Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there. I
Speaker 1: didn't even have to look why, I just knew, yes,
Speaker 1: and dudes and do debts. We are in our new studio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you tell? Does its sound different? It's the very
Speaker 1: first one and um it's tiny. Wait what do you mean?
Speaker 1: It's the very first one, very very first podcast we
Speaker 1: recorded in here. Yeah, I was gonna say, I said tiny,
Speaker 1: but it's not tiny. It's cozy. But it is our
Speaker 1: all ours, Yeah, how ours. Everybody else at house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works doesn't really know that yet, but they will. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: because when we actually have butt detection and when someone
Speaker 1: sits down these seats that aren't LSD to get a
Speaker 1: shock and plus an alarm goes off at our desks,
Speaker 1: what's called d M R T M. I how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. I feel like this is fancy. This
Speaker 1: is our first real like studio. That's not true, not no,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the last one was no. But
Speaker 1: it's not a utility closet. It's not a lactation room.
Speaker 1: It's not Yeah, it's not a murder room. It's not
Speaker 1: like an office with like desk for like office furniture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a studio that was built out for
Speaker 1: the specific purpose of recording podcasts. All we have to
Speaker 1: do is put up our Aaron Cooper originals. The artwork,
Speaker 1: got a couple of those waiting, and we gotta work
Speaker 1: on the lighting in here a little bit. Yeah, Jerius,
Speaker 1: it's such gonna hang some china balls for us. Yes,
Speaker 1: you keep pushing the china balls. Um so, anyway, enough
Speaker 1: about that. We just wanted to say we're super excited
Speaker 1: to be in our new office, in our new studio.
Speaker 1: It does feel good. Kudos for that intro. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say that. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going to say that too. I knew that
Speaker 1: you were thinking of saying that. Chuck. Yes, uh ESP.
Speaker 1: Do you believe in ESP? No? No, not at all.
Speaker 1: What do you think it is? Because surely, I mean
Speaker 1: just about anyone could agree that humans have some sort
Speaker 1: of ability somehow to make good guesses or to the future,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. Do you agree or
Speaker 1: do you think it's strictly just us selectively paying attention
Speaker 1: to random instances over others. I think it's that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and as we'll talk about, I think it's the just
Speaker 1: the nature of coincidence is going to happen because so
Speaker 1: many things happen every day, Uh, that something is bound
Speaker 1: to seem like something you dreamed about the night before
Speaker 1: at some point in your life. Yeah. But the other
Speaker 1: millions of dreams you have that, don't I think those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are the the tell you know,
Speaker 1: do you? I don't know, like I want to. I
Speaker 1: spent so many years of my life believing and stuff
Speaker 1: like that and wanting to go to to Duke University
Speaker 1: to study at their paras psychology department believe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: but you know, believing in ghosts and all this and
Speaker 1: just that's how I spent my childhood just reading about
Speaker 1: stuff like that voraciously. So Ghostbusters really did a number
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah. Yeah. When that came along, I was like,
Speaker 1: this was made for me. Um. But as an adult,
Speaker 1: it's not so much that I believe in the esp
Speaker 1: it's more that I UM, I refused to just utterly
Speaker 1: disbelieve in the possibility of it. Okay, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, I got you there, because we don't
Speaker 1: know everything about everything yet, right, but uh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: in the I'm the other camp. And I'm not even
Speaker 1: say the skeptic camp because there's people just plug me
Speaker 1: bad name some due to some bad apples. Not all skeptics,
Speaker 1: but there are some that are horses asses. Can we
Speaker 1: say that? I don't know, we'll find out. Um, All right,
Speaker 1: well let's talk about And I thought this was interesting
Speaker 1: because I never knew that uh ESP is just a
Speaker 1: big collective term for all manner of uh paranormal paranormal phenomena,
Speaker 1: which you could also call SI. Yeah, and so dude
Speaker 1: named jb Ryan, who will talk about later, he coined
Speaker 1: ESP the granddaddy. And then in the forties another guy
Speaker 1: coined the term sigh and sigh is the Greek letter
Speaker 1: and it's equated with psyche or the soul. And the
Speaker 1: reason that the guy chose SI is because he felt
Speaker 1: ESP suggested it was something supernatural, and SI, he felt,
Speaker 1: suggested that this is a normal part of humanity we
Speaker 1: just don't understand and it's it sounds like science, right, Um.
Speaker 1: But there are several categories of ESP UM and this
Speaker 1: is the one. I never knew the actual definitions for these.
Speaker 1: I sort of just threw them all in a bag together.
Speaker 1: You have telepathy, and that's when you can you know,
Speaker 1: you're over there reading my thoughts. Yes, like Chuck is
Speaker 1: really not happy to be in the new studio. That's
Speaker 1: not true. He'd rather be at home on the couch.
Speaker 1: I'm reading your thoughts right now, and I know that
Speaker 1: you like this place. Okay, Well, you're you're a telepath. Uh. Clairvoyance,
Speaker 1: which is the ability to see events or things objects
Speaker 1: happening somewhere else at the same time. So are you
Speaker 1: doing Are you a clairvoyant? I am. I'm seeing your
Speaker 1: couch right now, and I'm saying it's not that comfy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're not missing that much at the moment. I
Speaker 1: know somewhere Jonathan Strickland is waxing his head, bald head.
Speaker 1: That's just the logical assumption. Uh. Then we have our
Speaker 1: precogs precognition. That's when you see into the future. Retrocogs
Speaker 1: retro cognition. You can see into the distant past. That's
Speaker 1: there's another um that's a widely accepted definition of retrocognition,
Speaker 1: like seeing you know a cave like took took running
Speaker 1: around with the dinosaurs like you do, which I guess
Speaker 1: never would have happened. Um. But there's another term for retrocognition,
Speaker 1: whereas something in the future affects something in the past.
Speaker 1: So a decision you make in the future affects your past.
Speaker 1: And an example given is that, um, you have a
Speaker 1: dream about a dinosaur. Now, let's a spotted dog, and
Speaker 1: then the first thing the next morning, you go outside
Speaker 1: to water your lawn and the same spotted dog or
Speaker 1: a similar spotted dog walks by. The idea isn't that
Speaker 1: that was very coincidental or that you had esp and
Speaker 1: your dreams, but that you seeing that dog in the
Speaker 1: morning affected your dream the night before. So that's another
Speaker 1: definition that's emerging for retrocognition. That's getting a lot of
Speaker 1: traction because of the stuff we're finding on the quantum scale,
Speaker 1: just weirdness like that. All right, Then you have your
Speaker 1: mediumship and that's um ms Cleo who can channel dead
Speaker 1: spirits forgot about her? And then you have how much
Speaker 1: money that woman grossed in the nineties. She made a
Speaker 1: lot of though I hope so yeah, I mean, she
Speaker 1: was working hard, she had a finite window of opportunity,
Speaker 1: and she worked that whole time. She didn't like buy
Speaker 1: a sailboat and sail around the world after like a
Speaker 1: first million. You know, like she worked. So you're not
Speaker 1: in the camp of like she's taking people's money and
Speaker 1: taking advantage of people. I see that argument, sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: I also see like if people want to spend their
Speaker 1: money on that and they get something out of it,
Speaker 1: knock yourself out. Uh. And then you have a psychometry,
Speaker 1: which is the ability to read info about a person place,
Speaker 1: uh by touching the person object. And that's what I
Speaker 1: like to call the dead zone. Christopher Walking, he would
Speaker 1: place his hands on you and he would see something. Man.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about it recently about how that
Speaker 1: movie holds up. Still. Yeah, it's such a good movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is good. Chris Walking. There's another one, Chuck
Speaker 1: Um called telekinesis, which is like Uri Geller stroking a
Speaker 1: spoon and it bending right, like being able to manipulate
Speaker 1: matter just using a light touch or your mind, but
Speaker 1: there is no spoon. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't that from
Speaker 1: matrix Um. All right, So basically, uh, like you said,
Speaker 1: J b Ryan is the the granddaddy of all this,
Speaker 1: and he actually started studying. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: legitimate scientist, he wasn't some quack. And uh, this was
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties where he started at Duke University
Speaker 1: studying para para psychology basically. And he wasn't the first.
Speaker 1: He was one of the first UM laboratory experimenters in
Speaker 1: academia to really study SI. Right before him, probably about
Speaker 1: forty or so years before him, William James and some
Speaker 1: of his pals at the Society for Psychical Research UM
Speaker 1: really laid the groundwork for applying the scientific method to
Speaker 1: the study of paranormal phenomenon. And they did two things.
Speaker 1: They outed frauds, like fraudulent mediums, like very famously Madame Blevartsky.
Speaker 1: But then they also investigated ones like they approached them
Speaker 1: typically with like an open mind UM, and if they
Speaker 1: found somebody that they just couldn't explain, they would they
Speaker 1: studied them. So they were they were studying each one
Speaker 1: with an open mind. And the ones they figured out
Speaker 1: where frauds they outed as frauds. The ones they figured
Speaker 1: out couldn't quite explain, they sought to investigate scientifically rather
Speaker 1: than just saying, oh, they're frauds somehow. So that was
Speaker 1: the groundwork of the study of sigh. What was Madame
Speaker 1: Blevartsky Steel of the Cony Allen She was she actually
Speaker 1: she was almost a cult leader. You could argue she
Speaker 1: was she um. She created um. Oh man, it's called
Speaker 1: like theodism, I think, which is um. It was. It
Speaker 1: was almost a cult. It was a huge um movement
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century where like you go to like
Speaker 1: a seance and there was a medium there and they
Speaker 1: would channel like the spirits of the dead, relatives of
Speaker 1: people who were they're holding hands in the circle and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And she gained a lot of power
Speaker 1: and wealth and prestige until she was outed as as
Speaker 1: a fraud. And I don't remember the the it's theosophy,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Not to see theo is m.
Speaker 1: Theo ism has to do with theo Huxtable. Uh did
Speaker 1: you see The Source Family, by the way, that documentary. No,
Speaker 1: I haven't about the l a cult in the seventies.
Speaker 1: I saw the the Icon on Netflix and never clicked
Speaker 1: as a good it's really good and it's it's it's awesome. Actually,
Speaker 1: I recommend everyone it's one of those where like they
Speaker 1: interview a lot of them today and they weren't like,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't commit suicide. Like everyone was like
Speaker 1: it was pretty great. Oh yeah, yeah, they're all fine.
Speaker 1: They're all just a bunch of hippies. Still. They were
Speaker 1: out in l A. Yeah, yeah, right in Hollywood. There
Speaker 1: was one and um, there was a documentary I saw
Speaker 1: about a cult in Miami and they were like super
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian but they also were um the basis of
Speaker 1: their religion was was formed on pot too. Well that's
Speaker 1: what the Source family was. I wonder if they were related. Well,
Speaker 1: it was the seventies. Yeah, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: pot cults, I bet. But did they turn into like
Speaker 1: huge pot dealers. No, I don't think so. This cult
Speaker 1: they had a band though, and the called the Source.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't remember the name of the band,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty interesting to transfer that. It's a really
Speaker 1: good documentary. That was just funny to see all these people.
Speaker 1: Now they're like it was awesome. Yeah. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of sex and smoked a lot of weed. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what they These guys didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: a lot of sex though they were like real, like um,
Speaker 1: compartmentalized gender wise and like male dominance and all that.
Speaker 1: But they just smoked a ton of pot all the time,
Speaker 1: including their little kids. Well that's not like like four
Speaker 1: year old smoke. That's terrible. Yeah. There it was in
Speaker 1: the documentaries we're seeing. I don't remember what you had
Speaker 1: me up? You lost me there. I lost everybody there
Speaker 1: in that documentary. Yeah. Um, all right, So back to
Speaker 1: this ESP thing, um, jb Ryan, Yeah, jb Ryan. Well,
Speaker 1: basically there's a there's a lot of different outlooks on
Speaker 1: what ESP might be. Um, some people think that everyone's
Speaker 1: got it, but some people, um, it just pops up
Speaker 1: every now and then, um, like I might have a
Speaker 1: dream that comes true or whatever. Other people think that
Speaker 1: only certain people have it, have the the gift as
Speaker 1: they say, uh, and that they have to be in
Speaker 1: this special like you know, mental state to access at
Speaker 1: the shinnon the shitting. And then other folks say that
Speaker 1: everyone has that potential, but um, some people are just
Speaker 1: like in tune with it and some people aren't. And
Speaker 1: you follow in none of those three camps. Um, So
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little more about some ideas of what
Speaker 1: ESP is right after this so Chuck, Um, you said
Speaker 1: that basically how people see ESP is either everyone has it,
Speaker 1: some people have it, or no one has it. Basically, Uh,
Speaker 1: whether you're a skeptic or a believer. Um, if you
Speaker 1: are a believer in ESP and somebody comes to you
Speaker 1: and says, okay, explain ESP like it is it. There's
Speaker 1: actually a couple of very common suggestions or proposals. One
Speaker 1: made sense for a while before we knew a little
Speaker 1: more about the brain. Um, and that was that EESP
Speaker 1: was some form or fashion of the electromagnetic spectrum that
Speaker 1: we were receiving information from outside of our usual senses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it fell out of favor because, um,
Speaker 1: basically it didn't explain anything about how it moves through
Speaker 1: time or there. It didn't pick up on special some
Speaker 1: special part of your brain that like receives this message.
Speaker 1: And there was a UM did you see that study
Speaker 1: I sent you? That was I think from two ten
Speaker 1: where they put people in an MRI I and then
Speaker 1: showed them, um, different pictures or whatever. H And they
Speaker 1: did they showed like they I put you in the
Speaker 1: wonder machine and now I'm showing you a picture of
Speaker 1: flower and that's it. It's lovely, except that it sounds
Speaker 1: like a German rave. Okay, a little bit um, but
Speaker 1: that would be uh. The non ESP stimuli the control
Speaker 1: group to test ESP and to see if the brain
Speaker 1: reacted differently, and then to see if there was a
Speaker 1: part of the brain that's picking up on ESP. I
Speaker 1: would show you the flower, and then in the other room,
Speaker 1: I would also show Emily that flower. They think about
Speaker 1: it and send you the thought of that flower, So
Speaker 1: you're getting ESP stimuli and then non e SP stimuli.
Speaker 1: And from the m R I they showed that the
Speaker 1: brain didn't react differently, So it suggests that there isn't
Speaker 1: a sensory organ or region of the brain that's responsible
Speaker 1: for picking up ESP, which doesn't debunk the possibility of ESP.
Speaker 1: It just undermines the idea that there's a region of
Speaker 1: our brain that would be responsible for picking that up.
Speaker 1: Plus of Emily's over there, I'm my first guess is
Speaker 1: gonna be dog every time I'm in its flower And
Speaker 1: this well, it wasn't about guessing. It was just to see,
Speaker 1: like showing you ES the e SP version and then
Speaker 1: the non e SP version of the same thing, so
Speaker 1: you weren't guessing do you understand. Yeah, I get to know.
Speaker 1: I would have guessed dog or wine. There wasn't guessing.
Speaker 1: That's the way I guessed. Family thinks she has a
Speaker 1: gift a little bit, so she would have been disappointed.
Speaker 1: She s, yeah, a little, she thinks. But I think
Speaker 1: she's just super observant and intuitive. But that's definitely one
Speaker 1: explanation for it, which we'll get too, of course. Um.
Speaker 1: So these days there are other theories, one of which
Speaker 1: is that, uh, it's called spill over, that there's basically
Speaker 1: another dimension that we that doesn't you know, have our
Speaker 1: laws here and are dimension and that sometimes stuff just
Speaker 1: sort of spills over from that and we see the
Speaker 1: future of the past. And if you're a skeptic, you
Speaker 1: probably just pulled the decent sized clump of your hair
Speaker 1: out of the side of your head at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is something you can't prove obviously, it's like
Speaker 1: completely um And of course they'll say it exactly yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And I think I got the impression
Speaker 1: from this article that, um, they were making that point
Speaker 1: like science is just chasing its tail and trying to
Speaker 1: explain esp because it's not currently capable, and science goes
Speaker 1: it doesn't work like that, you know, um, at least
Speaker 1: with the electromagnetic spectrum explanation, it was pointing to something
Speaker 1: that we already know exists, right, It's just that there
Speaker 1: there's no way to show that we would be getting
Speaker 1: how we would be getting information from it, because the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic explanation, it basically says if you compare it to
Speaker 1: other findings from ESP, it makes even less sense. Because
Speaker 1: with the ESP, one of the hallmarks of it is
Speaker 1: that no matter whether you're out there are outside of
Speaker 1: the studio thinking about wine or a dog or something
Speaker 1: and I'm picking up on it, or if you're in
Speaker 1: China and I'm here and we're doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: that the signal doesn't weaken at all. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: just flies in the face of all we know about
Speaker 1: electromagnetic rights, exactly right. So there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: wrong with the proposals of what ESP is. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know, the reason why people still believe in
Speaker 1: this stuff is because of either hearing a story about
Speaker 1: their friend who said, you know, listen to this crazy
Speaker 1: thing happened, or experiencing it themselves in some way or another,
Speaker 1: having a dream that something similar happened, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're like, I might have the gift exactly,
Speaker 1: or it popped up in me, you know, briefly at least.
Speaker 1: And there's a I mean, there's a lot of um
Speaker 1: evidence of strange and unusual occurrences that support the idea
Speaker 1: of esp um. This article gives a really good one
Speaker 1: about UM. A book called Futility that was written by
Speaker 1: a guy named Morgan robertson right, and in it the
Speaker 1: guy details this book or this boat called the titan Ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah ship, the boat, a big old boat, um, which
Speaker 1: is sailing across the Atlantic and hits an iceberg at
Speaker 1: night and sinks and a bunch of people die because
Speaker 1: they weren't enough lifeboats. Yeah, this is And if that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, the Titanic did the same exact thing, the Titanic,
Speaker 1: not the titan did the same exact thing fourteen years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they're there are a bunch of similarities. Um. The
Speaker 1: titans struck an iceberg in the book on the starboard
Speaker 1: side on an April night in the North Atlantic off
Speaker 1: the coast of Newfoundland, and the real Titanic struck an
Speaker 1: iceberg on the starboard side in April in the North
Speaker 1: Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland on the starless Night.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, Okay, Uh, they were both
Speaker 1: said to be unsinkable. Um, more than half of the
Speaker 1: passengers of the Titanic perished and more than half of
Speaker 1: the passengers and crew on the titan perished. So there's
Speaker 1: all these things in there. But you do a little
Speaker 1: more digging and you find out that Robertson was he
Speaker 1: was a seaman, and he knew a bunch of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's not unreasonable to think at the time they
Speaker 1: wanted to build the biggest ships, and the word titan
Speaker 1: it would be a great name back then for a
Speaker 1: super big ship. And that sailing route uh was a
Speaker 1: common one, and there were icebergs, and April might have
Speaker 1: been a common month for that kind of voyage. So
Speaker 1: all of it can be explained away kind of um,
Speaker 1: but it is definitely something you look at go oh interesting,
Speaker 1: It is interesting, and it's amazing coincidence, and it focuses
Speaker 1: the attention and captures the imagination. Um. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: once you hear about Robertson's background, it becomes slightly less impressive.
Speaker 1: So then kind of too over the years that little
Speaker 1: Colonel got erased and added to it was that this
Speaker 1: idea for this book came to him in a trance,
Speaker 1: which bolsters the espy Is that true or is that
Speaker 1: just been added? Uh, I'm sure it was added over
Speaker 1: the years. Which is a big problem with this kind
Speaker 1: of anecdotal evidence is that you know, it gets embellished
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, exactly. And uh, it's just it's not
Speaker 1: enough that this is a really interesting, unique circumstance or
Speaker 1: coincidence or whatever. There has to be this extra layer
Speaker 1: of proof, like it came to him in a trance.
Speaker 1: Come on. Yeah. Um. So back to Rhyan, he did
Speaker 1: some um. Like I said, in the nineteen thirties, he
Speaker 1: started studying the stuff with one of my favorite inventions,
Speaker 1: um by his colleague Carl Zenter. Of course, if you
Speaker 1: seen Ghostbusters he was using. He was using a version
Speaker 1: of Zentner cards. Um. The shapes weren't all exactly. I
Speaker 1: think there was one that was different Um and Ghostbusters,
Speaker 1: But the original Zentner cards were was a deck of
Speaker 1: twenty five Plaine white cards, with each of them had
Speaker 1: one of five symbols, a circle plus sign, a square,
Speaker 1: a star, five point star and the three wavy lines
Speaker 1: like water a river. So what that is? Okay? And
Speaker 1: the idea is that, just like in Ghostbusters, you hold
Speaker 1: it up and UM asked the you know, not showing
Speaker 1: them the card at obviously not the symbol, and say
Speaker 1: what do you see? And they say what they see?
Speaker 1: And then you record after the deck how many they got? Right? Right,
Speaker 1: But the person holding the card is supposed to be
Speaker 1: thinking about what they're seeing so that the other person,
Speaker 1: the target, the receiver, can pick it up tele telepathically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I did they have these online? I took the
Speaker 1: test yesterday, UM, and I went through the deck and
Speaker 1: I only got six out of and at the end
Speaker 1: it just said you are not a psychic. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of funny. Statistically speaking for just one trial,
Speaker 1: that is more than chance. You did better than chance,
Speaker 1: So maybe you do have a touch six of what
Speaker 1: what would chance to be a chance would be if
Speaker 1: there's five different ones, and so this was six of
Speaker 1: twenty four would be uh no, that's not no, that's less. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: you did six of you did, so five of five
Speaker 1: would be chance. Okay, so I got one more? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: and I think like three of the first eight or
Speaker 1: so or six I got, and I was like, I've
Speaker 1: got the gift, right, but I didn't know, like it's
Speaker 1: randomly generated, and so it's not like someone was on
Speaker 1: the other side thinking of that card. So I literally
Speaker 1: I was like, what do I do? I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just guessing. So that brings up some interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: like there's there's um evidence that when a machine is
Speaker 1: involved that there is no telepathy. There would only be clairvoyance. Right,
Speaker 1: So I mean if if if telepathy is you picking
Speaker 1: up what's in someone else's mind and the computer is mindless,
Speaker 1: then you shouldn't be able what you were saying, like
Speaker 1: you should it shouldn't You should not be able to
Speaker 1: know what zenter card it's going to pick next. Right,
Speaker 1: But there have been investigations using computers and using machines
Speaker 1: that show above chance that there is some sort of
Speaker 1: weird interaction like a random number generators. So Princeton University
Speaker 1: has a department called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Department.
Speaker 1: Pair right and pair has been doing studies for a
Speaker 1: couple of decades. The millions of trials and basically they'll
Speaker 1: say this is a random number generator or this this
Speaker 1: machine operates randomly or whatever. We want you to think
Speaker 1: of a number, and we want to see if you
Speaker 1: can influence the numbers that this computer spits out. Oh
Speaker 1: so you're thinking of the number, then you're okay. The
Speaker 1: human is trying to affect the computer, the output the
Speaker 1: behavior of the computer. Of course, if you're sitting across
Speaker 1: the room or in another room thinking about a number
Speaker 1: that a random generator should put out, it should have
Speaker 1: zero effect whatsoever. It's a computer. The weird thing is
Speaker 1: is what Princeton has found is that yes, over enough trials,
Speaker 1: you there is a slight, very slight, but measurable effect
Speaker 1: that human thought has on a random number generator. It's
Speaker 1: it's on Princeton's website. And this is stuff that like
Speaker 1: is apparently accepted in the in the scientific community that
Speaker 1: the the the trials that they are running are so
Speaker 1: widespread and so repeatable and have been done so many
Speaker 1: times that the data that they're coming up with is
Speaker 1: is it's significant. Well, Ryan, with his inner card experiments
Speaker 1: in the thirties did find that some people um got
Speaker 1: what they thought were pretty impressive results. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: a few I can't remember their names, but Hubert Pierce
Speaker 1: was he one of them. He was the one how
Speaker 1: many what was his percentage? He had one where he got, um,
Speaker 1: remember how you got three in a row and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, he got twenty five in a row once.
Speaker 1: Come on, no, I'm not kidding. He was also documented
Speaker 1: iss selecting five hundred and fifty eight correct out of
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty which is the odds of that
Speaker 1: happening by chance, We're twenty two billion to one. Now,
Speaker 1: were these the early experiments? Because okay, because I did
Speaker 1: read that UM and this seems like I can't believe
Speaker 1: he didn't check this. Apparently the early cards were a
Speaker 1: little translucent. Oh yeah, some of them were. And then
Speaker 1: he corrected for that and the and the percentages went
Speaker 1: down and then they U I know other scientists said
Speaker 1: that you are somehow influencing with your body. Tell like
Speaker 1: you basically you don't have a good enough poker face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the earliest um Ryan experiments with the center cards,
Speaker 1: he would hold the card up and he'd be making
Speaker 1: eye contact right right the guy. Yeah, the guess it
Speaker 1: would be like is it the way line? And yeah,
Speaker 1: he start shaking his head almost imperceptive. Um, but he
Speaker 1: uh he, that's called sensory leakage, where you the person
Speaker 1: who is um holding the card and knows where the
Speaker 1: card is somehow, there's some detail about your face that
Speaker 1: when you do a thousand trials with somebody, they start
Speaker 1: to pick up on and it affects their guests. That
Speaker 1: influences their guests. So to um correct for that, to
Speaker 1: control for that a sensory leakage in that um, they
Speaker 1: they came up with something called the gans Field experiment. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a German gunsfeld Um that means whole field in German.
Speaker 1: And that is when they started putting people um, they
Speaker 1: would start depriving their other sense is basically, uh, they
Speaker 1: would be in a like a dimly lit room with
Speaker 1: red lighting and they would have white noise, and they
Speaker 1: would have their eyes covered with these uh special glasses
Speaker 1: or ping pong balls cut in half like Kermit the fraud.
Speaker 1: I guess later on they said, we should just make
Speaker 1: some classes exactly We've got the funding. So basically the
Speaker 1: idea was, let's rule out any uh any of that
Speaker 1: gross censury leakage, which smells um. So yeah, Apparently later
Speaker 1: on in Rhyan's experiments. Um, after he started controlling for stuff,
Speaker 1: the percentages started to drop. Yeah. Correct, Um, he's he was.
Speaker 1: Also he's generally a respected researcher for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: whenever he did whenever evidence of like um, some sort
Speaker 1: of bias or fraud or something was brought to him,
Speaker 1: he corrected for it. He wore glasses in a white right.
Speaker 1: That was another one. Um. But also he was daring
Speaker 1: enough to stake his entire career on a field of
Speaker 1: study that will get anybody mocked publicly privately. Um, can
Speaker 1: really shut down a lot of opportunities for you. This
Speaker 1: guy and his wife, Louisa Ryan both dedicated their careers
Speaker 1: to establishing the field of parapsychology and really studying it
Speaker 1: and then just walking away from it. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was like, I really want to prove this is true?
Speaker 1: Was he? Uh? Yes, he did? That was that was
Speaker 1: a huge criticism of him. He was a definite believer. Um.
Speaker 1: He was quoted by I don't know what the guy's
Speaker 1: steal was, but one day he was visited by one
Speaker 1: person and the interviewer who went on to write a
Speaker 1: paper I think in scientific American to expose him. He
Speaker 1: said he kept a file of people of the results
Speaker 1: of tests where um, people he suspected were purposefully getting
Speaker 1: things wrong because they didn't like him to mess with
Speaker 1: his data, he just took those and never published him.
Speaker 1: He didn't include him in the results, which would definitely
Speaker 1: affect the number of correct hits. Right. Um, that was
Speaker 1: a huge criticism. That's not good science at all. But
Speaker 1: he was definitely a believer, which was another criticism. But
Speaker 1: he was daring and he did um. There was another
Speaker 1: story where it's called the Levy affair where a guy
Speaker 1: named Levy, who was an electrical engineer working in the lab,
Speaker 1: unplugged uh, I guess the censor that would correct negative
Speaker 1: hits for a little while during a trial, so that
Speaker 1: all that were recorded for a little bit were positive hits,
Speaker 1: um and so, and then he plugged it back in. Well,
Speaker 1: this one guy saw what the guy was doing and
Speaker 1: went to Ryan. And Ryan went to the guy Levy
Speaker 1: and said, did you do this? And let me say,
Speaker 1: just it's like you're fired, and just like through the
Speaker 1: results away and all that. So he wasn't like he
Speaker 1: was a true believer, but he wasn't just some like
Speaker 1: outright fraud, right right, But he was and still is
Speaker 1: under the microscope as much as probably any researcher in
Speaker 1: all of academia ever has been. All right, well, right
Speaker 1: after this break, we'll talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: skeptics say about ESP All right, Josh. One thing you'll
Speaker 1: hear skeptics say a lot is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Speaker 1: And I have to agree with him, and Uh, it
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary claim here. And UM, so far there
Speaker 1: hasn't been um extraordinary evidence. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I pointed to earlier that I think is what's going
Speaker 1: on if you look at statistics, you look at six
Speaker 1: billion people on planet Earth, uh, and them thinking a
Speaker 1: good zillion things each day. And that is scientific, by
Speaker 1: the way. Um, at some point somebody is going to
Speaker 1: think something that it mirrors something that happens in the
Speaker 1: near future. Uh, And it's just chance and coincidence. I
Speaker 1: have a great example of that, man. It happened this
Speaker 1: very morning. Yeah I did. Um. I was at the printer.
Speaker 1: You know, we just moved offices, and I was at
Speaker 1: the printer and I had like an extra piece of
Speaker 1: paper that I didn't need, and I realized, like, we
Speaker 1: have no paper recycling here. So on my way back
Speaker 1: yet that is everyone out there. It's like, what kind
Speaker 1: of office would have, right, we just said we have
Speaker 1: a we have a fifty gallon drum that we throw
Speaker 1: stuff into that it catches on fire and then we
Speaker 1: send it up a burning drum, that's what it's called.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting those soon, um, right, and we are
Speaker 1: getting hip soon. I know this because on my way
Speaker 1: back to my desk, I popped into Izzy, the I
Speaker 1: T guy who's also the head of all recycling and
Speaker 1: stuff here. It's like, is he need a paper recycling
Speaker 1: bins by the printer? And he goes, I'm writing an
Speaker 1: email right now to everybody about that very thing. You
Speaker 1: almost did your USY impression close, um, And so like
Speaker 1: I thought about it. That's pretty amazing, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was about nine in the morning, and this is
Speaker 1: a company wide email, so it would be something that
Speaker 1: is he would probably knock out about that time. The
Speaker 1: reason I was thinking of is because I was just
Speaker 1: at the printer. We just moved into this office and
Speaker 1: we didn't have bins yet, so it was still a
Speaker 1: potential thing for somebody to be thinking about. Or doing
Speaker 1: or writing an email about UM. And so there's all
Speaker 1: these different really overlooked variables or factors to this whole
Speaker 1: thing that that you don't think of. Instead, it just
Speaker 1: seems like an amazing coincidence or ESP. To me, the
Speaker 1: really significant thing was that I happened to be researching
Speaker 1: ESP while this happened. That's what it really kind of
Speaker 1: stood out to me. But if you really kind of
Speaker 1: look at it, like, there's a finite amount of things
Speaker 1: that people could think about in any given day, in
Speaker 1: any giving context, in an office or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like had I been a goat at a petting zoo
Speaker 1: and I went over and UM talked to the cow
Speaker 1: and the cow was writing the email about recycling bins. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but we're in an office. I'm talking to the guy
Speaker 1: about recycling bins. There's just a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: you kind of once you take that into account, it
Speaker 1: becomes less amazing. Like like the the guy writing the
Speaker 1: Titan Titanic book. Yeah, you know, I used to happen
Speaker 1: to me, now that I think of it, is UM.
Speaker 1: I used to And this it's weird. It was only
Speaker 1: with phone land lines that hadn't happened with the cell phone.
Speaker 1: But I used to like, no, the phone was gonna
Speaker 1: ring right before it rang, like almost go to reach
Speaker 1: for it. Um. And I mean it's not like it
Speaker 1: happened all the time, but it happened enough times where
Speaker 1: I was like, that's weird. Sure, I know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, but and that was all it was to me.
Speaker 1: I was not like I the gift. But think about
Speaker 1: it in in that respect to you know people, So
Speaker 1: was it you knew who was calling or just that
Speaker 1: the phone was about to just that it was about
Speaker 1: to ring. Now, yeah, that is weird. You definitely do
Speaker 1: have esp yeah, um. Or maybe I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: the phone made a little tick noise right before it
Speaker 1: rang that I didn't pick up on, but only subconsciously.
Speaker 1: You know. Well that's another explanation for today that um right,
Speaker 1: that um there is uh subliminal stuff in the environment
Speaker 1: that is just too weak in nature for us to
Speaker 1: pick up on consciously, but our unconscious does or subconscious does,
Speaker 1: which frankly opens up a whole other can of worms.
Speaker 1: You know, as far as you know, how real is
Speaker 1: that kind of thing there? But probably a little closer
Speaker 1: to reality is the idea that um our attention isn't
Speaker 1: focused on everything that we're picking up at all times,
Speaker 1: like like I see your beard and I see your
Speaker 1: shirt and everything, but I'm still also picking up like
Speaker 1: sensory information from like Jerry's computer that I can see
Speaker 1: in my peripheral vision or whatever. My attention isn't focused
Speaker 1: on it, but my brain is still receiving information. So
Speaker 1: the idea that our brains can put it together all
Speaker 1: this information that we're not aware consciously that we're receiving, um,
Speaker 1: but we're still getting impressions from it. That'sh that that
Speaker 1: could be a great explanation for ESP as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's never happened with my cell phone
Speaker 1: sort of makes sense because maybe there it was a
Speaker 1: mechanical function a landline, right, Yeah, like you said a
Speaker 1: click or a tick, but I think you meant like
Speaker 1: a click And it wasn't even the newer model. This
Speaker 1: was back in the day when it was like yeah,
Speaker 1: ringing like bell, So maybe that does explain it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got another good example that I came across and
Speaker 1: researching this. UM. Let's say that you and I are
Speaker 1: hanging out and you're humming baby, I'm five work right,
Speaker 1: just over and over again. I don't know that song,
Speaker 1: but I'm reading Yes you do, No, don't, Yeah you do? It?
Speaker 1: Was it Katy Perry? I don't know Katy Perry anyway, um,
Speaker 1: although I will have to say I did love that
Speaker 1: halftime show. It was great, well it was. It was hysterical.
Speaker 1: What's up with the sharks being a meme? Now? I
Speaker 1: would think they were really significant. She looked like she
Speaker 1: was worked at corn Dog on a Stick. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is. That's not all corn dogs around sticks.
Speaker 1: It's that place in our hot Dog on a Stick
Speaker 1: that was called that place in the mall where they
Speaker 1: wore those big giant Yeah. No, I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about Katy Perry. But it was the funniest most but
Speaker 1: like the crazy just kept coming and coming, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is the best thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So anyway, in this universe, you're well aware of Katy
Speaker 1: Perry and her song Firework, and you're humming it to yourself.
Speaker 1: But I'm sitting there reading The New Yorker and I'm
Speaker 1: engrossed in it and not I don't notice that you
Speaker 1: get up to go make some nachos, and you come
Speaker 1: back in, and you catch my attention because you're you're
Speaker 1: coming back in with some nachos and they smell awesome.
Speaker 1: And now my attention is directed to you, and you're
Speaker 1: still humming Firework, right, And I'm like, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about that song Firework. I had that in my head.
Speaker 1: How crazy we must be connected. I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: you had been humming it earlier, and beneath my awareness
Speaker 1: I picked it up. Although once I became aware that
Speaker 1: you were humming it, it seemed to me like I
Speaker 1: had ESP. Well, yeah, and that ties into another explanation
Speaker 1: is that people who do seem to have that gift
Speaker 1: are just really really hyper observant on minute details, like
Speaker 1: the same people that can pick up on micro expressions. Um,
Speaker 1: they might feel like they have the gift because they're
Speaker 1: just really in tune to what's going on around them
Speaker 1: or not just you know, like a big lunk head
Speaker 1: walking around. So a lot of people who believe in
Speaker 1: the ESP say, yes, we agree with that, especially parapsychology researchers,
Speaker 1: and there are still plenty of respected ones out there.
Speaker 1: Is a guy named darry O Bem. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: that thing. He said. He's been doing this for a
Speaker 1: while now legitimately we should talk about him. But there
Speaker 1: to button up that point, there is UM a lot
Speaker 1: of parapsychologists or even just plain old psychologists who are
Speaker 1: researching ESPUM who say, yes, that definitely most likely accounts
Speaker 1: for almost all of it, and that's good for us
Speaker 1: to be thinking about that, and that in and of
Speaker 1: itself deserves like academic inquiry and research. Right, But there
Speaker 1: are still some experience experiments that are being produced by
Speaker 1: guys like Darry Obem that UM are showing some weird
Speaker 1: results that go beyond this kind of explanation. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and one of the problems, well we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: problems with even this research um about it being reproducible
Speaker 1: in a second. But he did a couple of experiments.
Speaker 1: This is from NPR. Crow wrote this, Yeah, from from
Speaker 1: from radio LAMB Nice. I didn't know that, um. These
Speaker 1: are the two that he pointed out. He did nine
Speaker 1: different experiments, but the two that he highlighted was at Cornell,
Speaker 1: which is where bim is a does his work. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's again a very respected psychologist, and this study
Speaker 1: that of these experiments was published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Personality and Social Psychology, which is a respected journal. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so they The first one was a computer quiz. They
Speaker 1: took a hundred students, fifty males and fifty women, and um. Basically,
Speaker 1: they showed a computer screen with two little curtains on it,
Speaker 1: side by side and said, behind one is nothing a
Speaker 1: brick wall, and behind the other is something sexy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, I was about to call
Speaker 1: it pornographic, but who knows. Maybe it's art erodess. Yeah, gross, Um,
Speaker 1: that just makes you feel like you're dad saying it
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, well, this room too small for you
Speaker 1: to say. Um. So basically he would say, you tell me, um,
Speaker 1: what what you think you're going to see? And they
Speaker 1: were all hooked up to uh two machines to read
Speaker 1: the you know, they're what's going on in their body
Speaker 1: of course, and um, you would think it would be
Speaker 1: a fifty results, but they actually got a fifty three
Speaker 1: point one percent result for the what UH craw Witch
Speaker 1: calls erotic stimuli. Um. And basically they they think, or
Speaker 1: at least that's what BEM thinks, is that one possibility
Speaker 1: is that if there's if they think they're going to
Speaker 1: see something erotically stimulating, then um, it got passed back
Speaker 1: through time. Yeah, that's kind of his position, is that
Speaker 1: retrocognition thing. Yeah, that they somehow their future selves who
Speaker 1: saw the erotic image was stimulated enough that that stimulation
Speaker 1: traveled backwards three seconds and influenced their choice because they
Speaker 1: were they would be slightly stimulated physiologically right before they guess.
Speaker 1: And he said, before the computer even chose which which
Speaker 1: one to show? Right, they right, they were making their
Speaker 1: choices often correct, Um, before the computer chose to show
Speaker 1: an erotic or non erotic image. And it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like much, but crow which points out a couple of things.
Speaker 1: One that um, when there was a control group that
Speaker 1: was shown just non erotic pictures, they did forty nine
Speaker 1: eight percent correct, which is chance. They're all not happy, right,
Speaker 1: They're like, we don't want to be the control They're like,
Speaker 1: can we get a little steamier in here? Um? But
Speaker 1: and he he also pointed out that fifty three point one,
Speaker 1: to be specific, doesn't sound like much, but um, apparently
Speaker 1: that's a point two percent chance where on a scale
Speaker 1: between zero and one, where zero is it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen, and one is that it's definitely gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And apparently, as far as um correlation goes, or links
Speaker 1: between two things something affecting another, a point too is
Speaker 1: about the same as the link between aspirin and heart
Speaker 1: attack prevention. Um, the link between calcium and taken bone mass,
Speaker 1: the link between second hand smoke and lung cancer. So
Speaker 1: things that are touted is like, pay attention to this, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So so stuff that we accepted is like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're around second hand smoke you can get cancer
Speaker 1: from has the same exactly it is and um. Later on,
Speaker 1: a meta analysis of Bem's experiments, some other experiments that
Speaker 1: were carried out afterward, and then some other experiments all
Speaker 1: grouped together. A meta analysis showed that um, they they weren't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't statistically significant if you took all of the
Speaker 1: existing body of literature of these experiment but it was
Speaker 1: a New Scientist article, and um, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: In the comments section, somebody said, yeah, it's not reproducible,
Speaker 1: but a lot of science isn't reproducible. And it reminded
Speaker 1: me of our scientific method episode where like apparently a
Speaker 1: lot of um trials that that like pharmaceuticals are based
Speaker 1: on aren't reproducible. Wasn't it like them? Which doesn't surprise
Speaker 1: me of course. Yeah, all right. And then there was
Speaker 1: this other experiment that I need you to explain to
Speaker 1: me because I didn't understand it. Okay, you're ready, Like
Speaker 1: I got the first part, but I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense to me because it's a little
Speaker 1: mind blowing. So you know how like if you are
Speaker 1: studying something and you write it down, it gets in
Speaker 1: your brain a little more so that when you're tested
Speaker 1: on it later, uh, you will recall it more easily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a common study method, write something down. So Bem
Speaker 1: carried out a very simple experiment that did the opposite
Speaker 1: of that. First, he showed some people a bunch of
Speaker 1: a bunch of words, forty eight random words. I think
Speaker 1: now it's like tree or something like that, and he
Speaker 1: told them to visualize it though, right, right, So they
Speaker 1: saw all forty eight words and thought about them, not
Speaker 1: visualized the letters, but visualized the thing, right, like see
Speaker 1: the tree, and just just to kind of try to
Speaker 1: memorize all forty eight words. Then the computer randomly selected
Speaker 1: twenty four of those words, and then after they'd done that,
Speaker 1: BEM gave them a test of recall to see how
Speaker 1: many they recalled right. So the people I had to
Speaker 1: type out the the the words they recalled. Then after that,
Speaker 1: the computer randomly selected twenty four of the forty eight
Speaker 1: words for the people to type after they had already
Speaker 1: taken the test of recall. And those twenty four words
Speaker 1: are the ones that people more consistently got right on
Speaker 1: the earlier tests. So it's it's another example of that
Speaker 1: retroco mission that these people getting the words in their
Speaker 1: heads after the tests somehow went backward and influenced their
Speaker 1: recall and memory for the test that they took before
Speaker 1: they learned them. That makes more sense a little, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a little let's see, time travel melts my
Speaker 1: brain too, right. So this guy published this stuff in
Speaker 1: like two thousand and ten, and like it was, it
Speaker 1: made a huge, huge splash, huge criticism. The academic journal
Speaker 1: was criticized, and Ben was you know, pilloried and all that.
Speaker 1: But he's still you know, put out these these very reproducible, understandable,
Speaker 1: simple exercises that still showed statistically speaking, there were some
Speaker 1: significant results that went beyond chance. So when it comes
Speaker 1: to debunking UM esp one thing that you're not gonna
Speaker 1: you know, you said fraud, You're not gonna see a
Speaker 1: lot of people call researchers outright frauds because that's just
Speaker 1: sort of a dangerous thing to say. Sure, it's not nice, um,
Speaker 1: but there are people out there who I guess or
Speaker 1: criticized for, you know, basically trying to call out UM.
Speaker 1: And this is something completely different. But these these on
Speaker 1: stage psychic shows like crossing Over with John Edwards, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's easy to pick those people out and say
Speaker 1: you're a big fraud and this is not true of course,
Speaker 1: And all you're doing is cold reading. Uh cold reading
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Animal Um Pet Psychics episode.
Speaker 1: That's basically when you get up on stage and you say, sir,
Speaker 1: I'm sensing um someone there you're having some trouble with
Speaker 1: with another man in your life. Uh with the name
Speaker 1: of j or or is it h or oh, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's p Yes, p my my boss, Uh Peter, Yes,
Speaker 1: yes exactly. And that's all a cold reading is. It's
Speaker 1: throwing out these really broad things that anyone can latch onto.
Speaker 1: So it's really easy to call uh, those people out.
Speaker 1: And there's a guy, um sort of a guy famous
Speaker 1: for doing that. His name is um James Randy, and
Speaker 1: he's famous for his offer of one million dollars to
Speaker 1: anyone that can prove their psychic ability, which of course
Speaker 1: no one stepped up to do that. But then he
Speaker 1: gets pooh pooed a little bit, like you're just making
Speaker 1: a mockery of trying to legitimately disprove something. And mockery
Speaker 1: is absolutely the right word. And to me, the presence
Speaker 1: of mockery indicates the absence of objectivity, right, So, like
Speaker 1: what you're dealing with then with a guy like that,
Speaker 1: is uh, a set of beliefs, a belief system running
Speaker 1: up against another belief system, just like a couple of
Speaker 1: religions or something like that. It's not objectivity against fraud
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's belief against belief or something.
Speaker 1: Um And and yeah, the idea of lumping together John
Speaker 1: Edwards with Darryl bem is just that's, you know, fraudulent
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Yeah, that's just they call that theatrics,
Speaker 1: just like the on stage h theatrics of a stage psychic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I believe. I totally agree. Yeah, you know I
Speaker 1: I do too. I think there's a definite room for
Speaker 1: a healthy scientific inquiry into just about anything, whether skeptics
Speaker 1: believe in it or not. If you can get some
Speaker 1: funding for it, who cares. That's my motto. You got
Speaker 1: anything else on ESP? Uh? Let me think? No, I've
Speaker 1: got one more thing I found. I came across the
Speaker 1: I think five Nightline with Ted Coppele, where, Um, the
Speaker 1: news broke that the CIA had been studying ESP and
Speaker 1: trying to do remote viewing what Ronson was talking about
Speaker 1: in The Men Who Stare at Coats when it finally
Speaker 1: became declassified. In take, coppled like a twenty minute Nightline
Speaker 1: segment on it totally worth watching. It's some pretty softball questions.
Speaker 1: But Robert Gates, who would later become the the head
Speaker 1: of Defense, he's on there just basically trying as politely
Speaker 1: as possible to show that he does not believe in
Speaker 1: any of this. Even so, here's the pharmacy. I a director,
Speaker 1: and um, it's just neat. Unlus you get to watch
Speaker 1: Copple again. I miss he was great news man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I miss those dudes. I miss. Uh, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking yesterday about broke call. Yeah, rather I was. I
Speaker 1: was always a broke coll man. Did you I like
Speaker 1: Peter Jennings He was great? Yeah. I don't even all
Speaker 1: of them were great. I don't even have any idea
Speaker 1: who does Night in the News now I don't watch it.
Speaker 1: It was Brian Williams until about a day ago. Did
Speaker 1: he get fired? He like got I know, the whole kerfuffle,
Speaker 1: but he didn't get fired. I'm using my ESP to
Speaker 1: predict that by the time this came, this comes out,
Speaker 1: he will not be there anymore. I think this is
Speaker 1: getting big quick interesting. Yeah, Twitter is involved, man, the
Speaker 1: Twitter takedown. Uh. If you want them more about ESP,
Speaker 1: the internet was virtually set up for you to go
Speaker 1: find out more about it. Um, you can start by
Speaker 1: typing ESP in the search far at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Since I said that it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail, yeah, before we do listener mail, I just
Speaker 1: want to give a quick shout out to my buddy
Speaker 1: Isaac McNairy. Uh. If you remember, I did a Judge
Speaker 1: John Hodgman episode with Emily in which I did a
Speaker 1: bad home renovation and um, this dude stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Listener from Kansas carpenter. Master carpenter said, hey, man, I'll
Speaker 1: come and stay with you and help you do your
Speaker 1: your project. They're right, And I said this sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: and he actually came and did it and it looks
Speaker 1: awesome and he's a super cool guy. And if you're
Speaker 1: in Kansas near Elder Rado, Kansas, there's no better guy
Speaker 1: to hire of El Dorado, it's Elder Rado. Actually, Okay,
Speaker 1: he has a point out, but um, not only is
Speaker 1: he a great carpenter and a cool guy, but he
Speaker 1: works with a nonprofit called Outreach Program. Uh and you
Speaker 1: can find an outreach program dot org where they're basically
Speaker 1: feeding the world. They package food and they get people
Speaker 1: together in a room and package these mass quantities of
Speaker 1: food to send to other countries and feed the hungry.
Speaker 1: And he's just a really good dude. So thanks to
Speaker 1: Isaac for that, and my kitchen was looking good. So
Speaker 1: again for his nonprofit that is Outreach Program dot org.
Speaker 1: And if you need a great carpenter and you're in Kansas,
Speaker 1: check out Retrofit Remodeling. All right, listener, mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this pronunciation help. Hey guys, I'm a botanist and
Speaker 1: just want to throw throw your rope to help you
Speaker 1: out with pronouncing plant family names. All plant family names
Speaker 1: end in a C E A E. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought we got that wrong. Uh, it is a mess
Speaker 1: of vowels. Guys, when you read it, you should just
Speaker 1: imagine you were spelling a C E as in a CE.
Speaker 1: So when you read a plant family name, just break
Speaker 1: off the CE and read the first part and then
Speaker 1: spell a C. So the plant family for poison oak
Speaker 1: is uh Ana cardia Anna cardia ce. So it's just
Speaker 1: Anna cardi A C. I remember it by imagining the
Speaker 1: aneurysm and cardiac arrest I would have if I fell
Speaker 1: into it. A N, A C A R D. I
Speaker 1: what well she spelled out Anna cardi. Oh got the
Speaker 1: first two uh, first letters from each of those words. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Guys who love your podcast find it endearing when you too,
Speaker 1: puzzle out on pronunciations. Um see see that's good to know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I love you, bunches, And that is from Jane
Speaker 1: and she said ps. In Europe, they pronounced plant families
Speaker 1: completely differently. Um other parts see other parts of the
Speaker 1: US might have other conventions, but the above pronunciation is
Speaker 1: standard in California. Well, okay, what a c C. I
Speaker 1: You want to let us know something that we should
Speaker 1: have known before we even recorded, But you're generous enough
Speaker 1: with your time and effort to correct us. I guess
Speaker 1: there's a way to put it. We that was very helpful.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Jane. If you want to be like
Speaker 1: Jane in other words, you can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and as always, you can join us
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: is it how stuff Works dot com