio with

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Speaker 3: Foo Fighters Go give me more Ringo when they're doing

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Speaker 3: the drums, which means loosen up and give it a

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Speaker 3: bit more feel to it. And that's all because of

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Speaker 3: the voodoo Queen of Liverpool gave the Beatles their sound.

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Speaker 2: What's the story about office plants investigating a murder case?

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Speaker 3: Well this is This is also a really fascinating period

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Speaker 3: because it's sort of you know, King Charles of England

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Speaker 3: talked to his plants. You know, any time he goes

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Speaker 3: to a plant ceremony where a new tree has been planted,

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Speaker 3: he'll always shake a leaf and say have a good

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Speaker 3: life before leaving.

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Speaker 2: Like shaking somebody's hand.

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Speaker 3: Exactly, he's good on you, well done, have a good life.

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Speaker 3: You know that's he shakes their head, but it's the

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Speaker 3: leaf and he does it most sincerely and it's all

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Speaker 3: rarely down to this guy in the nineteen sixties seventies

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Speaker 3: in New York called Cleeve Baxter, Remember those in that

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Speaker 3: book The Secret Life of Plants was a massive book

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Speaker 3: New York Times stuff sell were back in the day.

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Speaker 3: Cleeve Baxter was a polygraph experts for the CIA, and

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Speaker 3: he had his own unit in America when My Detectors

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Speaker 3: first became a thing. He was the guy who was

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Speaker 3: sort of leading the way in teaching it and getting

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Speaker 3: the message out there. And one night in his office

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Speaker 3: he attaches one of the polygraph pieces to a plant

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Speaker 3: and discovers that it gives a reaction, and it started

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Speaker 3: giving reactions whenever he was thinking thoughts like threats, I

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Speaker 3: might burn this plant, and suddenly the reaction on the

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Speaker 3: polygraph goes as if it's as if the human has

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Speaker 3: been attached to it, and he thinks, my goodness, it

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Speaker 3: can understand me. So he starts experimenting in really interesting

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Speaker 3: ways to try and work out what the application is

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Speaker 3: of this, if it is true that plants and humans

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Speaker 3: can communicate. And one test that he does is he

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Speaker 3: gets six random students from his life detecting unit to

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Speaker 3: come into a room and pick a name out of

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Speaker 3: the hat and all the pieces of paper blank except one,

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Speaker 3: and one piece of paper that does have words on

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Speaker 3: it says murderer. And the job then of that person

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Speaker 3: is to go into a room. And all of them

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Speaker 3: had to individually go into this room, but no one

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Speaker 3: knew who had this murderer card. And inside that room

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Speaker 3: were two pop plants, office plants, and he had to

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Speaker 3: go in, rip out one of the plants and stamp

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Speaker 3: on it and murder.

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Speaker 2: It basically in front of the other plant.

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Speaker 3: In front of the other plant. So then what then

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Speaker 3: happens is effectively a police lineup.

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Speaker 4: All six are brought into the room and the job of.

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Speaker 3: The plant is to pick out who the murderer is.

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Speaker 4: And according to clean.

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Speaker 3: Acxer, it successfully did it picked out who the murderer was.

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Speaker 3: So he thinks, oh my goodness, I've got a whole

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Speaker 3: new police unit potential here because plants are everywhere.

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Speaker 4: He was called in to do it.

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Speaker 3: Into New Jersey there was a murder and a factory

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Speaker 3: and the police were there and they.

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Speaker 4: Needed him to come in to do my detecting.

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Speaker 3: And so he came in and he said to them,

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Speaker 3: were there any witnesses to the crime. They said, no, no,

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Speaker 3: we've got no one. And he looked around the room

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Speaker 3: where the murder happened and he said, well, I think

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Speaker 3: you'll find there was a witness to the murder because

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Speaker 3: look in the corner, you've got a pop plant there.

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Speaker 3: And so he had everyone from the factory come and

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Speaker 3: parade past the plant to see if they were the

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Speaker 3: murder murderer. That gave a reaction and it didn't give

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Speaker 3: a reaction. But then later it was discovered that the

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Speaker 3: murderer was not a worker at the factory, so it

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Speaker 3: was never a person was never presented in front.

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Speaker 4: Of the plant.

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Speaker 3: But his dream that he kind of did throughout his

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Speaker 3: career was he he thought, why send astronauts into space

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Speaker 3: if we can have this kind of telekinesis thing with plants.

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Speaker 3: We can send plants, We can send mimosas into space,

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Speaker 3: and they can do our deep space travel for us

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Speaker 3: and report back to us if we've got fights going

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Speaker 3: on in jungles. We've got agents all over the jungle.

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Speaker 3: We can get reports back from oak trees and all

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Speaker 3: sorts of other plants. And so he's this guy who

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Speaker 3: had this big vision for how we could communicate with plants,

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Speaker 3: and again nothing came to it, except for the fact

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Speaker 3: that when you talk to your trees these days, or

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Speaker 3: your plants at home, it's largely down to Cleave Baxter.

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Speaker 2: He was onto something there too, I think, Dan, well, look.

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Speaker 3: At the whole thing that's going on now with the

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Speaker 3: wood Wide Web as they call it, the Secret Internet

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Speaker 3: that turns out the mic helium networks and playing with

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Speaker 3: I mean the fact that it's Basically, it's a functioning

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Speaker 3: Internet almost down there. They do online shopping, basically, they

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Speaker 3: do cyber bullying. The amount of odd intelligence that's been

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Speaker 3: going on underneath that we're only just discovering is a

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Speaker 3: real eye opener, and I agree it sort of suggests

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Speaker 3: that maybe Cleve was onto something more than he's been

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Speaker 3: given credit for.

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