Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for
Speaker 1: this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How
Speaker 1: the Hum Works came out back in December of two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, and it is probably the saddest most aggravating
Speaker 1: affliction I can think of, next to Morgellons, because people
Speaker 1: don't believe you when you have this thing. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting episode if you ask me. It's got everything.
Speaker 1: Uh that X Files makes an appearance, and so does
Speaker 1: Vocal Fry before our Vocal Fry episode ever came out.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy it. Bon Chawn's welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and I would say it's stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: but it's not because I haven't said Jerry, and now
Speaker 1: I did, so this is sufficient. Yes, are people going
Speaker 1: crazy yet? I don't know. There's probably some people who
Speaker 1: started going crazy in the moment they hit play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Chuck's version of the hum. Yeah, capital T, capital H. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the hum you just did it makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: a hum. But apparently like if you'd listen, I don't.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can hear the same thing I'm
Speaker 1: hearing because you're hearing it in your head. But there's
Speaker 1: like a gravelly quality to it, the vocal fry. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to call it that, I say gravelly,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It wasn't constant. The gravelly thing gave
Speaker 1: it texture and it was kind of broken up a
Speaker 1: little bit. That is more akin to the hum than
Speaker 1: the unbroken part that was going throughout. So apparently, while
Speaker 1: this is called the hum, and we should eventually explain
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, it's not the casical definition of
Speaker 1: a hum that people here, right, It's not it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like a diesel truck idoling engine idling is with
Speaker 1: a classic description of it, Yeah, the um. That term
Speaker 1: vocal fry is one of those you ever hear or
Speaker 1: learn of a new expression or a thing and they've
Speaker 1: never heard of, and then you see it everywhere. That
Speaker 1: is called the bottom minehuff phenomenon. And that's happening to
Speaker 1: me with vocal fry. Where did you hear that? I
Speaker 1: can't remember where I initially heard it, but it's a
Speaker 1: thing now that they say, um, like Kim Kardashian is
Speaker 1: who they always blame. It's a vocal affectation that's supposedly
Speaker 1: young women are using now where they go into that
Speaker 1: lower tone, um, that gravelly tone on certain like the
Speaker 1: ends of sentences. Usually I know you, I heard that too,
Speaker 1: and that supposedly keeps them from being promoted at work
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's the female equivalent of
Speaker 1: the guys who speak up yeah, or all the valley
Speaker 1: girl thing, which is up speak, like the valley girls
Speaker 1: talking like that. But now it's um. You know, he
Speaker 1: was a nice guy, but I really wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: his motivation was. Oh okay, yeah, that's a great impression.
Speaker 1: That's because it was dead on. Yeah. And I totally
Speaker 1: got that you had pigtails just now. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: talking Emily about it the day. She was like, do
Speaker 1: I do that? It's like, now, you don't do that? No,
Speaker 1: you don't. I just did that, didn't I a little bit?
Speaker 1: But you you were doing a different voice, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, I can't escape it. Now. It's
Speaker 1: like every other day since I've heard it, I've seen
Speaker 1: something about vocal fry And have you noticed people with
Speaker 1: vocal frymore all the time. Okay, yeah, it's annoying, Like
Speaker 1: what you're describing now has really nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the hum, but it actually does have a lot in
Speaker 1: common with the hum, and that kind of people who
Speaker 1: hear the hum um tended to be able to focus
Speaker 1: in on it more and more easily the more that
Speaker 1: they're exposed to it, which is the opposite of what
Speaker 1: should happen to a noise that really is inconsequential in
Speaker 1: the environment. That's so what we're talking about here, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is the hum with a capital H. That's right. What
Speaker 1: what is it? Well, it is um. It is a sound,
Speaker 1: a mysterious sound that is heard in places around the
Speaker 1: world by about two percent of the local population. UM.
Speaker 1: It is a low frequent and we're going to get
Speaker 1: into the frequencies and all that, but let's just call
Speaker 1: it a low frequency rumbling right now. It's a drone.
Speaker 1: It's a vibration described sometimes as it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: coming from nowhere or inside my own head. Um. And
Speaker 1: it is. There are places all around the world where,
Speaker 1: like I said, a very small population of people experience
Speaker 1: this hum, and depending on where you are, they will
Speaker 1: name it that hume, like the Auckland hume. The winds
Speaker 1: are hum, the Bristol hume, Yeah, the Taos hum and um.
Speaker 1: It's been described, you know, going back to the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: People have talked about it in literally sure, but really
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies and the modern
Speaker 1: world is when people have started describing hearing this thing
Speaker 1: that drives them batty basically. And one of the ways
Speaker 1: that it drives them batty is they'll say do you
Speaker 1: hear that? And everyone else in the room will say no.
Speaker 1: The other of people's at yeah, and they'll be like,
Speaker 1: how do you what do you mean you don't hear that?
Speaker 1: And everybody else in the room goes, okay, right, maybe
Speaker 1: you're a little wacky. It's generally at night. It's worse
Speaker 1: at night, for sure, and generally in more rural areas, um,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because it's not as much noise pollution,
Speaker 1: I think exactly. Yeah. Um. It also is tends to
Speaker 1: be worse indoors, so at night, which is a little weird.
Speaker 1: Indoors means that you don't get much sleep because this
Speaker 1: is something that you can't not focus on. People who
Speaker 1: suffer from the hum tend to say that it dominates
Speaker 1: the soundscape. It's not something they can just tune out.
Speaker 1: It's not something that they're getting used to. And again,
Speaker 1: the more the more they're exposed to it, the easier
Speaker 1: they say it is to tune into it and I
Speaker 1: guess become cognizant of it yet again, So imagine about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and imagine being plagued by a sound that does this
Speaker 1: to you and that everyone else says is not real
Speaker 1: because they don't hear it. Yeah, and it's been I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll get into the reasons that it maybe or may
Speaker 1: not be happening, but it's been uh passed off as
Speaker 1: mass hysteria UM or mass delusion UM from everything from
Speaker 1: that to like government conspiracy to uh legitimate legitimate noise,
Speaker 1: whether or not it's acoustic or electromagnetic. And that's part
Speaker 1: of the problem is is there one um? Right? There
Speaker 1: are lots of harms. Is there no harm? You know,
Speaker 1: your your skeptics will say there is no harm. It's
Speaker 1: tentatives or it's something like that UM or some other
Speaker 1: inner ear noise like otto acoustic noise UM. So who knows,
Speaker 1: but that's there there are two ways that the hum. Okay,
Speaker 1: so again, let's let's restate this and let's put ourselves
Speaker 1: in the position of the outsider, because I don't experience
Speaker 1: the hum, so I am it ounced. I don't either
Speaker 1: knock on wood because the more I researched it some
Speaker 1: more I'm like, oh God, I hope I never do well.
Speaker 1: We we left out one um one quality of it
Speaker 1: that that is common around the world. And when we
Speaker 1: say around the world, it tends to be curiously concentrated
Speaker 1: in the West, UM and in the euro I didn't
Speaker 1: notice that euro ancestry West. Yeah, I didn't really see
Speaker 1: anything about any countries in the East. If you look
Speaker 1: at UM, if you look at there is a guy
Speaker 1: who runs a m Glenn McPherson. Yes, Glenn McPherson runs
Speaker 1: something called the World HUM Map and Database. And we
Speaker 1: ran into Glenn mc fherson. Before we get too far,
Speaker 1: we should give a huge shout out to Jared Keller
Speaker 1: over at Mike who wrote this amazing article called a
Speaker 1: mysterious sound is driving people insane and nobody knows what's
Speaker 1: causing it. Totally worth reading UM. And he talks about
Speaker 1: a guy named Glenn McPherson who's a professor in uh
Speaker 1: British Columbia, and he set up a website called the
Speaker 1: World HUM Map and Database, and so anybody who hears
Speaker 1: the HUM can go and fill out a questionnaire and
Speaker 1: then it takes that data and puts a dot on
Speaker 1: the map, and you can hover over the dot and
Speaker 1: get the data. Right if you look at it, it's
Speaker 1: just the United States, Great Britain, your Western Europe, Canada,
Speaker 1: South Africa. It's pretty it's it's unusual that there's nothing
Speaker 1: in Africa except South Africa. Um, and it's just in
Speaker 1: these European ancestry western countries. Right. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, that's because this is an English
Speaker 1: language database, and so of course somebody whose native languages
Speaker 1: like Swahili isn't gonna go into this. And I have
Speaker 1: no idea what I'm typing here, but yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's one explanation. There are other explanations too, and
Speaker 1: now we arrive at one of them. We're going back
Speaker 1: on the outside because you don't hear the hump. I
Speaker 1: don't hear the hump. And let's say that we're your
Speaker 1: nose and throat guys, and somebody comes to us and says,
Speaker 1: I'm going crazy, Like I'm seriously contemplating suicide because this
Speaker 1: HUM is keeping me up at night. I haven't slept
Speaker 1: at weeks. I'm irritable, i have headaches, nosebleeds, I'm nauseated
Speaker 1: all the time. These are all common symptoms of HUM sufferers.
Speaker 1: You're you're going to think one of two things as
Speaker 1: a doctor a physician. One is tonitus, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the other one is you're crazy that you're you're driving
Speaker 1: yourself crazy. Um. Both of them can kind of be
Speaker 1: explained away, and they are explained away by this guy
Speaker 1: named David Demming, and he is a geoscientist from University
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma, and he wrote what is probably the definitive
Speaker 1: study on the harm so far back in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: That's right, so Demming apparently if you look at his research,
Speaker 1: there is another theory. Uh. And this is where the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government comes into play, because there's a couple of um.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of theories revolving around the US military
Speaker 1: and whether or not they are causing this UM. One
Speaker 1: is with their High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program h
Speaker 1: a a ARP in Alaska, and they transmit RF signals
Speaker 1: into the HONO sphere. And very well, should we go
Speaker 1: ahead and start talking about the frequency ranges VLF and
Speaker 1: e l F. VLF is very low frequency and those
Speaker 1: are waves at point one hurts and the other one
Speaker 1: is e l F. Right, is there extremely low frequencies
Speaker 1: and they're in the range of UM the same amount
Speaker 1: of hurts, but their wavelength is up to like a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand meters. Right, that's an extremely long wavelength, that's right.
Speaker 1: And um, people who think, you know, they call them
Speaker 1: HUM investigators. Uh, they believe pretty much that it is
Speaker 1: VLF and e l F tones um that are driving
Speaker 1: these people crazy. And those tones can drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: They do have adverse effects on the body. Um. You
Speaker 1: know you you probably heard it about a lot when
Speaker 1: it comes to like cell phone radiation that kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But Um, whether or not e l F and VLF
Speaker 1: is or are the HUM is what's a matter of
Speaker 1: much debate. It is a matter of debate because and
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a matter of faith because what
Speaker 1: you're talking about there with UM E l F and
Speaker 1: vlf frequencies is uh tones, those are radio waves, and
Speaker 1: radio is part of the electromagnetic spec spectrum. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it has been shown at very very high frequencies,
Speaker 1: humans can detect electro magnetics sound. We take it as sound,
Speaker 1: which is weird because it's not supposed to happen like that,
Speaker 1: But that's how we experience it. It's not like at
Speaker 1: a high frequency we suddenly see it. We hear it.
Speaker 1: And if you are familiar with the UM comment six
Speaker 1: seven that the European Space Agency recently landed on, which
Speaker 1: is crazy, that comment was found to emit a an
Speaker 1: electro magnetic clicking sound, which is how we experience electro
Speaker 1: magnets or electromagnetic sound at a certain frequency. And so
Speaker 1: because it's a clicking sound, it's not a hum at all.
Speaker 1: Some people are saying, well, that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: This is a hum. It doesn't if we can hear it,
Speaker 1: it's it's it doesn't sound like an idoling diesel engine.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a clicking sound or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then what's more, what this guy is saying is
Speaker 1: that if it's a very low frequency or extremely low frequency,
Speaker 1: that's the opposite of how we hear electromagnetic radiation. We
Speaker 1: hear at a very high frequency, not a very low frequency,
Speaker 1: so which one is it? So, yes, it's still a
Speaker 1: huge matter of debate even as to whether the HUM.
Speaker 1: First of all, if it does exist, if it's a
Speaker 1: single source, single source, and then um, if it is
Speaker 1: a single source or any kind of source, is it
Speaker 1: electromagnetic or is it acoustic? And we'll unpack the difference
Speaker 1: between those things right after this. So as whether or
Speaker 1: not the HUM exists. The Canadian government actually part of
Speaker 1: the problem is it's hard to get research done on
Speaker 1: this because very small number of people experience it, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are called crackpots. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: tough to get funding for research. But luckily there's a
Speaker 1: country called Canada that will fund things like this. And
Speaker 1: uh Dr Colin novak Um spent a year listening to
Speaker 1: the windsor hom in Ontario and what they found was
Speaker 1: the HUM is real. And they traced the source in
Speaker 1: that case too UM on the Michigan side of the
Speaker 1: Detroit River UM and basically a steel plant on Zug Island.
Speaker 1: Then that sounds like an industrial plant ially does, and
Speaker 1: it supposedly generates a lot of VLF waves UM when
Speaker 1: they're operating. So in this instance, at least the hum
Speaker 1: was a real thing, and they found out it was
Speaker 1: a tone created from basically an industrial plant, right, So
Speaker 1: they apparently took steps to cut down on whatever energy
Speaker 1: it was emitting. Yeah, they turned off the hum machine
Speaker 1: right exactly. And all of a sudden, Um, some people said, Hey,
Speaker 1: that worked, a lot of people said that did absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: The Hum's still out there. And then the most people said,
Speaker 1: I still don't know what you're talking about. So that
Speaker 1: that and that wasn't actually the first time government has
Speaker 1: looked into the hum. In Taos, New Mexico, there's something
Speaker 1: called the Taos Hum and apparently, uh, somebody wrote in
Speaker 1: to complain about it to a local newspaper, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like hundreds more people said, yes, I
Speaker 1: hear the same thing. I've been hearing the same thing
Speaker 1: for years. What is going on? And enough of enough
Speaker 1: people said something in New Mexico that it prompted an
Speaker 1: investigation by the University of New Mexico and Sandy A Labs,
Speaker 1: which I think is like a government affiliated kind of Um. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a neat research lab. They do all sorts of
Speaker 1: cool clandestine stuff. Nice right, um, and very much so.
Speaker 1: And actually the X Files mentioned the hum in an
Speaker 1: episode called Drive Yeah. Interesting, they talk about it. There
Speaker 1: was a couple of characters had to constantly moved westward
Speaker 1: or else they would suffer from the pressure of this
Speaker 1: hum that no one else could hear. Let me guess,
Speaker 1: Mulder believe Scully did not exactly how did you saw
Speaker 1: that one? No? I didn't, but you know, so um
Speaker 1: they looked into the Taos hum and they could never
Speaker 1: figure out what it was, so I think they kind
Speaker 1: of wrote it off as either mass delusion or a
Speaker 1: bunch of people had tenitas or what have you. Which
Speaker 1: is again, that's the that's the easy that's the easy answer,
Speaker 1: like you have tonitas. The problem is if if a
Speaker 1: prison is tonitas, they the sound is internal, like they remember,
Speaker 1: there's like an idea that the and isn't it a
Speaker 1: high pitch ringing? Yes? Usually it can. It can vary
Speaker 1: in in um and pitch, but for the most part
Speaker 1: it's you can tell it's internal with the hum. Everyone
Speaker 1: who experiences the hume says, no, this is external, and
Speaker 1: it's it's they're so convinced it's external that they'll go
Speaker 1: out at night when it's worse and try to find
Speaker 1: the source of it. They'll drive around their city or
Speaker 1: their neighborhood or walk around and look for what it
Speaker 1: is that's driving them crazy and they'll never find it,
Speaker 1: or they'll turn off the power of their house, or
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all sorts of extreme UM and of
Speaker 1: course it's all like anecdotal, but people that are driven
Speaker 1: to suicide or this one guy who intentionally deafened himself
Speaker 1: with a chainsaw, which I'm not sure how you do.
Speaker 1: I guess the chasteria from UM and possibly even murder,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a bit, which is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: But the point is that it's not just something that's
Speaker 1: just bugging people like it. It is having the hum.
Speaker 1: There are people all over the world that don't know
Speaker 1: each other, that have never met that UM are suffering
Speaker 1: from something that they hear that other people can't hear
Speaker 1: in concentrated areas. Yeah, and then and that's affecting their
Speaker 1: quality of life. And UM, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: ever finished the sentence, which is weird. That means I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in something, Okay, But um, did we say
Speaker 1: or did I say that people who suffer from the
Speaker 1: hum tend to be in their fifties and older. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the markers between like fifty and seventy. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a this is something in the favor of
Speaker 1: acoustic sound. Um. So, acoustic sound is a compression wave
Speaker 1: and it's something that's carried through and propagates through media.
Speaker 1: So um, there it's a vibration in the air. Whereas
Speaker 1: an electromagnetics wave comes from an electrical or a magnetic
Speaker 1: or both source. This is like the vibe of vibration.
Speaker 1: It's a sound wave. That's that's an acoustic wave. Right. So, um,
Speaker 1: as we age, say you get to around fifty years
Speaker 1: of age, your ability to hear high frequency and mid
Speaker 1: frequency acoustic sound diminishes. Your low frequency capabilities go undiminished.
Speaker 1: So it's not like they increase, but comparatively speaking, you
Speaker 1: get better at hearing low frequencies around age fifty. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So what some people think is that if it is electromagnetic,
Speaker 1: then there are some people out there who are capable
Speaker 1: of hearing electromagnetic waves while the rest of us can't
Speaker 1: and they're being driven crazy by some source that we
Speaker 1: have yet to identify. Um or if it's acoustic, that
Speaker 1: there are some people out there who are superheroes of
Speaker 1: low frequency sound, which would also kind of um do
Speaker 1: away with another diagnosis that a lot of doctors give people,
Speaker 1: which is hyper accus us, which to me is worth
Speaker 1: a whole other podcasts. It's another people kill themselves over
Speaker 1: this heightened hyper hearing to where like this, the rustle
Speaker 1: of clothes is unbearable. Man. The thing is is, if
Speaker 1: you have hyper accused us, it's not just going to
Speaker 1: be some harm that you hear and everything else is normal,
Speaker 1: which is what hum suffers experience. You would hear everything
Speaker 1: on this grand scale. You'd be like Spider Man exactly.
Speaker 1: So what they think is that there are people who
Speaker 1: UM are predisposed to hearing low frequency sounds way better
Speaker 1: than other people, and that it comes as their higher
Speaker 1: and mid frequency capabilities diminished with age. Right, But again,
Speaker 1: what are they hearing? Well? That's right, UM. I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier the h A A r P program that the
Speaker 1: US government military is doing in Alaska. The other one
Speaker 1: that I teased UM is the TACAMO, the Take Charge
Speaker 1: and Move Out system. In the nineteen sixties, U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy basically adopted this program to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with submarines, long range bombers, UM ballistic missiles during nuclear war,
Speaker 1: and they use very low frequency radio waves to do so.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's a real thing, but is it
Speaker 1: the hum um? Other conspiracy theorists will say that the
Speaker 1: US government is also using these things to target individuals
Speaker 1: UM and of course that's you know, you want to say,
Speaker 1: that's probably bunk, but you never know. You know, what
Speaker 1: the cool irony is that Jared Keller points out is
Speaker 1: that if the HUM is electromagnetic in nature, tinfoil hat,
Speaker 1: an aluminum foil hat would actually work because it blocks
Speaker 1: out about I think write but like just a thin
Speaker 1: layer of aluminum can block out like of electromagnetic waves.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty ironic that it might actually work, although
Speaker 1: I don't I haven't heard whether that helps people with
Speaker 1: the HUM if they put on a tinfoil hat, if
Speaker 1: that would help or not, or if it has um.
Speaker 1: But speaking of tacomo uh, if you read David Demming's
Speaker 1: UM journal article, it's called the HUM an anomalous sound
Speaker 1: heard around the World. And there is a journal called
Speaker 1: the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is a pure viewed
Speaker 1: scientific journal that accepts articles on things on the fringe
Speaker 1: of science, which the home most decidedly is UM. David
Speaker 1: demon gets into Tacomo and he basically says, this is
Speaker 1: a secret government program. So obviously we can't get any
Speaker 1: real answers. We don't know how often it works or
Speaker 1: how often they're transmitting or anything, but we do know
Speaker 1: it is a real thing. And he correlates some dates
Speaker 1: when there's like upgrades to the system and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden in this one area around the same
Speaker 1: time there's the Kokomo Indiana Hume starts UM. So he
Speaker 1: he does a good job of correlating, and I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of what he settles on. He believes that
Speaker 1: it's probably the TACAMO program, that this very low frequency
Speaker 1: transmission two submarines underwater from airplanes above is being propagated
Speaker 1: around the world, and that would suggest that it's a
Speaker 1: global source. That it's just some people can hear these
Speaker 1: radio waves that you're not supposed to be able to hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it's multiple sources combined, like a combined effect, like
Speaker 1: if you live near an industrial plant that has a
Speaker 1: machine that's making the sound that maybe certain people are
Speaker 1: retuned to or not. I don't know, well, That's another
Speaker 1: characteristic is that it's mostly experienced in the country. But see,
Speaker 1: I just chalked that up to noise pollution being reduced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when I worked at a convenient store in the
Speaker 1: midnight shift the um. When I worked during the day,
Speaker 1: I would not notice anything. But when I worked up
Speaker 1: there at night at three am, I would hear the
Speaker 1: buzzing of the fluorescent lights and it would drive me crazy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I would turn them off and people would
Speaker 1: think we're closed. So you the thing is, you eventually
Speaker 1: stopped hearing that, right well, when I left work. That's
Speaker 1: called habituation. So habituation means that you are capable of
Speaker 1: so like you'd focus on these things the whole time
Speaker 1: you were there. Well yeah, in the middle, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: focus on it, but I would notice. I'd be reading
Speaker 1: a book and I would just hear that that sound,
Speaker 1: you know, But I never noticed it during the day
Speaker 1: when the lights were on. But so like when you
Speaker 1: didn't hear it, that's habituation. Where like your your supposed
Speaker 1: to something, your brain says, uh, this is totally it's
Speaker 1: not a threat. I don't have to pay attention to
Speaker 1: it anymore. So anytime in this context that I hear
Speaker 1: that sound, I don't have to become cognizant of it.
Speaker 1: Now apparently you did. You kind of like fell into
Speaker 1: cognizance like here or there, and like you'd notice it again.
Speaker 1: But for a normal human being, when you're exposed to
Speaker 1: something like that over and over again, the less you
Speaker 1: notice it. But like we said, with the hum, the
Speaker 1: more you're exposed to it, the easier it is to
Speaker 1: tune in. And what that's called no, And not only
Speaker 1: can you not escape it, you can catch it easier
Speaker 1: and easier, Like you can become cognizant of it easier
Speaker 1: and easier the more you're exposed to it, And that's
Speaker 1: called sensitization, where I guess another explanation for the Thus,
Speaker 1: the sufferers of the hum, if they are hearing something,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that it drives them so baddy
Speaker 1: is because their habituation levels are low, but they're sensitive.
Speaker 1: Sensitization levels are high, so they're not able to ignore it,
Speaker 1: and some part of their brain is focusing in on
Speaker 1: and this creates this, I guess, a perfect storm of holaciousness.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, right after this break, um, I did
Speaker 1: mention murder. So we're gonna talk about one of them
Speaker 1: more interesting parts of the effects of the HUM right
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So I mentioned murder, like I said,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that UM. What is the
Speaker 1: guy's name, Steve Collaz. He's a mechanic. He's a mechanical
Speaker 1: engineer and HUM investigator in Connecticut. And I believe he
Speaker 1: was the one that traced UM the windsor home to
Speaker 1: Zug Island and he has done UM some research that
Speaker 1: he believes the HAM and others believe the HAM could
Speaker 1: be responsible for UM well for killing other people, UH,
Speaker 1: specifically in his case. He actually approached Connecticut State police
Speaker 1: investigators after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and he said the HUM from a nearby gas pipeline
Speaker 1: might have driven Adam Lanza two well, have contributed to
Speaker 1: driving him to do something like this. And I don't
Speaker 1: think he's saying this made him crazy so he did this.
Speaker 1: I think he's saying, fragile minded people could be pushed
Speaker 1: over the edge. It could be the last straw for somebody. UM.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much credence it has, but
Speaker 1: investigators did at least include that in the documents they
Speaker 1: released to the public, so they thought it was worthy
Speaker 1: enough to put in, you know, among the seven thousand
Speaker 1: other documents to release to the public. And he's not
Speaker 1: the only one. Um, remember the Navy yard shooting in
Speaker 1: Aaron Alexis, he fully came out and said, um, quote,
Speaker 1: Ultra low frequency attack is what I've been a subject
Speaker 1: to for the last three years, I'm sorry three months,
Speaker 1: and to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven
Speaker 1: me to this end. Quote. And he scrawled and scratched
Speaker 1: E l F on the shotgun barrel that he used
Speaker 1: to kill twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard and
Speaker 1: he yeah, and he scratched my E l F weapon
Speaker 1: on the stock I think yeah. And um, basically, conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists would say, well, this is clearly driving people to
Speaker 1: do things like this. Skeptics are gonna say, no, these
Speaker 1: people are delusional and they're the ones who believe the
Speaker 1: government is shooting them with these U E l F
Speaker 1: tones and driving them crazy. But either way, it's a
Speaker 1: little startling that someone would scratch that in their shotgun
Speaker 1: before they did something like this and blame it on
Speaker 1: that outright, But that that raises another point, like, you know,
Speaker 1: how exposed was he to those conspiracy theories? Gut A
Speaker 1: lot of people would say, well, there, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a Yahoo group dedicated to the HUM. There's that one
Speaker 1: world HUM map and database, and like people who go
Speaker 1: see these things, I mean, are they are they just
Speaker 1: suggestible and they're like, oh yeah, I can hear it too. Um.
Speaker 1: David Deming points out, like, that's crazy. The idea that
Speaker 1: people are tuning into this thing that's having a really
Speaker 1: um diminishing effect on their well being as part of
Speaker 1: just a mass delusion or something like that kind of
Speaker 1: goes against this the typical psychology of mass delusion where
Speaker 1: people join crowds to be to get some sort of
Speaker 1: positive benefit or effect from it. You can argue they're
Speaker 1: they're getting they're feeling a sense of inclusion or whatever
Speaker 1: by saying I hear the HUM too. Ben in a
Speaker 1: very small minority. But apparently if you are a HUM sufferer,
Speaker 1: like your life is screwed up and you're not a
Speaker 1: happy person. Yeah, I will say this. One thing I've
Speaker 1: noticed about conspiracy theorists is not of them ever believe one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like they believe a lot of them, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that's all I have to say about that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing. So not only is this driving
Speaker 1: people crazy, there is evidence that if this does exist,
Speaker 1: if there is something that, um, if there's some sort
Speaker 1: of what's called low frequency noise that's in the environment,
Speaker 1: it is, it's everywhere, but if people are are being
Speaker 1: exposed to it, there's evidence that biologically speaking, it can
Speaker 1: have an impact. And they're just happened to be this
Speaker 1: incredible real world laboratory that's sprung up in Portugal in
Speaker 1: the late seventies because a guy named Castello Bronco was
Speaker 1: put in charge of the Portuguese Air Forces maintenance, repair
Speaker 1: and manufacturing plant. It's called ogma UM or I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know Portuguese accent or else I do it,
Speaker 1: but we'll just call it ogma um. And he happened
Speaker 1: to just be sitting there and he watched a aircraft
Speaker 1: technician wander around aimlessly in what apparently looked a lot
Speaker 1: like an epileptic seizure to this doctor. And it was
Speaker 1: during in what's called an aircraft run up procedure where
Speaker 1: they're like going through all the systems and this guy
Speaker 1: was just standing there and all of a sudden, he's
Speaker 1: wandering around. So he looked into it and found that
Speaker 1: ten of the workers at this aircraft repair shop were
Speaker 1: diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. And if you look at
Speaker 1: this population and compared to the population of Portugal at large,
Speaker 1: not you wouldn't expect ten percent to have it. You'd
Speaker 1: expect point two percent to have it. So the fact
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of people who are being
Speaker 1: diagnosed with this really um led them to believe that
Speaker 1: they were exposed to this low frequency noise or that
Speaker 1: it was having a dangerous effect on them. And this
Speaker 1: one guy who was a worker there got really into
Speaker 1: did in all this, and he created a living will.
Speaker 1: His name was Phelippe Pedro, and Phelippe Pedro was like,
Speaker 1: you cut me open the moment I die. And doing
Speaker 1: autopsy and they found this guy was messed up, like
Speaker 1: his his ajora, his heart was thicken, the walls were
Speaker 1: thickened inexplicably chi yeah, pretty much, um, but no, that
Speaker 1: would be explicable. Oh so he was a very healthy person.
Speaker 1: Then apparently what they found doesn't jibe with his lifestyle
Speaker 1: he was he was diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. He
Speaker 1: died at age fifty eight. Um he had a thicken
Speaker 1: he had thickened heart tissue, he had a tumor and
Speaker 1: his kidney, he had a tumor in his liver. Um
Speaker 1: And apparently, now thanks to this guy and his autopsy,
Speaker 1: he kind of like laid the groundwork for this investigation
Speaker 1: into low frequency noise being dangerous for humans even though
Speaker 1: we don't feel anything, but on a cellular level, being
Speaker 1: exposed to this stuff has these effects. Um. So, apparently,
Speaker 1: if you have thickening of your heart tissue without any
Speaker 1: kind of inflammation response, um, that is a classic sign
Speaker 1: of low frequency noise damage. It's what's called uh vibro
Speaker 1: acoustic disease, which certain people may be susceptible to and
Speaker 1: others are not. In theory, supposedly, anyone exposed to it
Speaker 1: would be susceptible to it. The way that it ties
Speaker 1: into the hum is some people might actually be able
Speaker 1: to hear what they're being exposed to, while while most
Speaker 1: people might not. So we're all exposed to it. Then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the in this article, I can't remember the name of it,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was basically an overview of this
Speaker 1: this um aircraft place by some Portuguese scientists. Um. They
Speaker 1: they said, it's almost impossible to get a control group
Speaker 1: to compare because everybody's exposed to low frequency noise, just
Speaker 1: most of us aren't aware of it. Yeah, it's just everywhere,
Speaker 1: but it's not considered a nuisance except for that two
Speaker 1: to eleven of poor people who suffer from hearing the hume. Right,
Speaker 1: and their accounts differ wildly as well. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: it's tough to study, and you can't get funding to
Speaker 1: study because it's French science unless you're in Canada. So
Speaker 1: they say, turn a fan on at night. Really, that's
Speaker 1: what one guy does. Makes sense, Yeah, turn on a
Speaker 1: fan or like some sort of like they need white
Speaker 1: noise to john it out and that helps. But yeah,
Speaker 1: get that up, get the white noise out. That's what
Speaker 1: I sleep to. Uh again, go read the awesome article
Speaker 1: by Jared Keller. Yeah, Life Science had a couple of
Speaker 1: good articles yeah. Um, and then David Demming has the
Speaker 1: hum and Anomalous Sound Heard round the World. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then if this kind of stuff floats your boat, you
Speaker 1: might want to check out some of our friends sites
Speaker 1: to um there's a great podcast by our friend Roman
Speaker 1: mars n in Visible, who would be able to explain
Speaker 1: a lot of the science behind this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: One No, but it's kind of up his alley, like
Speaker 1: the vibro Acoustic Shard. I can totally see him getting
Speaker 1: into that. And I just think if somebody dug that,
Speaker 1: they dig n in Visible and then damn interesting. Another
Speaker 1: great site that would definitely have probably has something about
Speaker 1: the home on it. Yeah, and watch the X Files.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, our pal molder. Uh and of course
Speaker 1: you can um hang out at how stuff works. You
Speaker 1: can just type the home in. I don't think it'll
Speaker 1: bring up an article, but see what happens. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't have one yet. No, but uh yeah, type home
Speaker 1: into the search bar and see what comes up. It's
Speaker 1: just a fun game. And since I said the search bar,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call it this
Speaker 1: um limousine ranch. Hey guys, I finally have a story
Speaker 1: for you after listening for over five years. I live
Speaker 1: in super rural South Dakota, not just a regular rural
Speaker 1: South Dakota. My town is only about people and it
Speaker 1: is the largest town within a hundred miles radius. The
Speaker 1: main business here is agriculture and ranching a big surprise.
Speaker 1: After I married my plumber husband from St. Louis, we
Speaker 1: moved back to my little hometown six years ago, where
Speaker 1: we started a plumbing business. He started a plumbing business.
Speaker 1: Shortly after moving here, we got a call to go
Speaker 1: to Anderson's limousin ranch limousine ranch with no E on
Speaker 1: the end. After driving out to the country and lots
Speaker 1: of gravel roads, later, he came up on the ranch
Speaker 1: and failed to see any limos He said he couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out where all the limousines were, uh, and why
Speaker 1: there would be a limousine company dealership in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere on an Indian reservation, I guess. He asked
Speaker 1: the owners and they explain that they run limousine cattle
Speaker 1: on their ranch, which I looked up. It's a type
Speaker 1: of cattle from the Limousine region of France. They don't
Speaker 1: look like they're wearing cloaks or anything. Now, my brother
Speaker 1: and I teased them for quite some time on this
Speaker 1: to get a mental image of the absurdity. Imagine the
Speaker 1: vast prairie of dances with as or fargo and then
Speaker 1: expect to see a limousine dealership out there, um or
Speaker 1: just a bunch of limousines is kind of meandering around
Speaker 1: the fields. That sounds like something that would happen in Fargo.
Speaker 1: That's very Coen Brothers esque but not. Kevin Costner asking
Speaker 1: that he's pretty self serious. Yeah, he didn't look like
Speaker 1: he has much of us since humor, does he? I
Speaker 1: don't know. He was in Bull Durham. It's funny. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: back in the day when he was Bible. I watched
Speaker 1: the preview only for that movie Draft Day that he
Speaker 1: did recently. Yeah, I can barely make it through the preview.
Speaker 1: The preview built it up. They were like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe he's doing it. Is he really going to do this?
Speaker 1: And it's about the NFL Draft and he's like a
Speaker 1: GM and they built it up to this thing, and
Speaker 1: finally I was It was when it was in the
Speaker 1: movie theater the preview. I leaned over to my buddy
Speaker 1: Scotty who you know, and I was like, like, what
Speaker 1: does he do? Does he like open fire on the
Speaker 1: room and like shoot people or is it just some
Speaker 1: sort of trade it's a team. Yeah, but they were
Speaker 1: building up like I can't leave this is happening. Ye
Speaker 1: did you ever see the movie? No, what was Scott's
Speaker 1: take on it? He just laughed and said, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That sounds like our Scott. That's he's the guy that
Speaker 1: laughs at things like that. Um. That is from Jennifer Coleman. Oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot we were even doing Listen to mail. That's right, Jennifer,
Speaker 1: And Um, you should tease your husband for that. That's
Speaker 1: pretty funny stuff. And he should stick to the plumbing business.
Speaker 1: Yeah for real, not the limousine company finding business. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to mock someone you love on our show,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. You also
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