Speaker 1: This is what these people.
Speaker 2: Everybody want to well, they don't get either. Just Quinton
Speaker 2: or set Timmins or somebody, Yeah, to go wit you well.
Speaker 2: And now the well drillers, now them drillers, of them
Speaker 2: witches don't know nothing about it.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I would if I drilled well, I would want to
Speaker 2: witch you.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of witching for water? It's an
Speaker 1: ancient folk method for finding underground water, but people today
Speaker 1: believe that you can also use it to find underground
Speaker 1: utilities and a bunch of other stuff. It's long been
Speaker 1: chalked off by science as hocus pocus, but it's still
Speaker 1: widely used in rural America, and I'm interested in how
Speaker 1: people view this. On this episode, we'll interview seven people.
Speaker 1: A legit water witcher, a casual water witcher, a guy
Speaker 1: who knew a legendary waterwitcher, a guy who's a huge skeptic,
Speaker 1: a lady who paid for the services of a waterwitcher,
Speaker 1: a guy in commercial construction, and a physicist from a
Speaker 1: major university. But I'm only looking for one answer, and
Speaker 1: it's not if water witchers can find underground water, but
Speaker 1: I want to know what makes the sticks move because
Speaker 1: that's the one thing that is not up for debate.
Speaker 1: They do move, But I'll let you make the decision
Speaker 1: if this is crazy folklore and unsolved physics mystery, or
Speaker 1: perhaps we just haven't asked the right questions. But honestly,
Speaker 1: you won't be able to make an intelligent decision until
Speaker 1: you've tried it for yourself. I really doubt that you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to miss this one. And hey, we've got
Speaker 1: some sweet new massyoak yep, that's right, Massy Oak Bear
Speaker 1: Grease and this country life hats coming out. Check it
Speaker 1: out on the meat eater dot com.
Speaker 4: Something's going on in the rides, I just don't know
Speaker 4: what it is.
Speaker 1: My name is Klay Knukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 1: As we explore.
Speaker 3: He kind of had a kit. I mean he had
Speaker 3: an old tin about like what you'd say a fruitcaken. Nowadays,
Speaker 3: and in that kit he had pill bottles, just normal
Speaker 3: little pill bottles. He would have sulfur water and in
Speaker 3: one and he'd have salt water in another one. He
Speaker 3: would have good what we call good water, and he'd
Speaker 3: put it in these bottles. But he didn't have him
Speaker 3: marked he had them. He'd just had black electrical tape
Speaker 3: around him. And whenever he'd get out and do some
Speaker 3: water witching, he would have all these things in his pocket.
Speaker 3: But then whenever he got round to witching, he would
Speaker 3: have him in his hand.
Speaker 1: This is the voice of my neighbor Mark Findall. Mark
Speaker 1: once told me that he was the biggest farmer in
Speaker 1: hall Guy, Arkansas, pausing for a minute before he said,
Speaker 1: I'm about two inches taller than my brother. Mark is
Speaker 1: telling me a story about a water witcher named Seth
Speaker 1: Timmins that he knew very well.
Speaker 3: Well. He would he'd get wherever he was going, and
Speaker 3: of course he'd had he had a big long elbow
Speaker 3: shaped probably big around as your thumb, probably a six
Speaker 3: inches handle, and then it ran out about eighteen inches,
Speaker 3: just an hell complete a nighty l and he'd get
Speaker 3: out and he would hold that up above his head
Speaker 3: and it would point the direction he wanted to go
Speaker 3: to look for water. So he'd hold that up and
Speaker 3: then he had a long piece of I think it
Speaker 3: was a brass that he would hold in his hand
Speaker 3: and he'd start walking. Then he'd stop and you would
Speaker 3: see this thing start bouncing up and down, and he'd
Speaker 3: and you'd see him count and then then he'd stop. Well,
Speaker 3: then he'd set that down and then he'd get his
Speaker 3: He had a it was like an old big carpenter's
Speaker 3: plumb bob on a piece of leather, and he would
Speaker 3: hold that in his hand, out away from his body,
Speaker 3: and he'd have some of that. He'd have whatever it
Speaker 3: was he was in one of those pill bottles, and
Speaker 3: he'd look at it and if it didn't react, and he'd
Speaker 3: put a different pill bottle in his hand and he'd
Speaker 3: watch it. Well, then you'd see that things start going
Speaker 3: around in a circle, see, and and you'd see him counting,
Speaker 3: and he'd put a rock right there where he was
Speaker 3: standing and he'd say, well, right here at a one
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty feet is good water and it'll make
Speaker 3: about five six eight ten gallons a minute. I mean
Speaker 3: that's he had that.
Speaker 1: He had that level of confidence in the specificity of
Speaker 1: what he was going to find.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course you'd you'd be sitting there, and of
Speaker 3: course there'd be the landowner and maybe two or three
Speaker 3: neighbors and a bunch of kids bouncing around, and they'd
Speaker 3: all have that look on their face, you know, like
Speaker 3: you know, that look of what just happened. I don't
Speaker 3: think I'm going to say anything, because I don't want
Speaker 3: to make him mad or or embarrass him or you know.
Speaker 3: But Seth, he never never bothered him, you know.
Speaker 1: Out of the gate. I'll tell you that Seth's method
Speaker 1: of witch and water was quite unconventional. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to say because the origin of water witching is lost
Speaker 1: to antiquity. But as to what it actually is, it's
Speaker 1: an ancient trade where you use some type of rod
Speaker 1: or forked stick to find underground water. Cave paintings in Africa,
Speaker 1: believed to be eight thousand years old, depicted water witchers.
Speaker 1: Some believe Moses in the Bible smiting the rock with
Speaker 1: the staff in the desert and water coming out of
Speaker 1: the rock was a form of water witching. The Greeks
Speaker 1: wrote about waterwitching in the fifth century. The term waterwitching
Speaker 1: is primarily a Scottish and American term, but some call
Speaker 1: it dousing and some call it divining for water. Will
Speaker 1: use all these words interchangeably. The actual name waterwitching hasn't
Speaker 1: done it any favors in modern times, proven to be
Speaker 1: a real marketing blunder. People used to believe the mysterious
Speaker 1: movement of the witching sticks was supernatural. Some say the
Speaker 1: name though, came from them using witch hazel wood. Regardless,
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, it probably did give a witchcraft vibe,
Speaker 1: which I'm not a fan of nor want to play
Speaker 1: around with at all. But to add to it all, today,
Speaker 1: waterwitching is considered a pseudoscience, and for over one hundred years,
Speaker 1: the US Geological Survey has denied any credible evidence that
Speaker 1: it works. In a nineteen seventeen paper, they called it
Speaker 1: a favorite trick for appealing to uneducated persons, and that
Speaker 1: quote further tests by the United States Geological Survey of
Speaker 1: this so called witching for water, oil, and other minerals
Speaker 1: would be a misuse of public funds. They were done
Speaker 1: with it a long time ago, and since then many
Speaker 1: controlled academic tests supposedly with expert water witchers, have proven
Speaker 1: water witchers can't find underground stuff any better than random chance.
Speaker 1: But I'm just not sure that these academics and these
Speaker 1: studies got it right. I just think there's something more
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about Seth Timmins.
Speaker 3: He was born in February of nineteen twelve in a snowstorm.
Speaker 3: He lived between hog Guy and West Fork. He was
Speaker 3: an only child, and back then that was a rarity.
Speaker 3: Seth was thirty six before when he first got married,
Speaker 3: and he said that was just a little bit young.
Speaker 3: I mean that's he had a great sentient, great laugh,
Speaker 3: you know, outgoing, loved the coffee shop, liked to hear
Speaker 3: what was going on in the neighborhood. They were like
Speaker 3: super diversified. You know. They had of course, they had
Speaker 3: the milk cow, They had their chicken, had a huge garden,
Speaker 3: had an o'sal, always had a litter pigs, butchered his
Speaker 3: own hogs, you know, working horses, working mules. They raised mules.
Speaker 3: That was their big cash crop back in the day,
Speaker 3: was raising and selling mules down to the delta. Very
Speaker 3: you know what you would think of a typical Arkansas
Speaker 3: farmer of the of the era, of that era. But
Speaker 3: yet he had season tickets to the race of back
Speaker 3: football games. Every Saturday morning that there was a football game,
Speaker 3: we'd see he and his wife going, probably three or
Speaker 3: four hours before the football game, they'd go up there.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it wasn't like they were hermits,
Speaker 3: lived up on the hill, so and just sitting and
Speaker 3: just listening to the stories that he would tell about
Speaker 3: growing up, you know, before electricity. That I can always
Speaker 3: remember him, you know, as a water witch. Some of
Speaker 3: them call it doodlebugging. A lot of time people would
Speaker 3: come he they'd want him to come witcha well, and
Speaker 3: he never charged, but it was kind of a customary
Speaker 3: thing that people would come and pick him up and
Speaker 3: take him. They'd come get him and take him because
Speaker 3: that way he wouldn't get lost. And he always got
Speaker 3: a got a kick out of seeing.
Speaker 1: Just leaving this area and going somewhere which today wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a very far trip at.
Speaker 3: All, no, you know, considering he grew up riding in
Speaker 3: a wagon.
Speaker 1: Seth had an old school methodology on water witching that
Speaker 1: he undoubtedly learned from people straight out of the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: He believed that if he held in his hand what
Speaker 1: he was looking for, the witching sticks would find that
Speaker 1: specific thing. He even believed that he could find natural gas.
Speaker 1: Though the specific tactics and even theatrics vary, they all
Speaker 1: hinge on a single principle that spurred my curiosity since
Speaker 1: I was a child. Many, if not most people, when
Speaker 1: holding these rods or a four could stick. When you
Speaker 1: walk over water or a buried water line, or even
Speaker 1: an underground electric line, the sticks will move like they're
Speaker 1: being pulled by a magnet. And the way I've seen
Speaker 1: it done, the witching sticks are primarily straightened out clothes
Speaker 1: hangers or just common thin metal wire in the shape
Speaker 1: of an elm. Despite the criticism science saying that it
Speaker 1: isn't real, I'm telling you from personal experience, something moves
Speaker 1: the rods. I'm trying to understand what that something is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's just you know, people were just
Speaker 3: just you know, what do they say, especially if it
Speaker 3: was new to them. They had never seen anything like that,
Speaker 3: and a lot of old timers they'd seen water, which
Speaker 3: is before and I think it was a lot more
Speaker 3: common in the older days because whenever you dug a well,
Speaker 3: you dug you physically dug a water well, and you
Speaker 3: looked for a spot that wasn't fifty feet deep. You
Speaker 3: know you found it.
Speaker 1: There was a little more consequence to it when you're
Speaker 1: hand big and a well versus drilling with a big
Speaker 1: piece of machinery. They were looking for any edge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess when you think about somebody that was want
Speaker 1: and water, they're definitely on the landscape. We know that
Speaker 1: there's some places are good, some places all right, someplaces
Speaker 1: that have water, someplaces don't. There were people that thought
Speaker 1: they could help you find it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Waterwitching and its psychology begins to be understood when you
Speaker 1: establish a fundamental fact good water isn't everywhere. This is
Speaker 1: the voice of another family friend of ours, Ozark cattle
Speaker 1: farmer Roger Quinton.
Speaker 2: Like we were talking about the upper place. When I
Speaker 2: was a kid, we didn't have no water. Still ain't
Speaker 2: got no water on that farm. But right across fence
Speaker 2: and they were drilled well behind his house and they
Speaker 2: hit good water.
Speaker 3: They had good, sweet water.
Speaker 2: They went right up on the hill about one hundred
Speaker 2: foot they drilled another well, fell into a cavern and
Speaker 2: had good water. Two hundred foot west of there they
Speaker 2: drilled a well and it's the nastiest sulfur in the world,
Speaker 2: and they ain't very much of it. We had a
Speaker 2: well two hundred and fifty foot south of that Goodwill,
Speaker 2: and it had so much natural gas in she couldn't
Speaker 2: use it. And there's places that they're in anywhere you
Speaker 2: get across the.
Speaker 3: Road over yonder.
Speaker 2: I think you can drill a thousand foot deep not
Speaker 2: getting no water, you know, they just it won't turn
Speaker 2: stick at all.
Speaker 1: And variability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's how spotty good water and bad water
Speaker 2: is anywhere in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: Good water isn't everywhere, and the success of your well
Speaker 1: can come down to a matter of feet. Some regions
Speaker 1: of the country sit above giant underground aquifers, and water
Speaker 1: is always at a known distance. But places like the
Speaker 1: Ozarks are kars underlain with limestone, producing unseen fissures, sinkholes
Speaker 1: and caverns. So why wouldn't you look for help beyond
Speaker 1: what your eyes can see? Water witchers believe they could
Speaker 1: help answer a question of great consequence, But how accurate
Speaker 1: are they? Here's mark on seth. How how accurate was
Speaker 1: he in helping people to your knowledge? You know what?
Speaker 1: You would know?
Speaker 3: He was pretty good, I would say the guys that
Speaker 3: were drilling the well. The well drillers, they love to
Speaker 3: be able to pull out on am you know, pull
Speaker 3: up somebody's house or future house and see a stake
Speaker 3: driven out there in the pasture. They were thrilled because hey,
Speaker 3: the pressure was off of them. Yeah. It wasn't like
Speaker 3: the guy says, well, I've hired you to come out
Speaker 3: and drill the water well and I want you to
Speaker 3: hit water. You're fixing, fixing to spend you know, thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars.
Speaker 1: All the liabilities on the water witcher who said drill here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because hey, the the you know, the pressure was
Speaker 3: off of them.
Speaker 1: Well, and if you hired a well driller today, he
Speaker 1: essentially is doing the same job as a water witcher.
Speaker 1: I mean he's not using any you know, tech techniques, but.
Speaker 3: He's maybe maybe he's using intuition. Maybe he is, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, he's drilled thousands of well so no doubt.
Speaker 1: In a specific area, so he would know waters usually
Speaker 1: in the valleys or on the hills.
Speaker 3: Actually, and actually Seth would say I could find better
Speaker 3: water away from a river or a creek or a
Speaker 3: lower heats you off on the hillside.
Speaker 1: Roger Quinton lives about five miles over the mountain from Mark,
Speaker 1: and he's what I would call a casual water which
Speaker 1: he grew up around it. He understands its limitations, but
Speaker 1: which are well for family when needed. I want us
Speaker 1: to see how commonness.
Speaker 2: Is my great grandfather which the lot. If the water
Speaker 2: witcher say he would settle well, and my granddad lived
Speaker 2: to be ninety seven years old, and they they would
Speaker 2: come get him. He never And if you you kept
Speaker 2: telling me about those people that are professionals, there is
Speaker 2: no professional. If they charge you money to which you're well,
Speaker 2: go get you somebody else, because he don't know any
Speaker 2: more than no boy that does it for a hobby.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've known of it all my life.
Speaker 3: My dad could do it. I can do it.
Speaker 2: Take a peach tree and put it between hands, you
Speaker 2: walk across the stream of water. If it's good enough,
Speaker 2: it'll it'll twist the hands. And you know you wouldn't
Speaker 2: think they do it, but the end of that stick
Speaker 2: will go straight down. Now, mister Timmins over there that
Speaker 2: you talk to, Mark find all about he's I've seen
Speaker 2: him work lot. He had a little different technique. He
Speaker 2: could tell you how many feet it was deep and
Speaker 2: all that, but it's all say principle.
Speaker 3: It's just what it is.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you know, I waged one here two years ago.
Speaker 3: It twists the water out on my hand.
Speaker 2: At ninety foot we hit thirty forty fifty gall in
Speaker 2: a minute. We had to case it off and we
Speaker 2: had to drive a thousand foot before we got any
Speaker 2: more water.
Speaker 1: But you found that water that was close?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was, it was, and I know what
Speaker 2: it was there.
Speaker 1: There are many techniques for witching water. Roger has a
Speaker 1: traditional and simple method using a forked peach limb, which
Speaker 1: is a favorite type of wood. Many believe different woods
Speaker 1: react differently, and I'll try to describe it. You cut
Speaker 1: a green limb about as big around as your pinky.
Speaker 1: That's the shape of the letter why. The bicycle handlebar
Speaker 1: part should be about twelve to fourteen inches on each fork,
Speaker 1: and the single rods sticking out about eight to ten inches.
Speaker 1: You hold the stick like you're riding a bicycle, and
Speaker 1: the single rod sticks out straight, and when it feels
Speaker 1: like the stick is being pulled downward like by a magnet,
Speaker 1: it's believed to indicate water. However, many people use too
Speaker 1: thin metal rods bit in the shape of an al,
Speaker 1: held parallel to each other, and as you walk, the
Speaker 1: rod's cross indicating water beneath. But I'd like to ask
Speaker 1: a more fundamental question, what is the mechanism behind what
Speaker 1: makes them move? Here's Mark. So, with your knowledge of Seth,
Speaker 1: did what did he feel like he was tapping into?
Speaker 1: Do you think he felt like it was just physics.
Speaker 1: There's just some unexplainable physics. Did he think it was supernatural?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What did he think it was?
Speaker 3: It was just it was a gift. I think he
Speaker 3: looked at it as a.
Speaker 1: Gift, as like a human gift.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's one of those things that it makes
Speaker 3: absolutely no common sense, but yet you know you do it,
Speaker 3: you know it's it's done. And Seth was not one
Speaker 3: of these bragful, boastful tell a tall tale, you know.
Speaker 3: He was. He was very factual. He rarely what you
Speaker 3: would say, embellish on a story or anything like that.
Speaker 3: He was. It's just it was just common to him.
Speaker 1: He was. Was Seth a religious person at all?
Speaker 3: He was, Yeah, he was a church going you know,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't preachy.
Speaker 1: I asked that because I wondered, Uh, how he equated
Speaker 1: like having this because if it was a if he
Speaker 1: felt like and I think a lot of people did
Speaker 1: feel like it was like a personal gift that they
Speaker 1: could do this. How do they equate that into like
Speaker 1: their their faith and stuff? You know that wasn't even connected.
Speaker 3: I don't he never really talked about it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: people woul ask him for Seth, why can't I do
Speaker 3: this right? Well, he said, I guess you just don't
Speaker 3: have it?
Speaker 1: What do you what do you make of the whole
Speaker 1: water witching scene? So you knew a guy like Seth,
Speaker 1: but you also carry copper witch and sticks in your
Speaker 1: truck sometimes? What do you what do you make of it?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, most anybody, I've never seen really anybody
Speaker 3: that it didn't work with. And it would be curious
Speaker 3: to be around somebody that it did not work with.
Speaker 3: What you know, right, what's their problem?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's physics? Do you think it's it's
Speaker 1: a gift that a human has? What do you think?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think it's a gimmick. You know, there's
Speaker 3: definitely something that he's tuned to. And but Seth was
Speaker 3: I don't know a lot more sensitive to it, in
Speaker 3: tune to it, you know, whatever you want to say. Uh,
Speaker 3: but oh yeah, if I was going to go out
Speaker 3: here and drill a water well, I would definitely have
Speaker 3: somebody come out with it, you know, kind of make
Speaker 3: the odds a little bit better in your favor.
Speaker 1: I like that answer. It makes the odds a little
Speaker 1: bit more in your favor. The psychology of water witching
Speaker 1: is interesting. In many handle it like a superstition, like
Speaker 1: let's do it just in case it can't hurt. Some
Speaker 1: say witching sticks operate on the same principle as a
Speaker 1: Oiji board, okay, which I don't like. I don't see
Speaker 1: the connection. No, when I've ever known tries to summon
Speaker 1: spirits while they're looking for water, and like I said,
Speaker 1: into witchcraft and I just don't think that the devil
Speaker 1: cares where my water line is buried. But this is
Speaker 1: more interesting. Some experts believe the movement of the sticks
Speaker 1: is fueled by the psychological phenomenon called the ideal motor effect,
Speaker 1: where your thoughts can trigger physical movements without conscious intent,
Speaker 1: where suggestions and expectations can trigger muscle movements which bypass
Speaker 1: our will so the water which are subconsciously beyond his knowledge,
Speaker 1: is moving the sticks, tricking his mind into thinking it's
Speaker 1: happening on its own. If this is the case, I'd
Speaker 1: say it's worth its own study, its own bear grease,
Speaker 1: because I'm telling you the sticks move and your hands don't.
Speaker 1: So is this human psychology that we're dealing with or physics?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's both. I've got a question for Roger. What
Speaker 1: would it like if you are just let's say, the
Speaker 1: ozarks fifty years ago? Would a water witcher just have
Speaker 1: been like a common or just somebody that could do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just I mean it would have just been like it
Speaker 1: wasn't even funny. It wasn't even a question of whether
Speaker 1: it works. It's just like, that's just what these people do.
Speaker 2: Everybody want to well, they don't get either just Clinton
Speaker 2: or Seth Timmins or somebody, Yeah, to go go with you. Well,
Speaker 2: and now the well drillers now them drillers, So them
Speaker 2: witches don't know nothing about it.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I would if I drilled well, I would want to
Speaker 2: witch you.
Speaker 1: Uh what do you what do you make of it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Do you think it's do you
Speaker 1: think it's real?
Speaker 2: I have no idea what the physics is it of it,
Speaker 2: or what the scientific part of it is, but I
Speaker 2: just know it works.
Speaker 1: So you you think it's it is physics, though it's
Speaker 1: not like some supernatural thing.
Speaker 2: No, it's just like finding a water line with two
Speaker 2: close agents.
Speaker 1: Roger just mentioned finding a water line with two clothes hangars,
Speaker 1: as if that were common knowledge in America for everybody.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what I grew up doing. We called
Speaker 1: it witching for a water line, and it works on
Speaker 1: electric lines too. I've known how to do this since
Speaker 1: I was a teenager. Am I really this deceived and
Speaker 1: this gullible? If it is this ideometer effect, I'm just
Speaker 1: telling you that it's wild. This is absolutely getting out
Speaker 1: of control. I've been searching for the answer far too
Speaker 1: long on Google. I am headed out of the country,
Speaker 1: headed into the big city to find the answer. I'm
Speaker 1: walking towards the University of Arkansas campus. It's been twenty
Speaker 1: years since I've been in the physics building. I am
Speaker 1: potentially illegally parked, and I'm going to see one of
Speaker 1: my old professors, doctor Daniel Kineffect. He was my physics
Speaker 1: teacher and some pretty interesting things have come up in
Speaker 1: my life as an adult that now I've got to
Speaker 1: go back and see him, and I've got some serious
Speaker 1: questions for him that have come up in my life
Speaker 1: that have been challenged. Waterwitching, dowsing, using divining rods. These
Speaker 1: are things that I grew up around. Wasn't an expert,
Speaker 1: but they were common and we're just accepted as something
Speaker 1: that was real. And I've used them, used them much
Speaker 1: of my life, even used them when I was a
Speaker 1: landscaper to locate water lines and electric lines underground. And
Speaker 1: the older I get, the more it feels like I'm
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. But I want to go see doctor
Speaker 1: Kennefec and ask him if there's any physics behind this
Speaker 1: that could validate that it works, because the science I've
Speaker 1: seen says it is not real. I've got a pair
Speaker 1: of witch and sticks in my hand. Walking down the
Speaker 1: sidewalking and I'm going to the physics building. Walking onto
Speaker 1: the University of Arkansas campus is a trip down memory
Speaker 1: lane as I ponder if I am one of the
Speaker 1: uneducated people that the trickery and lies of water witching
Speaker 1: have deceived and prayed upond, I guess it's possible but
Speaker 1: only science can answer this question. And as we know,
Speaker 1: physics seeks to understand the nature and properties of matter,
Speaker 1: energy and their interactions like stuff bumping together. What makes
Speaker 1: stuff move? It tells us how the physical universe works.
Speaker 1: It will tell us why the witch and sticks move.
Speaker 1: This should be simple. Here's doctor kinnefect, So what do
Speaker 1: you know about dowsing, divining rods and water witch? What's
Speaker 1: your knowledge of that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: I always heard the word dowsing. That was what I
Speaker 6: would have heard growing up in Ireland. Divining sometimes so,
Speaker 6: and it is true that from a physics point of view,
Speaker 6: it's difficult to see what it is that you'd be
Speaker 6: detecting with the rod in the water, for instance. You've
Speaker 6: almost certainly heard the phrase that is so commonly used
Speaker 6: about gravity and physics. We started with that as being
Speaker 6: as it were, the first force in the sense that
Speaker 6: it's what Newton had it. And now, as you may know,
Speaker 6: we claim there are four fundamental forces in nature that
Speaker 6: we know, and it's commonly said by physicists that gravity.
Speaker 3: Is the weakest of them. What are the four forces?
Speaker 6: So we have gravity, we have electromagnetism, and then we
Speaker 6: have the strong nuclear force, and the weakly clear force.
Speaker 6: So those forces are both sort of hidden down in
Speaker 6: the nucleus. We never encounter them in our kay live.
Speaker 6: The thing is that gravity is really weak. I can't
Speaker 6: see how it could be anything gravitation because we do
Speaker 6: know that. Actually, while I think everybody hopefully knows that
Speaker 6: gravity is caused by massive objects, right, mass is what
Speaker 6: produces the gravitation. But now an interesting question becomes, Okay,
Speaker 6: but what if the mass is in motion? Does that
Speaker 6: change things? And the answer is actually, in principle it does.
Speaker 1: So potentially moving water could do something too.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah.
Speaker 6: The trouble is that the amount of water that we
Speaker 6: have here in the Earth, it's just far too weak.
Speaker 1: Gravity as a weak force is kind of confusing. But
Speaker 1: the four fundamental forces in the universe are gravity, electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: and the strong and weak nuclear force. These forces govern
Speaker 1: all interactions of matter in the universe period. Doctor kin
Speaker 1: Effect says gravity would be the most likely candidate, but
Speaker 1: he thinks it's highly unlikely. When you hear stuff like
Speaker 1: this like dowsing, as a physicist, do you automatically think
Speaker 1: this is hopeless focus?
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm thinking that it would be difficult for
Speaker 6: me to see how to prove that it was true.
Speaker 6: That would be really think Now, of course, the physicists
Speaker 6: are all different, and yeah, you would certainly get physicists
Speaker 6: who would be pretty dismissive to yeh, don't talk to
Speaker 6: me about that, right, I mean, I am more open
Speaker 6: minded in my view. I don't know because I haven't
Speaker 6: studied it, right, what I know? And then an answer
Speaker 6: to the question will why not study it? And the
Speaker 6: answer comes back to that question. There's so much stuff
Speaker 6: out there to study, you can't do everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's part of my deal. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of research on specifically dowsing for underground water, and
Speaker 1: basically all the research that we've found has shown that
Speaker 1: these dowsers for water had no more chance of finding
Speaker 1: water than someone of the random chance. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what the academic research points to that we've found.
Speaker 1: And I'm not really that sold on. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to find underground natural water using dowsing rods. I
Speaker 1: do believe that I could go out in your yard
Speaker 1: right now and locate your electric lines. And there are thousands,
Speaker 1: if not hundreds of thousands of people in the country
Speaker 1: today plumbers and electricians that carry divining rods in their
Speaker 1: trucks and man, the way that it was presented to
Speaker 1: me was completely functional. I've yet to find any science
Speaker 1: that validates it, but it would.
Speaker 6: It's tricky because, and here's where the skepticism comes in.
Speaker 6: It so often happens that when you take something like
Speaker 6: that and you bring it into the lab to study it,
Speaker 6: it kind of evaporates. Yeah, now, why does that happen?
Speaker 6: Is that because the person involved is essentially a fraud?
Speaker 6: Maybe I don't know. Maybe it's not mystical, but it's
Speaker 6: just subtle, right, And the particular thing that makes it
Speaker 6: work somehow is gone when you're in the lab and
Speaker 6: you don't know what it is. And that happens even
Speaker 6: in the lab, right, I could give you examples.
Speaker 1: So that's not like laughable to you.
Speaker 6: You know that happens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, does it really? Like you go to the lab
Speaker 1: and it literally doesn't work in the lab, but it works,
Speaker 1: or you go.
Speaker 6: To a different lab but it worked in the first
Speaker 6: lab but not in the second lab.
Speaker 1: Say, I would think you would say, Clay, that is
Speaker 1: human bias and just crazy people.
Speaker 3: It can be.
Speaker 6: It can be, but there are situations where you find it. Oh,
Speaker 6: that's because we didn't really know what was making this work.
Speaker 6: We hadn't identified the cause of it. I mean, let
Speaker 6: me give you a quick example. So in my field,
Speaker 6: gravitation ways, there was a claim, this is decades ago
Speaker 6: now in the Soviet Union then still the Soviet Union,
Speaker 6: that they were getting a very good Q factor quality factor,
Speaker 6: resonant factor with a certain crystal. And there was a
Speaker 6: lot of skepticism from people in the West, and they
Speaker 6: couldn't replicate it, you know, they set it up the
Speaker 6: way that people told them they had done it, but
Speaker 6: it wasn't work, and so people were thinking, God, these
Speaker 6: guys are maybe fraudulent, right, And so then one of
Speaker 6: the non Soviet groups sent a guy over there and
Speaker 6: he was tasked to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 6: And apparently he did actually figure it out, because it
Speaker 6: turned out that to make it work, when you suspended
Speaker 6: the crystal from a special wire, very expensive, carefully constructed wire,
Speaker 6: but you also needed to grease the wire. And the
Speaker 6: way that the Russians did this was pretty casual. In
Speaker 6: the lab, they'd just gotten used to it. They took
Speaker 6: the wire and they typically just rubbed it behind the
Speaker 6: rear to get a little bit of grease on it.
Speaker 6: And the trouble is you don't put that in the
Speaker 6: scientific pick you know, said hey, be sure you rubbed
Speaker 6: the wire behind the gear grease right, So nobody did
Speaker 6: that anywhere else, but he discovered that he saw them
Speaker 6: do it right, so he said, oh, should I do
Speaker 6: that too? And I said, oh, you got to do
Speaker 6: that right.
Speaker 1: And so this very like fundamental thing threw the whole
Speaker 1: thing off.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 6: So if you didn't have the ear grease, it didn't work.
Speaker 6: And so when he went back home, the group in
Speaker 6: Scotland that's where he was from, uh, succeeded. Where the
Speaker 6: other group's trying to replicate this approach.
Speaker 1: Film, it just it just shows the challenges that there
Speaker 1: are in measuring some of these things, and even motivation too.
Speaker 1: It's like you've got bigger fish the fry in this
Speaker 1: and so it's plausible that it's just not really been
Speaker 1: researched enough.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and especially because of course there's a moving target, right,
Speaker 6: am I really studying whether you can find water with
Speaker 6: a wooden rod or an electric cable with a metal rod?
Speaker 6: Those are two from a physicist point of view, boy,
Speaker 6: those are two big, very different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: I would be looking for different explanations in both of
Speaker 6: those cases.
Speaker 1: So it is possible that science just hasn't uncovered the
Speaker 1: full story. It is possible that water witch in just
Speaker 1: won't fit into the scientific method box because there are
Speaker 1: too many variables for it to work in a controlled environment.
Speaker 1: This could be the classic excuse for pseudoscience. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it's true. Look back at all the things that science
Speaker 1: has got wrong in the past, but also look back
Speaker 1: at all the pseudo scientists that got a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff wrong. But you are not going to believe this.
Speaker 1: Right in the middle of my interview with doctor Kenefect,
Speaker 1: there is a knock on the door and in walks
Speaker 1: his niece Sarah. He tells her what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and she says, I had a guy witch you well
Speaker 1: for us just last year. Within five minutes, I'm interrogating
Speaker 1: her about her story. Meet Sarah. You can't make this
Speaker 1: stuff up. So I'm doing an interview with doctor Kinneffect,
Speaker 1: my foreign physics teacher, and in walks some of his
Speaker 1: family and they just so happened to have fairly recently.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, in the last six months six months.
Speaker 5: So his father whiched my parents well, and we reached
Speaker 5: out to his family when I needed a well and
Speaker 5: his father has since passed. I actually talked to his brother,
Speaker 5: and his brother was like, I don't have the skill,
Speaker 5: but my brother does, so you need to go talk
Speaker 5: to my brother. So we gave him a call. He
Speaker 5: came on out for one hundred and fifty dollars, he
Speaker 5: will witch you're well. He had truly like a stick,
Speaker 5: the why stick off of a tree. Yeah, and then
Speaker 5: he had his dowsing rods, which were some sort of
Speaker 5: gold medal.
Speaker 1: I didn't okay, said two different things.
Speaker 5: So he started with the stick this why stick holding
Speaker 5: the two ends and walked the property. He said, actually
Speaker 5: he asked us where's the house going to be? So
Speaker 5: we kind of told him where, and he's like, where
Speaker 5: would you like it? And so we kind of pointed
Speaker 5: in a direction and he started sort of triangulating, walking
Speaker 5: across and across and across. He said he was looking
Speaker 5: for faults. So he found what he says is a fault,
Speaker 5: and then he got out his two dowsing rods and
Speaker 5: walked like a smaller area and then he was like Okay,
Speaker 5: right here, he says, of course he can't guarantee it,
Speaker 5: but we had the well dug and they went down
Speaker 5: about two hundred feet and we have about four gallons
Speaker 5: per minute?
Speaker 1: So is that good for your area? It's not great
Speaker 1: for my area. So it didn't work that well.
Speaker 5: No, my parents well is actually more like ten gallons
Speaker 5: a minute. And so if you look online, like there's
Speaker 5: some role places that won't certify the will if it's
Speaker 5: less than six gallons a minute. What I was telling
Speaker 5: some of my friends was actually like it's a good
Speaker 5: bit of what I felt was performance art.
Speaker 7: Really yeah.
Speaker 5: He was like, well, where do you want it? And
Speaker 5: so like he sort of walked back and forth. There's
Speaker 5: a very very distinct ravine on one side, big mountain
Speaker 5: on the other, and it's like, okay, like to find
Speaker 5: a fault in that. It's like, well, there's there's a
Speaker 5: pond on one side and then there's you know, a
Speaker 5: ravine on the other. So like where with the where
Speaker 5: with the water table be?
Speaker 1: So why did you why did you hire him? He
Speaker 1: was the one I knew, I mean, but why did
Speaker 1: you think that you needed a water witcher to find
Speaker 1: your water? Would that just be like just something that
Speaker 1: everybody down there does.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, so it's just common just like, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna drill, well might as well. Is it kind
Speaker 1: of like it's probably not really gonna work, but it might,
Speaker 1: so it's worth taking a chance.
Speaker 8: Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: Is that the way you felt?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 5: I mean, for one hundred and fifty bucks, It's like,
Speaker 5: let's let's give it a shot. Let's say if it works,
Speaker 5: we were going to dig a well around that area anywot.
Speaker 5: So for him to come out and go, yeah, you
Speaker 5: probably find water here, you kind of go, okay, like
Speaker 5: is it worth like, you know, fifteen hundred dollars? Probably
Speaker 5: not about one hundred and fifty one hundred fifty bucks.
Speaker 5: It's like, let's figure out. Let's see what he does.
Speaker 1: Roger Quinton told us that you shouldn't have to pay
Speaker 1: for a water witcher. But let's not forget that this
Speaker 1: guy which Sarah's mother's ten gallon a minute well too,
Speaker 1: So technically he was one hundred percent on finding water.
Speaker 1: Some say that you can find water anywhere if you're
Speaker 1: willing to dig deep enough, But I like Sarah's attitude
Speaker 1: about the whole deal. It's worth a shot. You might
Speaker 1: be under the impression that water witchers are these mystical
Speaker 1: hippie bearded guys wearing poenty hats. But all the water
Speaker 1: witchers that I've ever known have been practical, down to
Speaker 1: earth people. I'd like you to meet a water witcher,
Speaker 1: a legit water witcher from Madison County, Arkansas, who was
Speaker 1: a logger and a carpenter his whole life. I think
Speaker 1: you'll appreciate his simple, no fluff attitude about it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to see how he got started.
Speaker 9: My name Carl Holt, and the way I got starready
Speaker 9: just being around them old guys, don't it. And that's
Speaker 9: been forty something years ago or fifty.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 9: I watched them and they let me sometimes use their
Speaker 9: stuff and do with the heck call of elves wooden stick.
Speaker 9: A way back there there was an old man named
Speaker 9: last name of Tuddle lived over where my drive for
Speaker 9: and he's probably the first one I ever seen which
Speaker 9: well figured out I could do it. I've done a
Speaker 9: bunch of them up around Kingston and up on the mountain,
Speaker 9: and I ate one to Yellville and doesn't.
Speaker 1: When you go out to a piece of property, what
Speaker 1: would you do would you ask the landowners any questions?
Speaker 1: Would you just start walking? Would you use some clues
Speaker 1: that maybe you know about where water would be and
Speaker 1: go there first? Ay?
Speaker 9: Usually just figured out how far they wanted it from
Speaker 9: the house and made a circle round, and that didn't work.
Speaker 7: You wanted a little lighter.
Speaker 1: You've had quite a bit of success finding water with
Speaker 1: the wells that have been drilled where you said there
Speaker 1: was water.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they've always hit water and sometimes it's pretty deep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How does it work in a community? How would
Speaker 1: people know that you would witch a well for them?
Speaker 1: Just word of mouth?
Speaker 7: Yeah, just word of mouth.
Speaker 1: Do you expect anything from people when you witch well
Speaker 1: for them?
Speaker 7: Nope?
Speaker 9: I just tell them the ain't no guarantee. Yeah, so far,
Speaker 9: so good.
Speaker 1: What do you think the mechanics of water witching working
Speaker 1: to find underground water is?
Speaker 9: I'm not really sure. I figure a person's got something
Speaker 9: in their body that does it. I don't know, because
Speaker 9: really there's no signs on it, and physically it shouldn't
Speaker 9: be possible, but it isn't.
Speaker 7: It works.
Speaker 1: Do you think about that? What you just said that
Speaker 1: there's no science behind it, it shouldn't work. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: are you just okay with that? Yeah, you just that
Speaker 1: doesn't even bother you at all.
Speaker 9: Nah, because most people that want me to witch, well
Speaker 9: they've talked to somebody else I've wished one for. Yeah,
Speaker 9: they just have to trust me.
Speaker 1: The old man that I heard about over in hog
Speaker 1: Guy that was a big water witcher, he believed that
Speaker 1: it was a personal gift. So he really believed that
Speaker 1: it was like supernatural essentially.
Speaker 7: Huh.
Speaker 9: I don't really, I don't really agree with that. I
Speaker 9: mean because like me and people that are a lot
Speaker 9: different people and still witch water.
Speaker 1: Talking with Carl, you quickly see that he doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to prove or an ego to stroke. Waterwitching is
Speaker 1: just a tool that he can use to help the
Speaker 1: people in his community. You don't get a Charlattan vibe
Speaker 1: from him at all, or any sense that this eye
Speaker 1: doesn't one hundred percent believe everything that he says. I
Speaker 1: want to hear his process. He uses a y shaped
Speaker 1: green limb, but it's got to be alive.
Speaker 9: That's hard to explain. You can how you to hold
Speaker 9: a stick like that pointing out right and you can
Speaker 9: hold as tight as you want to, and whenever you
Speaker 9: go over that water it's going down. If it has twists,
Speaker 9: the bark off and the deeper it is less, it's
Speaker 9: not as bad. But you can get one. It's pretty
Speaker 9: close and it'll burn your hands trying to hold it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard people say that.
Speaker 7: What causes it? I having a clue.
Speaker 1: What would you say to skeptics that would say that
Speaker 1: you're subconsciously moving the stick with your hands.
Speaker 9: Ain't happening. You can hold it like get and it'll
Speaker 9: still pull. Yeah, some people probably think it.
Speaker 1: I think people that say that a human is unconsciously
Speaker 1: moving it with their hands they've never done it before.
Speaker 7: Huh.
Speaker 1: I mean, because it's hard to deny that that thing's
Speaker 1: moving on its own. If you've done it right, you
Speaker 1: will you show me how you make a stick, and
Speaker 1: I want you to show me how you do it.
Speaker 7: I'll get the perners and you go down there and
Speaker 7: find one. Yeah, that's a hard.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's do that. Let's do that now. After
Speaker 1: cutting a live y shaped maple limb, we walk up
Speaker 1: to his known well where he knows there's water about
Speaker 1: one hundred yards uphill from his house.
Speaker 7: Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: So he's holding that tight like he's squeezing that would
Speaker 1: and it is pulling down, like it's actually twisting in
Speaker 1: his hand. So I mean, it's actually you're like trying
Speaker 1: to hold it tight and I won't do it. You
Speaker 1: can't show me again back up. So it's not he's
Speaker 1: not tricking himself. He's holding it as tight as he can.
Speaker 1: And as he walks over this well, we know there's
Speaker 1: water here. It's pulling out. He's he's not twisting that.
Speaker 1: It's going down on its own, like something's pulling on it.
Speaker 7: That's worked for you for forty years longer.
Speaker 1: I filmed Carl Death gripping his y shaped maple limb
Speaker 1: and saw the sticks with my own eyes twist in
Speaker 1: his hands like a fishing pole bending under the tension
Speaker 1: of a big catfish. It went down at least eight inches.
Speaker 1: I'm going to post this video on my Instagram, and
Speaker 1: I'm certain people will say that me and Carl are delusional,
Speaker 1: and maybe we are. But if it's the ideo motor effect,
Speaker 1: I want to know the physics of how micro movements
Speaker 1: and the palms of his stationary death gripped hands can
Speaker 1: twist the wood. A human doesn't have snake scales or
Speaker 1: centipede legs on the palms of their hands that can
Speaker 1: move wood. I just cannot fathom the physics of that,
Speaker 1: and I saw it with my own eyes. You just
Speaker 1: got to see it and feel it to believe it.
Speaker 1: But please hear the nuance in what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it really helps you find water, but
Speaker 1: with all the intellect and skepticism and intelligence that I
Speaker 1: can muster, I'm telling you I believe those sticks are
Speaker 1: moving on their own. And I think that this is
Speaker 1: a good time to hear from America's greatest skeptic and
Speaker 1: my friend meat Eater's own Stephen Ranella.
Speaker 4: When I went water witch and with Clay. Oh, and
Speaker 4: first off, I know Clay doesn't like calling it water
Speaker 4: witching because he thinks it kind of sounds like sorcery.
Speaker 4: But that's how I knew it as a kid, is
Speaker 4: water witching. I'm at Waterwitch and with Clay down in
Speaker 4: the Florida Everglades. We were down there doing a different
Speaker 4: work project, but it came up that he was going
Speaker 4: to do some water witching, and we happened to know
Speaker 4: an area where there had been some water lines under
Speaker 4: the ground.
Speaker 3: If I remember correctly of something like that.
Speaker 4: So we knew a test site, okay, and Clay rigged
Speaker 4: up his witch and rod. I was very skeptical. I
Speaker 4: remained very skeptical. But it's hard to explain something when
Speaker 4: you're holding those wires. Something's happening. Something's happening that I
Speaker 4: can't explain. Maybe it's like your pulse goes up, some
Speaker 4: kind of electromagnetic thing in your body. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but I would be walking along regardless of what was
Speaker 4: going on, subserve. I would be walking along, and there
Speaker 4: would be like unmistakable activity in the rod, in the
Speaker 4: witch and rod, and try as I might, I just
Speaker 4: couldn't figure out like what I was doing, what I
Speaker 4: could be doing personally that would drive the movement of
Speaker 4: the rod right, just trying to hold like as stationary
Speaker 4: as possible, and that sucker would bend. And yeah, I
Speaker 4: can see where people get the idea that something's happening
Speaker 4: and it's detecting water, some kind of magnetic whatever. I
Speaker 4: can't explain it, but I'll tell you a quick story.
Speaker 4: Just the other day, we were having a conversation about ghosts. Okay,
Speaker 4: who believes in ghosts and who doesn't believe in ghosts.
Speaker 4: A dear friend of mine gives his ghost story, all right.
Speaker 4: His ghost story is that one time his dog freaked
Speaker 4: out in the middle of the night and kept staring
Speaker 4: into a bedroom, an empty bedroom, and then wouldn't stop
Speaker 4: staring in air, and then went and looked on the bed. Okay,
Speaker 4: So he's like, therefore, or that's a ghost story. Now
Speaker 4: when I hear that story, I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe the mouse ran through there, maybe the dog was
Speaker 4: tripping out, like the fact that that happens. I can't
Speaker 4: jump to that. It's like ghost like. There could be
Speaker 4: all these other explanations. Same with the witch and rod.
Speaker 4: The witch and rod is moving. I just can't tell
Speaker 4: that it's not me doing it right, or like some
Speaker 4: impulse in my body or some ever so slight moment,
Speaker 4: or like your palms get sweaty. I don't know, rather
Speaker 4: than it's detecting subsurface water or structures. But again, something's
Speaker 4: going on in the rids. I just don't know what
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 1: You have no idea. How satisfied it was to see
Speaker 1: Steve holding those witch and sticks and watching them move.
Speaker 1: His head was spinning backwards. But I now want to
Speaker 1: introduce you to a professional who has the most practical
Speaker 1: insight that we've heard yet.
Speaker 8: My name is Colin Deaton. I live in Marble, Arkansas,
Speaker 8: in Madison County. Been in the commercial construction industry for
Speaker 8: twenty one years doing excavation and underground utilities site work.
Speaker 8: I would say over twenty one years in doing the
Speaker 8: what I do for a living, I've probably witched and
Speaker 8: confirmed the accuracy of what I've witched out thousands of times.
Speaker 1: Colin, would you describe yourself as like a normal person?
Speaker 3: It's probably debatable, but yeah, have you had.
Speaker 1: Any history of deep mental illness or any witchcraft in
Speaker 1: your background?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: To my knowledge, You're like a very normal, very rational,
Speaker 1: clean cut smart guy.
Speaker 8: Thank you. It's nice.
Speaker 1: It's not a weirdo, folks. That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: tell you, normal people. Water witch.
Speaker 8: Well, the first time I heard about the dow was
Speaker 8: from Grandpa father. People like that about finding water for wealth.
Speaker 8: But I really didn't know anything about it until I
Speaker 8: started doing it for commercial construction, locating utilities and such.
Speaker 8: First formul I had. Benny Alvard is the first one
Speaker 8: to tell me about it, and I kind of thought
Speaker 8: it was a joke like one of the go get
Speaker 8: the pipe stretcher thing. Here, hold these things, I'll show
Speaker 8: you how to how to find the line. But after
Speaker 8: doing it several times and seeing something actually get dug
Speaker 8: up where we located it, I started to believe. And
Speaker 8: then now I just do it every day if I
Speaker 8: want to know where something is.
Speaker 1: It feels to me like there's two two categories of
Speaker 1: people that talk about this stuff, and most media focuses
Speaker 1: on like the folksy people that are that say they're
Speaker 1: able to find underground natural water. But then there's this
Speaker 1: other group of people that actually are carrying thousand rods
Speaker 1: in their truck on a daily basis, not trying to
Speaker 1: be folksy or cute.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: Construction people that literally are trying to find stuff underground.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you see it all the time, or I do
Speaker 8: every day. Every contractor I've ever work with does the
Speaker 8: same thing. It's not nobody thinks it's too crazy.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this at length, But you can use
Speaker 1: metal rods to find all types of underground utilities. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird but true. There are companies that
Speaker 1: sell commercial witch and sticks that have handles making it
Speaker 1: where you actually aren't even touching the rods. They spend
Speaker 1: completely on their own. Once again, can the ideo motor
Speaker 1: effect transfer through a handle into a rod. I don't
Speaker 1: know how confident would you be right now to walk
Speaker 1: out into my yard, which you've never been here before.
Speaker 1: How confident are you that you could find my waterline?
Speaker 8: If you've got a water line go into your house
Speaker 8: with which I would assume you do. Yeah, I could
Speaker 8: show you where it's you I want to know.
Speaker 1: So you're that confident in what you do.
Speaker 8: It might take me a little bit, but I could
Speaker 8: sort it out. Sometimes you want to take cues from
Speaker 8: things you see already, just to verify, because you can
Speaker 8: locate anything, not just water lines. Like I could locate
Speaker 8: a tree root out there and think it's your water line.
Speaker 8: I would have to play with it a little bit,
Speaker 8: walk around, but then I could get confident.
Speaker 1: So you are using all kind of clues, like you're
Speaker 1: not just using exactly what's in your hand. You're using exactly.
Speaker 8: I mean, the witch and sticks are going to cross
Speaker 8: up if there's something underground, whether it's a water sewer,
Speaker 8: electric communication, tree root extension, I could walk over that
Speaker 8: cord right there, and it would cross up. It could
Speaker 8: be an extension cord laying on the ground. Power to it,
Speaker 8: no power to it.
Speaker 1: I think that's where we lose people, is you're like, now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. It'll cross over an electric line, a
Speaker 1: gas line. This is where it gets really freaky. They
Speaker 1: will cross one hundred percent of the time over a
Speaker 1: grave or.
Speaker 8: A found an old foundation that's buried.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's it's picking up on something because it
Speaker 1: is not. I mean that. What does it feel like
Speaker 1: when they move in your hands?
Speaker 8: You don't really feel it? Yeah, I mean because you
Speaker 8: have to keep your hands pretty loose on it or
Speaker 8: they won't move if there's restriction there, So you don't
Speaker 8: really feel it. You just kind of feel them as
Speaker 8: they slide.
Speaker 1: It feels like a magnet to me. That's the way
Speaker 1: I would describe it, like magnetism. Like making these rods cross.
Speaker 1: This brings up an odd and confusing point. You hold
Speaker 1: metal witching sticks loosely so they can move on their own,
Speaker 1: But when you hold a green forked limb you can
Speaker 1: hold it as tight as you want. Hey, boys, I
Speaker 1: don't make the rules, I just know them. And this
Speaker 1: is just wild kind of unrelated. But doctor kin Effect
Speaker 1: told me that there is a sophisticated, high dollar instrument
Speaker 1: that they use to measure gravity and it's able to
Speaker 1: detect grave As I understand it, it's because of the
Speaker 1: hollow casket creating an almost imperceivable distance in gravity. Point being,
Speaker 1: there is some unusual stuff going on in the universe,
Speaker 1: like to me. I'm not claiming to be good at it,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you it is like gravity. There's
Speaker 1: no question, like I don't have to summon spirits or
Speaker 1: prey or it's like there's nothing supernatural going on here.
Speaker 1: This is a force that is equivalent to gravity that
Speaker 1: works every time, it doesn't not work sometimes. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it's always accurate.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Okay, to that point, I can get false positives, right,
Speaker 8: is what I would call it. I've done that before.
Speaker 8: Thought I was witching something, Doug, Doug, Doug didn't find it.
Speaker 8: Maybe there's something deeper than what I was digging. I
Speaker 8: can't explain that sometimes, but I've never a false negative,
Speaker 8: you know, like I've never I'm hug and oh my goodness,
Speaker 8: I didn't see that. I didn't think that was there. Yeah,
Speaker 8: if there's something there I always cross up on it. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I if I witch out of square before I dig
Speaker 8: and I don't find anything, I'm one hundred percent confident
Speaker 8: that there's nothing in that square.
Speaker 1: If the IDEO motor effect is real, then it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder what else in my life is completely fabricated
Speaker 1: that I'm convinced is one hundred percent real. That's a
Speaker 1: scary question. Human perception is frail. We all know people
Speaker 1: that live in a delusional world in some part of
Speaker 1: their life. It's easy to see in someone else, but
Speaker 1: hard to see in your own life. But to blindly
Speaker 1: accept the idio motor effect is one hundred percent true
Speaker 1: seems frail logic too. I'm no expert, but here's a
Speaker 1: quote from an academic paper on the IDEO motor effect.
Speaker 1: Despite its long history and the theoretical and port it
Speaker 1: existing empirical evidence for the IDEO motor theory is not
Speaker 1: strong enough to rule out an alternative hypothesis. End of quote.
Speaker 1: I don't want to misrepresent the research. They believe that
Speaker 1: it validated the effect. However, sounds to me like it's
Speaker 1: not as straightforward as gravity. There is some presumption, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like believing this takes some faith in something too.
Speaker 1: This stuff is just hard to quantify. It's possible, though,
Speaker 1: that the answer is deeper. I want to ask doctor
Speaker 1: Kinneffect an existential question about knowledge. How much do you
Speaker 1: feel like we actually know about physics because here we
Speaker 1: are in twenty twenty five, where we're at the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of human knowledge and intelligence and awareness of our universe?
Speaker 1: Or we assume that? And do you feel like they're
Speaker 1: more unanswered questions than when you started?
Speaker 6: Oh, there absolutely are more unanswered questions all the time.
Speaker 6: In many ways, the development of science involves the creation
Speaker 6: of questions non answers. I don't mean we're uninterested in answers.
Speaker 6: They're great. But usually when you get an answer, you
Speaker 6: get more questions. And that's certainly true in my field.
Speaker 6: We are, at one sense, much higher than where we
Speaker 6: started in terms of reaching a pinnacle.
Speaker 3: That's clear.
Speaker 6: Newton himself said, you know, I stood on the shoulders
Speaker 6: of giants, right. He could see further than the people
Speaker 6: before him. And we can see further than Newton could see.
Speaker 6: But we're conscious of not being near the summit. We're
Speaker 6: not near the pinnacle.
Speaker 1: Really, just your like personal engagement with physics, and you've
Speaker 1: dedicated your career and your life to this for a
Speaker 1: long time. Yes, does it feel like you're moving towards
Speaker 1: something that is infinite in a way, Like even if
Speaker 1: twenty five years from now, if we had this conversation,
Speaker 1: would we be any closer to understanding everything?
Speaker 6: That is a good question, and I can't tell you
Speaker 6: for sure whether we'll be closer. And it's unclear, of course,
Speaker 6: how we would define closer, because we're approximating to something
Speaker 6: we don't know. We don't know what the real true
Speaker 6: laws are. We only know what our discoveries are. How
Speaker 6: close we are to the real truth is I think
Speaker 6: fundamentally unknowable. I don't mean that we can say our
Speaker 6: ideas now seem to be better than they were before,
Speaker 6: because I think that is fair. I mean, we have
Speaker 6: learned a lot, But how close we are to being
Speaker 6: as it were done is another question. And we know
Speaker 6: that at times in the past when physicists thought they
Speaker 6: were close to being done, they weren't.
Speaker 1: Water witching merges the biases and frailty of human psychology
Speaker 1: with the great mysteries of physics exposing our inherent potential
Speaker 1: for deception. My final conclusion or at least right now
Speaker 1: is simply this. There is something to it, something is
Speaker 1: moving the sticks, and I have not heard an answer
Speaker 1: that completely satisfies me. So if you've got the gall
Speaker 1: take some clothes hangers and go out in your yard
Speaker 1: and try to find your waterline. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you should get a water witcher to come to your
Speaker 1: house if you drill a well, but it seems like
Speaker 1: it might put the odds in your favor. So I
Speaker 1: probably would, and maybe I'd do it for no other
Speaker 1: reason than to acknowledge my limited understanding of the universe.
Speaker 1: And after all this, I am just a little less
Speaker 1: confident in my own perception of reality. And I think
Speaker 1: that's good. I think it keeps us humble. It's clear
Speaker 1: of the things modernity has given us, so much of
Speaker 1: it good, but we have no idea what we've lost.
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Speaker 1: because that's where the bears live.