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, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Speaker 1: Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you, You
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. At the very top, we need to
Speaker 1: say that today's episode may contain information that is not
Speaker 1: suitable for all members of the audience, and candidly, the
Speaker 1: subject of today's episode got to me, which very rarely happens.
Speaker 1: It's a tale of quiet desperation. It's a tale of
Speaker 1: a real global cabal and the looming existential threat of
Speaker 1: nuclear annihilation, all occurring just under the glitzy surface of
Speaker 1: unprecedented American prosperity. I mean, what do you guys think
Speaker 1: of when you think of the nineteen fifties, postwar America.
Speaker 1: Everybody has a home. Everybody has a bunch of cool
Speaker 1: gadgets that are filling up that home, that are making
Speaker 1: life easier for everybody. The future. Uh is what that
Speaker 1: felt like. But you know the past, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly right, That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I was kidding at. You said it much better,
Speaker 1: ben Um, but no, it's true. It's that's that kind
Speaker 1: of like idyllic you know, clip art kind of American
Speaker 1: dream sense with also this like you know, absolutely terrifying
Speaker 1: underbelly just beneath the surface, kind of ready to you know,
Speaker 1: devour everyone whole well said. In some ways, this is
Speaker 1: a study of two very different worlds existing concurrently. On
Speaker 1: one world, we have a shiny universe of brand new
Speaker 1: homes and automobiles, solid jobs, two point five happy kids
Speaker 1: in suburbs across the country. The other world is a
Speaker 1: world of vast and true conspiracy, a violation that we
Speaker 1: still don't fully understand the extent of It's a profound
Speaker 1: crime nearly a century old, and the consequences of it
Speaker 1: remain with us in the modern day. This is a
Speaker 1: horror story, folks, But let's talk about the fun part first.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts, so that for the world, not
Speaker 1: just the US, it's the post World War two time,
Speaker 1: which for a lot of intens and purposes was great
Speaker 1: because there was such a devastating period that had occurred
Speaker 1: just before the nineteen fifties, and there's a feeling of
Speaker 1: rebirth that's coming out of that stuff. Um and in
Speaker 1: particular in the United States, as who you know, we're seeing,
Speaker 1: at least according to our news and all the history
Speaker 1: I've ever learned, were seen as the victors, were seen
Speaker 1: as the ones who really brought victory home for the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that, you know, the nineteen fifties were
Speaker 1: a particularly great time for a big segment of the
Speaker 1: US population. Uh, And they were an exception to the rule,
Speaker 1: because the nineteen fifties were horrible for a lot of
Speaker 1: the rest of the world due to that enormous devastation
Speaker 1: that we're alluding to a World War two, the US
Speaker 1: was very much in what is called the catbird seat,
Speaker 1: a little idiom that I love but still don't completely understand.
Speaker 1: Please explain it somewhat well. Well, the fighting didn't happen
Speaker 1: on American soil, right, The our cities were not destroyed
Speaker 1: the way much of Europe was, right, right, exactly, So
Speaker 1: they're too big actors here. First, the Americans are the
Speaker 1: inventors of nuclear technology. Also the first country to deploy
Speaker 1: this disastrous weapon in the field. So the US emerges
Speaker 1: as one of the world's most deadly military forces, in fact,
Speaker 1: the most deadly military force on Earth. And that's that's
Speaker 1: something that continues today. And also geography played a huge role.
Speaker 1: The US was isolated by two enormous oceans. It was
Speaker 1: really expensive to get over there, right, and because of that,
Speaker 1: they avoided that destruction. They still had a manufacturing base
Speaker 1: that had been accelerated through, you know, the war effort.
Speaker 1: So we're making more stuff than ever before. We're the
Speaker 1: we're like, if the world is a suburb, we're the
Speaker 1: only house that didn't get hit by the tornado, kind
Speaker 1: of end. And people were worried about this. The world
Speaker 1: is full pessimists, of course, right, And there were numerous
Speaker 1: experts who were arguing back and forth about the uncertain
Speaker 1: future because everybody knew unemployment rates had fluctuated widely over
Speaker 1: just the past few decades. In the nineteen thirties, around
Speaker 1: one out of four people were out of work due
Speaker 1: to the Great Depression. Still a terrible day. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a particularly great depression. It was a terrible depression, but
Speaker 1: it was you know, the big one. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the war effort um caused industrialization because you know, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff was needed to aid the war effort,
Speaker 1: with infrastructure and machinery of weapons of war, etcetera. By
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, unemployment had precipitously dropped to one point
Speaker 1: two percent. Uh. And this even to this day is
Speaker 1: a record low. And everyone and you know, their mother, sister, dog, brother,
Speaker 1: everyone was working. UMA yimists were concerned that this was
Speaker 1: like a bubble that was going to pop. This was
Speaker 1: not sustainable. Had the United States become addicted to war
Speaker 1: where we're going to have to face it that we
Speaker 1: were addicted to war, It's possible. Was global conflict now
Speaker 1: just an absolute necessity? Was this something that we were
Speaker 1: going to have to continue to almost you know, lean
Speaker 1: into in order to save our economy? Uh? It certainly
Speaker 1: feels like it sometimes even today. UM, Folks like Senator
Speaker 1: James Mead believe that the US would never be able
Speaker 1: to successfully convert from our military economy to a civilian one.
Speaker 1: And and this becomes sort of like this boogeyman of
Speaker 1: these these visions of things that were only just recently
Speaker 1: you know, out of people's you know, daily lives, things
Speaker 1: like these decaying factories. Uh and those huge, horrible unemployment numbers. Um.
Speaker 1: So people were spooked and they were gonna do whatever
Speaker 1: it took to kind of keep things on the up
Speaker 1: and up right. Yeah exactly. I mean part of being
Speaker 1: an economic expert or politician like Senator Mead is a
Speaker 1: big part of that is being the person who goes
Speaker 1: into a good situation and starts naming all the reasons
Speaker 1: it will be terrible. Shortly you're you're paid to ruin
Speaker 1: the party. Luckily, Mead and the other experts were proven
Speaker 1: incorrect in their predictions. Those unique advantages we mentioned for
Speaker 1: the US paved the way for the post war economic boom. Paul,
Speaker 1: can we get some music? Okay? Perfect? Yeah, exactly that.
Speaker 1: So the study of the US and the nineteen fifties is,
Speaker 1: I would argue, best understood as a study in paradox
Speaker 1: like life was great. Life was aces for a lot
Speaker 1: of white people who towed the correct ideological lines, but
Speaker 1: the horror of racism remained. The civil rights movement was
Speaker 1: in its nascent stages. The red scare of communism costs
Speaker 1: people their livelihoods. There was terror behind America's shiny new smile.
Speaker 1: But on the bright side, we'll bring back the happy music.
Speaker 1: Business was booming. Everything was That's why we call that
Speaker 1: generation the baby boomers. Think of it like, after years
Speaker 1: of rations and shortages and insane propaganda, people are kind
Speaker 1: of like um, the folks and countries that were able
Speaker 1: to end the pandemic. You know, they're desperate to get outside,
Speaker 1: get some action, enjoy the good life. And man, they
Speaker 1: loved spending money. It was a veritable shopping spree going
Speaker 1: on in the US. And like we said before, homes
Speaker 1: were one of the biggest things that people were buying
Speaker 1: and moving into. And of course there are bills that
Speaker 1: we've mentioned before on this show that we're available to
Speaker 1: help people who needed homes, who needed to be able
Speaker 1: to afford one. Cars were huge. I mean, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna you had to have a car, and you had
Speaker 1: to be able to drive fairly long distances a lot
Speaker 1: of times. You know, again, there's a lot of parts
Speaker 1: of the economy. We're just required a ton of travel.
Speaker 1: And because you have homes, because you have nice cars,
Speaker 1: you fill them up with things because there's space in there,
Speaker 1: and they're all these companies that are manufacturing things that
Speaker 1: are specifically designed for all of these new homeowners, all
Speaker 1: of these new car owners. Uh. And a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff ends up being, like I mentioned at the top, appliances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love those. I'm a sucker for the retro television stuff.
Speaker 1: Please send us your favorite weird commercials from the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. But not the Ronald McDonald one, I will
Speaker 1: have no Uh, that too was always creepy to me. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't surprise me that they kind of phased him
Speaker 1: out a bit, didn't they. Yeah, they did, they did.
Speaker 1: The original Ronald McDonald is a spooky, spooky dude. But yes,
Speaker 1: this the lture became something that defined success and even
Speaker 1: morality in terms of material It was both good and
Speaker 1: just to have new things. Uh. The population of the
Speaker 1: US was heavily incentivized to become consumers, more so than citizens.
Speaker 1: And the reason this happened is because of what you
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, NOL, the real fear that industry
Speaker 1: would die without the incentive to create more and more
Speaker 1: weapons of war. So like automobile manufacturers who came to
Speaker 1: the rescue during World War Two went back like they
Speaker 1: stopped making engines for planes and stuff like that, or
Speaker 1: making bombers like Ford did, and they went back to
Speaker 1: making cars, and they were like, we had to move
Speaker 1: these whips. So people were very encouraged to buy this stuff.
Speaker 1: New car sales quadruple between nineteen nineteen fifty five. This
Speaker 1: is back in the day when it wasn't a terrible
Speaker 1: idea to a brand new car. By the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, like seventy five of American households had
Speaker 1: at least one car. That's a huge change. Also, people
Speaker 1: were like crazy that oh yeah, the yie old baby boom.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean the war was over. Times are good.
Speaker 1: Things are great. My house is filled with silver things
Speaker 1: that can nuke, things, microwave, all this petroleum jelly laying around,
Speaker 1: Like what am I gonna do? Not that, not that,
Speaker 1: but the it's we're gonna talk about a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting how you can see this as in
Speaker 1: as an ideological shift from hot warfare, from warfare actual
Speaker 1: to cultural warfare in a way, and how all of
Speaker 1: these things that are being produced are in some ways
Speaker 1: promoting the America Rican way, the capitalist ideal. And it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to see that, like you're you're depicting, here
Speaker 1: been a necessary shift for the economy to continue on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is so we were painting, I think, the
Speaker 1: the propagandistic image, which happened because for very real and
Speaker 1: valid reasons in this time of prosperity. For a portion
Speaker 1: of the American population, about four million children are born
Speaker 1: each and every year during the nineteen fifties, that's that,
Speaker 1: that is the baby Boomer generation. And for so many people,
Speaker 1: this is still what a lot of people mean when
Speaker 1: they refer to the American dream. Right, this is back
Speaker 1: when depending on your demographic, of course, you could without
Speaker 1: going into debt at a college, you could get a
Speaker 1: solid job out of high school. You could buy a house,
Speaker 1: you could buy a car, you could buy two cars.
Speaker 1: You could afford to have kids. Every so often, you
Speaker 1: might celebrate your anniversary or whatever with a nice trip,
Speaker 1: maybe to Hawaii. I don't know what people did, is
Speaker 1: this is where kind of the middle class started becoming
Speaker 1: a thing, because they were the ones that bought all
Speaker 1: this year. Right, Yes, so they there's kind of that
Speaker 1: feedback loop. Right, people are making more money than they
Speaker 1: did before, and they're putting it back in the economy
Speaker 1: which also employs them. There is a good argument that
Speaker 1: an economy is a Ponzi scheme or capitalism is, but
Speaker 1: stress at the very least, right, it's the snake eating
Speaker 1: its own tail, and as long as it continues the cycle,
Speaker 1: then it will continue to exist. I'm probably oversimplifying it,
Speaker 1: but it certainly feels a little bit like a fairy
Speaker 1: tale kind of you know, yeah, this, I agree, and
Speaker 1: I don't think you're oversimplifying it very much. You know,
Speaker 1: this is what was happening, and even now some people
Speaker 1: will look back at that and ignore all the domestic
Speaker 1: problems were occurring and say those were the good old days.
Speaker 1: But this dream had a dark side because despite the
Speaker 1: measurable improvements and the lives of so many Americans, experts
Speaker 1: both domestic and abroad, knew that there were storms gathering
Speaker 1: on the horizon. Nuclear weaponry the other big advantage of
Speaker 1: the US the Pandora's jar, and now the lid was unscrewed,
Speaker 1: the seal was broken, that radioactive jin wasn't going back
Speaker 1: in the bottle anytime soon. So the average American, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to take that to mean, was basking this
Speaker 1: moment of unprecedented prosperity, but US politicians, military officials, and
Speaker 1: scientists were racing against the clock to prevent their enemies
Speaker 1: from acquiring nuclear weapons. They ultimately failed in this pursuit.
Speaker 1: They also continued to experiment with nukes. They were desperate
Speaker 1: to maintain this strategic edge for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: Consequences be damned, because you know, we use the phrase
Speaker 1: allies right when we're talking about that World War two alliance,
Speaker 1: but history proves it might be better to call them
Speaker 1: the frenemies, because you know, the Cold War basically started
Speaker 1: like the day after World War Two ended. I think
Speaker 1: I think maybe the US Russia took it afternoon off
Speaker 1: and then they were like, all right, back at it,
Speaker 1: but quieter this time. Yes, it's so quiet, it's almost silent,
Speaker 1: and there's a desperation behind it, you guys. And it
Speaker 1: leads us to what we're gonna talk about today, an
Speaker 1: actual dag um conspiracy for real, really really, yes, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: forever ever. Because Uncle Sam, the government of the United
Speaker 1: States of America wasn't fit to just sit with those
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons and say we are king now of just instruction,
Speaker 1: we win ha ha. They wanted to see what else
Speaker 1: could be done with these weapons? How far could this
Speaker 1: be taken? What else can be done with this technology?
Speaker 1: And oh boy, yeah, well, I mean it's understandable, right
Speaker 1: because they knew that the number one goal of every
Speaker 1: other country capable of doing so was to get nukes.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants the new toy. Everybody wants the biggest gun,
Speaker 1: you know, Like imagine if you were in the universe
Speaker 1: of Ghostbusters and you found out that you could build
Speaker 1: your own Goes or the Destroyer. That's that's what people
Speaker 1: were doing. And this is dangerous because in a very
Speaker 1: real way, this means that the world as we knew
Speaker 1: it could end at any given moment. And although everyone
Speaker 1: at this time was very much aware of the devastating
Speaker 1: impact a nuclear weapon could create. Everyone knew about Hiroshima
Speaker 1: and Nagasa Hockey, but no one, not even the experts,
Speaker 1: understood the full extent of fallout. How did it affect
Speaker 1: the atmosphere? How long did it stay? Could dropping a
Speaker 1: bomb in you know, Nepal later create fallout in Europe?
Speaker 1: Things like that, These questions whereas things you could model
Speaker 1: and you could try to test, and they definitely did,
Speaker 1: but they were also racing to learn more about how
Speaker 1: this affected ecosystems and organisms. They were driven, we have
Speaker 1: to say, by desperation, and as we continue, that's that's
Speaker 1: something everybody needs to remember. These people did not see
Speaker 1: themselves as villains, but that desperation is how we ended
Speaker 1: up with a ghoulish plan called Project Sunshine. We'll be
Speaker 1: back after the break. Here's where it gets crazy. So
Speaker 1: you know, um, you've got these nuclear weapons. You know
Speaker 1: what they do in theory, You've tested them on you know,
Speaker 1: you've you've done nuclear test detonations, etcetera. But what do
Speaker 1: they do to people? What do they do to human
Speaker 1: flesh and human bodies? You can do them with animals
Speaker 1: and in various environments lacking humans. Honestly, there were a
Speaker 1: lot more animals back than ben you pointed out, So
Speaker 1: the ethics of this was not as much of a
Speaker 1: concern as it certainly would be today. But it's again
Speaker 1: about how it affects that human tissue. Was it going
Speaker 1: to do? Uh? The U s Atomic Energy Commission created
Speaker 1: something called Project Gabriel, which was an investigation to figure
Speaker 1: out the full impact on the human population in a
Speaker 1: nuclear fallout zone. Through this project, the government concluded that
Speaker 1: the most dangerous part of this whole situation was the
Speaker 1: radio act the isotope known as trontium ninety um, which
Speaker 1: is a calcium like radioactive substance that is produced when
Speaker 1: nuclear explosions occur um. It can be absorbed by plants
Speaker 1: and animals, and it passes through food to humans, and
Speaker 1: humans bones can absorb it too. And if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: this is where a certain form of is it iodine
Speaker 1: or there's some some pill you can ingest that will
Speaker 1: block the absorption of that isotope. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The first thing you have to do to figure out
Speaker 1: if something like that would function is you need to
Speaker 1: get those isotopes into human bones, exactly right. You gotta
Speaker 1: test them. You gotta test it out. Did it go
Speaker 1: from that cattle into Bill? It's a Bill. Yes, Bill
Speaker 1: drew the short end of the straw at the lab.
Speaker 1: So he's out there, you know, drinking milk straight from
Speaker 1: the utter, just to see if he can get radiation
Speaker 1: through it. It was. It was a weird, weird gig
Speaker 1: for Bill. But but you're right. They needed this data.
Speaker 1: They needed to figure out what happened when the radioactive
Speaker 1: rubber hit the road, which means they needed human test subjects.
Speaker 1: They needed human tissue. The a e C. Commissioner at
Speaker 1: the time, a guy named Dr Willard Libby, complained about
Speaker 1: this constantly because he knew the score, he knew what
Speaker 1: was up. He was like, look, it's ugly, but we're
Speaker 1: trying to save the world here. We need people because
Speaker 1: they remember, they're not They're not just worried about their bombs.
Speaker 1: They're worried about other countries developing the tech and then
Speaker 1: dropping on them. Exactly. Yeah, so they so at the
Speaker 1: very least, they need to figure out how that stuff,
Speaker 1: uh interacts with the human body so that maybe they
Speaker 1: can figure out some mitigation, you know, procedures or whatever,
Speaker 1: like that pill that I can't remember the name, but
Speaker 1: definitely is a thing that we'll probably get to. We
Speaker 1: have to mention this part, folks. Obviously, the government could
Speaker 1: illegally experiment on disadvantaged populations. They have certainly done so
Speaker 1: in the past, and there are people who will assure
Speaker 1: you that the experiments like this continue in the modern day.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem with those experiments. Sometimes they have survivors,
Speaker 1: and survivors have a tendency to, you know, talk to
Speaker 1: people about the horrible things that happened to them, and
Speaker 1: so Project Gabriel led to a classified program called Project
Speaker 1: Sunshine in ninety three. It started out as just another
Speaker 1: secret investigation, which is a weird sentence to say, but accurate,
Speaker 1: and then it quickly took a dark turn. Do not
Speaker 1: let the name fool you. In fact, let's let Dr
Speaker 1: Libby himself introduce his project with this infamous quote. This
Speaker 1: comes from a secret meeting in nineteen fifty five when
Speaker 1: he was talking about the importance of getting humans to
Speaker 1: experiment on. I don't know how to get um, but
Speaker 1: I do say that it is a matter of prime
Speaker 1: importance to get them, and particularly in the young age group.
Speaker 1: So human samples are often of prime importance. And if
Speaker 1: anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching,
Speaker 1: they will really be serving their country hand hand nudge, nudge,
Speaker 1: wink wink. We need young bodies. Let's go snatch some
Speaker 1: anyone good. Yes, we got your back, We got your back.
Speaker 1: And the bluntness, the candid nature of that statement really
Speaker 1: stood out to me. I I hope it stands out
Speaker 1: to everybody listening, because with that, the US government got
Speaker 1: into the business of stealing the corpses of children. That
Speaker 1: is what today's episode is about, and that's part away.
Speaker 1: It got to me this wasn't a small operation. This
Speaker 1: was a global network. Sunshine created an invisible army of
Speaker 1: modern day resurrection men, literal corpse thieves. And we we
Speaker 1: talked about resurrection in the past, but somebody give us
Speaker 1: the quick and dirty just because it's such a cool
Speaker 1: term for such a horrible thing. Yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was especially um during early days of say medical experimentation,
Speaker 1: you know, when um surgeons were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how you know, the human body and the human anatomy functioned.
Speaker 1: Uh So in order to do that, they would often
Speaker 1: grave rob and then dig up corpses and cut them
Speaker 1: open to see what what's what? Yeah, nailed it. It's
Speaker 1: just like a well I think we talked about it
Speaker 1: at length in our episode on whether or not Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin was serial killer. The resurrection men came about because
Speaker 1: of gaps and loopholes in the laws at the time,
Speaker 1: Like it was legal to conduct medical experiments on cadavers,
Speaker 1: but it was illegal to buy them, so you just
Speaker 1: have plausible deniability, get some creepy and were desperate person
Speaker 1: to like Will said, rob a grave for you, and
Speaker 1: then you just pretend like, well, I don't know where
Speaker 1: this body came from, officer, I'm just trying to learn
Speaker 1: about kidneys. What do they just have like a body
Speaker 1: drop off repository like the return thing and a library
Speaker 1: like I mean what I mean, I know we're gonna
Speaker 1: get there, but jeezus, this is bleak. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: This was a massive operation, even if even if it
Speaker 1: was just sort of an implied operation. Right, Um, there
Speaker 1: were project managers who didn't want to disclose the actual
Speaker 1: nature of the research that was being done because if
Speaker 1: they did, then it could put their personal contacts and
Speaker 1: the people that were helping them out who were pimply
Speaker 1: breaking the law at risk. Um. So they decided to
Speaker 1: have researchers use people that they knew to recruit other
Speaker 1: people to do more of this stuff. Degrees of separation.
Speaker 1: That's how it works. I mean, that's that's the brilliant
Speaker 1: part about surveillance programs like five Eyes. This network operated
Speaker 1: everywhere from Australia to Europe through various means, and we
Speaker 1: still don't know the extent of this. We still don't
Speaker 1: know the specifics, but through various means, by hook or
Speaker 1: by crook, pieces of dead human beings were being stolen
Speaker 1: and they were being shipped off to the US. It
Speaker 1: seems that many of the governments of countries involved had
Speaker 1: no idea what was happening. Um. And that's that in
Speaker 1: itself is pretty distressing. And it's an important point, uh,
Speaker 1: that that you make here. Because some of these people
Speaker 1: were gathering samples, Like you said, they were contacted informally,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of off the books operation like agent
Speaker 1: between us. You want to help me steal somebodies. What
Speaker 1: are you doing Wednesday? Uh. They were given different reasons
Speaker 1: for this too, because the folks in charge of Projects
Speaker 1: Sunshine didn't want every and to know this was a
Speaker 1: program related to nuclear weaponry, so they made up a
Speaker 1: couple of different reasons. And that means that not all
Speaker 1: the people involved in this network understood exactly why they
Speaker 1: were shipping these samples to the US. And there were
Speaker 1: a lot of samples. This was not a one and
Speaker 1: done thing. This was not tragic case of like half
Speaker 1: a dozen very unfortunate families. Was way deeper and way
Speaker 1: more extreme. Yeah, according to the documents available that you know,
Speaker 1: are declassified on this stuff. There were at least fifteen hundred,
Speaker 1: I believe samples. I'm not doing the sound because I
Speaker 1: keep I'm going back and forth between whether or not
Speaker 1: to do that sound, just depending on the listeners reactions.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like I love it, give me some swish swish.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this man leave me alone with that swish wish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Matt, you just described like the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, people are okay, educate yourself. Oh dang, no,
Speaker 1: the tables have turned okay, So let's get back seriousness.
Speaker 1: There were over fifteen hundred samples of human flesh tissue.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were from babies and young children,
Speaker 1: as was stated by Dr Libby, that was important. Um again,
Speaker 1: they were stolen from all around the world. And here's
Speaker 1: the weird thing, and I we can't tell you if
Speaker 1: it's just what was reported, you know, and what was
Speaker 1: put in official documents by people who were keeping track
Speaker 1: of this stuff or or not. But allegedly only five
Speaker 1: hundred of those samples, so one third, were actually tested
Speaker 1: for the purposes of Project Sunshine, which in itself it's
Speaker 1: its own kind of heartbreak, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: All this for nothing for so little. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of our discussions about Unit seven thirty one in Japan,
Speaker 1: or some of the atrocities committed by German scientists during
Speaker 1: World War Two. There was some useful science that came
Speaker 1: from this, but the big misconception that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have is that this science was incredibly impactful or
Speaker 1: even good science. The events of seven thirty one were
Speaker 1: it was an APPATOI. It wasn't allowed. It was a
Speaker 1: chartl house. Yeah, and the parents, you know of of
Speaker 1: of these children had no idea what was going on. Look,
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where it's like do the
Speaker 1: means justify the ends. It's sort of like black ops
Speaker 1: and stuff, where clearly laws are broken, uh, to the
Speaker 1: greater good, for the greater good. But then when you
Speaker 1: start seeing things like only five samples were analyzed, you
Speaker 1: start to be like, well, why why do they need
Speaker 1: so many? And why was it such a widespread operation?
Speaker 1: Because it really is absolutely abominable behavior, at least for
Speaker 1: people that are religious. Can you imagine finding out that
Speaker 1: your child's you know, body was desecrated, dug up used
Speaker 1: for science experimentation. Well, that that's actually kind of where
Speaker 1: I want to go. I will will hit it more
Speaker 1: at the end here, But I wonder if transparency would
Speaker 1: have changed people's thinking. There's a there's a lot of
Speaker 1: patriotism going around for a long time in the United
Speaker 1: States after the Second World War, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: instead of doing it, you know, in the dark, surreptitiously
Speaker 1: stealing bodies, it was, Hey, we we really need to
Speaker 1: test this powerful weapon and the effects of it for
Speaker 1: the safety of national security, for ours, the strength as
Speaker 1: a union. We need you, or children's corpses, because because
Speaker 1: you know, at least they're not asking for your firstborn
Speaker 1: or you're young the way, or they're not killing children
Speaker 1: and torturing children and people as in Unit one, they
Speaker 1: are definitely experimenting on the thing that was once a
Speaker 1: loved one. Yeah, um, call it Project HEROD. Sure you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder too. I'm picturing the scenario in my mind
Speaker 1: where you know, like a representative comes and Knox and says,
Speaker 1: Mrs Jones, we we have your country needs you. There's
Speaker 1: a thing you can do to really help us out. Um,
Speaker 1: We're here to ask if we can you know, honor
Speaker 1: the memory of your child by having it serve and
Speaker 1: potentially save the lives of millions, right, good line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's something that occurred to me as well, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the one of the closing things we
Speaker 1: can really dive into towards the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: So let's pause for a moment for word from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: and then we'll return with some examples of how this
Speaker 1: process occurred. And we're back. Uh. There's a British documentary
Speaker 1: we'd like to draw your attention to came out in
Speaker 1: n It's called Deadly Experiments. In Deadly Experiments, one of
Speaker 1: the people interviewed is a woman named Jane Pritchard. She
Speaker 1: is British. She had a child that was still born
Speaker 1: in nine seven, and she learned that when her child
Speaker 1: when when she gave birth, the doctors who spirited the
Speaker 1: child away removed its legs and sent those legs off
Speaker 1: to the US for Projects Sunshine. She was forbidden to
Speaker 1: dress her daughter for the funeral because the doctors knew
Speaker 1: that if she did, she would find out what happened
Speaker 1: to literally half of her child. She also continues and
Speaker 1: she says, I asked if I could put her christening
Speaker 1: robe honor, but I wasn't allowed to and that upset
Speaker 1: me terribly because she wasn't christened. No one asked me
Speaker 1: about doing things like that, taking bits and pieces from her,
Speaker 1: and that, you know, that goes that ties in exactly
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about with the idea of religious practices.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? These are these are some
Speaker 1: of the most important sacred traditions in a lot of
Speaker 1: belief systems. And words like we're three guys who were
Speaker 1: paid to talk, and words fail me to try to
Speaker 1: describe the profundity of that experience. I mean, imagine you
Speaker 1: have you have a stillborn child. That is an emotional
Speaker 1: trauma that will follow you like a shadow for the
Speaker 1: rest of your days. And then on top of that tragedy,
Speaker 1: you learn that your child's body has been desecrated in
Speaker 1: the name of nuclear war. So and he continues, So okay.
Speaker 1: Even Canada and the UK for a number of years
Speaker 1: had alleged that deaths like this occurred, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: an official investigation for decades. It wasn't even until two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. Remember this stuff was happening to fifty six.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until two thousand and one that Britain's atomic
Speaker 1: Energy Agency acknowledged that they were stealing the bones of children,
Speaker 1: which you know to to the point of fairy tale.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a fable, This sounds like folklore. This
Speaker 1: sounds like a boogeyman, a monster from ages past. Now
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. So what happens to the bodies of
Speaker 1: the people that we love when they're gone? Um? There
Speaker 1: are obviously options, you have things like cremation and burial,
Speaker 1: em bombing, um. But it's not like h and deup
Speaker 1: with some sort of inventory or a checklist of what
Speaker 1: happens to organs. I'll only say this because I've been
Speaker 1: watching six ft Under a lot lately. Apparently when a
Speaker 1: body is picked up from the morgue or after an autopsy,
Speaker 1: you know, by a an embalming um service or or
Speaker 1: company or uh funeral home, there is absolutely a checklist,
Speaker 1: like if, for example, if someone was in a you know,
Speaker 1: accident where parts were severed. Um, there is a checklist
Speaker 1: for things an episode involving a severed foot that points
Speaker 1: that out in six ft Under, But we don't get that.
Speaker 1: We could probably request it, but we don't. So it's
Speaker 1: not like most of us would actually have some sort
Speaker 1: of checklist as to where the organs especially end up, uh,
Speaker 1: and where different body parts might turn up right, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean and and also think about, you know, think
Speaker 1: about the grief that someone is going through. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's easy to understand how figuring out what happened to
Speaker 1: specific body parts wouldn't be the highest priority because you're
Speaker 1: just trying to make it from one day to the next.
Speaker 1: And regulatory agencies exist in multiple countries to monitor these processes,
Speaker 1: but the average person doesn't really have a way to
Speaker 1: learn whether their loved ones body parts are being given
Speaker 1: a dignified burial in accordance to their religious statutes, or
Speaker 1: whether they're being illicitly taken for other purposes. A few
Speaker 1: years back here in our home state of Georgia, authorities
Speaker 1: discovered this funeral home north of Atlanta was being paid to,
Speaker 1: you know, do a typical burial service, but they were
Speaker 1: taking the bodies and just like throwing them in freezers
Speaker 1: and in the woods. It's um, these are you know,
Speaker 1: this is taking advantage of very vulnerable people at one
Speaker 1: of the worst moments in their lives. And that that's
Speaker 1: one of the most frightening lessons about Project Sunshine that's
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the two big things we
Speaker 1: should keep in mind here. Something like this conspiracy could
Speaker 1: easily happen again in the modern day. The only reason
Speaker 1: it's if it's not happening now. The only reason stuff
Speaker 1: like this is not happening is because people haven't found
Speaker 1: a rationalization that they felt was noble enough. We're one
Speaker 1: excuse away from something like this happening again, and and
Speaker 1: and wasn't necessary back to thirty one, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it is crucial to understand the effects of nuclear fallout,
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. Were there better ways to go about it?
Speaker 1: Like what you guys were saying earlier, That's what I
Speaker 1: keep thinking, Like what if you what if you phrased
Speaker 1: it as this is a way for your family to
Speaker 1: serve not only your country, but the world, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah, I mean I don't like, if
Speaker 1: you check organ donor or something like that on your
Speaker 1: on your registration and your you know, your license or whatever,
Speaker 1: does that mean does this qualify? I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of silly question, but I'm not intending it
Speaker 1: to be. I just mean, you know, this is obviously
Speaker 1: extenuating circumstances when you know, desperate times and all of that.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if there would be a way to
Speaker 1: kind of like interpret that as you're an organ donor
Speaker 1: or you know, when people say they're doing in their
Speaker 1: body the science, I always like, what does that actually mean?
Speaker 1: Is that some sort of like writ that you have
Speaker 1: to create that says which you know exactly which research
Speaker 1: lab you want to donate your body too for a
Speaker 1: specific project? Or is it just more like what do
Speaker 1: you need here? I am excuse me, right? I I
Speaker 1: imagine there's some way uh to there there's some way
Speaker 1: to specify uh cause or an experiment or an institution
Speaker 1: to which you donate your body or parts of your body,
Speaker 1: But I I don't know. The closest experience I have
Speaker 1: had with consensual donation of body parts has been I
Speaker 1: went through a phase where I really wanted to donate
Speaker 1: my left eye to uh to someone. But they're they're
Speaker 1: understandably there there's some there's some legal hurdles. If you're
Speaker 1: a guy who's just like I want to give away
Speaker 1: one of my eyes, first question is like, well, who
Speaker 1: do you want to give this cornea too? And if
Speaker 1: your answer is I d k L O L. Then
Speaker 1: they're understandably going to be a little bit weirded out.
Speaker 1: But why did you not give away your eye? It
Speaker 1: got too complicated, honestly, that's the reason, okay. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and also you know it's something that would still be
Speaker 1: interested in doing. I mean, giving giving someone power of
Speaker 1: site is an amazing thing, you know. Um. But also
Speaker 1: I wear contacts, so it's like it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: like giving away a car, right is my is my
Speaker 1: eyes so bad that it would be like giving someone
Speaker 1: a lemon, a beat up car that they really don't
Speaker 1: want to drive, you know, and it just sits in
Speaker 1: the driveway of their skull. Uh. That phrase the driveway
Speaker 1: of your skull. Then that's incredible. But but lets let
Speaker 1: us know about that. No, I think your question about
Speaker 1: organ donation is is really interesting. I haven't thought about
Speaker 1: it in that way. I know, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you guys, but I think most people our
Speaker 1: age in this state become organ donors because they knock
Speaker 1: a couple of bucks off the license gate exactly. And again,
Speaker 1: it's all does come down to um as as so
Speaker 1: much so often burial does uh to religious belief and
Speaker 1: I think that's the greatest betrayal. You know, is in
Speaker 1: a country where supposedly we prize people's right to exercise
Speaker 1: their religious you know, freedom so highly to betray that trust,
Speaker 1: you know, is is this pretty pretty uh egregious? And
Speaker 1: this goes to our second, perhaps the most important point.
Speaker 1: No one in this conspiracy saw themselves as villains, right.
Speaker 1: Everybody is the protagonist of their story. And these people
Speaker 1: who consider themselves good people, through through a series of
Speaker 1: slippery sloops, found themselves stealing corpses of children, Which makes
Speaker 1: you think what lengths would you go to if you
Speaker 1: genuinely thought you were saving the world. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was not a hypothetical question, and it's something you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's easy to say that these people were monstrous,
Speaker 1: but then you have to ask yourself, what would you
Speaker 1: do in that situation? If you thought that you could
Speaker 1: save billions of people by breaking, by bending them breaking
Speaker 1: some ethical rules, would you do it? I mean, what
Speaker 1: would you prefer to be haunted by? Is another way
Speaker 1: to put it. Would you prefer to spend the rest
Speaker 1: of your life knowing that you literally still corpses? Or
Speaker 1: would you prefer to be haunted by the idea that
Speaker 1: you could have saved the world and decided not to.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know an easy way out of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know the solution there. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing. I gotta tell you. I'm really torn. I'm
Speaker 1: genuinely torn because I know if someone did that to
Speaker 1: my son, like if he had just passed away and
Speaker 1: parts of him were taken away, I would be furious.
Speaker 1: I'd be I'd be going on a little hunt for
Speaker 1: the hunt for the resurrection people who took parts of
Speaker 1: my son. But it's also you know, scientifically, if you
Speaker 1: take belief out of it, it's a dead body and
Speaker 1: it really is something that you know could potentially help.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, they're researching the effects of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, uh, like these terrifying weapons that the research
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily going to save anybody, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: it's a weapon and you just realize, well, we've got
Speaker 1: to protect people from the effects of this weapon, you
Speaker 1: don't you don't necessarily need to know how it affects
Speaker 1: the human body. I don't know. Just like I said, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's about like trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: can we guard our population against the use of these
Speaker 1: weapons by others? You know? And by the way, that
Speaker 1: thing that I was struggling so desperately, remember, it's just
Speaker 1: it's called uh potassium iodide, and it's just a pill
Speaker 1: that blocks radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid. So not
Speaker 1: quite the same thing. But you know, they might not
Speaker 1: have known how that worked if they hadn't studied the
Speaker 1: effects of that on the human body and knowing that
Speaker 1: the thyroid absorbs that particular radioactive material. So I I
Speaker 1: do get it. But also I'm when I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask a question, ben, Um, did I miss this or why? So?
Speaker 1: Why children specifically or was that just part of the
Speaker 1: you know, part of the whole deal. They were just
Speaker 1: some children involved. Yeah, it was just their vibe, I guess. No,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That's a horrible thing to say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the issue was that children would be children of
Speaker 1: this era, would be the first kids born after the
Speaker 1: creation and deployment of nuclear weapons. So they like you
Speaker 1: could if you took anybody was born before that time,
Speaker 1: you would only see the effect of what happened to
Speaker 1: them at that moment later in life when they were exposed,
Speaker 1: you know, when then when they're like fifty years old
Speaker 1: or something. But if you if you look at children,
Speaker 1: you're looking at an organism that is new to the environment.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of like the study of microplastics, right.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal when scientists found out that
Speaker 1: microplastics are occurring in human bodies while children are in
Speaker 1: the womb, you know what I mean. That means that
Speaker 1: it's already something that's with you from day zero. So
Speaker 1: if you have a stillborn child and you're able to
Speaker 1: test it for levels of things like strontium ninety, then
Speaker 1: what you can learn is that you can learn basically
Speaker 1: whether the radiation or the contamination is ubiquitous enough to
Speaker 1: enter through another filter. So it's because remember kids just
Speaker 1: being born. If it's born and it has traces of
Speaker 1: contamination in it already, that means that this contaminant, ever
Speaker 1: it is, be a microplastics or strontium ninety, has managed
Speaker 1: to pass through another filter. It's gone from the environment,
Speaker 1: maybe to an animal, a cow or whatever, into a
Speaker 1: human that is burying a child, and then from that
Speaker 1: human into the other human inside of them. So there's
Speaker 1: there's a logic to it. But it's um, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a soulless logic, I would argue, And you're right,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to parse this. It's not something
Speaker 1: with an easy answer, and it's startling. It should be
Speaker 1: startling that investigations are kind of ongoing. You know, you
Speaker 1: would think that this guy would get much more press coverage.
Speaker 1: It was in it was in the New York Times
Speaker 1: a couple of times. You would think that it got
Speaker 1: um much more attention, or that the American public at
Speaker 1: the very least, which would be putting more eyes on
Speaker 1: these kind of classified projects that occur. But for now,
Speaker 1: what we can say is it's a conspiracy. It really happened,
Speaker 1: and something like this, based on what we know about
Speaker 1: human psychology, could easily happen again. Uh, this is a
Speaker 1: tragedy all around, you know what I mean. There's not
Speaker 1: there's there's not an evil mad scientist in here. There's
Speaker 1: there there's just like like it always is, there's there's
Speaker 1: a massive terrified, frightened people who are doing their best
Speaker 1: not to die. What a doubter. Okay, who's got jokes?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I don't don't think I have any
Speaker 1: jokes after that, doing their best not to die. That's
Speaker 1: the most emo thing I've heard all week. But it's true.
Speaker 1: It's all we're that's what we're all doing. Yeah, thankfully
Speaker 1: it's gotten a little easier, I think. Ah, these days,
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of things trying to kill us,
Speaker 1: no question about that. Um. But now I didn't know
Speaker 1: about this project, and I have to say this, this
Speaker 1: is such a cliche thing, but how come all of
Speaker 1: these government projects that are like involving horrible things. I'll
Speaker 1: have names like Operation Twinkle Toes and Operations Starfruit, Operations
Speaker 1: capri Son, you know, like they're all horrible, horrible thing.
Speaker 1: I understand why they do it. It's like to get
Speaker 1: people off the set of like how absolutely horrible and
Speaker 1: maniacal what's actually going on is? But it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: an interesting dichotomy when you read about so many of these, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to I know this is not true, but
Speaker 1: I like to imagine that there is in every government
Speaker 1: there's like one person, one lady, one guy, just some
Speaker 1: generic dude whose entire job is to think up these names,
Speaker 1: and like they get up, you know, they get to
Speaker 1: the office eight or nine or whatever, and they've got
Speaker 1: a list of crazy stuff that their government is doing.
Speaker 1: And then they you know, like they lean back, they
Speaker 1: have some coffee, and they're like, let's call this one
Speaker 1: project Artichokes. I like artichokes, and then let's torture some people,
Speaker 1: right right, And I, um, yeah, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know the process. I know it can change. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they really like acronyms or initialisms and then yeah,
Speaker 1: like like you said, no, sometimes it's it seems purposefully misleading.
Speaker 1: Like if we ever hear about a top secret government
Speaker 1: project that's been declassified and its name is like Project
Speaker 1: Fuzzy Warm Times, and that's clearly evil, right, gotta be
Speaker 1: gotta be the most evil one. The more snuggly the name,
Speaker 1: the more evil of the project. Um, that's my theory. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, no, this is something that I think everyone
Speaker 1: should know about. Um, certainly a dark period and history
Speaker 1: in general, but also in like weird government conspiracies. And
Speaker 1: it's far from the only example. We'd like to know
Speaker 1: what you think, what lengths would you go to if
Speaker 1: you genuinely thought you were saving the world. Uh, let
Speaker 1: us know if you have experience with other similar stories
Speaker 1: in your neck of the global woods. Obviously being based
Speaker 1: in the US, we see a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: emerges from the US specifically, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: other countries aren't also doing dastardly things. We want to
Speaker 1: hear from you as always. You're the most important part
Speaker 1: of the show, so let us know. We try to
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Speaker 1: us all smile collectively in our hearts, um, then we
Speaker 1: will read it on one of our our episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, if you if you feel like
Speaker 1: if you feel like saying, I love how these guys
Speaker 1: always ruined my day with these stories, probably not going
Speaker 1: to read that one. Well maybe now that's a that's
Speaker 1: a positive. I see what you did there, Ben, And
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