Speaker 1: Attention, DC, Boston, Toronto and any place that can fly
Speaker 1: to those cities. We're gonna be live on stage doing
Speaker 1: our thing again. I'm May fourth, fifth, and sixth this year.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I gotta say, we've done this topic
Speaker 1: a few times already and it's a real banger and
Speaker 1: we can't wait to come to your city and have
Speaker 1: you see it with us. We're so excited and we
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Speaker 1: sysk and get your tickets today. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too,
Speaker 1: in low data mode and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? I just got a message flashed
Speaker 1: on my screen that Jerry's in low data mode. Oh really,
Speaker 1: it means she's low key. Olivia helped us with this one.
Speaker 1: And you know what Olivia has gotten great at lately
Speaker 1: is titling these episodes in fun ways. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: you want to. You want to say this one too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's generally just for us, which I appreciate. But
Speaker 1: this is about dousing aka water witching, the practice of
Speaker 1: using sticks or metal rods or something to walk around
Speaker 1: and have and tell you whether or not there is
Speaker 1: water underground or iron ore or body being buried or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we'll get into all that. But Olivia titled it
Speaker 1: the surprisingly long lasting art of dousing, and I think
Speaker 1: it's appropriate she called it an art because it's definitely
Speaker 1: not a science, although people have tried to apply science
Speaker 1: to it in interesting ways. Yeah, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people say it's pure bunk. I just think it's very
Speaker 1: interesting and I've never known much about it. And that's
Speaker 1: how I'm kind of choosing topics these days, is what
Speaker 1: do I want to learn about? You know? Sure me first,
Speaker 1: that's right, and through me we can be the conduit
Speaker 1: to others too, amazing new ideas like dowsing. And actually
Speaker 1: we shouldn't say this is a new idea for us,
Speaker 1: because this um we actually did a chapter in our book,
Speaker 1: remember I dowsing, that's right, And in that chapter I
Speaker 1: went back and reread it and I was very satisfied
Speaker 1: that we basically took the stance that we're taking today,
Speaker 1: that you just took that basically. You know, some people
Speaker 1: call it bunk. I don't know enough about it to
Speaker 1: say either way, and just to keep our minds open.
Speaker 1: And even though it is bunk in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: we're not like gonna poop poo or tear it down
Speaker 1: like we did crop circles, you know. Yeah, I agree. Um,
Speaker 1: it's something that people have been doing for over five
Speaker 1: hundred years and and like we said, it's got a
Speaker 1: bunch of different names, but dowsing, basically as we think
Speaker 1: of it today is something that started in sixteen century
Speaker 1: what would now be Germany and the mining industry there,
Speaker 1: which was a new thing that was really growing fast,
Speaker 1: and they were looking for or underground veins of ore.
Speaker 1: And it looks like as early as fifteen thirty there
Speaker 1: was somebody, a mining expert name Yorg Ericola who talked
Speaker 1: about dowsing and divining rods in a way that he
Speaker 1: wasn't like, hey, this is what this is like, as
Speaker 1: if people understood what it was right in his book
Speaker 1: De ray Metallica, is that really what it was called? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great name. So yeah, the Germans are pretty
Speaker 1: much unambiguously the people who created dowsing at least in
Speaker 1: the roughly modern era, and it got imported to England
Speaker 1: pretty quickly and France also, So in England they were
Speaker 1: using it for mining, just like they were in Germany
Speaker 1: to discover or but France also adopted it and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to use this for water instead. I didn't
Speaker 1: see where they got that idea from or why, but
Speaker 1: they I don't know. There's like supposed references in the
Speaker 1: Bible which may or may not reflect housing. Who knows.
Speaker 1: It's possible that they thought that's what it was used
Speaker 1: for in France. I'm not sure. But by the sixteenth
Speaker 1: and early seventeenth century you had people a lot of
Speaker 1: people in Western Europe walking around with forked sticks looking
Speaker 1: for ore and water and basically being like this, this
Speaker 1: really works. This is how we're going to find water.
Speaker 1: And back then it made a lot of sense because
Speaker 1: there wasn't any other way to find water, so why
Speaker 1: not walk around with a forked stick? Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: idea we'll get into sort of how people do it
Speaker 1: later on, but is that you hold a forked stick.
Speaker 1: Back then, at least that was sort of what they
Speaker 1: were using exclusively, and it would dip down when there
Speaker 1: was something underneath you of note, there was a man
Speaker 1: named Robert Boyle, known as a father of chemistry in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, who described it as a forked hazel twig.
Speaker 1: I believe there were other woods used hazel as one.
Speaker 1: It's kind of mentioned a lot. Yeah, what was one
Speaker 1: of the other ones I've seen peach rowan, which I
Speaker 1: am not familiar with the rowan tree, but apparently there's
Speaker 1: plenty of them here and they bear fruit, but it's
Speaker 1: a it's like a fruit wood that's supposedly really good
Speaker 1: for it. Um, which hazel is another one. And then
Speaker 1: willow um, which makes a lot of sense because willow
Speaker 1: trees tend to grow where there's water near the surface,
Speaker 1: so it would kind of make sense that you would
Speaker 1: use the willow branch. And then you'd turn around and
Speaker 1: point to the willow tree and say down there, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then if it's the nineteen fifties through seventies, you
Speaker 1: could switch your child with it. It's right. My grandmother, oh,
Speaker 1: my dear sweet, my dad's mom opal, she would make
Speaker 1: us go pick out our switch, no, which is I
Speaker 1: think was a tradition. This ouf like, go pick out
Speaker 1: the switch that I'm gonna use, And that was the
Speaker 1: punishment that was the fear, and you would you go
Speaker 1: out there and you pick the flimsy twig that you
Speaker 1: could find and come back. And then she she never
Speaker 1: touched us. She didn't. Oh that's good, she didn't do that. Similarly,
Speaker 1: when you were really bad, Grandma Opal would make you
Speaker 1: dig your own grave in the backyard, really get to you.
Speaker 1: But she never. Oh man, I miss her. She was great,
Speaker 1: lived to one hundred and one. I know, that's amazing,
Speaker 1: not bad. So we mentioned other things that you could
Speaker 1: find underground, like dead bodies. This happened for a while
Speaker 1: in the late seventeenth centuries. They started getting into things like, hey,
Speaker 1: we could find treasure using these y rods. We could
Speaker 1: find we could find the bodies that we were talking about.
Speaker 1: We could find a property boundary that no one can
Speaker 1: agree on. Yeah, that one's really out there. Well, and
Speaker 1: that's very like, I mean, you better agree on who's
Speaker 1: doing doing that job between two neighborhoods who are at
Speaker 1: dispute with one another. You know, yeah, for sure, it's
Speaker 1: called the best dowser in your area. Let's use my guy.
Speaker 1: He'll show you show us where the property line is exactly.
Speaker 1: But there was a French peasant named Jacques Amar, who
Speaker 1: in the latest seventeenth century, as the story goes, was
Speaker 1: water dowsing, and the rod pointed down very sharply, and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, let's get some guys out here, dig
Speaker 1: down and get this water. And before you knew it,
Speaker 1: they struck body and it was a murdered woman. And
Speaker 1: he not only found the body, but then went to
Speaker 1: the widower and the family basically and said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to point this thing at you guys, and the thing
Speaker 1: dipped at her former husband. He fled the scene and
Speaker 1: was found out to be the murderer. And so now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, dowsing rods are, for a while
Speaker 1: at least, and for this guy, for sure, a way
Speaker 1: to root out murderers and dead bodies. So much so
Speaker 1: that in leone Um there was a group of like
Speaker 1: I think, a husband and wife who owned a wine
Speaker 1: shop there who were murdered four years later after he
Speaker 1: discovered that first body, and they actually contacted jack Amar
Speaker 1: and said, can you come help us find who did this?
Speaker 1: And so he set about with his dowsing stick looking.
Speaker 1: I think he actually got into a boat at one
Speaker 1: point and sailed around looking for a murderer, rooted one out,
Speaker 1: he found one in another town, and that guy actually
Speaker 1: confessed and then fingered two other accomplices who had fled
Speaker 1: France by that time. So you're like, well, that guy
Speaker 1: was very special. As far as dowsing goes, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to interpret it to if you're going
Speaker 1: to be a skeptic, where you could say, like, this
Speaker 1: is the sixteenth century or seventeenth century in France, and
Speaker 1: if people thought that you were a murderer, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter whether you were a murder or not. You were
Speaker 1: in big trouble, and so you might flee France if
Speaker 1: you got worried that people were coming to look for you.
Speaker 1: Who knows, Or you could also believe that Jacques amar
Speaker 1: had some special talent or gift that allowed him to
Speaker 1: douse murder suspects, among other things. And that's that's actually
Speaker 1: a point that kind of underpins the entire dowsing tradition.
Speaker 1: Most dowsers believe that it's innate in them, maybe innate
Speaker 1: in everybody, and they're just a little more their sense
Speaker 1: is a little more refined, but that it's not like
Speaker 1: you're picking up some magic stick. It's the stick is
Speaker 1: somehow an instrument that you're you're special innate ability is
Speaker 1: using to kind of guide you. Yeah, and you also
Speaker 1: forgot the last possibility there, which is through a rock
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century France, and you're probably gonna hit
Speaker 1: two people who murdered wine shoff owners. Right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good point too. Eighteenth century dousing was not so
Speaker 1: much a thing for mining anymore in Europe because science
Speaker 1: had improved such that they were like, now we've got better,
Speaker 1: better ways to discover or this or under our feet.
Speaker 1: And into the twentieth century, we'll get to kind of
Speaker 1: where it stands today later. But of course the Nazis
Speaker 1: got involved because they were into all sorts of weird
Speaker 1: esoteric methods of doing anything, and the stupid Nazis and
Speaker 1: Himmler of course said hey, let's look for explosives, let's
Speaker 1: look for water, let's look for gold, or just get
Speaker 1: some Nazis out there with dowsing rods and tell me
Speaker 1: what happens. Yeah, apparently they trained whole units, because again
Speaker 1: the Nazis were very stupid. And then in the twentieth century, chuck,
Speaker 1: if you were educated by or employed at Harvard in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, there was a good chance you were
Speaker 1: going to study dowsing. Well, a lot of Harvard people did,
Speaker 1: weirdly sure, but I mean, how many really were there
Speaker 1: out there at the time. This is probably a significant people,
Speaker 1: probably like a dozen. So yeah, a full third of
Speaker 1: Harvard educated people were studying dowsing in the fifties. One
Speaker 1: guy Raid Hyman and another Elizabeth G. Cohen, they worked together.
Speaker 1: They were sociologists from Harvard, and they studied dowsing by
Speaker 1: by surveying agricultural extension agents, the people who were the
Speaker 1: conduit between education and you know, the rural areas, right,
Speaker 1: So these people had a foot in each camp, so
Speaker 1: they were they were a really good group to study
Speaker 1: dowsing or dowsing beliefs. They found that every single state
Speaker 1: head dowsers, mostly in the rural areas, and that in
Speaker 1: those rural areas where the dowsers were most densely concentrated.
Speaker 1: There was about an average in the United States in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties about thirty five dowsers per one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. That's a huge number of dowsers in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Middle twentieth century, still working in these rural areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree, that's a lot. Uh. Yeah. They also
Speaker 1: did a bunch of, like you said, interviews with these
Speaker 1: agricultural agents, and it was basically like a little more
Speaker 1: than half thought it was bunk. About twenty percent said
Speaker 1: they believed in it, about twenty four percent said they
Speaker 1: were open minded to it, kind of on the fence.
Speaker 1: And one thing that they discovered that Hymen and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Cummen discovered was basically people it's not that they so
Speaker 1: much believed in dowsing as being like this foolproof thing,
Speaker 1: but more like, hey, we can't get a lot of
Speaker 1: guidance on where to find water, and like it doesn't
Speaker 1: cost a lot to hire a dowser, so it's better
Speaker 1: than nothing. If I can pay someone in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties like five bucks to walk around my field for
Speaker 1: a good place to drill, it's better than zero, right.
Speaker 1: And it's not like they just tapped like todd to
Speaker 1: go out there and like use a stick to be
Speaker 1: like drill here. These dowsers that they were employing had
Speaker 1: some sort of success in their track record, so yeah,
Speaker 1: there it made it a little easier to be like
Speaker 1: I'll just give this a try, because what else, what opportunity?
Speaker 1: What other alternatives do I have? Yeah, there was another
Speaker 1: Harvard or named Ivan zee Vacht who did some studying
Speaker 1: of this, and like he said, he found that there
Speaker 1: were certain people who just seemingly were more gifted than
Speaker 1: others at it. It was a part time thing. Usually
Speaker 1: people did make some pretty good money doing it, and
Speaker 1: it was almost always something that men did and not women.
Speaker 1: And like you mentioned, they they generally believed it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a snake oil thing where they were like, let
Speaker 1: me see how many people I can rip off with
Speaker 1: this stick. Um, they believed in what they were doing.
Speaker 1: It seems like about across the board. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: universally basically. Um. He so he studied specifically Homestead, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: U and he found that Um that he well, he
Speaker 1: basically lumped it in with folk magic, which I think
Speaker 1: is that's fair. Um. And he said that that DAL
Speaker 1: is the most commonly used type of folk magic and
Speaker 1: agriculture in these rural areas. Like another type would be
Speaker 1: using the zodiac to predict when to do certain farming
Speaker 1: like harvesting or planting or something like that. But you're
Speaker 1: more much more likely to find find people who were
Speaker 1: willing to believe in dowsing than than that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that even educated people believed in it in the area.
Speaker 1: And one reason you can kind of give for that
Speaker 1: is that these areas were hard up for water, so
Speaker 1: it kind of I would guess that like the lack
Speaker 1: of availability of water or at least easy access to
Speaker 1: it would kind of help suspend your disbelief more than
Speaker 1: somebody who you know has a municipal water supply running
Speaker 1: into their house, you know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Speaking
Speaker 1: of VAT, he continued his work into the late sixties
Speaker 1: along with his colleague Linda K. Barrett, and they started
Speaker 1: researching Urban Dowsers, which is a pretty good band name.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. What are they? What kind of music?
Speaker 1: I know this is your specialty. I'm going to just
Speaker 1: go fall back on the standby of math rock. I
Speaker 1: would say Pavement, like maybe a Pavement tribute band. Even
Speaker 1: that's kind of what it sounds like to me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just go with math rock, Okay. They study
Speaker 1: the American Society of Dowsers the ASD. They were founded
Speaker 1: in Vermont in the early nineteen sixties. I think they're
Speaker 1: about a thousand strong. And these are people that lived,
Speaker 1: you know, these are urban dowsers. They live where they
Speaker 1: have city water systems and plenty of water, and they
Speaker 1: used dowsing for other things, sometimes to detect if you
Speaker 1: had a medical problem, sometimes to look for something that
Speaker 1: someone lost. They basically argued like, hey, you should be
Speaker 1: using us all over the world where people don't have water,
Speaker 1: Like why is everyone against dousing when you should be
Speaker 1: enlisting us? Right, And the ASD still survives today. They
Speaker 1: have multiple chapters all over the world. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, even though it's the American Society of Dowsers,
Speaker 1: they do have other chapters in other countries and they
Speaker 1: still dowse. They still meet, they share tips and tricks
Speaker 1: with one another. I believe they have newsletters. So they're
Speaker 1: still around for sure. So should should we take a
Speaker 1: break and then talk about how to do it? Definitely? Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break, We're gonna get our coat
Speaker 1: hangers out, and we're gonna get going right after this.
Speaker 1: I've still stumped. There's a about ten percent of my
Speaker 1: brain is still working out what music urban dowsers play.
Speaker 1: I'll come up with it. I can't that's a that's
Speaker 1: a tough one. So I mean, if it were like,
Speaker 1: if they were clever and they wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: engage in a bit of word play, then I would
Speaker 1: say they're like neo country pop, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like Billboard chart pop Urban Dowsers, like they can their
Speaker 1: music can be enjoyed in the city or the country.
Speaker 1: You mean, like the guys that sing about tailgating and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Precisely, I mean, what you got, Luke
Speaker 1: Bran or Urban Dowsers? Which one you're gonna do? I
Speaker 1: predict Luke Bryan's gonna change his name to Urban Dowsers
Speaker 1: in the next five years. Hey, I'm not gonna not
Speaker 1: Luke Bryan. I don't know it's music, but he seems
Speaker 1: like a good guy from what I understand he is.
Speaker 1: All right, So, how did dows you take the Well,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways. You can have that y
Speaker 1: shaped rod and you hold it by the why and
Speaker 1: have the the single stem pointing out with your palms upward,
Speaker 1: the why pointed upward. In fact, that about a forty
Speaker 1: five degree angle. Then you walk around and you wait
Speaker 1: for that thing to I guess to move in your hands.
Speaker 1: You will you wait for it to make a barrier
Speaker 1: on your own son, and it difts down. Like we said,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the different kind of sticks that were used.
Speaker 1: The kind of dowsing I see a lot on YouTube
Speaker 1: because I did a lot of watching of this stuff
Speaker 1: is the coat hanger. One where they take and it's
Speaker 1: not always coat hangers, but just two metal L shaped
Speaker 1: rods and you hold it by the small side of
Speaker 1: the L in each hand and walk around and then
Speaker 1: these rods, you know, come together and cross one another
Speaker 1: at a place where you're standing. Right. Apparently, the American
Speaker 1: Society of Dowsers says, far and away the most frequent
Speaker 1: tool these days to use for dowsing is the pendulum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which can be anything from a crystal on a piece
Speaker 1: of hemp string to a paper clip on some leftover
Speaker 1: thread or down flossy even who knows it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because again, remember this this is a tool that the
Speaker 1: human is a conduit for. It's not like the tool
Speaker 1: itself is super important. Yeah, it's just it just kind
Speaker 1: of points out what the human can sense innately. And
Speaker 1: with the pendulum, they basically say, if it's swinging forward
Speaker 1: to backward, that's yes meaning okay, there's some water here,
Speaker 1: or it swings from side to side for no. And
Speaker 1: because you can get a yes or a no out
Speaker 1: of this pendulum, you can use it for plenty of
Speaker 1: other stuff. In fact, there's something called information dowsing, which
Speaker 1: is essentially like fortune telling. You ask the dows the
Speaker 1: dowsing rod or dowsing pendulum certain questions in the way
Speaker 1: it responds will give you the answer you're looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think. It just kind of hit me
Speaker 1: today that they said that this is usually man, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of the one area there where that's true. Like,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a of a man that's
Speaker 1: a fortune teller or palm reader? It seems like that's
Speaker 1: usually women, right, Yeah, there are plenty of women dowsers
Speaker 1: these days. I think it was just in that fifties
Speaker 1: survey though. Yeah, yeah, because I've seen interviews with multiple
Speaker 1: women who are dowsers. All right, all right, so that
Speaker 1: that clears that up. We talked about walking across the
Speaker 1: field and stuff. That's sort of what everyone usually thinks
Speaker 1: of when they think of dowsing or water witching is
Speaker 1: something they call it here in the States, but there's
Speaker 1: also map dowsing, which that pendulum comes in handy, or
Speaker 1: you might just use like a pencil or something where
Speaker 1: you go to like a map and do the same
Speaker 1: thing to narrow down what field you should walk in
Speaker 1: to find whatever you're looking for. The pencil one. I
Speaker 1: think there's a writer named Robert Ader who wrote a
Speaker 1: pamphlet that's on the American Society of Dowser website where
Speaker 1: he talks about using that pencil to find whatever, and
Speaker 1: you'll hold that pencil over a map, try and tune
Speaker 1: in whatever that means to what you're trying to find
Speaker 1: and feel for the location. And he's like, listen, I've
Speaker 1: looked for water on the moon with my Moon maps.
Speaker 1: I've looked for the grave side of Bigfoot, and I
Speaker 1: didn't big dig a Bigfoot up, but I found a
Speaker 1: spot on the map where there are definitely some large
Speaker 1: humps of earth right full stop, so exactly so um.
Speaker 1: Also in that pamphlet, Robert he basically says like how
Speaker 1: you ask the question and how you word it is
Speaker 1: really important. And he gave an anecdote about when he
Speaker 1: was looking for water on the moon with the map
Speaker 1: of the Moon. He asked the he asked the pencil, like,
Speaker 1: show me where water on the moon is, and he
Speaker 1: said the pencil started to float over in his hand over,
Speaker 1: don't be ridiculous here over his shoulder and point toward
Speaker 1: the moon behind him out the window, and he realized,
Speaker 1: oh no, I had to ask it where on the map?
Speaker 1: Show me on the map where there's water on the moon.
Speaker 1: And then the pencil pointed it out. So I feel
Speaker 1: like here we kind of reached like the point between
Speaker 1: finding water on the moon and finding bigfoot graves where
Speaker 1: most people are going to take their leave of dowsing
Speaker 1: and be like this, this doesn't work. But if you
Speaker 1: step back and kind of strip away all the add
Speaker 1: ons and stuff that's been you know, put onto it
Speaker 1: over the years, and just go back to searching for
Speaker 1: oars or water using this stuff, um, you can kind
Speaker 1: of not regain credibility. That's not the word I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: The phrase. It's more it comes it's yes, sure, it's
Speaker 1: at least less loony. How about that? Yeah? Did that
Speaker 1: guy also in the pamphlet say I found the Tykondo
Speaker 1: Rogan number two to be quite cheeky. Man, that's an
Speaker 1: arcane pencil reference right there. Shout out to David Reese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got that all, but he's slapping his knee right now.
Speaker 1: So how does this um supposedly work? You know, it's
Speaker 1: not like they're just like, hey, this is magic or whatever.
Speaker 1: There have been people that have tried to explain like
Speaker 1: how this might work, and some of the explanations, you know,
Speaker 1: early on were obviously some kind of magnetism or magnetic
Speaker 1: field or something that people can pick up on on
Speaker 1: planet Earth. There was a a German alchemist name Johann
Speaker 1: Tolde who wrote under the pen name Basilius Valentius, great name,
Speaker 1: and put out this theory that the metals in the
Speaker 1: earth basically breathe a breath that rises out from the
Speaker 1: earth that attracts the rod, and that you know, the
Speaker 1: trembling rod would would shake when it hits that breath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is back in the day, right, And the
Speaker 1: German miners of his day were like, we think it's
Speaker 1: just magnetism, right, that's a kind of a convoluted theory
Speaker 1: you got there, Valentis. But um, yeah, So I feel
Speaker 1: like there have been people over the years who've kind
Speaker 1: added unnecessarily to the mystique. Because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, this is just magnetism. Somehow we're picking
Speaker 1: up magnetism. That makes sense, that that's logical. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: We don't have any way to explain it. But it's
Speaker 1: a lot better than breath coming up. But if you
Speaker 1: stop and think about it, you know, maybe this guy
Speaker 1: was just basically using a different word or a different term,
Speaker 1: or embellishing on the idea of magnetism or something like that.
Speaker 1: And if you kind of read into the explanations over
Speaker 1: the years buy dowsers for what dowsing is or how
Speaker 1: it works, you kind of get the same premise that
Speaker 1: somehow the person is picking up on something that's invisible
Speaker 1: to us, but that person can still sense. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: watched this school YouTube. There was this guy. It had
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty five thousand music. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he even said his name, but he's a YouTube
Speaker 1: dowser guy who came on to kind of talk about it,
Speaker 1: and he just he had a very nice demeanor. He
Speaker 1: had this big beard and he was just sort of like, listen,
Speaker 1: this coat hanger isn't magic. I'm not magic, he said.
Speaker 1: I just believe that there are certain people who can
Speaker 1: sense voids in the earth under their feet, and some
Speaker 1: people are better at this than others. Other people have
Speaker 1: pointed to like certain animals that could do this. I
Speaker 1: know that, of course he's are all anecdotal, but like
Speaker 1: mister ed, like, hey, put peanut butter in that guy's
Speaker 1: teeth and he'll say anything you want. Or but like
Speaker 1: you know, animals like mules plowing fields would there are
Speaker 1: anecdotal stories of them like stopping at places and like
Speaker 1: refusing to sort of walk over an area that later
Speaker 1: turns out there was something buried underground that would have
Speaker 1: like harmed the plow or something like that. To say,
Speaker 1: but this YouTuber was he was a good guy and
Speaker 1: he was just like, listen, you believe it or not.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you should go do this stuff or
Speaker 1: you should believe it, but this is just what I
Speaker 1: feel like people, there are certain people who can sense
Speaker 1: avoid in the earth. I was waiting for you initially
Speaker 1: to say where he was saying, like the rod's not magic.
Speaker 1: I'm not magic, my beard, that's magic. No. He turned
Speaker 1: out to be fairly sensible, And this is something I
Speaker 1: remember from childhood though from church, is that Christians have
Speaker 1: long sort of had this. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the dark arts in a way, and so anytime it's
Speaker 1: something in that realm, Christians are going to be very
Speaker 1: much like, no, no, no, I don't remember specifically what
Speaker 1: it was, but I have some vague recollection from my
Speaker 1: childhood of hearing about water witching and someone saying I
Speaker 1: don't know who it was, but someone in my life
Speaker 1: could have been someone at church and in my family
Speaker 1: even saying like no, no, no, that's like, that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, black magic basically, right, exactly, call it folk magic,
Speaker 1: call it whatever it's. It's still not it's still not
Speaker 1: God performing a miracle. It's you exactly yet, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's blasphemous and demonic and the devils somehow involved. We
Speaker 1: just know it. I'm sure it's you, just priest's fault
Speaker 1: to some degree. That's that same impulse, So we don't
Speaker 1: understand it, so it must be demonic. The irony here
Speaker 1: is that what they're afraid of and don't understand probably
Speaker 1: doesn't even exist. It's not even necessarily real. So they're
Speaker 1: afraid of chance happenings, of people just randomly getting something
Speaker 1: right once in a while. Yeah, Martin Luther apparently was
Speaker 1: not a big fan of dowsing. That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named Johann Gottfried Ziedler. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book that was basically like, Hey, these people
Speaker 1: are tapping into something called the world spirit, and if
Speaker 1: you tap into that, man, you can find out anything
Speaker 1: you want, like whether somebody who died went to heaven
Speaker 1: or hell. You're not supposed to know that, you're not God.
Speaker 1: He's keep away from dowsing. Essentially, what Zidler's message was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a lot of Christian pushback on
Speaker 1: that guy. So as as science kind of progressed people,
Speaker 1: there's a really long tradition of people trying to apply
Speaker 1: science to explaining dowsing UM. And I say we take
Speaker 1: our second break and come back and get into some
Speaker 1: of those because there, this is where it gets super
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. Let's do it all right. So we
Speaker 1: were going to talk a little bit about the beginnings
Speaker 1: of UM, sort of the modern take on things, and uh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess this is less modern because this is the
Speaker 1: seven late seventeen hundreds. But in sixteen ninety three there
Speaker 1: was a French priest and a doctor of divinity named
Speaker 1: Ley Lorraine de Valmont. Great book, great name, but not
Speaker 1: a good hotel name at all. He really attract attention
Speaker 1: to you. I think it's a great book, great name.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about um Amar. Remember Amar who
Speaker 1: found the I think the murderer Jacques Amar the probably
Speaker 1: the most famous dowser of all time. I think, Well,
Speaker 1: did he have a one hundred and eighty five thousand
Speaker 1: views on YouTube? Would? He would? He was quite a showman.
Speaker 1: So he wrote a book when he basically wrote about
Speaker 1: Amar success where he claimed that certain particles um arose
Speaker 1: from water underground, from treasure, from a dead body, let's say,
Speaker 1: and they would enter the body through the pores and
Speaker 1: that some people, like this YouTube dowser said, were just
Speaker 1: particularly sensitive and that seems to be the sort of
Speaker 1: the refrain that, like he said earlier, some people just
Speaker 1: claimed to be more sensitive to this either magnetic field
Speaker 1: or these this energy coming out from the ground or
Speaker 1: these voids in the earth, right um. And this is
Speaker 1: about where science starts to kind of try to be
Speaker 1: applied to explaining dowsing. And that Dave Almont termed these
Speaker 1: particles lays at tombs because Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry,
Speaker 1: had already identified that they're probably something called adams in
Speaker 1: the world and that they are just out and about.
Speaker 1: And so what low Lorraine de Almont was saying was
Speaker 1: that we're some people are sensitive to those last homes,
Speaker 1: and that kind of kicked off that tradition of like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this new science. Let's figure out how it applies
Speaker 1: to dowsing, right, or hey, let's I believe In the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds there were French priests that practice what they
Speaker 1: called radiaesthesia, which was let's use dousing to detect a
Speaker 1: radiation a various kind. Let's find it to diagnosed disease.
Speaker 1: And this, you know this again is when it veers
Speaker 1: away from like water and iron ore or something right
Speaker 1: to a little more of the hokey pokey. But again,
Speaker 1: radiation had just been discovered, and in no time, three
Speaker 1: French priests are applying it, saying like, that's really detecting.
Speaker 1: That explains it. Some other people have said, oh, it's electricity.
Speaker 1: Some people say yeah, it actually is radiation, or it
Speaker 1: is magnetism or something like that, and then you've got
Speaker 1: the other camp that's like, no, it's esp or these
Speaker 1: people are conduits for God or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: what was the thing you found that I in reply
Speaker 1: sent you a picture of Professor Frank. I don't remember
Speaker 1: where I saw that, but it was a really neat
Speaker 1: explanation of it. Um. So it was basically saying that
Speaker 1: we have, like our cells are capable of accepting electricity
Speaker 1: or some sort of charge or whatever, and that that
Speaker 1: ores in water emanate things that can charge those cells,
Speaker 1: and that that's kind of how we pick it up. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's just another way of putting it.
Speaker 1: It's just again, we know about cells. We know that
Speaker 1: cells currency is electricity or that they can transmit electricity.
Speaker 1: So therefore maybe those that were on a cellular level,
Speaker 1: some people are picking it up. And that's what dowsing is.
Speaker 1: It's it's that same tradition. Now we understand something a
Speaker 1: little more about the universe's figure out how it applies
Speaker 1: to dowsing. Right, perhaps it is the when in terms
Speaker 1: of human bodies, it is the soul. Perhaps you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's dowsing is the is the window to the soul.
Speaker 1: I thought the eyes were Nope, that's wrong. It's dowsing
Speaker 1: as far as modern science goes. And this is something
Speaker 1: that you reminded me that we talked about in our
Speaker 1: Wigia Boards episode, is that people were doing this with
Speaker 1: their hands with something that's called idiomotor movements, which is
Speaker 1: your muscles are twitching because of some kind of subconscious
Speaker 1: mental activity that's going on. Yes, and that ties into
Speaker 1: that last explanation I was mentioning about the cells and
Speaker 1: the electricity. They were basically saying like, yeah, that's totally correct.
Speaker 1: The ideomotor movements are triggered by the emanations from the
Speaker 1: ground that enter your cells and trigger your muscle movement
Speaker 1: unconscious to you. Yeah, someone may be good at finding
Speaker 1: water because they've spent a lot of time in a
Speaker 1: particular area finding water, and there they have this subconscious
Speaker 1: thing to where they're picking up on the vegetation or
Speaker 1: the way the ground is and they don't realize it.
Speaker 1: So then they'll stop at a place that their body
Speaker 1: is saying, here is water, and it's translating to that
Speaker 1: idiomotor movement making the rod dip. Right. That's one explanation, right,
Speaker 1: that they have some sort of what's called non conscious intelligence. Okay, Um.
Speaker 1: The other explanation I was saying. Is like they were saying, No,
Speaker 1: the water or the ore itself is putting something up
Speaker 1: from the ground that's triggering your muscles to engage in
Speaker 1: the idiomotor movement. So they're both saying, yes, there's idiomotor movement.
Speaker 1: The dows or the people the person holding the dowsing
Speaker 1: rod is causing these movements without being aware of it.
Speaker 1: But the different explanations of why is that either the
Speaker 1: person is noticing some vegetation that they're out of where
Speaker 1: they have linked to water unconsciously, right, or the other
Speaker 1: one is that the water itself is emanating something that's
Speaker 1: triggering that idea motor movement in the person. It's a
Speaker 1: little more than potato potato that there's a pretty big
Speaker 1: difference between those two, even though they share the majority
Speaker 1: of the explanation in common. No, I agree, they're quite different.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're out there screaming at your phone, guys,
Speaker 1: there's water under the ground all over the place, So
Speaker 1: anyone can take a couple of coat hangers and dig
Speaker 1: down twelve feet and find water. Probably the YouTuber acknowledges
Speaker 1: this and says, yeah, there's water all over the place.
Speaker 1: He said, but some places are better to get water
Speaker 1: than others because you don't just go dig a well
Speaker 1: anywhere on your property. You try and home in on
Speaker 1: a place that has got you know, better water, more
Speaker 1: readily available to pool and where you can get it easier.
Speaker 1: That's why people bring in geologists. That's why people bring
Speaker 1: in dowsers. They have done experiments where I think BBC
Speaker 1: Science Focus reported on them, where they did like randomized
Speaker 1: experiments with water pipes underground, they found that dowsers had
Speaker 1: no success at finding the water. There have been other
Speaker 1: experiments under control conditions where they find that dowsers don't
Speaker 1: do any better at finding water than chance would. Our
Speaker 1: old buddy James Randy offered a million dollars to anyone
Speaker 1: that could prove it. That has not gone claimed to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, No, and not just proved that, but proved
Speaker 1: like any real paranormal ability. Proving dowsing would have probably
Speaker 1: won that prize for sure. Yeah. The thing is is
Speaker 1: um if you're a if you're a dowser, if you're
Speaker 1: a geologist, you poop poo dowsing. If you're a dowser,
Speaker 1: you probably poopoo geology. And if you're involved in excavating
Speaker 1: um wells, you probably poop poo both um. There was
Speaker 1: a there was a guy interviewed in an Aon article
Speaker 1: that Olivia turned up written by Lois Parshley, to where
Speaker 1: the guy this guy whose job it was was to
Speaker 1: excavate wells in California. As part of his job it
Speaker 1: was to hire either a geologist or a dowser or both,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, neither one's particularly good at at
Speaker 1: reliably finding a good water source. They're both used different techniques,
Speaker 1: but neither one's you know, dead on. So it's not
Speaker 1: like in this guy's mind, geology is just supplanted dowsing
Speaker 1: in rural water thirsty areas because the geologists you pay
Speaker 1: a lot more for a geologist and then they may
Speaker 1: or may not turn up water, whereas the dowser you
Speaker 1: pay I think I saw about a tenth of what
Speaker 1: you pay a geologist for a day, and they may
Speaker 1: or may not turn up water. So it just kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense in that rural area, like, hey, if
Speaker 1: neither one's going to reliably turn up water, but there's
Speaker 1: a chance either one will, I'm gonna go with the
Speaker 1: person who charges away. There was also the case of
Speaker 1: this science blogger from the UK, Sally Lapage, who was
Speaker 1: having a water pipe installed, and I believe the UK company,
Speaker 1: the water company sent out at dowser and Sally was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what is going on here? Like what
Speaker 1: century are we living in? And the UK water company
Speaker 1: kind of shrugged and Lapage did a little investigating and
Speaker 1: found that ten out of twelve water companies in the
Speaker 1: UK use water dowsing, and one of them, I believe,
Speaker 1: the one that did her parents' house said in a
Speaker 1: tweet a we found that some of the older methods
Speaker 1: are just as effective as the new ones. We also
Speaker 1: use drones and satellites. But you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: of money spent toward dowsing is no big deal, whereas
Speaker 1: a lot of other people were like, you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: spending any of our money on this. Yeah, because again
Speaker 1: it's pseudoscience, right, So yeah, you can understand how people
Speaker 1: would be upset about that, and then at the same
Speaker 1: time it really kind of undermines a lot of geologists work.
Speaker 1: If water companies are using dowsers still too, I have
Speaker 1: a question. I'm naive. I don't know a lot about machinery.
Speaker 1: Isn't there some kind of machine that can look into
Speaker 1: the earth and find good water pretty easily. I would
Speaker 1: guess that there is as well, but I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think so, because if I wouldn't geologists just be employing that,
Speaker 1: And if so, why would they have a reputation for
Speaker 1: not being able to find water very reliably? I mean,
Speaker 1: the answer is there can't be otherwise of course they'd
Speaker 1: be using that, But like, I don't know, it seems
Speaker 1: like some kind of seis mcgrab and someone a lot
Speaker 1: smarter than me is going to explain why, which I
Speaker 1: that's what I love doing about the show. Someone's going
Speaker 1: to explain to me and we'll read it on the air.
Speaker 1: I would guess, though, Chuck at this point, So that
Speaker 1: really cool tool where you put a shotgun shell in
Speaker 1: and it stamps the earth and then it gets an
Speaker 1: image back on radar or something. Yeah, that's what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, right. Those things are awesome, but I think
Speaker 1: they only go so deep, and you're probably looking for
Speaker 1: water much deeper than that. That would be my guess.
Speaker 1: Like if I was watching a movie and it was
Speaker 1: about one part of it had a family trying to
Speaker 1: dig a well and they called up some guy, well,
Speaker 1: wells are us came out and like just planted some
Speaker 1: funky machine down on the earth and and he said,
Speaker 1: this thing's gonna it's on wheels, and it's gonna drive
Speaker 1: around this acre of property and tell you exactly where
Speaker 1: the water is. I would totally believe that's a thing.
Speaker 1: Sure I would too. And in the exact same way
Speaker 1: people who hire dowsers and watch somebody walk around their
Speaker 1: property with the stick believe what they see too. Probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a very good movie, but that is a huge,
Speaker 1: huge area for improvement from what I can tell researching this.
Speaker 1: Unless somehow dousing community has managed to completely science silence
Speaker 1: the geological community as far as like water finding goes,
Speaker 1: I don't. It just seems like the geologists aren't like,
Speaker 1: of course we can find water, and here's how. I
Speaker 1: just haven't really seen it that where there's like this
Speaker 1: reliable way to find water. Yeah, I just don't understand it.
Speaker 1: So if you're a geologist who finds water, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear how you do what you do and
Speaker 1: how reliable it is. Yeah, one more thing, chuck, before
Speaker 1: we go. In that AEON article, there was mention of
Speaker 1: a study that was done at the University of British
Speaker 1: Columbia by a psychologist named Helene Gaucho and she is
Speaker 1: the one who seems to have turned up that idea
Speaker 1: of non conscious intelligence where people using a Wuiji board
Speaker 1: we're actually better at ants in questions. They got more
Speaker 1: questions right when they were using a Wuigi board than
Speaker 1: when they weren't using a Wuiji board, which is really
Speaker 1: really weird. And so Gaucheou explained it by saying, like,
Speaker 1: we might have some type of intelligence or intellect or
Speaker 1: memory that we can't access consciously, but if we kind
Speaker 1: of put the power of answering off onto something else,
Speaker 1: like a Wuiji board, were able to access it because
Speaker 1: I guess we get our conscious mind out of the
Speaker 1: way a little bit. And that kind of was applied
Speaker 1: to this idea of dowsers that these people, like you said,
Speaker 1: could recognize vegetation in the wild. There's certain kinds of
Speaker 1: rocks that suggested there's water somewhere, and they didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they've done this, that they've made that connection, but
Speaker 1: it's still there. It's non conscious intelligence, and when they're
Speaker 1: holding those dowsing rods, they're able to kind of put
Speaker 1: the power of explaining into the dowsing rod and access
Speaker 1: that nonconscious intel diligence, and that that's how they'd turn
Speaker 1: up water when they managed to turn up water. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty interesting too. Well, I certainly
Speaker 1: don't have everything figured out, so who knows? Who knows? Well,
Speaker 1: if you're a member of the geological community, let us
Speaker 1: know how you find water and how reliable it is.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear that. And since I spoke to
Speaker 1: the geological community directly, that means, of course it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm going to call this overdue read.
Speaker 1: This came in at the end of last year, and
Speaker 1: this is from Emily Kenyon and the UK okay specifically
Speaker 1: in England specifically, and I know I'll always get these
Speaker 1: shires mispronounced, but Leicestershire. This is apparently we have gotten
Speaker 1: Emily going on a lot of fun things because of
Speaker 1: our show. I want to say thanks for all the
Speaker 1: excellent work. Let you know that your podcast has I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll continue to make subtle and positive impacts on
Speaker 1: my life. And Emily listened to some highlights and now
Speaker 1: have an active post up here composting episode. Very nice
Speaker 1: we now regularly have breakfast for tea as I wanted
Speaker 1: every breakfast you discussed in that episode, but as we
Speaker 1: don't breakfast together as a family to solve the problem. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: I asked for the book Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Speaker 1: for Christmas from the Dial Painters episode and I've just
Speaker 1: finished it. It was stunning, rage inducing, and inspiring all
Speaker 1: at once, and I just ordered a copy for a friend.
Speaker 1: Very nice. I'm planning on making the water Shed fried
Speaker 1: Chicken recipe this week off the back of the Fried
Speaker 1: Chicken episode. Nice. That's gonna knock your socks off. And
Speaker 1: my house has never been cleaner and my garden more
Speaker 1: well kept since I found you guys during Lockdown. You
Speaker 1: made pottering around a joy, learning and chuckling at the
Speaker 1: same time, although I'm with Chuck on the economic stuff,
Speaker 1: which is to say, I guess no. Thank you, thanks
Speaker 1: again for all these positive impacts on my life, and
Speaker 1: Happy New Year to you guys and the team from
Speaker 1: Emily Emily Kenyon. Thanks a lot, Emily. That's fantastic. I'm
Speaker 1: glad we could have some positive effects on your life.
Speaker 1: That was very nice. Chuck, good good selection. It's good.
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Emily and let us
Speaker 1: know how we've impacted your life, hopefully for the better,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. It's stuff podcast at
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