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 this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4: My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer Paul, Mission control deck, and most importantly, are you.
Speaker 2: You are here that makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 2: want you to know. Fellow conspiracy realist. We are beginning
Speaker 2: tonight's episode with a disclaimer, and a strong one. Please
Speaker 2: listen closely. Tonight we are exploring the concept of so
Speaker 2: called auditory hallucinations, meaning at base, the idea of experiencing
Speaker 2: sounds that do not provably exist. And you know, Matt,
Speaker 2: the vast majority of human beings at some point have
Speaker 2: all felt they heard something with no discernible physical origin.
Speaker 2: Often when you're like almost falling asleep or you're almost
Speaker 2: waking up, you know, just a gut check. Has that happened?
Speaker 2: Have you ever occasionally just had one of those auditory
Speaker 2: hallucination hiccups?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think the sleep aspect of it feels right
Speaker 4: to me. Where you're somewhere between being awake and being asleep,
Speaker 4: and maybe something from a dream creeps in and almost
Speaker 4: wakes you up, and then you think you heard it
Speaker 4: in real life, but it may have just been something
Speaker 4: that you were experiencing, which is interesting because I guess
Speaker 4: I don't know the idea of hearing things in a
Speaker 4: dream is interesting to me. You often hear people describing
Speaker 4: like I wrote a song in my dreams, but I've
Speaker 4: always struggled to be able to explain how sound occurs
Speaker 4: in Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's almost like the exploding head syndrome that
Speaker 5: we've discussed before, where you think you hear a loud
Speaker 5: crash or something like late at night or as you're
Speaker 5: falling asleep. You go and check it out and absolutely
Speaker 5: nothing has happened, but your mind has created that sound.
Speaker 5: I get a thing in this house. It's usually like
Speaker 5: an ice maker. That's yeah, down the way, I get
Speaker 5: that too. Yes, it will just be a random like
Speaker 5: sounds like a crash right of just ice hitting down
Speaker 5: and you just go, oh, what, what the heck was
Speaker 5: that somebody just opened a door?
Speaker 4: Well, that ice sound is such a racket, you know,
Speaker 4: for being such a small sound. It really does seem
Speaker 4: to take on a much more kind of large scale quality.
Speaker 2: You know, what is it appropriateception? Your sense of yourself
Speaker 2: in space also gets a little wonky in that liminal spot,
Speaker 2: you know. That's why sometimes you might jerk in your
Speaker 2: sleep because you feel like you're falling or you're moving
Speaker 2: while your physical body is simply prone. And look, you
Speaker 2: know again, the vast majority of people have heard something
Speaker 2: at some point. Oh, I thought I heard a voice.
Speaker 2: I turned around, No one was there. My life continues, nonetheless,
Speaker 2: And folks, while you, me and our cohort Matt, Noel
Speaker 2: and Paul do technically function as voices in your head
Speaker 2: tonight via an audio podcast. We are not doctors, to
Speaker 2: be very clear before we explore any of this. If
Speaker 2: you are experiencing things that bring you distress or discomfort,
Speaker 2: immediately contact medical professional. Here are the facts. What do
Speaker 2: we mean when we say hearing voices? This is a
Speaker 2: kind of auditory hallucination or word of the day paracusia,
Speaker 2: nice one, right, But this is a genre of these.
Speaker 2: This is auditory verbal hallucinations. That means not just the sound,
Speaker 2: not just an ice machine to your point, Matt, but
Speaker 2: something vocalizing towards you in your head, a signing a thing,
Speaker 2: and there's some really interesting science spoiler, we're not going
Speaker 2: to get into it about what it means when you
Speaker 2: hear it.
Speaker 4: It just like in mono.
Speaker 2: Versus in stereo. There's there's a lot of deep water here.
Speaker 2: But obviously, in the modern world, perhaps unfairly, this is
Speaker 2: often associated with some sort of sort of deletarious medical condition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean typically things like psychosis, some form of
Speaker 4: dementia perhaps, or schizophrenia. You know, I think many times
Speaker 4: schizophree is obviously sort of a catch all term. Lots
Speaker 4: of different little subtle, you know, things that can exist
Speaker 4: under that umbrella. But I think a lot of folks
Speaker 4: have the understanding of schizophrenia as even going so far
Speaker 4: as to assign it like some form of multiple personality syndrome,
Speaker 4: which I think is a bit of a misnomer. But
Speaker 4: to your point, Ben, about these audio hallucinations, they're not
Speaker 4: just sounds. They have personalities, and a lot of times
Speaker 4: those personalities can be aspects or sort of multiplicities of
Speaker 4: your own personality. You know, insecurities that are calling out
Speaker 4: to you and you know, chastising you or trying to
Speaker 4: shame you for certain things that you're insecure about, and
Speaker 4: there can be positive ones too that try to kind
Speaker 4: of lift you up, and sometimes those voices compete.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is it is true that schizophrenia as
Speaker 2: an umbrella term is. It's been challenging to modern neuroscience
Speaker 2: to really define this, to understand it, and that challenge
Speaker 2: remains in the modern day, to be clear. But there
Speaker 2: are other potential diagnoses that can be related to auditory
Speaker 2: verbal hallucinations or this specific genre of peracusia, depression, disassociative
Speaker 2: identity disorder, generalized anxiety PTSD, obsessive compulsive substance induced psychoses.
Speaker 2: A lot of times people will experience non consensual hallucinations,
Speaker 2: meaning purpose they did not purposely seek these out. A
Speaker 2: lot of that information comes from a number of self
Speaker 2: reported polls found one from twenty fifteen that notes this.
Speaker 2: And to your earlier point, Noel, there are other possible
Speaker 2: causes that are purely hardware causes, things like tumors in
Speaker 2: the right or wrong part of the brain, dementia, epilepsy,
Speaker 2: and so on. But there is a pickle in this porridge.
Speaker 2: A great many people, it turns out, who experience what
Speaker 2: we would call auditory hallucinations, have no discernible mental illness,
Speaker 2: have no diagnoses regarding that they are simply otherwise normal
Speaker 2: individuals who seem to at are regular intervals hear voices
Speaker 2: they cannot scientifically explain. And these are not always bad
Speaker 2: voices at all, right, They're not all created equally. Over
Speaker 2: the years on this show, we've mentioned many people, normal
Speaker 2: people as well as world leaders, who felt that they
Speaker 2: occasionally heard a voice that guided them towards some better outcome.
Speaker 2: Winston Churchill always comes to mind to this.
Speaker 4: Mh or Joan of arc is another good example, or
Speaker 4: I think even Mahama Gandhi is said to have heard voices.
Speaker 4: And oftentimes some of these folks are, you know, like
Speaker 4: especially with Churchill and Gandhi credited as being great orators,
Speaker 4: you know, or a scene as being you know, really
Speaker 4: high level thinkers as opposed to being cast off as
Speaker 4: you know, the mentally ill.
Speaker 3: But there's also just one other thing to add to
Speaker 3: the list.
Speaker 5: There have been we're talking about a hardware issue because
Speaker 5: they're I think hearing loss. Antonitis can also be associated
Speaker 5: with greakpoint like almost like the hardware picking up some
Speaker 5: kind of signal right, or or maybe even it's not
Speaker 5: something with an actual origin point, you know, physically in
Speaker 5: the environment, but because of the way the hardware is
Speaker 5: like attempting to pick up signal almost it like creates
Speaker 5: music in somebody's head or even vocalizations, which is really
Speaker 5: fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: It's confusing to me too, because as someone who has
Speaker 2: lucid dreams when on the few occasions I do sleep,
Speaker 2: I am one of those people who walks out with
Speaker 2: like a fully formed idea and says, oh, crap, that's
Speaker 2: not that's not a thing yet, and have to frantically
Speaker 2: search to make sure my brain was not just being
Speaker 2: super unoriginal. But yeah, I have auditory hallucinations.
Speaker 4: And I think to your point, Matt about tonights and
Speaker 4: things of that nature, I think that's a really interesting
Speaker 4: point because I have a really dear friend who does
Speaker 4: experienced to nitis and is a huge fan of music,
Speaker 4: which should be a real bummer, right. You know, you
Speaker 4: basically have this high frequency that never goes away, but
Speaker 4: this person has essentially trained themselves to tune it out,
Speaker 4: which is something that people who experience these type of
Speaker 4: auditory hallucinations also have to do to varying degrees. And
Speaker 4: we'll get more into the specifics around that a little later.
Speaker 4: But you know, maybe there's some of them you don't
Speaker 4: want to tune out because they're helpful, but the real
Speaker 4: bad ones you got to figure out a way to separate.
Speaker 4: You know. Okay, some of them may tell you to
Speaker 4: do bad things and you have to essentially contend with
Speaker 4: that and decide which ones to listen to and which
Speaker 4: ones not to.
Speaker 5: Well, the reason why, sorry, guys, So, the reason why
Speaker 5: I bring it up is because in that case with tonitis,
Speaker 5: there is stimulus, but it's self generated, right, And there's
Speaker 5: and when we're defining what this is, you know, you
Speaker 5: one perceives a sound within an environment where that sound
Speaker 5: there is no stimulus for that sound, right, But as
Speaker 5: we're going to find and as we dig deeper into this,
Speaker 5: often there is sound being generated. It's just not sound
Speaker 5: that anybody else in the environment can hear, and it
Speaker 5: is self created.
Speaker 2: Very weird, And we should note, folks that if you
Speaker 2: are hearing this and you have struggled with or encountered
Speaker 2: things like this, we're not here to dismiss nor to disprove.
Speaker 2: What we do want to note is that these things
Speaker 2: which science describes as hallucinations, if you are a person
Speaker 2: that is considered to hear voices, then that means those
Speaker 2: hallucinations are not one offs. What they are instead is
Speaker 2: a recurrent, if not ongoing experience. It happens more than
Speaker 2: once if you are hearing voices. History is riddled with
Speaker 2: people who have been affected by these we'll get to
Speaker 2: the Joan of arcs later in tonight's show, and in
Speaker 2: some cases, of course, purposely seeking them out. There's a
Speaker 2: huge cultural context too, how do you understand the world
Speaker 2: around you or the world inside you in the evenings
Speaker 2: of your People who heard voices were treated very differently
Speaker 2: depending on their cultural context. For example, if you're a
Speaker 2: person like let's say, what's a famous example, there's a
Speaker 2: sailor back in the past who who just all of
Speaker 2: a sudden hears a voice and knows that they must
Speaker 2: return to shore to convey great news from the gods.
Speaker 2: If you heard something just once, you may interpret it
Speaker 2: as a side from something supernatural, heavenly or demonic forces.
Speaker 2: You make a prediction, and then other people, like the
Speaker 2: oracles of old, they would purposely attempt to trigger a
Speaker 2: hallucinatory state by doing things like inhaling vapors. You know,
Speaker 2: they would Basically, I'm not trying to be, you know,
Speaker 2: dismissive of their experience, but the current guests from history
Speaker 2: is that they would they would huff stuff. They would
Speaker 2: huff stuff and that would make them see and hear things,
Speaker 2: and that worked out for them, and they were lauded,
Speaker 2: they were sought after. Their advice was important. They had
Speaker 2: values sociologically. But if you experience this in the wrong
Speaker 2: cultural context, you're vilified, you're shunned, your outright executed for
Speaker 2: trafficking and dark magic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's similar to certain like sweat lodge rituals in
Speaker 4: Native American cultures, where you know, hyahuasca or certain psychedelic
Speaker 4: substances are inhaled or consumed under the supervision of some
Speaker 4: sort of leader, you know, someone occupying like sort of
Speaker 4: a guide role, and that's done intentionally to experience hallucinations
Speaker 4: that take you somewhere and teach you something.
Speaker 2: And for thousands of years this was the case. Your
Speaker 2: mileage would vary depending upon the culture in which you lived,
Speaker 2: and as a result, we will never know how many
Speaker 2: people died over the thousands of years as a result
Speaker 2: of these cultural contexts. I mean the idea that hallucinations
Speaker 2: visual or auditory or you know, kinesthetic, the idea that
Speaker 2: they might have some hardwire, hardware physiological cause it didn't
Speaker 2: really occur to humanity until way late in the game.
Speaker 2: We're talking like the Enlightenment in Western Europe in the
Speaker 2: late seventeen hundreds. Finally some people started saying, maybe we
Speaker 2: treat these experiences as symptoms of diseases or neurological conditions.
Speaker 2: And although that is good, now there's an important step
Speaker 2: for humanity. These treatments were very bad. They were terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, trepanation, drilling holes in the skull to release demonic forces.
Speaker 4: That would be probably the most quack kind of version.
Speaker 4: But then you get into things that are more supported
Speaker 4: by quote unquote science, like lobotomy is where literal pieces
Speaker 4: of the brain are removed of very blunt instrument kind
Speaker 4: of operation that's left many folks absolutely unable to cope
Speaker 4: with life.
Speaker 2: Asylums were prisons.
Speaker 5: Yeah, prisons where there's human experimentation going on. Not that
Speaker 5: there isn't that going on at prisons, regular old prisons.
Speaker 2: Right, good point, Matt.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, you know, imagine you are the equivalent of a
Speaker 2: doctor in the late seventeen hundreds, and you say, this
Speaker 2: person's obviously distressed. Let's always throw them in cold water,
Speaker 2: and let's not feed them for a week. Surely i'll
Speaker 2: get them in a good s Oh my good idea.
Speaker 5: There are a couple of live wires that I noticed
Speaker 5: last time we were in room seven B. Why don't
Speaker 5: we take some of those live wires, attach them to
Speaker 5: their skull on both sides and see what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, give them this spoon to bite down on. It'll
Speaker 4: be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, just for science. Also branding the skull
Speaker 2: with a hot iron, which I don't understand. But there's
Speaker 2: the other question here. Is it always a bad thing
Speaker 2: to hear voices? Right? Without integrating anybody's personal experience, there's
Speaker 2: a tricky question.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: In many cases you could say this is one's own
Speaker 2: brain conspiring against you. But more and more often people
Speaker 2: are asking, is hearing voices always a bad thing? We'll
Speaker 2: tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
Speaker 2: it gets crazy. Actually, no, not always a bad thing,
Speaker 2: And that is according to people who actively encounter auditory
Speaker 2: verbal hallucinations on a regular or even daily basis.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a pretty cute little animated character by
Speaker 4: the name of Jimminy Cricket from a Pinocchio who sings
Speaker 4: always let your conscience be your guide. And I would
Speaker 4: argue that that's what Jimmy Cricket represents is Pinocchio's conscience,
Speaker 4: you know, telling him when to not do the bad
Speaker 4: things and what good things are. And it's you know,
Speaker 4: our conscience is a little voice inside of us that
Speaker 4: tells us the difference between right and wrong.
Speaker 2: Unless we be quick to judge on the idea of oh,
Speaker 2: these folks are unbalanced there something like that. Before you
Speaker 2: paint with a broad brush, folks, let's remember there is
Speaker 2: a very high likelihood that you yourself experience a kind
Speaker 2: of hallucination at all times, your own internal monologue. For
Speaker 2: the vast majority of folks, this internal monologue is recognized
Speaker 2: as an internal voice. This is me doing like a
Speaker 2: wonder years thing to myself, they say, instead of some
Speaker 2: external voice. And that's where I want to shout out.
Speaker 2: This excellent conversation we had years back with our pal
Speaker 2: Joe McCormick of stuff to blow your mind on the
Speaker 2: bi camera mind theory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, excellent episode. Definitely listen to that. Is it a
Speaker 5: two parter?
Speaker 4: I think it is, Yeah, not one hundred percent, sure,
Speaker 4: it feels like it was really good stuff.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, So okay, so we're going to get into
Speaker 5: some of this, guys. But in that episode, one of
Speaker 5: the things that is discussed, in one of the ways
Speaker 5: that the by camera mind has been explored over the years,
Speaker 5: is to question the possibility is it is there any
Speaker 5: way possible that there is some kind of outside force, right,
Speaker 5: or is it the brain itself, the two hemispheres of
Speaker 5: the brain communicating with each other in some way that
Speaker 5: we can't consciously perceive, or is it possible that well
Speaker 5: this is so weird, but is it possible that sometime
Speaker 5: in the past, is there interference in some way, either
Speaker 5: divine or you know, physical of what metaphysical, I don't
Speaker 5: know what you call it, Sure, some kind of thing
Speaker 5: that is either causing the hardware to function, the ears,
Speaker 5: or you know, the voice, or the brain itself.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think in those days it was maybe
Speaker 4: people just didn't know people did know what to call it,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, like that internal monologue or that conscience,
Speaker 4: that little voice, you know, telling you what to do
Speaker 4: again to the good. Often people would assume that it
Speaker 4: was some external force because they didn't understand this metacognition,
Speaker 4: which I think is what it all boils down to.
Speaker 4: You're thinking about thinking, so you're kind of having these
Speaker 4: little conversations with yourself in your mind. But it's I
Speaker 4: would argue, I think, and probably scientists would argue for
Speaker 4: the most part, that it's all you. But it's just
Speaker 4: different parts of you kind of trying to weigh, you know,
Speaker 4: what you should or should not do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the call is coming from inside the house. By
Speaker 2: Cameral mind theory comes from Julian Janes and Julian. The
Speaker 2: reason it's called by Cameron is because this theory argues
Speaker 2: that without it argues that the human species until about
Speaker 2: three thousand years ago, almost said three grand years ago,
Speaker 2: until about three thousand years ago, your average factory human
Speaker 2: being did not have self awareness, did not have introspection,
Speaker 2: and they were hearing messages from one hemisphere of the
Speaker 2: brain transmitting to another. So instead of your internal monologue saying,
Speaker 2: oh that that cliff is coming up, I should stop running,
Speaker 2: you would feel as though there were some ghostly force
Speaker 2: saying there's a cliff stop.
Speaker 3: And that's theoretically right. It's because it is right.
Speaker 2: Very much so. And and a lot of Janes, uh.
Speaker 2: We talk about this in the in the conversation it's
Speaker 2: a wild ride, but a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: Jane supporting evidence comes from ancient literature and myth, So
Speaker 2: that can be sticky for people because it's always going
Speaker 2: to be explored through a modern context anyway. Point is,
Speaker 2: if you believe Jane's then the idea is that your
Speaker 2: internal monologue does not exist. There every the voice you
Speaker 2: hear in your head is a god in the heavens,
Speaker 2: a demon in the depths, maybe a dead ancestor. And
Speaker 2: what what I find fascinating about this is that there
Speaker 2: is a not insignificant amount of human beings today who
Speaker 2: say that they have no internal monologue. They don't hear
Speaker 2: their voice thinking. And that's that's a very difficult thing,
Speaker 2: I believe for a lot of people to rock.
Speaker 4: I think it's difficult to quantify though, right because like
Speaker 4: we you know, we understand what sound sounds like, and
Speaker 4: I think when I'm thinking about words or I'm thinking
Speaker 4: about sounds, I'm not hearing it exactly. It's sort of
Speaker 4: a vague approximation. It's like remembering what things sound like
Speaker 4: instead of actually hearing a sound, right, hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's difficult because then it would it would
Speaker 2: be like asking people who cannot mentally visualize things to
Speaker 2: draw a picture of their experience. You know, it's to color,
Speaker 2: you know, like, yeah, just so, and so there's this
Speaker 2: weird bag of badgers. The science is all over the
Speaker 2: place right now. The prevalence of auditory hallucinations and the
Speaker 2: general human population is thought to range somewhere from five
Speaker 2: to twenty eight percent. That's a hell of a march.
Speaker 4: That's a range. Yeah, And I think I heard something
Speaker 4: in some of the research that I was doing on
Speaker 4: the side here that I think only around two percent
Speaker 4: of people like get treatment for it. Sure it was
Speaker 4: something even lower than this, because again, this is a range,
Speaker 4: it's like a spectrum. Right, So maybe that twenty eight
Speaker 4: percent would be more of a traditional internal monologue, right,
Speaker 4: and then like the smaller numbers would be genuine auditory
Speaker 4: hallucinations where people are hearing conflicting voices that they're having
Speaker 4: to contend with.
Speaker 2: It's difficult because to measure this. We'll get into it.
Speaker 2: But it comes from what we're seeing as one symptom
Speaker 2: or occurrence. I don't even want to call it a
Speaker 2: symptom that can come from or originate from a wide
Speaker 2: variety of situations. We know that there's a stigma associated
Speaker 2: with this, a stigma that some of our fellow conspiracy
Speaker 2: realists this evening may have encountered firsthand. And it's simply this.
Speaker 2: The reports of auditory verbal hallucinations are most prevalent in
Speaker 2: patients diagnosed with some sort of psychosis. However, it is
Speaker 2: by no means limited to people with those conditions. The
Speaker 2: science continues, I mean, thankfully this objective study of it
Speaker 2: became more accepted in the modern world. In the late
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and nineties, there was a crazy thing that happened.
Speaker 2: Reality television actually helped a little.
Speaker 4: Bit with this.
Speaker 2: There were these Dutch researchers in the nineteen nineties that
Speaker 2: ran Approach on Dutch TV. It was probably the most
Speaker 2: exciting thing that ran on TV that year, because if
Speaker 2: you've ever seen Dutch television outside the news, it's not great.
Speaker 2: So beside, this ran a program on TV and they said, look,
Speaker 2: if you have heard voices, we're watching this program. If
Speaker 2: you've heard voices. Contact us, call us, tell us what
Speaker 2: your experience is like. And a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who contacted them said, you know, yeah, I hear voices,
Speaker 2: but they're not disruptive and your point, Noel, They said,
Speaker 2: I never felt a need to consult medical or mental
Speaker 2: health services. Again, a small but vocal group proportion of
Speaker 2: the group said, wi fi, these experiences to be positive,
Speaker 2: to be inspirational, they add value and quality to my life.
Speaker 2: This is not what the researchers were expecting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, you would almost always expect to a negative thing.
Speaker 5: And maybe that it's because of the way hearing voices
Speaker 5: is portrayed often in popular media and the way it's
Speaker 5: spoken about so closely associated with mental illness, probably for
Speaker 5: a lot of people going through medical school. So there's
Speaker 5: a stigma to it that goes far beyond popular media.
Speaker 5: It's within the textbooks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people are still there's sort of rowing against
Speaker 2: the tide here because fiction is always the court of
Speaker 2: public opinion, right, so there's no shortage already in the
Speaker 2: nineties of copaganda basically saying if you hear a voice,
Speaker 2: you are crazy. That voice is telling you to do
Speaker 2: bad things, but that doesn't seem to be the case
Speaker 2: for a lot of humans. So let's go to a
Speaker 2: psychologist at the University of Manchester, Eilsh Campbell. They were
Speaker 2: very interested in this study, this Dutch TV study, and
Speaker 2: so she and her colleagues said, all right, why does
Speaker 2: the experience of hearing voices, why does it vary? It's
Speaker 2: sort of like Senastasia. You know, No, two versions of
Speaker 2: Senastasia are really alike. And although there is a genetic component,
Speaker 2: writers like Nabokov were very upset when they learned that
Speaker 2: their children had senesasia, but at completely different associations with
Speaker 2: letters and colors and stuff. And so Campbell says, Okay,
Speaker 2: you might have a childhood trauma. You might have, for
Speaker 2: one reason or another, some kind of PTSD, some inherent
Speaker 2: suspicion about other people being untrustworthy or dangerous. You might
Speaker 2: have insecurities or vulnerabilities that cause you to interpret voices
Speaker 2: you hear however they arrive. You may interpret those as
Speaker 2: negative things. But if you have a positive outlook, if
Speaker 2: you have an overall positive life experience, then the voices
Speaker 2: you hear may be a lot more like at a boy,
Speaker 2: great work, nice one, Carol malmacchiato.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you reward yourself, right, give.
Speaker 4: Me a pat on the back. We should give ourselves
Speaker 4: a pat on the back. And we were talking about
Speaker 4: that kind of early at the top of the episode,
Speaker 4: the idea of there being competing voices, some good, perhaps
Speaker 4: some bad, some neutral. You know. I've even heard people
Speaker 4: in you know who are part of this community, which
Speaker 4: you're going to get to. It really is becoming more
Speaker 4: of a community, talking about how when they meet somebody new,
Speaker 4: that person could then become a voice in their head,
Speaker 4: like if they're being interviewed, for example, they might be
Speaker 4: hearing a version of that person's voice in their head
Speaker 4: kind of giving them a hard time or saying that
Speaker 4: your answers are stupid, you're doing a bad job at
Speaker 4: this interview. It was actually specifically in a piece that
Speaker 4: I saw from NBC News hearing voices other can't how
Speaker 4: a growing movement fights mental health, and one of the
Speaker 4: Genie Bass, who is the kind of main subject of
Speaker 4: the piece, literally said to the person interviewing her, I'm
Speaker 4: hearing your voice now in my head as I'm watching
Speaker 4: you talk to me. And the person asked, how do
Speaker 4: you differentiate between my voice and the version of me
Speaker 4: that's in your head. And Genie said, I'm watching your
Speaker 4: mouth move so that I know when your mouth's not moving,
Speaker 4: that's the version in my head. And then the person
Speaker 4: interviewer also asked how long that my voice might stick around.
Speaker 4: She said it might be forever, or it might just
Speaker 4: be Typically, it's like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Right, with a fade off, a window of time. And
Speaker 2: the point is this idea of positive versus negative experiences,
Speaker 2: and we're using that in the non scientific means. We're
Speaker 2: saying feeling good versus feeling bad. It strikes me as
Speaker 2: being similar to ingesting hallucinogens. Seen and setting may play
Speaker 2: a role. So let's say you have a pre existing
Speaker 2: set of religious beliefs, you may find that the voice
Speaker 2: visiting you, like the voices Joan of Arc allegedly heard,
Speaker 2: are helpful rather than a hindrance. The voices in your
Speaker 2: head are in short, not created equally. And this is
Speaker 2: something that was very interesting to a Stanford University anthropologist
Speaker 2: named Tanya Lherman, and doctor Lhrman has done some amazing work.
Speaker 2: What she found was the culture plays such a key.
Speaker 2: You can see her, you can hear her rather in MPR.
Speaker 2: You can read about her in Atlantic. You can read
Speaker 2: her studies online. She went around the world and found
Speaker 2: people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia in three very different cultures,
Speaker 2: the United States, the capital of Ghana, and part of India.
Speaker 2: And she had these She had some pretty salient observations
Speaker 2: that I think are worth highlighting tonight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can probably kind of figure where this is going,
Speaker 4: but I mean, you summed it up beautifully already. Been
Speaker 4: just the idea that your cultural background and the way
Speaker 4: you view certain forces, external forces, like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 4: the idea that back in the day folks might have
Speaker 4: thought it was always the voice of a god. While
Speaker 4: the question is which god and what do they represent?
Speaker 4: And what lens cultural lens are you filtering these voices
Speaker 4: that you're hearing through? And Leerman I had this to say.
Speaker 4: The Americans I spoke to felt assaulted by horrible voices
Speaker 4: that told them they were worthless and they should die.
Speaker 4: Those voices were full of violence. And Ghana, the Africans
Speaker 4: heard an audible God who told them not to ignore
Speaker 4: those evil voices. And in Chennai, which is the part
Speaker 4: of India you've mentioned, Ben people heard annoying relatives who
Speaker 4: told them to douce chores and clean up.
Speaker 2: To me, that last part is so weirdly wholesome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is like, don't think just because I've passed on
Speaker 2: to the afterlife that you get out of laundry, you know.
Speaker 2: And she continues and points to this idea of individualism
Speaker 2: versus collectivism in society. She says, so, I think Americans
Speaker 2: think of their minds as a private fortress, and they
Speaker 2: have this model that when you hear an audible voice,
Speaker 2: it means your mind, your sanctum senatorum. Is it sanctum sanatorum,
Speaker 2: doctor Strange, I don't know that one well enough to
Speaker 2: know well well, your sacred space, your mind is somehow
Speaker 2: being broken or invaded. And then Lherman says, I think
Speaker 2: they're different social invitations in Chennai and in Akra, capital
Speaker 2: of Ghana where this occurs. Says, I think there's much
Speaker 2: more of an invitation to think about things supernatural, to
Speaker 2: think about the religious world. To interpret these experiences as
Speaker 2: the voice of a spirit.
Speaker 3: Or you're annoying relatives or yes.
Speaker 2: Who are now spirits and are still so mad about
Speaker 2: the laundry.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, we talked a little bit about Joan
Speaker 4: of Arc and a lot of the folks that I
Speaker 4: think we've we've been reading about, you know, who are
Speaker 4: talking about their experiences with these types of auditory hallucinations.
Speaker 4: There's often a voice telling people they are some sort
Speaker 4: of messenger from God. That's a commonly reported thing, like
Speaker 4: really common, and probably more common in folks who are
Speaker 4: devoutly religious or have had some religious upbringing. To again,
Speaker 4: interpret it through that lens. Obviously, Joan of Arc went
Speaker 4: all in on that interpretation. The person I was referencing
Speaker 4: from the NBC piece mentioned something similar and said that
Speaker 4: for a time she thought she was the living embodiment
Speaker 4: of Mary Magdalene, but then came to realize that, you know,
Speaker 4: think about it differently, but still appreciated it and felt
Speaker 4: spiritually connected to Mary Magdalen. There's a really disturbing but
Speaker 4: excellent a twenty four horror film called Saint Maud about
Speaker 4: a young woman who has these types of voices, and
Speaker 4: the whole play of the film is is it real
Speaker 4: or is it in her head? And what ultimately comes
Speaker 4: down to is it doesn't really matter. It's real to them,
Speaker 4: and it's all about how you behave with that information.
Speaker 2: It's lived experience.
Speaker 5: Do you guys remember speaking with David Ike and just
Speaker 5: how he seems to be fully convinced that he had
Speaker 5: that exact experience where he was given a message and
Speaker 5: a goal and all this other stuff from like directly
Speaker 5: from a higher power, and then changed his entire life
Speaker 5: and went on that path. I thought that was really
Speaker 5: interesting to hear that, you know, hear someone explaining it
Speaker 5: to you directly, like this is what happened to me.
Speaker 2: Agreed, Yeah, it's funny because this is probably a conversation
Speaker 2: for off air right now. But as a teaser we
Speaker 2: are going to explore in an upcoming episode coming to
Speaker 2: an evening near you, we are going to explore the
Speaker 2: idea of divine intervention. And as you guys know, Matt
Speaker 2: nol way back in the day, my biological father was
Speaker 2: convinced he had discovered his own religion, and it came
Speaker 2: about with the idea of these of these visions, of
Speaker 2: these you know, these divine interventions, these statements from supernatural,
Speaker 2: scientifically unprovable powers, and it all hinges on a very
Speaker 2: very and be diplomatic interesting Now, it's not one of
Speaker 2: those interesting interpretation of the mechanics of reincarnation. And it's
Speaker 2: a cool ride. It's a cool ride. But in this case,
Speaker 2: with this cultural context, what Luhrmann found is that it
Speaker 2: seems societies that are a little more openly collectivist, a
Speaker 2: little more get by with a little help from your friends.
Speaker 2: The folks in those places, even when diagnosed with schizophrenia,
Speaker 2: they have a higher rate when it comes to encountering
Speaker 2: voices in their heads that do not aggressive, frightening, or evil.
Speaker 2: And I think that's such a profound statement.
Speaker 4: I do jap into something they feel right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: collective unconscious of some kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know the the other ideas about delusions
Speaker 2: of grandeur and megalomania, those are real. But let's let's
Speaker 2: leave them for a moment, because I think we need
Speaker 2: to get to a lot of caveats. Do you guys
Speaker 2: want to take a break or do you want to
Speaker 2: Shall we power through?
Speaker 4: I just wanted to add one little thing, if I might,
Speaker 4: just we're talking about some examples of these things in
Speaker 4: your birth father's example and Joan of Arc and all
Speaker 4: of that. Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer, has
Speaker 4: a whole book. It's called Vallis where it's sort of
Speaker 4: like autobiographical to a degree, and he believes fully that
Speaker 4: he received divine information that was shot into his brain
Speaker 4: by a pink space laser that imbued him with the
Speaker 4: knowledge that his son had some sort of test cancer. Uh,
Speaker 4: and he felt as though he was given that information
Speaker 4: and then did something about it. And also I think
Speaker 4: there's one part of a story where he says it
Speaker 4: taught him how to speak Greek and things like that.
Speaker 4: So I mean there are actionable examples of people getting
Speaker 4: this stuff and feeling much more like wow, maybe that
Speaker 4: was an external force. I just think it's all very fascinating.
Speaker 2: And we are going to encounter some caveats some current
Speaker 2: science about these cognitive conspiracies. Yes, I'm paid by the
Speaker 2: alliteration on that one. We'll be back after a co
Speaker 2: sign from our co conspiracy kidding there, it's an outbreak.
Speaker 2: We have returned. Caveat, caveat, caveat. While cultural context is key,
Speaker 2: while it is important science, we cannot forget the hard,
Speaker 2: continuing science of neurology as well. You know, we talked
Speaker 2: about this before. In recent years, there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of interest in determining something you alluded to earlier, Matt,
Speaker 2: whether people with schizophrenia in particular are experiencing subvocal speech
Speaker 2: in short, and this happens in sci fi all the time.
Speaker 2: In short, when we're hearing these voices, are our speech
Speaker 2: muscles engaging in normally imperceptible ways.
Speaker 4: When you say speech muscles, do you mean literally the
Speaker 4: muscles that we use to move our mouths to form sounds,
Speaker 4: or we're talking about more brain patterns and things that
Speaker 4: are engaging in language centers of the brain firing.
Speaker 5: Basically, the question is what is there a physical thing
Speaker 5: that is occurring in the body, whether it's your larynx,
Speaker 5: your vocal cords, or just signals right right, yeah, even
Speaker 5: your the tiny bones within your ears, Like, is there
Speaker 5: vibration occurring in there so that you're because that's how
Speaker 5: you hear everything, right, Is there something going on in there?
Speaker 4: It's really interesting. I'm sure that we've got an answer.
Speaker 4: I would just back to my point earlier about at
Speaker 4: least my experience. I don't feel like I hear sound
Speaker 4: when I think about it. It's like a memory. It's
Speaker 4: more of an approximation. It's not like I'm actually can
Speaker 4: play a symphony in my mind with every multi polyphonic
Speaker 4: sound fidelity. Maybe there are some people that can, but
Speaker 4: to me it just feels experientially different than actually hearing something.
Speaker 3: Well, somebody did this, Ben.
Speaker 5: You found a study from Lewis Gould, and this is
Speaker 5: the most fascinating thing I think that I read for
Speaker 5: this episode.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 5: This study on what you just mentioned, their subvocal speech,
Speaker 5: the possibility or the hypothesis that perhaps there's actual movement
Speaker 5: within those vocal chords, air being pushed through even when
Speaker 5: the person the subject doesn't believe they're pushing air through
Speaker 5: and making sounds, but it could actually be happening.
Speaker 3: Just tell us about this is crazy.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Second word of the evening electro myography electromigraphy EMG as
Speaker 2: the street name, and it's exactly as you described that
Speaker 2: the muscles around the trachea you're you know, your neck
Speaker 2: junk is moving when you are thinking. So Gould gathers
Speaker 2: a group of people diagnosed with schizophrenium and a group
Speaker 2: of patients who do not have a schizophrenia diagnosis, records
Speaker 2: their muscle, their vocal muscle activity low and behold when
Speaker 2: he looks at the EMG recordings of schizophrenic patients as
Speaker 2: the experience hallucination as they hear voices, and we'll learn
Speaker 2: hallucination is kind of a sticky term to some people.
Speaker 2: He found that when these patients were hearing voices, their
Speaker 2: EMG recordings showed their vocal muscles were activating. This means
Speaker 2: that when people again diagnosed with schizoph are hearing voices
Speaker 2: in their heads, their vocal muscles are contracting, they're engaging
Speaker 2: in subvocal speech, even if they are not aware of it.
Speaker 2: It's very important scientific clue. But also if you're in
Speaker 2: a cultural context that says there may be possession, then
Speaker 2: this means you're just possessed.
Speaker 4: Well, and just just to clarify too, like they're not
Speaker 4: they're not opening their mouths. This stuff is happening without
Speaker 4: them opening their mouths and actually make It's almost like
Speaker 4: it sounds to me like throwing your voice inside your
Speaker 4: own head.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it. Yeah, but like
Speaker 2: on a micro scale, yeah, assassinating.
Speaker 4: So these are like really subtle movements, right, These are
Speaker 4: very It's just it's almost like the intimation of those
Speaker 4: muscles wanting to do their thing because the brain thinks
Speaker 4: it's actually speaking.
Speaker 5: Well, Wow, According to the Slate article that you linked
Speaker 5: to Ben titled when people with schizophrenia her voices, They're
Speaker 5: really hearing their own subvocal speech. It's from March second,
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. In there, they actually went further and not
Speaker 5: just tested, you know, whether or not those muscles were moving.
Speaker 5: They placed a microphone up to the place where the
Speaker 5: spot where Adam's apple is if you've got one, or
Speaker 5: just you know, right behind that area of your throat,
Speaker 5: and they were able to actually pick up whispers essentially,
Speaker 5: like the tiniest, like I was saying, air moving through
Speaker 5: those vocal cords. When they enhanced it enough to where
Speaker 5: the person experiencing hallucinations was making audible sound, just nobody
Speaker 5: else could hear it, and it was almost like minor
Speaker 5: vibrations in their own head.
Speaker 2: It's literally a subtle flex. Is it not.
Speaker 4: Really fascinating?
Speaker 3: It takes you again.
Speaker 5: This is where you made a kind of aside there
Speaker 5: about what was it been someone? Is it something else
Speaker 5: possessing the vocal cords? Is it the person doing it?
Speaker 5: Because you know, in the patients who were going who
Speaker 5: were being tested for these things, the patients hear that
Speaker 5: their own vocal cords moving in a way that they
Speaker 5: believe it is something else, someone else speaking to them, right,
Speaker 5: But it is in fact physically them making informing those things.
Speaker 5: The weird question is and that if you want to
Speaker 5: take it further and get even more metaphysical, it's is
Speaker 5: it something speaking through the vocal records, like when we
Speaker 5: think about culture geyst or different types of ghosts being
Speaker 5: able to inhabit with energy other things?
Speaker 3: Right, I don't.
Speaker 2: I just watched Talk to Me I'm all about That
Speaker 2: was so good.
Speaker 4: It was so good. I really loved it. Yeah, yeah, Well, these.
Speaker 2: Are things that are going to come up in our
Speaker 2: Divine Intervention episode as well. In the meantime, please check
Speaker 2: out our episodes on possession and the cultural context in
Speaker 2: which that perhaps supernatural conspiracy occurs. There's there's something else
Speaker 2: too that I think is important to remember. This is
Speaker 2: not at all when when scientists are looking at this,
Speaker 2: they're not at all trying to devalue nor dismiss the
Speaker 2: lived experience of other people. And if you want to
Speaker 2: play along at home, fellow conspiracy realist, if you want
Speaker 2: to practice subvocalization, then all you have to do I
Speaker 2: think three syllables will fix it. All you have to
Speaker 2: do is take a three to four syllable word, like
Speaker 2: let's say, uh, bonder room. So think of the word
Speaker 2: bonder room and don't open your mouth, don't exhale breath.
Speaker 2: But flex is though you're saying it aloud to yourself
Speaker 2: without engaging you know, your wind bag, parts of your body.
Speaker 2: And then that that flex you feel in your throat.
Speaker 2: That's what's being measured in subvocalization, just on a much
Speaker 2: smaller level. The science is there, But wouldn't it like, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, I think I would. I'm understanding this like that
Speaker 4: it is the brain sort of really treating this, believing
Speaker 4: that this is a physical process. But it's not like
Speaker 4: it's an enough movement for it to create the kind
Speaker 4: of sound you might if you're doing a voice in
Speaker 4: your head without opening your mouth or like mmmm humming
Speaker 4: or something like. It wouldn't be enough to register vibrationally,
Speaker 4: Like I understand that there's a parallel here, and then
Speaker 4: it sort of represents the fact that these things are
Speaker 4: thought of no pun intended, or I guess not really
Speaker 4: a pun, but by the brain as real speech. But
Speaker 4: you're not hearing sound, you're not doing impressions in your
Speaker 4: head with your voice. It's just sort of like there's
Speaker 4: a parallel there, there's a connection.
Speaker 2: I would say, without waxing too philosophic, I guess my
Speaker 2: response would be that we talk a lot about culture
Speaker 2: as a result of other human interaction, but we have
Speaker 2: to realize that every individual human mind, any higher order mind,
Speaker 2: honestly is a culture all its own. So you may not,
Speaker 2: you know, your your brain is a lot like a
Speaker 2: big house or a space shuttle. You live in a
Speaker 2: very small part of it, the you that you think
Speaker 2: of as you, and you don't know what happens in
Speaker 2: the other stairwells, in the other rooms. So not to
Speaker 2: say that everyone's a haunted house, but everyone's a haunted house.
Speaker 2: And there's this thing. We got to get to, this
Speaker 2: full disclosure at bias here. This personally means a lot
Speaker 2: to me, and it's quite controversial. You alluded to it
Speaker 2: a bit earlier. Right now, in the meantime, while the
Speaker 2: science is ongoing, while it is important to figure out
Speaker 2: these possible internal conspiracies, there are organizations that are seeking to,
Speaker 2: if not normalize, humanize this experience. I think they're doing
Speaker 2: very important work by far the most prominent is the
Speaker 2: Hearing Voices Movement HVM, which started in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and the organizations affiliated with this, the event individuals a
Speaker 2: film with this, are saying, let's find a more holistic,
Speaker 2: alternative way of understand the experience of people who hear voices.
Speaker 2: We don't want to call them hallucinations, and we definitely
Speaker 2: don't want to paint with a broad brush and call
Speaker 2: all of these people crazy, because they're normal people. You know,
Speaker 2: why don't we treat this experience if you're not hurting anyone,
Speaker 2: Why don't we treat this experience as maybe having tonight
Speaker 2: to Matt's point, or having freckles, you know, like, why
Speaker 2: do we have to other people who? In fact, what's
Speaker 2: quite inspiring, I would argue is that the HVM folks,
Speaker 2: the Hearing Voices movement, they see this holistic approach as
Speaker 2: a matter of human rights, and they say, you can
Speaker 2: live a full, healthy life with quote unquote voices in
Speaker 2: your head, and you shouldn't be treated as unusual, nor dangerous,
Speaker 2: nor someone who is you know, off their rocker or
Speaker 2: out there squash about it, out there squash, I love
Speaker 2: American English. We just made that up, but I think
Speaker 2: it works.
Speaker 4: I love it. But I think you came across this
Speaker 4: one as well. But there's a really good ted X
Speaker 4: talk out of Australia Hearing Voices, An Insider's Guide to
Speaker 4: auditory Hallucinations from a woman named Deborah Lampshire who has
Speaker 4: lived most of her adult life with these these voices.
Speaker 4: And really, I mean it's not she doesn't go into
Speaker 4: the science. That's not what it's about. It's an experiential
Speaker 4: discussion about how it has affected her life and it's
Speaker 4: really fascinating. It's only like I think it's like ten, ten,
Speaker 4: twelve minutes something like that, but it's absolutely worth it
Speaker 4: if you want to hear someone's perspective. She talks about
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff, the other inqualities of it,
Speaker 4: the you know, being able to live a full life,
Speaker 4: makes a lot of references to great people figures throughout history.
Speaker 4: But one thing that she said that I thought was
Speaker 4: interesting in terms of the negative voices, she ended the
Speaker 4: talk by using this term or describing herself as having
Speaker 4: a mutinous mind, which I thought was really just kind
Speaker 4: of poetic and really just hit the nail on the
Speaker 4: head for the negative self talk. Kind of versions of
Speaker 4: these voices. But we also know people that have depression
Speaker 4: experience cyclical negative self talk that maybe doesn't quite push
Speaker 4: into the realm of hearing voices per se. So there
Speaker 4: is a connection and a continuity with all of these things,
Speaker 4: Ben that you listed at the top of the show,
Speaker 4: these kind of conditions that are now starting to be
Speaker 4: treated with more nuance. But back in the day, we're
Speaker 4: maybe painted with a much broader brush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can starve people into being happy, or you know,
Speaker 2: just stick a stick an ice pick through their eye. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you've come a long white humanity, right, go team the
Speaker 2: thing about the Hearing Voices movement, and you're absolutely right, Noel.
Speaker 2: That is a great TED talk. You can see another
Speaker 2: TET talk by Eleanor Langen. I want to say in general,
Speaker 2: these movements prize what we'll call holistic health solutions. However,
Speaker 2: to be absolutely fair, they have received a lot of
Speaker 2: criticism from other aspects of science. But despite the ongoing
Speaker 2: debate which continues as we record this evening, the intentions
Speaker 2: of the Hearing Voices movement do seem good. They are
Speaker 2: good faith actors. Plus it might change the conversation a
Speaker 2: little bit if we realize that as of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: science has proven that you can teach people to hallucinate
Speaker 2: and they will not be able to tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Their lived experience will become that of someone hearing voices.
Speaker 4: Wow. Yeah, I don't know about this. That's fascinating. You're
Speaker 4: talking about the thing we reference here the paper from
Speaker 4: journal Science Phil Corlitt and al. Powers from Yale. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'd love to hear more about this. This is not
Speaker 4: something that got a chance to dig into yet.
Speaker 5: Well, well, craignth im wrong here. Basically, the study is
Speaker 5: saying most people walk around in the world and they
Speaker 5: just kind of use their senses and they interpret what
Speaker 5: they see.
Speaker 3: They take it in Oh hey.
Speaker 5: There's some I forget the term for a high some
Speaker 5: high density sound absorbing sponge or whether looking at it, I
Speaker 5: see it. It's the color for me, and my perception
Speaker 5: is gray. It looks as though it's squishy. I think
Speaker 5: I understand what that is. But then people who tend
Speaker 5: to hallucinate, or or do hallucinate on a regular basis,
Speaker 5: interact with the world rather than just taking what their
Speaker 5: senses are giving them right as fact, they often will
Speaker 5: perceive the world as what they almost anticipate confirmation bias.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's funny too, because we all operate this way.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter who you are. You know, you hear
Speaker 2: a you hear a really barnstorming fart on a crowded elevator,
Speaker 2: you clock it, and then you anticipate, you anticipate there
Speaker 2: will be a spell and some social awkwardness unless somewhat
Speaker 2: is particularly all gas, no breaks, and they're like, that
Speaker 2: was me, you know, have a good ride to the
Speaker 2: fourteenth floor well, which is actually the third Whatever got.
Speaker 5: Them, get them every time, every one of those architects.
Speaker 5: It makes a lot of sense to me, or this
Speaker 5: connection right here specifically why post traumatic stress can be
Speaker 5: a reason someone experiences auditory hallucinations because you are anticipating
Speaker 5: something possibly negative.
Speaker 4: To creming the bad thing right, Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 5: Gonna I'm not gonna be surprised again by whatever this
Speaker 5: thing is or a similar situation.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna know that it's hell, it's coming.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Auditory hallucinations occurred and estimated forty percent of individuals diagnosed
Speaker 2: with post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. And it's it's such
Speaker 2: a real thing, even like I think we're doing a
Speaker 2: good job exercising empathy and saying don't dismiss these experiences.
Speaker 2: If someone is telling you that they are hearing something,
Speaker 2: they're not being a crackpot. They are a rational actor.
Speaker 2: They are encountering sensory stimulus from somewhere, you know. And this,
Speaker 2: this study, I think is a real equalizer for humanity
Speaker 2: because these folks that you mentioned their nol phil Corla
Speaker 2: and OWL powers. They start by conditioning these subjects to
Speaker 2: hear a tone. Just imagine a tone in your head
Speaker 2: if you hear sound in your head every time they
Speaker 2: see a checkerboard pattern, pretty simple. And then what they
Speaker 2: slowly do over time, somewhat insidiously, is they remove the
Speaker 2: actual sound, but they keep the visual stimulus. So they
Speaker 2: start asking people, do you hear the sound when you
Speaker 2: see the checkerboard? And participants who already regularly heard voices
Speaker 2: were five times more likely to say they heard the
Speaker 2: tone when none was played, and they were overall they
Speaker 2: were like thirty percent more confident in their choice, like, yes,
Speaker 2: I definitely heard this, but they found something else fascinating.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the experiment, all of the participants,
Speaker 2: every single one experienced hearing a tone that was not
Speaker 2: there because they have been conditioned to hear it.
Speaker 4: See, I'm struggling with this and I think it's been
Speaker 4: clear and what I've been saying, like I'm having a
Speaker 4: hard time, Like I'm trying to think of a sound
Speaker 4: or a tone or words, and I just don't know
Speaker 4: if I'm doing it right quote unquote, like I'm trying to.
Speaker 2: Picture if you're remembering it, Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 4: But I'm also thinking, like if I did something like
Speaker 4: this where I tried to like hear the tone, then
Speaker 4: think about the tone, and then play the tone on time,
Speaker 4: Like could I continue that on in my mind when
Speaker 4: the tone was muted? And I'm thinking kind of yes,
Speaker 4: Like that's starting to get my head to wrap around
Speaker 4: this idea of what a internal sound is. You know,
Speaker 4: it's really cool obviously, you know, Like I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: just a giant sound nerd. It's like passion and it's
Speaker 4: something that I just have been a part of my
Speaker 4: life since I was very little, and I just it's
Speaker 4: this is a really real noodle scratcher. I love this one.
Speaker 5: This isn't exactly the same thing, but guys, do you
Speaker 5: ever encounter some kind of mechanical like hum or were
Speaker 5: let's see, uh, let's say it's a washing machine or
Speaker 5: you know, dry dishwasher, a fan, just something that has
Speaker 5: a constant like kind of sound.
Speaker 3: Do you guys ever build that into a word?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Or yeah, okay, of course you guys do that too, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people come up with song
Speaker 4: ideas that way from processing little things they hear and
Speaker 4: they're now surroundings, you know, or things that are rapid repetitive,
Speaker 4: and then they start to assign rhythm to that. I
Speaker 4: can't remember what it was. It was like sting or
Speaker 4: it was somebody talking about the difference between a musical
Speaker 4: mind and like a non musical mind, and he was like,
Speaker 4: if you hear a looping, cyclical sound like that, do
Speaker 4: you immediately start building it into a beat? Or to
Speaker 4: you is it just background noise? Well, if it's background noise,
Speaker 4: you're not a songwriter, you know what I mean, You're
Speaker 4: not someone that processes the world like that. I think
Speaker 4: all three of us have musical intuition, and I think
Speaker 4: that's that's probably why we do process it like that.
Speaker 2: And there's a there's another wrinkle. There's one more badger
Speaker 2: in the bag. We should say the spoiler. Our very
Speaker 2: last thing is going to be from that Slate article
Speaker 2: that you mentioned earlier, Mex because it's just beautifully put.
Speaker 2: But before we get to that, future technology may mean
Speaker 2: that everyone hallucinates or encounters a voice in their head
Speaker 2: head the role of implants. It's on the horizon, you know, Matt,
Speaker 2: you have mentioned a little bit. We've talked about this
Speaker 2: in the past, but like DARPA is dealing with it.
Speaker 2: Forget the scuttle, but about Elon Musk experimenting on terminally
Speaker 2: ill primates, which was not cool. But so imagine a
Speaker 2: world wherein it is normalized, or it is mandatory to
Speaker 2: have technology implanted in your head that allows near instantaneous
Speaker 2: connection to the Internet. The voices of old, supernatural and
Speaker 2: infernal deities may become a real thing. The Guardian Angels
Speaker 2: will functionally, in practice be there, except they'll be sponsored
Speaker 2: by dictators, state powers, tech corporations, ad clients. The voice
Speaker 2: in my head needs me to buy RB's.
Speaker 4: Now Arby sounds good, but here's the question, you know,
Speaker 4: and I'm also picturing like picking up cell phone static
Speaker 4: get it, just like inside your head all of a
Speaker 4: sudden but like, would again, I know we're not there yet,
Speaker 4: but these implants, would they be audio implants that would
Speaker 4: vibrate your cocklear you know, bones, or would you be
Speaker 4: hearing these sounds quote unquote in your mind?
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, yeah, you would. Unfortunately, it would be case
Speaker 2: by case basis, because every every person is their own
Speaker 2: spaghetti bowl of cognitive variables. So you know, there's there's
Speaker 2: a real mental health danger to the way this stuff
Speaker 2: is being rolled out, and the legislation will get there
Speaker 2: about ten years after it should. Uh, it's definitely going
Speaker 2: to happen. And you know, Matt, you were alluding to
Speaker 2: some experiments that we already know have been ongoing for
Speaker 2: quite some time now.
Speaker 5: Well, there there are some experience, but there are also
Speaker 5: real technologies you can find right now. You can't find
Speaker 5: the actual original article unless you have a magazine, so
Speaker 5: you'd have to go to probably your local library maybe
Speaker 5: though I guarantee the library or Congress will have it,
Speaker 5: or you know, if you're in a major city, you
Speaker 5: can find it. But it is a It's an article
Speaker 5: from the New York Times magazine from two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: March two thousand and three. Article is titled the Sound
Speaker 5: of Things to come In Here there is a description
Speaker 5: of an invention from this person named Woody Norris. It's
Speaker 5: titled Hypersonic Sound or HSS. It is an invention that
Speaker 5: was awarded the Popular Science Grand Prize for New Inventions
Speaker 5: in two thousand and two. Popular Science gave this thing,
Speaker 5: gave this guy who invented this a Grand Prize thing.
Speaker 5: It is a beam of sound that you can hold
Speaker 5: up and it acts like a speaker and it shoots
Speaker 5: sound out like a laser beam, and you can target
Speaker 5: someone walking down the street and nobody else will hear
Speaker 5: what is being played. But you can literally hook it
Speaker 5: up to a CD player, to a microphone and you
Speaker 5: can be sound into someone's brain.
Speaker 4: But again I have to ask, like, is it hitting
Speaker 4: them and causing vibrations the way we think of perceiving
Speaker 4: sound or is it something bigger than that? Is it
Speaker 4: something more advanced than that.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I do know that DARPA in
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven was working on something called a
Speaker 5: sonic projector that does something very similar, and it was
Speaker 5: specifically being developed for sonic deception, an age old tactic that.
Speaker 4: Is scized right, They're like, yeah, yes, it's.
Speaker 5: Been used since the biblical days before that to trick
Speaker 5: an army or individual.
Speaker 3: That is my dog.
Speaker 5: That is not an auditorial illusination, is it? That is
Speaker 5: my dog sleeping and dreaming real hard. But it's just
Speaker 5: something that's been around for a long time and powerful.
Speaker 5: You know, militaries know that you can trick people with sound.
Speaker 5: So if you have the capability to either trick on
Speaker 5: an individual level or on a mass level, it creates
Speaker 5: doubt for all of this other stuff. One of the
Speaker 5: most common things that's reported with hearing hallucinations is that
Speaker 5: it's an exterior force, some bad person. Right, we're talking
Speaker 5: about how Americans specifically experience that. I just it bothers
Speaker 5: me so much that the waters get muddied by actual,
Speaker 5: real technological advancements that have been around for well over twenty.
Speaker 2: Years, and it can be deployed easily their cost effective. Imagine,
Speaker 2: for instance, if you are a religiously motivated partisan and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you hear what you think to
Speaker 2: be the voice of God telling you to do a
Speaker 2: specific thing. These are imperative statements that are meant to
Speaker 2: be made in this kind of in this kind of
Speaker 2: asymmetrical warfare. It's a very real thing, like the voice.
Speaker 2: If you don't have voice in your head yet, they're
Speaker 2: on the way within a few generations from you. As
Speaker 2: you hear this today, it's so interesting.
Speaker 4: You got me thinking about the psyops angle, Matt, and
Speaker 4: it made me think of the Operation Wandering Soul, where
Speaker 4: the US, you know, basically planted speakers in a Vietnamese
Speaker 4: forest and played these ghost tapes that were essentially, you know,
Speaker 4: ghostly sounds trying to get Vietnamese soldiers to defect because
Speaker 4: they thought their ancestors were coming to kill them or
Speaker 4: were disappointed with them in some way. But like what
Speaker 4: you're talking about, Matt, would take that weaponize that to
Speaker 4: another level, especially considering, you know, the cultural aspect of
Speaker 4: it that we've been talking about this whole time. Well
Speaker 4: you're talking about like a reverse of all this like
Speaker 4: induced oral hallucinations. I think it's wow.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, And this is where we leave it.
Speaker 2: We've taken you to the edge of the rabbit hole. Folks.
Speaker 2: There there's one less thing. Will end on this and
Speaker 2: go right to right to our outro, because we need
Speaker 2: your help. We are doing an episode about divine intervention.
Speaker 2: We want to hear your favorite stories or purported divine intervention,
Speaker 2: and we want to hear any personal experience you feel
Speaker 2: you yourself may have had. All Right, the very very
Speaker 2: last thing. Let's leave the very last word to Eliza Sternberg,
Speaker 2: writing for Slate, who says the following. The brain is
Speaker 2: a masters storyteller, designed to make sense of the chaos
Speaker 2: of our lives. It compensates for the presence of auditory
Speaker 2: hallucinations caused by a defect and self recognition by writing
Speaker 2: a narrative to account for them. It's no accident that
Speaker 2: schizophrenic patients reach for spy agencies, religious entities, or supernatural
Speaker 2: forces when describing the voices in their heads. These are
Speaker 2: theories that the brain can cox to explain how a
Speaker 2: foreign voice could infiltrate a mind, know it intimately, and
Speaker 2: torment its victim with relentless surveillance. Either way you look
Speaker 2: at it, there's a conspiracy afoot. What do you think? Folks?
Speaker 2: Tell us we're easy to find online.
Speaker 4: It's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy
Speaker 4: stuff on YouTube, Facebook and x nay, Twitter, Twitter and AXX.
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Speaker 4: Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
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